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MICROFILMED  1991 

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AUTHOR: 


ROBERTSON, 


TITLE: 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF 

FREETHOUGHT  ... 


PL  A  CE : 


LONDON 


DA  TE : 


1915 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARIES 
PRESE  R\ "  .\ ^'  I '  1 0  N  DEP  A  RTM ENT 


Original  Material  as  Filiiu  d  -  Existing  Bibliographic  Record 


r 


211 
R546 


Robertson,  John  Mackinnon,  1856-1933. 

history  of  freethoup+il ,  anc.era,  and 


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Association  for  information  and  Image  Management 

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LIBRARY 


Gift  of 

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Nicholas  Murray  Butler 


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I  \ 


A  SHORT 


HISTORY  OF  FEEETHOUGHT 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


WALT  WHITMAN:  an  Appreciation.     (Out  of  print.) 

ESSAYS  TOWARDS  A  CRITICAL  METHOD.     (Out  of  print.) 

NEW  ESSAYS  TOWARDS  A  CRITICAL  METHOD. 

MONTAIGNE  AND  SHAKSPERE.      Second  edition.    With  addi- 
tional essays  on  cognate  subjects. 

BUCKLE  AND  HIS  CRITICS :  a  Sociological  Study. 

THE  SAXON  AND  THE  CELT  :  a  Sociological  Study. 

MODERN  HUMANISTS:  Studies  of  Carlyle,  Mill,  Emerson,  Arnold, 
Ruskin,  and  Spencer.     Fourth  edition. 

THE  FALLACY  OF  SAVING :  a  Study  in  Economics. 

THE  EIGHT  HOURS  QUESTION:  a  Study  in  Economics. 

THE  DYNAMICS  OF  RELIGION :  an  Essay  in  English  Culture- 
History.    (By  "  M.  W.  Wiseman.")    (Out  of  prmt.) 

PATRIOTISM  AND  EMPIRE.     (Out  of  print.) 

STUDIES  IN  RELIGIOUS  FALLACY.     (Out  of  print.) 

WRECKING  THE  EMPIRE.     (Out  of  print.) 

CHRISTIANITY  AND  MYTHOLOGY.     Second  edition. 

A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIANITY.     Second  edition. 

PAGAN  CHRISTS.     Second  edition. 

CRITICISMS.     2  vols. 

TENNYSON  AND  BROW^NING  AS  TEACHERS. 

ESSAYS  IN  ETHICS. 

ESSAYS  IN  SOCIOLOGY.     2  vols. 

LETTERS  ON  REASONING.     Second  edition. 

COURSES  OF  STUDY.     Second  edition. 

CHAMBERLAIN  :  a  Study. 

DID  SHAKESPEARE  WRITE  "TITUS  ANDRONICUS"? 

PIONEER  HUMANISTS  :  Essays  on  Machiavelli,  Bacon,  Hobbes, 
Spinoza,  Shaftesbury,  Mandeville,  Gibbon,  and  Mary  Wollstone- 
craft. 

TRADE  AND  TARIFFS. 

CHARLES  BRADLAUGH.  (By  Mrs.  Bradlaugh  Bonner.)  Part  II 
by  J.  M.  R. 

RATIONALISM. 

THE  BACONIAN  HERESY  :  a  Confutation. 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  STATES.     (New  edition  of  "An  Introduc- 
tion to  English  Politics.") 
ELIZABETHAN  LITERATURE. 


A  SHORT  HISTORY 


OF 


FEEETHOUGHT 


ANCIENT  AND  MODERN 


i 


BY 


JOHN    M.  EOBEETSON 


*) 


THIRD  EDITION,  REVISED  AND  EXPANDED 


IN  TWO  VOLUMES 
Vol.  I 


SHAFTESBURY'S  "  Characteristics."    Edited  with  an  Introduction. 

2  vols.     (Out  of  print.) 
BUCKLE'S  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Civilization  in  England. 

Edited  with  an  Introduction.     Routledge. 
The  Philosophical  Works  of  BACON.     Edited  with  an  Introduction. 

Routledge. 


(issued  for  the  hationalist  press  associationm-imited) 


London : 
WATTS  &  CO., 

JOHNSON'S  COURT,  FLEET  STREET,  E.G. 

1915 


« 


i 


TO 


SYDNEY  ANSELL  GIMSON 


? 


■i    I" 


CONTENTS 


VOLUME  I 


Preface 


1,. 


Chap.  I— Introductory 

§  1.  Origin  and  Meaning  of  the  word  Freethought 

§  2.  Previous  histories  _----- 

§  3.  The  Psychology  of  Freethinking  -  -  -  - 

CHAP.  TI— Primitive  Freethinking  .  .  -  - 

Chap,  hi— Progress  under  Ancient  Religions 

§  1.  Early  Association  and  Competition  of  Cults 

§  2.  The  Process  in  India     ------ 

§  3.  Mesopotamia     ------- 

§  4.  Ancient  Persia  ------- 

§  5.  Egypt     -------- 

§  6.  Phoenicia  ------- 

§  7.  Ancient  China   ------- 

§  8.  Mexico  and  Peru  ------ 

§  9.  The  Common  Forces  of  Degeneration  -  .  - 

Chap.  IV— Relative  Freethought  in  Israel 

§  1.  The  Early  Hebrews       .----- 
§  2.  The  manipulated  prophetic  literature  -  -  - 

§  3.  The  Post-Exilic  Literature       -  -  -  -  - 

CHAP.  V— Freethought  in  Greece     .    -    -    - 

§  1.  Beginnings  of  Ionic  Culture      -  -  -  -  - 

§  2.  Homer,  Stesichoros,  Pindar,  and  ^schylus    - 

§  3.  The  Culture-Conditions  _  -  -  -  - 

§  4.  From  Thales  to  the  Eleatic  School       -  -  -  - 

§  5.  Pythagoras  and  Magna  Graecia  .  -  -  - 

§  6.  Anaxagoras,  Perikles,  and  Aspasia        -  -  -  - 

§  7.  From  Demokritus  to  Euripides  -  -  -  - 

§  8.  Sokrates,  Plato,  and  Aristotle  -  -  -  - 

§  9.  Post- Alexandrian  Greece  :  Ephoros,  Pyrrho,  Zeno,  Epicurus, 

Theodorus,   Diagoras,    Stilpo,   Bion,   Strato,   Evemeros, 

Carneades,   Clitomachos ;    The   Sciences;    Advance   and 

Decline    of    Astronomy;    Lucian,    Sextus    Empiricus, 

Polybius,  Strabo ;  Summary  _  -  -  - 

CHAP.  VI— FREETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  ROME 

§  1.  Culture  Beginnings,  to  Ennius  and  the  Greeks 

vii 


PAGE 

xi 


1 

10 

15 

22 

44 
48 
61 
65 
69 
78 
82 
88 
91 


97 
104 
109 

120 

123 
126 
134 
136 
148 
162 
157 
168 


180 


194 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 


§  2.  Lucretius,  Cicero,  Caesar  .  -  -  -  - 

§  3.  Decline  under  the  Empire        -  -  -  -  " 

§  4.  The  higher  Pagan  ethics  -  -  "  "  ' 

CHAP.  VII— ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

§  1.  Freethought  in  the  Gospels  :  contradictory  forces       - 

§  2.  The  Epistles :  their  anti-rationalism 

§  3.  Anti-pagan  rationalism.     The  Gnostics  -  "  " 

§  4.  Rationalistic  heresy.     Arius.     Pelagius.     Jovinian.     Aerius. 

Vigilantius.     The  religious  wars     -  -  -  " 

§  6.  Anti-Christian  thought  :    its  decline.     Celsus.     Last    ighta 

of  critical  thought.     Macrobius.     Theodore.     Photmus. 

The  expulsion  of  science.     The  appropriation  of  pagan 

endowments  -  -  "  ".  "      - 

§  6.  The  intellectual  and  moral  decadence.     Boethms 

CHAP.  VIII— FREETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 

§  1.  ISIohammed  and  his  contemporaries.    Early  "  Zendekism  " 

§  2.  The  Influence  of  the  Koran 

§  3.  Saracen  freethought  in  the  East.  The  Motazilites.  The 
Spread  of  Culture.     Intellectual  Collapse 

§  4    El-Marri  and  Omar  KhayyAm.     Sufiism 

§  5.  Arab  Philosophy  and  Moorish  freethought.  Avempace. 
Abubacer.     Averroes.     Ibn  Khaldun 

§  6  Rationalism  in  later  Islam.  Sufiism.  Babism  in  contem- 
porary Persia.  Freethinking  in  Mohammedan  India  and 
Africa  .----'' 

CHAP.  IX— CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES         -  -  " 

§  1.  Heresy  in  Byzantium.   Iconoclasm.   Leo.    Photius.   Michael. 

The  early  Paulicians 
§  2.  Critical  Heresy  in  the  West,    Vergilius.    Claudius.    Agobard. 
John     Scotus.      The    case    of     Gottschalk.      Berengar. 
Roscelin.  Nominalism  and  Realism.   Heresy  in  Florence 

and  in  France  -  -  "  '       /^  ^      -x  •" 

§  3  Popular  Anti-Clerical  Heresy,  The  Paulicians  (Cathari)  m 
Western  Europe :  their  anticipation  of  Protestantism. 
Abuses  of  the  Church  and  papacy.  Vogue  of  anti-clerical 
heresy.     Peter  de  Brueys.     Eudo.    Paterini.    Waldenses 

§4  HeresyinSoutJiern  France.  The  crusade  against  Albigensian 
heresy.  Arrest  of  Provencal  civilization :  Rise  and  char- 
acter of  the  Inquisition 

8  5  Freethought  in  the  Schools,  The  problem  set  to  Anselm. 
Roscelin.  Nominalism  and  Realism.  Testimony  of 
Giraldus  Cambrensis :  Simon  of  Tournay.  WiUiam  of 
Conches.     Abailard.    John  of  Salisbury 

5  6  Saracen  and  Jewish  Influences.  Maimonides.  Ibn  Ezra. 
Averroists.  Amalrich.  David  of  Dinant.  Thomas  Aquinas. 
Unbelief  at  Paris  University.  Suppressive  action  of  the 
Church.     Judicial  torture  .  .  -  - 


201 

207 

215 


218 
224 
224 

229 


235 
243 


248 
252 

253 
261 

266 


272 

277 

277 


282 


291 


299 


307 


f 


CONTENTS 

§  7.  Freethought  in  Italy.  Anti-clericalism  in  Florence. 
Frederick  II.  Michael  Scotus.  Dante's  views.  Pietro 
of  Abano.  Brunetto  Latini.  Cecco  Stabili.  Boccaccio. 
Petrarch.     Averroism         .  _  -  -  - 

§  8.  Sects  and  Orders.  Italian  developments.  The  Brethren  of 
the  Free  Spirit.  Beghards,  etc.  Franciscans.  Humiliati. 
Abbot  Joachim.     Segarelli  and  Dolcino     .  -  - 

§  9.  Thought  in  Spain.  Arab  influences.  Heresy  under 
Alfonso  X.  The  first  Inquisition.  Arnaldo  of  Villanu- 
eva.  Enrique  IV.  Pedro  de  Osma.  The  New  Inquisi- 
tion.    The  causes  of  Spanish  evolution 

§  10.  Thought  in  Englarid.  Roger  Bacon.  Chaucer.  Items  in 
Piers  Ploughman.     Lollardry.     Wiclif 

§  11.  Thought  in  France.  Francois  de  Rues.  Jean  de  Meung. 
Reynard  the  Fox.  Paris  university.  The  sects.  The 
Templars.  William  of  Occam.  Marsiglio.  Pierre  Aureol. 
Nominalism  and  Realism.  "Double  truth."  Unbelief 
in  the  Paris  schools  _  _  -  -  - 

§  12.  Thought  in  the  Teutonic  Countries.  The  Minnesingers. 
Walter  der  Vogelweide.  Master  Eckhart.  Sects.  The 
Imitatio  Christi       ------ 

Chap.  X— Freethought  in  the  Renaissance 


§  1. 


§  2. 


TJie  Italian  Evolution.  Saracen  Sources.  Anti-clericalism. 
Discredit  of  the  Church.  Lorenzo  Valla.  Masuccio. 
Pulci.  Executions  for  blasphemy.  Averroism.  Nifo. 
Unbelief  at  Rome.  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  Platonism. 
Pico  della  Mirandola.  Machiavelli.  Guicciardini.  Belief 
in  witchcraft.  Pomponazzi.  Pomponio  Leto.  The  sur- 
vival of  Averroism.  Jewish  freethought  - 
TJie  French  Evolution,  Desperiers.  Rabelais.  Dolet.  The 
Vaudois  massacres.  Unbelieving  Churchmen.  Marguerite 
of  Navarre.  Ronsard.  Bodin.  Vallee.  Estienne.  Pleas 
for  tolerance.     Revival  of  Stoicism  .  -  - 

§  3.  Tlie  English  Evolutio7i.    Reginald  Pecock.    Duke  Humphrey. 
Unbelief  in  immortality      .  -  -  -  - 

§  4.  TJie    Remaining    European    Countries.    Nicolaus  of   Cusa. 
Hermann  van  Ryswick.   Astrology  and  science.   Summary 

Chap.  XI— The  Reformation  Politically  Considered 


316 


§  1.  The  German  Conditions. 
Causation    - 

§  2.  The  Problem  in  Italy 
Savonarola.  Catholic 
Heresy  in  Italy.  Its 
gatorius.     Italian  and 

§  3.  The  Hussite  Failure  in 
Militz  and  his  school, 
wars.    Helchitzky  - 


The  New  Learning.    Economic 

,  Spain,  and  tlie  Netherlands, 
reaction.  The  New  Inquisition, 
suppression.     The  Index  Expur- 

northern  "  character  " 

Bohemia.  Early  anti-clericalism. 
Huss  and  Jerome.     The  Taborite 


IK 


PAGE 


322 


331 


337 
342 


351 


361 


365 


379 
393 
398 


403 


407 


415 


-.if*»*^' 


*.*in     ■«»-■* 


■■■"#|g  .*•  ''■•*':^ 


„».^    -^-  •*  *■♦.. 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 


§  2.  Lucretius,  Cicero,  Caesar  .  .  -  -  - 

§  3.  Decline  under  the  Empire        .  .  -  -  - 

§  4.  The  higher  Pagan  ethics  .  .  -  -  - 

Chap,  Vll— Ancient  Chbistianity  and  its  Opponents 

§  1.  Freethought  in  the  Gospels  :  contradictory  forces 

§  2.  The  Epistles :  their  anti-rationalism 

§  3.  Anti-pagan  rationalism.     The  Gnostics  -  -  - 

§  4.  Rationalistic  heresy.     Arius.     Pelagius.     Jovinian.     Aerius. 

Vigilantius.     The  religious  wars     -  -  -  - 

§  5.  Anti-Christian  thought  :    its  decline.     Celsus.     Last  lights 

of  critical  thought.     Macrobius.     Theodore.     Photinus. 

The  expulsion  of  science.     The  appropriation  of  pagan 

endowments  -  -  -  -  "  " 

§  6.  The  intellectual  and  moral  decadence.     Boethius 

CHAP.  VIII— FREETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 

§  1.  Mohammed  and  his  contemporaries.     Early  "  Zendekism  " 
§  2.  The  Influence  of  the  Koran      .  -  -  -  - 

§  3.  Saracen  freethought  in  the  East.      The  Motazilites.     The 

Spread  of  Culture.     Intellectual  Collapse 
§  4.  El-Marri  and  Omar  Khayydm.     Sufiism 
§  5.  Arab    Philosophy    and     Moorish    freethought.      Avempace. 

Abubacer.     Averroes.     Ibn  Khaldun 
§  6.  Rationalism  in  later  Islam.     Sufiism.     Babism  in  contem- 
porary Persia.     Freethinking  in  Mohammedan  India  and 
Africa  ------- 

Chap,  ix— Christendom  in  the  Middle  Ages 

§  1.  Heresy  in  Byzantium.  Iconoclasm.  Leo.  Photius.  Michael. 
The  early  Paulicians  .  -  -  -  - 

§  2.  Critical  Heresy  in  the  West.  Vergilius.  Claudius.  Agobard. 
John  Scotus.  The  case  of  Gottschalk.  Berengar. 
Roscelin.  Nominalism  and  Realism.  Heresy  in  Florence 
and  in  France  ------ 

§  3.  Popular  Anti-Clerical  Heresy.  The  Paulicians  (Cathari)  in 
Western  Europe:  their  anticipation  of  Protestantism. 
Abuses  of  the  Church  and  papacy.  Vogue  of  anti-clerical 
heresy.     Peter  de  Brueys.     Eudo.    Pater ini.    Waldenses 

§  4.  Heresy  in  Southern  France.  The  crusade  against  Albigensian 
heresy.  Arrest  of  Provencal  civilization  :  Rise  and  char- 
acter of  the  Inquisition       .  -  -  -  - 

§  5.  Freethought  in  the  Schools.  The  problem  set  to  Anselm. 
Roscelin.  Nominalism  and  Realism.  Testimony  of 
Giraldus  Cambrensis :  Simon  of  Tournay.  William  of 
Conches.     Abailard.     John  of  Salisbury 

§  6.  Saracen  and  Jewish  Influences.  Maimonides.  Ibn  Ezra. 
Averrolsts.  Amalrich.  David  of  Dinant.  Thomas  Aquinas. 
Unbelief  at  Paris  University.  Suppressive  action  of  the 
Church.     Judicial  torture  -  -  -  - 


PAGE 

201 
207 
215 


218 
224 
224 

229 


235 
243 


248 
252 

253 
261 

266 


272 

277 

277 


282 


291 


299 


307 


315 


CONTENTS 

§  7.  Freethought  in  Ituly.  Anti-clericalism  in  Florence. 
Frederick  II.  Michael  Scotus.  Dante's  views c  Pietro 
of  Abano.  Brunetto  Latini.  Cecco  Stabili.  Boccaccio. 
Petrarch.     Averroism  -  -  -  .  - 

§  8.  Sects  and  Orders.  Italian  developments.  The  Brethren  of 
the  Free  Spirit.  Beghards,  etc.  Franciscans.  Hwniliati. 
Abbot  Joachim.  Segarelli  and  Dolcino 
§  9.  Thought  in  Spain.  Arab  influences.  Heresy  under 
Alfonso  X.  The  first  Inquisition.  Arnaldo  of  Villanu- 
eva.  Enrique  IV.  Pedro  de  Osma.  The  New  Inquisi- 
tion.    The  causes  of  Spanish  evolution      .  -  - 

§  10.  Thought  in  England.  Roger  Bacon.  Chaucer.  Items  in 
Piers  Ploughman.     Lollardry.     Wiclif 

§  11.  TJwught  in  France.  FrauQois  de  Rues.  Jean  de  Meung. 
Reynard  the  Fox.  Paris  university.  The  sects.  The 
Templars.  William  of  Occam.  Marsiglio.  Pierre  Aureol. 
Nominalism  and  Realism.  "Double  truth."  Unbelief 
in  the  Paris  schools  _  -  -  -  - 

§  12.  Thought  in  the  Teutonic  Countries.  The  Minnesingers. 
Walter  der  Vogelweide.  Master  Eckhart.  Sects.  The 
Imitatio  Christi       ------ 

Chap.  X— Freethought  in  the  Renaissance 

§  1.  TJie  Italian  Evolution.  Saracen  Sources.  Anti-clericalism. 
Discredit  of  the  Church.  Lorenzo  Valla.  Masuccio. 
Pulci.  Executions  for  blasphemy.  Averroism.  Nifo. 
Unbelief  at  Rome.  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  Platonism. 
Pico  della  Mirandola.  Machiavelli.  Guicciardini.  Belief 
in  witchcraft.  Pomponazzi.  Pomponio  Leto.  The  sur- 
vival of  Averroism.     Jewish  freethought    -  -  - 

§  2.  Tlie  French  Evolution.  Desperiers.  Rabelais.  Dolet.  The 
Vaudois  massacres.  Unbelieving  Churchmen.  Marguerite 
of  Navarre.  Ronsard.  Bodin.  Vallee.  Estienne.  Pleas 
for  tolerance.     Revival  of  Stoicism  .  .  - 

§  3.  Tlie  English  Evolution.  Reginald  Pecock.  Duke  Humphrey. 
Unbelief  in  immortality      .  -  -  -  - 

§  4.  The  Remaining  Europcaji  Countries.  Nicolaus  of  Cusa. 
Hermann  van  Ryswick.   Astrology  and  science.   Summary 

Chap.  XI— The  Reformation  Politically  considered 

§  1.  The  German  Conditions.  The  New  Learning.  Economic 
Causation 

§  2.  The  Problem  in  Italy,  Spain,  and  the  Netherlands. 
Savonarola.  Catholic  reaction.  The  New  Inquisition. 
Heresy  in  Italy.  Its  suppression.  The  Index  Expur- 
gatorius.     Italian  and  northern  "  character  "         - 

§  3.  The  Hussite  Failure  in  Bohemia.  Early  anti-clericalism. 
Militz  and  his  school.  Huss  and  Jerome.  The  Taborite 
wars.     Helchitzky  ------ 


1 

'I 


IX 


PAGE 


322 


331 


337 
342 


351 


361 


365 


379 
393 
398 


403 


407 


415 


CONTENTS 


( 


§  4.  Anti-Papalism  in  Hungary.  Early  anti -clericalism.  Rapid 
success  of  the  Reformation.  Its  decline.  New  heresy. 
Socinianism.      Biandrata.      Davides.      Recovery  of  the 

Church         -  -  -  -  '  At 

§  5.  Protestantism  in  Poland.  Early  anti-clericalism.  Inroad  of 
Protestantism.  Growth  of  Unitarianism.  Goniondzki. 
Pauli.     Catholic  reaction    -  -  -  -  ' 

§  6.  The  Struggle  in  France.  Attitude  of  King  Francis.  Economic 
issues.  Pre-Lutheran  Protestantism.  Persecution.  Ber- 
quin.  Protestant  violences.  Fortunes  of  the  cause  in 
France  ..----- 

§  7.  The  Political  Process  in  Britain.  England  not  specially  anti- 
papal.    The  causation.    Henry's  divorce.    Spoliation     - 

CHAP.  XIT— THE  REFORMATION  AND  FREETHOUGHT 

§  1.  Germany    and    Sivitzerland.      Mutianus.      Crotus.     Bebel. 

Rise  of  Unitarianism.     Luther  and  Melanchthon.     Their 

anti-democratic   politics.      Their   dogmatism.      Zwingli. 

Calvin  and  his  victims.    Gruet.    The  Liber tini.    Servetus. 

Gripaldi.     Calvin's  polity.     Ochino.     Anthoine.     Moral 

failure  of  Protestantism 
§  2.  England.    Henry  and  Wolsey.     Advanced  heresy. 

tion.     Sir  Thomas  More      - 
§  3.  The  Netherlands.    Calvinism  and  Arminianism. 

towards  Catholicism.     Barneveldt.     Grotius 
§  4.  Conclusion.     The    intellectual    failure.     Indirect    gains  to 

freedom        ------- 

CHAP.  XIII.— THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

^  1.  The  Italian  Influence.    Deism.    Unitarianism.    Latitudinar- 

ianism.     Aconzio.    Nizolio.     Pereira 
§  2.  Spain.    Huarte  ------ 

§  3.  France.  Treatises  against  atheism  :  DeMomay.  New  skep- 
ticism: Sanchez.  Montaigne.  Charron.  The  Satyre- 
Menipp6e.  Garasse  on  the  Beatix  Esprits,  Mersenne's 
attack  .------ 


PAGE 


Persecu- 


Reaction 


419 


422 


427 
431 


434 
458 
461 
464 


466 
470 


478 


PKEFACE 


This,  the  third  edition,  represents  a  considerable  expansion  of 
the  second  (1906),  which  in  its  turn  was  a  considerable 
expansion  of  the  first  (1899).  The  book  now  somewhat 
approximates,  in  point  of  fullness,  to  the  modest  ideal  aimed 
at.     Anything    much    fuller   would    cease   to   be   a    **  Short 

History." 

The  process  of  revision,  carried  on  since  the  last  issue,  has, 
I  hope,  meant  some  further  advance  towards  correctness,  and 
some  improvement  in  arrangement— a  particularly  difficult 
matter  in  such  a  book.  As  before,  the  many  critical  excursus 
have  been  so  printed  that  they  may  be  recognized  and  skipped 
by  those  readers  who  care  to  follow  only  the  narrative.  The 
chapter  on  the  nineteenth  century,  though  much  expanded, 
like  those  on  the  eighteenth,  remains,  I  fear,  open  to  objection 
on  the  score  of  scantiness.  I  can  only  plead  that  the  ample 
and  excellent  work  of  Mr.  A.  W.  Benn  has  now  substantially 
met  the  need  for  a  fuller  survey  of  that  period. 

It  is  fitting  that  I  should  acknowledge  the  generous  critical 
reception  given  by  most  reviewers  to  the  previous  editions  of 
a  book  which,  breaking  as  it  did  new  ground,  lacked  the  gain 
from  previous  example  that  accrues  to  most  historical  writing. 
My  many  debts  to  historians  of  culture  are,  I  trust,  indicated 
in  the  notes ;  but  I  have  to  repeat  my  former  acknowledg- 
ments as  to  the  Biographical  Dictionary  of  Freethinkers  of 
my  dead  friend,  J.  M.  Wheeler,  inasmuch  as  the  aid  I  have 
had  from  his  manifold  research  does  not  thus  appear  on  the 
surface. 


XI 


Xll 


PKEFACE 


It  remains  to  add  my  thanks  to  a  number  of  friendly 
correspondents  who  have  assisted  me  by  pointing  out  short- 
comings and  errors.  Further  assistance  of  the  same  kind  will 
be  gratefully  welcomed.  It  is  still  my  hope  that  the  book 
may  help  some  more  leisured  student  in  the  construction  of 
a  more  massive  record  of  the  development  of  rational  thought 
on  the  side  of  human  life  with  which  it  deals. 

An  apology  is  perhaps  due  to  the  purchasers  of  the  second 
edition,  which  is  now  superseded  by  a  fuller  record.  I  can 
but  plead  that  I  have  been  unable  otherwise  to  serve  their 
need ;  and  express  a  hope  that  the  low  price  of  the  present 
edition  will  be  a  compensation. 

J.  M.  K. 

September,  1914, 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  FREETHOUGHT 


Chapter  I 
INTRODUCTOKY 

§  1.  Origin  and  Meaning  of  the  Word 

The  words  "  freethinking  "  and  "  freethinker  "  first  appear  in  English 
literature  about  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  seem  to  have 
originated  there  and  then,  as  we  do  not  find  them  earlier  in  French 
or  in  Italian,^  the  only  other  modern  literatures  wherein  the  pheno- 
mena for  which  the  words  stand  had  previously  arisen. 

The  title  of  "  atheist "  had  been  from  time  immemorial 
applied  to  every  shade  of  serious  heresy  by  the  orthodox,  as 
when  the  early  Christians  were  so  described  by  the  image- 
adoring  polytheists  around  them  ;  and  in  Latin  Christendom 
the  term  infidelis,  translating  the  aTrto-ros  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, which  primarily  applied  to  Jews  and  pagans,^  was  easily 
extensible,  as  in  the  writings  of  Augustine,  to  all  who  challenged 
or  doubted  articles  of  ordinary  Christian  belief,  all  alike  being 
regarded  as  consigned  to  perdition.^  It  is  by  this  line  of 
descent  that  the  term  "infidelity,"  applied  to  doubt  on  such 
doctrines  as  that  of  the  future  state,  comes  up  in  England  in 
the  fifteenth  century.*  It  implied  no  systematic  or  critical 
thinking.  The  label  of  *'  deist,"  presumably  self-apphed  by  the 
bearers,  begins  to  come  into  use  in  French  about  the  middle  of 
the  sixteenth  century;*  and  that  of  "naturahst,"  also  presum- 
ably chosen  by  those  who  bore  it,  came  into  currency  about 
the  same^  time.  Lechler  traces  the  latter  term  in  the  Latin 
form  as  far  back  as  the  MS.  of  the  Heptaplomeres  of  Bodin, 

1  Cv-Ijechler,  Geschichte  des  eiigliachen  Deismus,  1841,  p.  458;  A.  S.  Farrar,  Critical 
History  of  Freethoiight,  1862.  p.  588 ;  Larousse's  Dictionnaire,  art.  Libre  Pensee  ;  Sayous, 
Les  clHstes  anglais  et  le  Christianisrne,  1882,  p.  203. 

2  Jesus  is  made  to  apply  it  either  to  his  disciples  or  to  willing  followers  in  Matt.  xvii. 
17.  where  the  implication  seems  to  be  that  lack  of  faith  alone  prevents  miraculous  cures. 
So  with  dTTKTTi'a  in  Matt,  xiii,  58.  In  the  Epistles,  a  pagan  as  such  is  d7r£(rros— e.g., 
1  Cor.  vi.  6.    Here  the  Vulgate  has  infideles :  in  Matt.  xiii.  58,  the  word  is  incredulitatem. 

'  Cp.  Luke  xii.  46;  Tit.  i,  15;  Rev.  xxi,  8.  ,     ^„ 

*  In  the  prologue  to  the  first  print  of  the  old  (1196)  Revelation  of  the  Monk  of  Evesham 
1482. 


*  Bayle,  Dictiofinaire,  art.  Vibet,  Note  D. 


INTRODUCTORY 

dated  1588;  but  it  was  common  before  that  date,  as  De 
Momay  in  the  preface  to  his  De  la  V^rite  de  la  religion 
chrMienne  (1581)  declaims  *'  against  the  false  naturalists  (that 
is  to  say,  professors  of  the  knowledge  of  nature  and  natural 
things)  ";  and  Montaigne  in  one  of  his  later  essays  (1588)  has 
the  phrase  ''nous  autres  naturalistes.''^  Apart  from  these 
terms,  those  commonly  used  in  French  in  the  seventeenth 
century  were  bel  esprit  (sometimes,  though  not  necessarily, 
connoting  unbelief),  esprit  fort  and  lihcrtin,  the  latter  being 
used  in  the  sense  of  a  religious  doubter  by  Corneille,  Moli^re, 
and  Bayle.^ 

It  seems  to  have  first  come  into  use  as  one  of  the  hostile 
names  for  the  "  Brethren  of  the  Free  Spirit,"  a  pantheistic  and 
generally  heretical  sect  which  became  prominent  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  and  flourished  widely,  despite  destructive  persecution, 
till  the  fifteenth.  Their  doctrine  being  antinomian,  and  their 
practice  often  extravagant,  they  were  accused  by  Churchmen  of 
licentiousness,  so  that  in  their  case  the  name  Libertini  had  its 
full  latitude  of  apphcation.  In  the  sixteenth  century  the  name 
of  Libertines  is  found  borne,  voluntarily  or  otherwise,  by  a 
similar  sect,  probably  springing  from  some  remnant  of  the  first, 
but  calling  themselves  Spirituales,  who  came  into  notice  in 
Flanders,  were  favoured  in  France  by  Marguerite  of  Navarre, 
sister  of  Francis  I,  and  became  to  some  extent  associated  with 
sections  of  the  Reformed  Church.  They  were  attacked  by 
Calvin  in  the  treatise  Conire  la  secte  fanatiqtie  et  furieicse  des 
Lihertins  (1544  and  1545).^  The  name  of  Libertini  was  not  in 
the  sixteenth  century  applied  by  any  Genevese  writer  to  any 
pohtical  party  ;*  but  by  later  historians  it  was  in  time  either 
fastened  on  or  adopted  by  the  main  body  of  Calvin's  opponents 
in  Geneva,  who  probably  included  some  members  of  the  sect 
or  movement  in  question.  They  were  accused  by  him  of 
general  depravity,  a  judgment  not  at  all  to  be  acquiesced  in,  in 
view  of  the  controversial  habits  of  the  age;  though  they 
probably  included  antinomian  Christians  and  libertines  in  the 
modern  sense,  as  well  as  orthodox  lovers  of  freedom  and  orderly 
non-Christians.  As  the  first  Brethren  of  the  Free  Spirit, 
so-called,  seem  to  have  appeared  in  Italy  (where  they  are 
supposed  to  have  derived,  like  the  Waldenses,  from  the 
immigrant  Paulicians  of  the  Eastern  Church),  the  name 
Libertini  presumably   originated   there.     But   in   Renaissance 


1  £ssats.  liv.  iii.  ch.  12.    Edit.  Firmm-Didot.  1882,  u,  518.  ^   ,  ,,    , 

2  See  F.  T.  Perrens.  Les  Lihertins  en  France  au  xviie  Steele,  1896,  lutrod.  §  11,  for  a 
good  general  view  of  the  bearings  of  the  word.  It  stood  at  times  for  simple  independence 
of  spirit,  apart  from  religious  freethiuking.  Thus  Madame  de  Sevign6  (Lettre  k  Mme.  de 
Grignan,  28  juin.  1671)  writes:  "JesuisZiberfiTie.  plus  que  vouB."  „    ,,    ^   .        „    , 

3  Stahelin,  Johannes  Calvin,  1863.  i.  383  sq.;  Perrens  as  cited,  pp.  &-6 ;  Mosheim,  Eccles, 
Hist.,  13  Cent.,  part  ii.  eh.  v.  §5  9-12,  and  7iotes:  14  Cent.,  part  ii.  ch.  v.  §§  3-5:  16  Cent., 
§  3,  part  ii,  ch.  ii.  §§  38-42. 

*  A.  Bossert,  Calvin,  1906,  p.  151. 


ORIGIN  AND  MEANING  OF  THE  WORD  3 

Italy  an  unbeliever  seems  usually  to  have  been  called  simply  ateo, 
or  infedele,  ovpagano,  "  The  standing  phrase  was  no7i  averfede.'*^ 
In  England,  before  and  at  the  Reformation,  both  *'  infidel  " 
and  "faithless"  usually  had  the  theological  force  of  "non- 
Christian."  Thus  Tyndale  says  of  the  Turks  that  though  they 
"  knowledge  one  God,"  yet  they  "  have  erred  and  been  faithless 
these  eight  hundred  years";  adding  the  same  of  the  Jews.^ 
Throughout  EHzabeth's  reign,  "  infidel  "  seems  thus  to  have 
commonly  signified  only  a  "  heathen  "  or  Jew  or  Mohammedan. 
Bishop  Jewel,  for  instance,  writes  that  the  Anglo-Saxon 
invaders  of  Britain  "then  were  infidels";^  and  the  word 
appears  to  be  normally  used  in  that  sense,  or  with  a  playful 
force  derived  from  that,  by  the  divines,  poets,  and  dramatists, 
including  Shakespeare,  as  by  Milton  in  his  verse.'*     Ben  Jonson 

has  the  phrase : 

I  did  not  expect 
To  meet  an  infidel,  much  less  an  atheist. 
Here  in  Love's  list.* 

One  or  two  earlier  writers,^  indeed,  use  "  infidel "  in  the  modern 
sense ;  and  it  was  at  times  so  used  by  early  Elizabethans.' 
But  Foxe  brackets  together  "Jews,  Turks,  or  infidels";®  and 
Hooper,  writing  in  1547,  speaks,  like  Jewel,  of  the  heathen  as 
"  the  infidels."'  Hooker  (1553-1600),  in  his  Fifth  Sermon,  §  9,'' 
uses  the  word  somewhat  indefinitely,  but  in  his  margin  makes 
"  Pagans  and  Infidels  "  equivalent  to  "  Pagans  and  Turks."  So 
also,  in  the  Ecclesiastical  Polity, '^^  "infidels"  means  men  of 
another  religion.  On  the  title-page  of  Reginald  Scot's  Discoverie 
of  Witchcraft  (1574),  on  the  other  hand;  we  have  "  the  infidelitie 
of  atheists";  but  so  late  as  1600  we  find  "J.  H."  [John 
Healy] ,  the  translator  of  Augustine's  City  of  God,  rendering 
infideles  and  homines  infideles  by  "  unbelievers."^  *  Infidelity," 
in  the  modern  sense,  occurs  in  Sir  T.  Browne.^^ 

In  England,  as  in  the  rest  of  Europe,  however,  the  phenomenon 
of  freethought  had  existed,  in  specific  form,  long  before  it  could 
express  itself  in  propagandist  writings,  or  find  any  generic  name  save 
those  of  atheism  and  infidelity ;  and  the  process  of  naming  was  as 
fortuitous  as  it  generally  is  in  matters  of  intellectual  evolution. 
Phrases  approximating  to  "free  thought"  occur  soon  after  the 
Restoration.     Thus  Glanvill  repeatedly  writes   sympathetically  of 


1  Burckhardt,  Eenaissance  in  Italy,  Eng.  tr.  ed.  1892,  p.  542,  note. 

^  Answer  to  Sir  T.  More,  Parker  Soc.  rep.  1850.  pp.  53-54. 

»  Controversy  with  Harding,  Parker  Soc.  rep.  of  Work^,  1845.  i.  305.  „   .....  g^  « 

*  Paradise  Lost.  i.  582 ;  Samson  Agonistes,  221.  5  The  New  Inn,  1628-9.  Act  ill.  Sc.  2. 

^  The  New  English  Dictionary  gixesinst&nces  in  1526  &nd  1552. 

7  If  Mr.  Froude's  transcript  of  a  manuscript  can  here  be  relied  on.    History,  ed.  1B7U. 
X,  545.    (Ed.  1872,  xi,  199.)         «  Four  Questions  Propounded  (pref .  to  Acts  and  Monuments). 

9  Answer  to  the  Bishov  of  Winchester,  Parker  Soc.  rep.,  p.  129.  _    

10  Works,  ed.  1850,  ii,  752.  "  B.  V,  ch.  i,  §  3.    Works,  i,  429. 

12  Be  civitate  Dei,  xx,  30,  end;  xxi,  5,  beginn.,  etc. 
18  Beligio  Medici,  1642,  pt.  i.  IS  19, 20. 


4  INTKODUCTOBY 

free  philosophers"*  and  "free  philosophy."''  In  1667  we  find 
Sprat,  the  historian  of  the  Eoyal  Society,  describing  the  activity  of 
that  body  as  having  arisen  or  taken  its  special  direction  through  the 
conviction  that  in  science,  as  in  warfare,  better  results  had  been 
obtained  by  a  "  free  way  "  than  by  methods  not  so  describable.^  As 
Sprat  is  careful  to  insist,  the  members  of  the  Koyal  Society,  though 
looked  at  askance  by  most  of  the  clergy  *  and  other  pietists,  were  not 
as  such  to  be  classed  as  unbelievers,  the  leading  members  being 
strictly  orthodox  ;  but  a  certain  number  seem  to  have  shown  scant 
concern  for  religion  ;*  and  while  it  was  one  of  the  Society's  first 
rules  not  to  debate  any  theological  question  whatever,^  the  intellec- 
tual atmosphere  of  the  time  was  such  that  some  among  those  who 
followed  the  *'  free  way  "  in  matters  of  natural  science  would  be 
extremely  likely  to  apply  it  to  more  familiar  problems.'  At  the 
same  period  we  find  Spinoza  devoting  his  Tractatus  Theologico- 
Foliticus  (1670)  to  the  advocacy  of  libertas  philosophandi ;  and  such 
a  work  was  bound  to  have  a  general  European  influence.  It  was 
probably,  then,  a  result  of  such  express  assertion  of  the  need  and 
value  of  freedom  in  the  mental  life  that  the  name  "  freethinker  " 
came  into  English  use  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  century. 

Before  "  deism  "  came  into  English  vogue,  the  names  for 
unbelief,  even  deistic,  were  simply  "infidelity"  and  "atheism  " 
— e.g.,  Bishop  Fotherby's  Atheoinastix  (1622),  Baxter's 
Unreasonableness  of  hifidelity  (1655)  and  Beasons  of  the 
Christian  Religion  (1667),  passim.  Bishop  Stillingfleet's  Letter 
to  a  Deist  (1677)  appears  to  be  the  first  published  attack  on 
deism  by  name.  His  Origines  Sacra  (1662)  deals  chiefly  with 
deistic  views,  but  calls  unbelievers  in  general  "  atheists." 
Cudworth,  in  his  True  Intellectual  System  of  the  Universe 
(written  1671,  pubUshed  1678),  does  not  speak  of  deism, 
attacking  only  atheism,  and  was  himself  suspected  of 
Socinianism.  W.  Sherlock,  in  his  Practical  Discourse  of 
Religious  Assemblies  (2nd  ed.,  1682),  attacks  "atheists  and 
infidels,"  but  says  nothing  of  "  deists."  That  term,  first  coined, 
as  we  have  seen,  in  French,  seems  first  to  have  found  common 
currency  in  France — e.g.,  on  the  title-pages  of  the  apologetic 
works  of  Marin  Mersenne,  1623  and  1624.     The  term  "  atheist  " 

*  Essay  Ii.  Of  Scepticism  and  Certainty  (rep.  of  reply  to  Thomas  White,  app.  to 
Scepftis  Scientifica  in  1665)  in  Glanvill's  collected  Essays  on  Several  Important  Subjects 
in  Philosophy  and  Beliaum,  1676,  pp.  38,  44. 

2  Plus  Ultra  :  or.  The  Progress  and  Advancement  of  Knowledge  since  the  Days  of 
Aristotle,  1668,  p.  146. 

3  History  cf  the  Royal  Society,  1667,  p.  73.  Describing  the  beginnings  of  the  Society, 
Sprat  remarks  that  Oxford  had  at  that  time  many  members  "  who  had  begun  a  free  way 
of  reasoning"  (p.  53).  *  Buckle,  Introd.  to  Hist,  of  Civ.  in  Eng.,  1-vol.  ed.  p.  211. 

5  Sprat,  p.  375  (printed  as  367).       ^  Id.,  p.  83.    The  French  Academy  had  the  same  rule. 

■^  Some  of  Sprat's  uses  of  the  term  have  a  very  general  sense,  as  when  he  writes  (p.  87) 
that  "  Amsterdam  is  a  place  of  Trade  without  the  mixture  of  men  of  freer  thoughts." 
Tlie  latter  is  an  old  application,  as  in  "  the  free  sciences"  or  "  the  liberal  arts." 


OEIGIN  AND  MEANING  OF  THE  WOKD  5 

was  often  applied  at  random  at  this  period ;  but  atheism  did 
exist. 

When  the  orthodox  Boyle  pushed  criticism  in  physical  science  under 
such  a  title  as  The  Sceptical  Chemist,  the  principle  could  not  well  be 
withheld  from  application  to  religion ;  and  it  lay  in  the  nature  of  the 
case  that  the  name  **  freethinker,"  like  that  of  "  skeptic,"  should  come 
to  attach  itself  specially  to  those  who  doubted  where  doubt  was  most 
resented  and  most  resisted.  At  length  the  former  term  became 
specific. 

In  the  meantime  the  word  **  rationalist,"  which  in  English  has 
latterly  tended  to  become  the  prevailing  name  for  freethinkers,  had 
made  its  appearance,  without  securing  much  currency.  In  a  London 
news-letter  dated  October  14,  1646,  it  is  stated,  concerning  the 
Presbyterians  and  Independents,  that  "there  is  a  new  sect  sprung 
up  among  them,  and  these  are  the  rationalists ;  and  what  their 
reason  dictates  to  them  in  Church  or  State  stands  for  good  until 
they  be  convinced  with  better."  ^  On  the  Continent,  the  equivalent 
Latin  term  {rationalista)  had  been  applied  about  the  beginning  of  the 
century  to  the  Aristotelian  humanists  of  the  Helmstadt  school  by 
their  opponents,^  apparently  in  the  same  sense  as  that  in  which 
Bacon  used  the  term  rationales  in  his  Redargutio  Philosophiarum — 
"  Kationales  autem,  aranearum  more,  telas  ex  se  conficiunt."  Under 
this  title  he  contrasts  (as  spiders  spinning  webs  out  of  themselves) 
the  mere  Aristotelean  speculators,  who  framed  a  priori  schemes  of 
Nature,  with  empiricists,  who,  "  like  ants,  collect  something  and  use 
it,"  preferring  to  both  the  "  bees  "  who  should  follow  the  ideal  method 
prescribed  by  himself."^  There  is  here  no  allusion  to  heterodox 
opinion  on  religion.  [Bishop  Hurst,  who  (perhaps  following  the 
Apophthegms)  puts  a  translation  of  Bacon's  words,  with  "  rationalists  " 
for  rationales,  as  one  of  the  mottoes  of  his  History  of  Rationalism,  is 
thus  misleading  his  readers  as  to  Bacon's  meaning.]  In  1661  John 
Amos  Comenius,  in  his  Theologia  Naturalis,  applies  the  name 
rationalista  to  the  Socinians  and  deists ;  without,  however,  leading 
to  its  general  use  in  that  sense.  Later  we  shall  meet  with  the  term 
in  English  discussions  between  1680  and  1715,  applied  usually  to 
rationaUzing  Christians  ;  but  as  a  name  for  opponents  of  orthodox 
religion  it  was  for  the  time  superseded, in  EngUsh,  by  "freethinker." 

1  Cited  by  Archbishop  Trench,  The  Study  of  Words,  19th  ed.,  p.  230,  from  the  Clarendon 
Staff  Papers,  App.  Vol.  Ill,  p.  40.  .  ^  t^,-..^,    t,     ,  ,:,        ,    ,•• 

2  Art.  llATioNALisMUs  AND  SuPERNATUBALisMUS  IP  Herzog  and  Plitt  s  Beal-Encyk.fur 
prot.  Theol.  und  Kirche,  1883,  xii,  509. 

3  Philosophical  Works  of  Bacon,  ed.  Ellis  and  Spedding,  lii,  583.  See  the  same  saying 
quoted  among  the  Apophthegms  given  in  Tenison's  Baconiana  (Routledge's  ed.  of 
Works,  p.  895). 


INTKODUCTOEY 


In  the  course  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  term  was  adopted 
in  other  languages.  The  first  French  translation  (1714)  of  CoUins's 
Discourse  of  Freethinking  is  entitled  Discours  sur  la  liherU  de 
penser ;  and  the  term  "  freethinkers  "  is  translated  on  the  title-page 
by  esprit  fort,  and  in  the  text  by  a  periphrasis  of  liberty  de  penser. 
Later  in  the  century,  however,  we  find  Voltaire  in  his  correspondence 
frequently  using  the  substantive  franc-pensant,  a  translation  of  the 
English  term  which  subsequently  gave  way  to  libre  penseur.  The 
modern  German  term  Freigeist,  found  as  early  as  1702  in  the 
allusion  to  "  Alten  Quacker  und  neuen  Frey-Geister  "  on  the  title- 
page  of  the  folio  Anahaptisticum  et  Enthusiasticmn  Pantheon, 
probably  derives  from  the  old  "  Brethren  of  the  Free  Spirit ";  while 
Schongeist  arose  as  a  translation  of  bel  esprit.  In  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century  Freidenker  came  into  German  use  as  a  transla- 
tion of  the  English  term. 

In  a  general  sense  "  free  thoughts"  was  a  natural  expression, 
and  we  have  it  in  Ben  Jonson  :  "  Being  free  master  of  mine 
own  free  thoughts."  ^  But  not  till  about  the  year  1700  did  the 
phrase  begin  to  have  a  special  application  to  religious  matters. 
The  first  certain  instance  thus  far  noted  of  the  use  of  the 
term  "freethinker"  is  in  a  letter  of  Molyneux  to  Locke,  dated 
April  6,  1697,^  where  Toland  is  spoken  of  as  a  "  candid  free- 
thinker." In  an  earlier  letter,  dated  December  24,  1695, 
Molyneux  speaks  of  a  certain  book  on  rehgion  as  somewhat 
lacking  in   "freedom  of  thought";^  and  in  Burnet's  Letters* 

occurs  still  earlier  the  expression  "men of  freer  thoughts." 

In  the  Neio  English  Dictionary  a  citation  is  given  from  the 

title-page  of  S.  Smith's  brochure,  The  Beligions  Impostor 

dedicated  to  Doctor  S-l-m-n  and  the  rest  of  the  neio  Religious 
Fraternity  of  Freethinkers,  near  Leather- Sellers'  Hall.     Priiited 

in  the  first  year  of  Grace  and  Freethinking,  conjecturally 

dated  1692.  It  is  thought  to  refer  to  the  sect  of  "  Freeseekers  " 
mentioned  in  Luttrell's  Brief  Historical  Relation  (iii,  56)  under 
date  1693.  In  that  case  it  is  not  unbeHevors  that  are  in 
question.  So  in  Shaftesbury's  Inquiry  Concerning  Virtue  (first 
ed.  1699)  the  expression  "  freethought "  has  a  general  and  not 
a  particular  sense  ',^  and  in  Baker's  Refkctio7is  upon  Learning, 
also  published  in  1699,  in  the  remark :  "  After  the  way  of 
freethinking  had  been  lai'd  open  by  my  Lord  Bacon,  it  was 
soon  after  greedily  followed  ";^  the  reference  is,  of  course,  to 
scientific  and  not  to  religious  thought. 

1  Every  Man  in  his  Humour  (1598),  Act  iii,  sc.  3. 

2  Some  Familiar  Letters  between  Mr.  Locke  and  Several  of  his  Friendft,  1708.  p.  190. 
8  Id.  p.  133.  *  Ed.  Rotterdam,  1686.  p.  195.  «  b.  II.  pt.  ii.  §  1. 

6  Ch.  on  Logic,  cited  by  Professor  Fowler  in  his  ed.  of  the  Novum  Organum,  1878, 
introd.  p.  118. 


ORIGIN  AND  MEANING  OF  THE  WORD  7 

But  in  Shaftesbury's  Essay  m  the  Freedom  of  Wit  and 
Humour  (1709)  the  phrases  " free- writers "  and  "a  free- 
thought"^  have  reference  to  "advanced"  opinions,  though  m 
his  letters  to  Ainsworth  (May  10,  1707)  he  had  written,  I 
am  glad  to  find  your  love  of  reason  and  freethought.  Your 
piety  and  virtue  I  know  you  will  always  keep."^  Compare  the 
Miscellaneous  Reflections  (v,  3)  in  the  Characteristics  (1711), 
where  the  tendency  to  force  the  sense  from  the  general  to  the 
special  is  incidentally  illustrated.  Shaftesbury,  however,  includes 
the  term  "free  liver"  among  the  "naturally  honest  appella- 
tions "  that  have  become  opprobrious. 

In  Swift's  Sentiments  of  a  Church  of  E^igland  Man  (1708) 
the  speciaUzed  word  is  found  definitely  and  abusively  connoting 
religious  unbelief:  "The  atheists,  libertines,  despisers  of 
religion— that  is  to  say,  all  those  who  usually  pass  under  the 
name  of  freethinkers";  Steele  and  Addison  so  use  it  in  the 
Tatler  in  1709  ;*  and  Leshe  so  uses  the  term  in  his  Truth  of 
Christianity  Demonstrated  (1711).  The  anonymous  essay, 
Reflexions  sur  les  crands  hommes  qui  sont  morts  en  plaisantant, 
by  Deslandes  (Amsterdam,  1712),  is  translated  in  EngHsh 
(1713)  as  Reflectio7is  on  the  Death  of  Free-thinkers,  and  the 
translator  uses  the  term  in  his  prefatory  Letter  to  the  Author, 
beside  putting  it  in  the  text  (pp.  50,  85,  97,  102,  106,  etc.), 
where  the  original  had  esprit  fort. 

It  was  not  till  1713,  however,  that  Anthony  CoUins's  Discourse 
of  Freethinking,  occasioned  by  the  Rise  and  Growth  of  a  Sect  called 
Freethinkers,  gave  the  word  a  universal  notoriety,  and  brought  it 
into  estabhshed  currency  in  controversy,  with  the  normal  significance 
of  "  deist,"  Collins  having  entirely  repudiated  atheism.     Even  after 
this  date,  and  indeed   in   full   conformity  with    the    definition  in 
CoUins's  opening  sentence,  Ambrose  PhiUps  took   The  Freethinker 
as  the  title  of  a  weekly  journal  (begun  in  1718)  on  the  Hnes  of  the 
Spectator,  with  no  heterodox  leaning,'  the   contributors   including 
Boulter,  afterwards  Archbishop  of  DubUn,  and  the  son  of  Bishop 
Burnet.     But  despite  this  attempt  to  keep  the  word  "  freethinking  " 
as  a  name  for  simple  freedom  from  prejudice  in  secular  affairs,  the 
tendency  to  speciaUze  it  as  aforesaid  was  irresistible.     As  names  go, 
it  was  on  the  whole  a  good  one ;  and  the  bitterness  with  which  it 
was  generally  handled  on  the  orthodox  side  showed  that  its  impUcit 
claim  was  felt  to  be  disturbing,  though  some  antagonists  of  course 
claimed  from  the  first  that  they  were  as  "  free  "  under  the  law  of 


1  85  3  and  4  ^  Letters.  1746.  p.  5. 

8  Orig  ed.  iii,  305,  306,  311 ;  ed.  J.  M.  R..  1900.  ii.  349.  353. 

5  Cp.'johnson  o^A.  Philips  in  Lives  of  the  Poets,    Swift,  too,  issued  his  Free  Thoughts 
upon  the  Present  State  of  Affairs  in  1714. 


M 


8 


INTBODUCTORY 


right  reason  as  any  skeptic/  At  this  time  of  day  the  word  may  be 
allowed  prescriptive  standing,  as  having  no  more  drawbacks  than 
most  other  names  for  schools  of  thought  or  attitudes  of  mind,  and 
as  having  been  admitted  into  most  European  languages.  The 
question-begging  element  is  not  greater  in  this  than  in  many  other 
terms  of  similar  intention,  such  as  "  rationahsm  ";  and  it  incurs  no 
such  charge  of  absurdity  as  hes  against  the  invidious  religious  term, 
*'  infidelity."     The  term  "  infidel "  invites  "  fidel." 

A  plausible  objection  may,  indeed,  arise  on  the  score  that  such 

a  term  as  **  freethought "  should  not   be  set  up  by  thinkers  who 

almost    invariably   reject    the    term    **  freewill " — the   rationalistic 

succession  having  for  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  been  carried  on 

mainly  by  determinists.     But  the  issues  raised  by  the  two  terms  are 

on  wholly  different  planes ;  and  while  in  both  cases  the  imperfection 

of  the  instrument  of  language  is  apparent,  it  is  not  in  the  present 

case  a  cause  of  psychological  confusion,  as  it  is  in  the  discussion  of 

the  nature  of  will.    The  freewill  fallacy  consists  in  applying  universally 

to  the  process  of  judgment  and  preference  (which  is  a  process  of  natural 

causation  like  another)  a  conception  relevant  only  to  human  or  animal 

action,  as  interfered  with  or  unaffected  by  extraneotis  compulsion. 

To  the  processes  of  nature,  organic  or  inorganic,  the  concepts  "  free  " 

and  *  bond"  are  equally  irrelevant:  a  tiger  is  no  more  "free"  to 

crave  for  grass  and  recoil  from  flesh  than  is  water  to  flow  uphill ; 

while,  on  the  other  hand,  such  **  appetites  "  are  not  rationally  to  be 

described  as  forms  of  bondage.    Only  as  a  mode  distinguishable  from 

its  contrary  can  "  freedom  "  be  predicated  of  any  procedure,  and  it  is 

so  predicated  of  actions  ;  whereas  the  whole  category  of  volitions  is 

alleged  and  denied  by  the  verbal  disputants  to  be  "free."     Some 

attempt  to  save  the  case  by  distinguishing  between  free  and  alleged 

"unfree  "  vohtions  ;  but  the  latter  are  found  to  be  simply  cases  of 

choices  dictated  by  intense  need,  as  in  the  case  of  deadly  thirst. 

The  difference,  therefore,  is  only  one  of  degree  of  impulse,  not  in  the 

fact  of  choice. 

The  term   "freewill,"  therefore,  is   irrational,  as  being  wholly 
irrelevant   to  the  conception  of   volition.     But  "  freethought,"  on 

1  Thus  Bentley.  writing  as  Phileleutherus  Lipsiensia  against  Collins,  claims  to  have 
been  train'd  up  and  exercis'd  in  Free  Thought  from  my  youth."  Dr.  Samuel  Clarke 
somewhere  makes  a  similar  statement :  and  the  point  is  raised  by  Berkeley  in  his  Mimite 
Philosopher,  Dial,  i,  §  10.  One  of  the  first  replies  to  Collins.  A  Letter  to  the  Free-thinker  a. 
By  a  Layman,  dated  February  24, 1712-13,  likewise  insists  on  the  right  of  believers  to  the 
title,  declaring  that  "a  free-thinker  may  be  the  best  or  worst  of  men."  Shaftesbury  on 
the  other  side  protests  that  the  passion  of  orthodoxy  "holds  up  the  intended  chains  and 
fetters  and  declares  its  resolution  to  enslave"  iCharacteristics,  iii.  305;  ed.  1900.  ii,  345). 
Later,  the  claim  of  Bentley  and  Clarke  became  common ;  and  one  tract  on  Christian 
evidences,  A  Layman's  Faith,  1732,  whose  author  shows  not  a  grain  of  the  critical  spirit 
professes  to  be  written  "  by  a  Freethinker  and  a  Christian." 


ORIGIN  AND  MEANING  OF  THE  WORD  9 

the  other  hand,  points  to  an  actual  difference  in  degree  of  employ vient 
of  the  faculty  of  criticism.  The  proposition  is  that  some  men  think 
more  "  freely  "  than  others  in  that  they  are  (a)  not  terrorized  by  any 
veto  on  criticism,  and  (b)  not  hampered,  or  less  hampered,  by 
ignorant  pre-suppositions.  In  both  cases  there  is  a  real  discrimina- 
tion. There  is  no  allegation  that,  absolutely  speaking,  "  thought  is 
free  "  in  the  sense  of  the  orthodox  formula ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is 
asserted  that  the  rationalist's  critical  course  is  specifically  determined 
by  his  intellectual  structure  and  his  preparation,  and  that  it  is 
sometimes  different  structure,  but  more  often  different  preparation, 
that  determines  the  anti-critical  or  counter-critical  attitude  of  the 
behever.  Change  in  the  preparation,  it  is  contended,  will  put  the 
latter  in  fuller  use  of  his  potential  resources ;  his  inculcated  fear  of 
doubt  and  dociHty  of  assent  being  simply  acquiescences  in  vetoes  on 
his  attention  to  certain  matters  for  reflection — that  is  to  say,  in 
arbitrary  limitations  of  his  action.  It  is  further  implied  that  the 
instructed  man,  other  things  being  equal,  is  "  freer  "  to  think  than 
the  uninstructed,  as  being  less  obstructed  ;  but  for  the  purpose  of 
our  history  it  is  sufficient  to  posit  the  discriminations  above  noted. 

The  essential  thing  to  be  realized  is  the  fact  that  from  its  earliest 
stages  humanity  has  suffered  from  conventional  or  traditionary 
hindrances  to  the  use  of  judgment.  This  holds  good  even  as  to  the 
early  play  of  the  simple  inventive  faculty,  all  innovations  in  imple- 
ments being  met  by  the  inertia  of  habit ;  and  when  men  reached  the 
stages  of  ritual  practice,  social  construction,  and  rehgious  doctrine, 
the  forces  of  repression  became  powerful  in  proportion  to  the 
seriousness  of  the  problem.  It  is  only  in  modern  times  that  freedom 
in  these  relations  has  come  to  be  generally  regarded  as  permissible  ; 
and  it  has  always  been  over  questions  of  religion  that  the  strife  has 
been  keenest. 

For  practical  purposes,  then,  freethought  may  be  defined  as  a 
conscious  reaction  against  some  phase  or  phases  of  conventional  or 
traditional  doctrine  in  rehgion — on  the  one  hand,  a  claim  to  think 
freely,  in  the  sense  not  of  disregard  for  logic,  but  of  special  loyalty 
to  it,  on  problems  to  which  the  past  course  of  things  has  given 
a  great  intellectual  and  practical  importance  ;  on  the  other  hand,  the 
actual  practice  of  such  thinking.  This  sense,  which  is  substantially 
agreed  on,  will  on  one  or  other  side  sufficiently  cover  those 
phenomena  of  early  or  rudimentary  freethinking  which  wear  the 
guise  of  simple  concrete  opposition  to  given  doctrines  or  systems, 
whether  by  way  of  special  demur  or  of  the  obtrusion  of  a  new  cult 
or  doctrine.     In  either  case,  the  claim  to  think  in  a  measure  freely  is 


10 


INTKODUCTORY 


implicit  in  the  criticism  or  the  new  affirmation  ;  and  such  primary 
movements  of  the  mind  cannot  well  be  separated,  in  psychology  or 
in  history,  from  the  fully  conscious  practice  of  criticism  in  the  spirit 
of  pure  truth -seeking,  or  from  the  claim  that  such  free  examination 
is  profoundly  important  to  moral  and  intellectual  health.  Modem 
freethought,  specially  so-called,  is  only  one  of  the  developments  of 
the  slight  primary  capacity  of  man  to  doubt,  to  reason,  to  improve 
on  past  thinking,  to  assert  his  personality  as  against  sacrosanct  and 
menacing  authority.  Concretely  considered,  it  has  proceeded  by  the 
support  and  stimulus  of  successive  accretions  of  actual  knowledge ; 
and  the  modern  consciousness  of  its  own  abstract  importance 
emerged  by  way  of  an  impression  or  inference  from  certain  social 
phenomena,  as  well  as  in  terms  of  self-asserting  instinct.  There  is 
no  break  in  its  evolution  from  primitive  mental  states,  any  more  than 
in  the  evolution  of  the  natural  sciences  from  primitive  observation. 
What  particularly  accrues  to  the  state  of  conscious  and  systematic 
discrimination,  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other,  is  just  the  immense 
gain  in  security  of  possession. 

§  2.  Previous  Histories 

Ifc  is  somewhat  remarkable  that  in  England  this  phenomenon 
has  thus  far  ^  had  no  general  historic  treatment  save  at  the  hands  of 
ecclesiastical  writers,  who,  in  most  cases,  have  regarded  it  solely  as 
a  form  of  more  or  less  perverse  hostility  to  their  own  creed.  The 
modern  scientific  study  of  religions,  which  has  yielded  so  many 
instructive  surveys,  almost  of  necessity  excludes  from  view  the 
specific  play  of  freethought,  which  in  the  religion-making  periods 
is  to  be  traced  rather  by  its  religious  results  than  by  any  record  of 
its  expression.  All  histories  of  philosophy,  indeed,  in  some  degree 
necessarily  recognize  it;  and  such  a  work  as  Lange's  History  of 
Materialism  may  be  regarded  as  part — whether  or  not  sound  in  its 
historical  treatment— of  a  complete  history  of  freethought,  dealing 
specially  with  general  philosophic  problems.  But  of  freethought  as 
a  reasoned  revision  or  rejection  of  current  religious  doctrines  by 
more  or  less  practical  people,  we  have  no  regular  history  by  a 
professed  freethinker,  though  there  are  many  monographs  and 
surveys  of  periods. 

The   latest   and   freshest   sketch   of    the    kind   is   Professor 
J.    B.    Bury's   brief   History   of  Freedom   of   Thought    (1913), 

I  Writteo  in  1808, 


PREVIOUS  HISTORIES 


11 


A 


notable  for  the  force  of  its  championship  of  the  law  of  liberty. 
The  useful  compilation  of  the  late  Mr.  Charles  Watts,  entitled 
Freethought :  Its  Bise,  Progress,  and  Triumph  (n.  d.),  deals  with 
freethought  in  relation  only  to  Christianity.  Apart  from  treatises 
which  broadly  sketch  the  development  of  knowledge  and  of 
opinion,  the  nearest  approaches  to  a  general  historic  treatment 
are  the  Dictionnaire  des  AtMes  of  Sylvain  Mar6chal  (1800: 
3e  6dit.,  par  J.  B.  L.  Germond,  1853)  and  the  Biographical 
Dictionary  of  Freethinkers  by  the  late  Joseph  Mazzini  Wheeler. 
The  quaint  work  of  Mar^chal,  expanded  by  his  friend  Lalande, 
exhibits  much  learning,  but  is  made  partly  fantastic  by  its 
sardonic  plan  of  including  a  number  of  typical  religionists 
(including  Job,  John,  and  Jesus  Christ!),  some  of  whose 
utterances  are  held  to  lead  logically  to  atheism.  Mr.  Wheeler's 
book  is  in  every  respect  the  more  trustworthy. 

In  excuse  of  Mar^chal's  method,  it  may  be  noted  that  the 
prevailing  practice  of  Christian  apologists  had  been  to  impute 
atheism  to  heterodox  theistic  thinkers  of  all  ages.  The  Historia 
universalis  Atheismi  et  Atheorum  falso  et  merito  suspectorum  oi 
J.  F.  Reimmann  (Hildesiae,  1725)  exhibits  this  habit  both  in  its 
criticism  and  in  its  practice,  as  do  the  Theses  de  Atheismo  et 
Superstitione  of  Buddeus  (Trajecti  ad  Rhenum,  1716).  These 
were  the  standard  treatises  of  their  kind  for  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  seem  to  be  the  earhest  systematic  treatises  in  the 
nature  of  a  history  of  freethought,  excepting  a  Historia 
Naturalismi  by  A.  Tribbechov  (Jenae,  1700)  and  a  Historia 
Atheismi  breviter  delineata  by  Jenkinus  Thomasius  (Altdorf, 
1692  ;  Basilete,  1709 ;  London,  1716).  In  the  same  year  with 
Reimmann's  Historia  appeared  J.  A.  Fabricius's  Delectus 
Argume7itormi  et  Syllabus  scriptorum  qici  veritatem  religionis 
Christiance  adversus  Atheos,  Epicureos,  Deistas,  seu  Naturalistas 

asseruerimt  (Hamburghi),in  which  it  is  contended  (cap.  viii) 

that  many  philosophers  have  been  falsely  described  as  atheists ; 
but  in  the  Freydenker  Lexicon  of  J.  A.  Trinius  (Leipzig,  1759), 
planned  as  a  supplement  to  the  work  of  Fabricius,  are  included 
such  writers  as  Sir  Thomas  Browne  and  Dryden. 

The  works  of  the  late  Rev.  John  Owen,  Evenings  with  the 
Skeptics,  Skeptics  of  the  Italian  Benaissance,  and  Skeptics  of 
the  French  Benaissance,  which,  though  not  constituting  a 
literary  w^hole,  collectively  cover  a  great  deal  of  historical 
ground,  must  be  expressly  excepted  from  the  above  charac- 
terization of  clerical  histories  of  freethought,  in  respect  of  their 
liberality  of  view.  They  deal  largely,  however,  with  general  or 
philosophical  skepticism,  which  is  a  special  development  of 
freethought,  often  by  way  of  reasonings  in  which  many  free- 
thinkers do  not  acquiesce.  (All  strict  skeptics,  that  is  to  say- 
as  distinguished  from  rehgionists  who  profess  skepticism  up  to 
a  certain  point  by  way  of   making  a  surrender  to  orthodox 


12 


INTEODUCTOEY 


PEEVIOUS  HISTOEIES 


13 


dogmatism  '—are  freethinkers ;  but  most  freethinkers  are  not 
strictly  skeptics.)  The  history  of  philosophic  skepticism,  again, 
is  properly  and  methodically  treated  in  the  old  work  of  Carl 
Friedrich  Staudlin,  Geschichte  und  Geist  des  Skepticismiis 
(2  Bde.,  Leipzig,  1794),  the  historic  survey  being  divided  into 
six  periods :  1,  Before  Pyrrho ;  2,  from  Pyrrho  to  Sextus ; 
3,  from  Sextus  to  Montaigne  ;  4,  from  Montaigne  to  La  Mothe 
le  Vayer ;  5,  from  La  Mothe  le  Vayer  to  Hume ;  6,  from  Hume 
to  Kant  and  Platner.  The  posthumous  work  of  Emile  Saisset, 
Le  Scepticisme :  JSn6sid^nie — Pascal — Kant  (1865),  is  a  fragment 
of  a  projected  complete  history  of  philosophic  skepticism. 

Staudlin's  later  work,  the  Geschichte  des  Bationalismus  und 
Supernaturalisrnus  (1826),  is  a  shorter  but  more  general  history 
of  the  strife  between  general  freethought  and  supernaturalism  in 
the  Christian  world  and  era.  It  deals  cursorily  with  the  intel- 
lectual attitude  of  the  early  Fathers,  the  early  heretics,  and  the 
Scholastics  ;  proceeding  to  a  fuller  survey  of  the  developments 
since  the  Eeformation,  and  covering  Unitarianism,  Latitudi- 
narianism,  English  and  French  Deism,  and  German  Eationalism 
of  different  shades  down  to  the  date  of  writing.  Staudlin  may 
be  described  as  a  rationalizing  supernaturalist. 

Like  most  works  on  reHgious  and  intellectual  history  written 
from  a  religious  standpoint,  those  of  Staudlin  treat  the  pheno- 
mena as  it  were  in  vacuo,  with  Httle  regard  to  the  conditioning 
circumstances,  economic  and  political ;  critical  thought  being 
regarded  purely  as  a  force  proceeding  through  its  own  pro- 
clivities. Saisset  is  at  very  much  the  same  point  of  view. 
Needless  to  say,  valuable  work  may  be  done  up  to  a  certain 
point  on  this  method,  which  is  seen  in  full  play  in  Hegel ;  and 
high  praise  is  due  to  the  learned  and  thoughtful  treatise  of 
E.  W.  Mackay,  The  Progress  of  the  Intellect  as  Exemplified  in 
the  Religious  Development  of  the  Greeks  and  Hebreivs  (2  vols. 
1850),  where  it  is  partially  but  ably  supplemented  by  the 
method  of  inductive  science.  That  method,  again,  is  freshly 
and  forcibly  applied  to  a  restricted  problem  in  W.  A.  Schmidt's 
Geschichte  der  Denk-  und  Glauhensfreiheit  im  ersten  Jahrhundert 
der  Kaiserherrschaft  %md  des  Christenthums  (1847). 

Later  come  the  Vorgeschichte  des  Bationalismus  (1853-62)  and 
Geschichte  des  Bationalismus  (1865)  of  the  theologian  Tholuck. 
Of  these  the  latter  is  unfinished,  coming  down  only  to  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  ;  while  the  former  does  not 
exactly  fulfil  its  title,  being  composed  of  a  volume  (2  Abth.  1853, 
1854)  on  Das  akademische  Lehen  des  1 7ten  Jahrhunderts,  and  of 
one  on  Das  kirchliche  Lehen  des  17ten  Jahrhunderts  (2  Abth. 
1861,  1862),  both  being  restricted  to  German  developments. 
They  thus  give  much  matter  extraneous  to  the  subject,  and  are 

*  Cp.  Haur^au,  Histoire  de  la  philoaophie  scolastique,  ed.  1870-1872,  i,  5i3-i6. 


not  exhaustive  as  to  rationalism  even  in  Germany.  Hagen- 
bach's  Die  KircheJigeschichte  des  18.  und  19.  Jahrhunderts 
(2  Th.  1848,  1849),  a  series  of  lectures,  translated  in  English, 
abridged,  under  the  title  German  Bationalism  in  its  Bise, 
Progress,  and  Declifie  (1865),  conforms  fairly  to  the  latter  title, 
save  as  regards  the  last  clause. 

Of  much  greater  scholarly  merit  is  the  Geschichte  der  religiosen 
Aufkldrung  im  Mittelalter,  vom  Ende  des  achten  Jahrhunderts 
bis  zum  Anfange  des  vierzehnten,  by  Hermann  Eeuter  (1875, 
1877).  This  is  at  once  learned,  judicious,  and  impartial.  Its 
definition  of  ''Aufkldrung  "  is  substantially  in  agreement  with 
the  working  definition  of  Freethought  given  above. 

Among  other  surveys  of  periods  of  innovating  thought,  as 
distinguished  from  histories  of  ecclesiastical  heresy,  or  histories 
of  "  religious  "  or  theological  thought  which  only  incidentally 
deal  with  heterodox  opinion,  should  be  noted  the  careful 
Geschichte  des  englischen  Deismus  of  G.  F.  Lechler  (1841)  :  the 
slighter  sketch  of  E.  Sayous,  Les  dHstes  ajiglais  et  le  Chris- 
tianisme  (1882) ;  the  somewhat  diffuse  work  of  Cesare  Cantu, 
Gli  eretici  d'ltalia  (3  tom.  1865-67)  ;  the  very  intelligent  study 
of  Felice  Tocco,  UEresia  nel  medio  evo  (1884) ;  Schmidt's 
Histoire  des  Cathares  (2  tom.  1849) ;  Chr.  U.  Hahn's  learned 
Geschichte  der  Ketzer  im  Mittelalter  (3  Bde.  1845-50) ;  and 
the  valuable  research  of  F.  T.  Perrens,  Les  Lihertins  en 
France  au  xviie  sidcle  (1896).  A  similar  scholarly  research  for 
the  eighteenth  century  in  France  is  still  lacking,  and  the  many 
monographs  on  the  more  famous  freethinkers  leave  a  good  deal 
of  literary  history  in  obscurity.  Such  a  research  has  been  very 
painstakingly  made  for  England  in  the  late  Sir  Leslie  Stephen's 
History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century  (2  vols., 
2nd  ed.,  1881),  which,  however,  ignores  scientific  thought. 
One  of  the  best  monographs  of  the  kind  is  La  Critique  des 
traditions  religieuses  chez  les  Grecs,  des  origines  au  temps  de 
Plutarque,  by  Professor  Paul  Decharme  (1904),  a  survey  at 
once  scholarly  and  attractive.  The  brilliant  treatise  of  Mr. 
F.  M.  Cornford,  From  Beligion  to  Philosophy  (1912),  sketches  on 
more  speculative  lines  the  beginnings  of  Greek  rationalism  in 
Ionia.  The  Geschichte  des  Monismus  im  Altertum  of  Prof.  Dr. 
A.  Drews  (1913)  is  a  wide  survey,  of  great  synthetic  value. 

Contributions  to  the  general  history  of  freethought,  further, 
have  been  made  in  the  works  of  J.  W.  Draper  {A  History  of  the 
Intellectual  Development  of  Europe,  2  vols,  1861,  many  reprints  ; 
and  History  of  the  Conflict  between  Beligion  and  Science,  1873, 
many  reprints),  both  full  of  suggestion  and  stimulus,  but 
requiring  thorough  revision  as  to  detail ;  in  the  famous  Intro- 
duction to  the  History  of  Civilization  in  England  of  H.  T. 
Buckle  (2  vols.  1857-61  ;  new  ed.  in  1  vol.  with  annotations  by 
the  present   writer,    1904);  in  the  History  of  the  Bise  and 


i 


14 


INTEODUCTOEY 


Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  Bationalism  in  Europe  of  W.  E.  H. 
Lecky  (2  vols.  1865  ;  E.P.  A.  rep.  1910).  who  was  of  Buckle's 
school,  but  fell  below  him  in  point  of  coherence  ;  in  the  com- 
prehensive History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology  of 
Professor  Andrew  D.  White  (2  vols.  1896 — a  great  expansion 
of  his  earlier  essay,  The  Warfare  of  Scierice,  2nd  ed.  1877)  ;  and 
in  the  essay  of  Mr.  E.  S.  P.  Haynes,  Religious  Persecution :  A 
Study  in  Political  Psychology  (1904  ;  E.  P.  A.  rep.  1906),  as 
well  as  in  many  histories  of  philosophy  and  of  sciences. 

The  so-called  History  of  Rationalism  of  the  American  Bishop 
J.  F.  Hurst,  first  published  in  1865,  and  "  revised  "  in  1901,  is 
in  the  main  a  work  of  odium  theologicum,  dealing  chiefly  with 
the  evolution  of  theology  and  criticism  in  Germany  since  the 
Eeformation.  Even  to  that  purpose  it  is  very  inadequate. 
Its  preface  alleges  that  *'  happily  the  vital  body  of  evangelical 
truth  has  received  only  comparatively  weak  and  timorous 
attacks  from  the  more  modern  representatives  of  the  rank  and 
rabid  rationalism  which  reached  its  climax  near  the  close  of 
the  eighteenth,  and  has  had  a  continuous  decline  through  the 
nineteenth,  century."  It  urges,  however,  as  a  reason  for 
defensive  activity,  the  consideration  that  "  the  work  of  Satan 
is  never  planless  ";  and  further  pronounces  that  the  work  of 
rationalism  "  must  determine  its  character.  This  work  has 
been  most  injurious  to  the  faith  and  life  of  the  Church,  and 
its  deeds  must  therefore  be  its  condemnation"  (Introd.  p.  3). 
Thus  the  latest  approximation  to  a  history  of  theological 
rationalism  by  a  clerical  writer  is  the  most  negligible. 

In  English,  apart  from  studies  of  given  periods  and  of  the 
progress  of  science  and  culture,  the  only  other  approaches  to  a 
history  of  freethought  are  those  of  Bishop  Van  Mildert,  the  Eev. 
J.  E.  Eiddle,  and  the  Eev.  Adam  Storey  Farrar.  Van  Mildert's 
Historical  View  of  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  Infidelity^  constituted 
the  Boyle  Lectures  for  1802-05  ;  Mr.  Eiddle's  Natural  History  of 
Infidelity  and  Superstition  in  Contrast  with  Christian  Faith  formed 
part  of  his  Bampton  Lectures  for  1852 ;  and  Mr.  Farrar  produced 
his  Critical  History  of  Freethought  in  reference  to  the  Christian 
Religion  as  the  Bampton  Lectures  for  1862.  All  three  were  men 
of  considerable  reading,  and  their  works  give  useful  bibiographical 
clues  ;  but  the  virulence  of  Van  Mildert  deprives  his  treatise  of 
rational  weight;  Mr.  Eiddle,  who  in  any  case  professes  to  give 
merely  a  "  Natural  History  "  or  abstract  argument,  and  not  a  history 
proper,  is  only  somewhat  more  constrainedly  hostile  to  "  infidelity  "; 
and  even  Mr.  Farrar,  the  most  judicial  as  well  as  the  most  compre- 
hensive of  the  three,  proceeds  on  the  old  assumption  that  "unbelief  ** 

*  Second  ed.  witli  enlarged  Appendix  (of  authorities  and  references),  1808,  2  vols. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  FEEETHINKING 


15 


(from  which  he  charitably  distinguishes  "  doubt ")  generally  arises 
from  "  antagonism  of  feeling,  which  wishes  revelation  untrue " — 
a  thesis  maintained  with  vehemence  by  the  others.^ 

Writers  so  placed,  indeed,  could  not  well  be  expected  to  contem- 
plate freethought  scientifically  as  an  aspect  of  mental  evolution 
common  to  all  civilizations,  any  more  than  to  look  with  sympathy 
on  the  freethought  which  is  specifically  anti-Christian.  The  anno- 
tations to  all  three  works,  certainly,  show  some  consciousness  of 
the  need  for  another  temper  and  method  than  that  of  their  text, 
which  is  too  obviously,  perhaps  inevitably,  composed  for  the  satis- 
faction of  the  ordinary  orthodox  animus  of  their  respective  periods  ; 
but  even  the  best  remains  not  so  much  a  history  as  an  indictment. 
In  the  present  sketch,  framed  though  it  be  from  the  rationalistic 
standpoint,  it  is  proposed  to  draw  up  not  a  counter  indictment,  but 
a  more  or  less  dispassionate  account  of  the  main  historical  phases 
of  freethought,  viewed  on  the  one  hand  as  expressions  of  the  rational 
or  critical  spirit,  playing  on  the  subject-matter  of  religion,  and  on 
the  other  hand  as  sociological  phenomena  conditioned  by  social 
forces,  in  particular  the  economic  and  political.  The  lack  of  any 
previous  general  survey  of  a  scientific  character  will,  it  is  hoped,  be 
taken  into  account  in  passing  judgment  on  its  schematic  defects  as 
well  as  its  inevitable  flaws  of  detail. 


§.3.  The  Psychology  of  Freethinking 

Though  it  is  no  part  of  our  business  here  to  elaborate  the 
psychology  of  doubt  and  belief,  it  may  be  well  to  anticipate  a 
possible  criticism  on  the  lines  of  recent  psychological  speculation, 
and  to  indicate  at  the  outset  the  practical  conception  on  which  the 
present  survey  broadly  proceeds.  To  begin  with,  the  conception  of 
freethinking  implies  that  of  hindrance,  resistance,  coercion,  difficulty; 
and  as  regards  objective  obstacles  the  type  of  all  hindrance  is 
restraint  upon  freedom  of  speech  or  publication.  In  other  words, 
aU  such  restraint  is  a  check  upon  thinking.  On  reflection  it  soon 
becomes  clear  that  where  men  dare  not  say  or  write  what  they 
think,  the  very  power  of  thinking  is  at  length  impaired  in  the 
ablest,  while  the  natural  stimulus  to  new  thought  is  withdrawn 
from  the  rest.  No  man  can  properly  develop  his  mind  without 
contact  with  other  minds,  suggestion  and  criticism  being  alike 
factors  in  every  fruitful  mental  evolution  ;  and  though  for  some  the 

>  Farrar.  pref..  p.  x :  Riddle,  p.  99 ;  Van  Mildert.  i,  105.  etc.  . 

2  Van  Mildert  even  recast  his  first  manuscript.    See  the  Memoir  of  Joanua  Watson, 
1863,  p.  35. 


16 


INTEODUCTOEY 


atmosphere  of  personal  intercourse  is  but  slightly  necessary  to  the 
process  of  mental  construction,  even  for  these  the  prospect  of 
promulgation  is  probably  essential  to  the  undertaking  of  the  task ; 
and  the  study  of  other  writers  is  a  condition  of  useful  ratiocination. 
In  any  case,  it  is  certain  that  the  exercise  of  argument  is  a  condition 
of  intellectual  growth.  Not  one  man  in  a  million  will  or  can  argue 
closely  with  himself  on  issues  on  w^hich  he  knows  he  can  say 
nothing  and  can  never  overtly  act ;  and  for  the  average  man  all 
reasoning  on  great  problems  is  a  matter  of  prompting  from  without. 
The  simple  fact  that  the  conversation  of  uneducated  people  runs  so 
largely  to  citation  of  what  "he  says"  makes  clear  this  dependence. 
Each  brings  something  to  the  common  store,  and  progress  is  set  up 
by  "pooling"  the  mass  of  small  intellectual  variations  or  origi- 
nalities. Thus  in  the  long  run  freedom  of  speech  is  the  measure  of  a 
generation's  intellectual  capacity;^  and  the  promoters  of  such 
freedom  are  typically  the  truest  servants  of  progress. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  still  a  common  disposition  to  ascribe 
to  a  species  of  intellectual  malice  the  disturbance  that  criticism 
causes  to  the  holders  of  established  beliefs.  Eecent  writers  have 
pressed  far  the  theorem  that  "  will "  enters  as  an  element  into  every 
mental  act,  thus  giving  a  momentary  appearance  of  support  to  the 
old  formula  that  unbehef  is  the  result  of  an  arbitrary  or  sinister 
perversity  of  individual  choice.  Needless  to  say,  however,  the  new 
theorem — which  inverts  without  refuting  Spinoza's  denial  of  the 
entity  of  volition — applies  equally  to  acts  of  belief;  and  it  is 
a  matter  of  the  simplest  concrete  observation  that,  in  so  far  as  will 
or  wilfulness  in  the  ordinary  sense  operates  in  the  sphere  of  religion, 
it  is  at  least  as  obvious  and  as  active  on  the  side  of  belief^  as  on  the 
other.  A  moment's  reflection  on  the  historic  phenomena  of 
orthodox  resistance  to  criticism  will  satisfy  any  student  that,  what- 
ever may  have  been  the  stimulus  on  the  side  of  heresy,  the 
antagonism  it  arouses  is  largely  the  index  of  primary  passion— the 
spontaneous  resentment  of  the  believer  whose  habits  are  disturbed. 
His  will  normally  decides  his  action,  without  any  process  of  judicial 
deliberation. 

It  is  another  way  of  stating  the  same  fact  to  point  out  the 
fallacy  of  the  familiar  assumption  that  freethinking  represents  a  bias 
to  "  negation."     In  the  nature  of  the  case,  the  believer  has  to  do  at 


1  Cp.  W.  A.  Schmidt,  Geschichte  der  Denk-  und  Qlauhetisfreiheit  im  ersten  Jahrhundert 
der  Kaiserherrschaft  unddes  Christenthums,lM7,pvl'2r-ld. 

2  Its  legitimacy  on  that  side  is  expressly  contended  for  by  Professor  William  James  m 
his  volume  The  Will  to  Believe  (1897).  the  positions  of  which  were  criticized  by  the  present 
writer  in  the  University  Magazine,  April  and  June.  1897. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  FEEETHINKING 


17 


least  as  much  negation  as  his  opponents ;  and  if  again  we  scan 
history  in  this  connection,  we  shall  see  cause  to  conclude  that  the 
temperamental  tendency  to  negation — which  is  a  form  of  variation 
like  another-  -is  abundantly  common  on  the  side  of  religious  con- 
servatism. Nowhere  is  there  more  habitual  opposition  to  new 
ideas  as  such.  At  best  the  believer,  so-called,  rejects  a  given  pro- 
position or  suggestion  because  it  clashes  with  something  he  already 
believes.  The  new  proposition,  however,  has  often  been  reached  by 
way  not  of  preliminary  negation  of  the  belief  in  question,  but  of 
constructive  explanation,  undertaken  to  bring  observed  facts  into 
theoretic  harmony.  Thus  the  innovator  has  only  contingently  put 
aside  the  old  belief  because  it  clashes  with  something  he  believes  in 
a  more  vital  way ;  and  he  has  done  this  with  circumspection, 
whereas  his  opponent  too  often  repels  him  without  a  second  thought. 
The  phenomena  of  the  rise  of  the  Copernican  astronomy,  modern 
geology,  and  modern  biology,  all  bear  out  this  generalization. 

Nor  is  the  charge  of  negativeness  any  more  generally  valid 
against  such  freethinking  as  directly  assails  current  doctrines. 
There  may  be,  of  course,  negative-minded  people  on  that  side  as  on 
the  other ;  and  such  may  fortuitously  do  something  to  promote 
freethought,  or  may  damage  it  in  their  neighbourhood  by  their 
atmosphere.  But  everything  goes  to  show  that  freethinking 
normally  proceeds  by  way  of  intellectual  construction — that  is,  by 
way  of  effort  to  harmonize  one  position  with  another ;  to  modify 
a  special  dogma  to  the  general  run  of  one's  thinking.  Eationalism 
stands  not  for  "  skepticism  "  in  the  strict  philosophic  sense,  but  for  a 
critical  effort  to  reach  certainties.  The  attitude  of  pure  skepticism  on 
a  wide  scale  is  really  very  rare — much  rarer  even  than  the  philo- 
sophic effort.  So  far  from  freethinkers  being  given  to  "  destroying 
without  building  up,"  they  are,  as  a  rule,  unable  to  destroy  a  dogma 
either  for  themselves  or  for  others  without  setting  a  constructive 
belief  in  its  place— a  form  of  explanation,  that  is  ;  such  being  much 
more  truly  a  process  of  construction  than  would  be  the  imposition  of 
a  new  scheme  of  dogma.  In  point  of  fact,  they  are  often  accused, 
and  by  the  same  critics,  of  an  undue  tendency  to  speculative  con- 
struction ;  and  the  early  atheists  of  Greece  and  of  the  modern  period 
did  so  err.  But  that  is  only  a  proof  the  more  that  their  freethinking 
was  not  a  matter  of  arbitrary  volition  or  an  undue  negativeness. 

The  only  explanation  which  ostensibly  countervails  this  is  the 

old  one  above  glanced  at — that  the  unbeliever  finds  the  given  doctrine 

troublesome  as  a  restraint,  and  so  determines  to  reject  it.     It  is  to 

be  feared  that  this  view  has  survived  Mr.  A.  S.  Farrar.     Yet  it  is 

0 


18 


INTEODUGTOKY 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  FKEETHINKING 


19 


very  clear  that  no  man  need  throw  aside  any  faith,  and  least  of  all 
Christianity,  on  the  ground  of  its  hampering  his  conduct.  To  say 
nothing  of  the  fact  that  in  every  age,  under  every  religion,  at  every 
stage  of  culture  from  that  of  the  savage  to  that  of  the  supersubtle 
decadent  or  mystic,  men  have  practised  every  kind  of  misconduct 
without  abandoning  their  supernatural  credences — there  is  the 
special  fact  that  the  whole  Christian  system  rests  on  the  doctrine  of 
forgiveness  of  sins  to  the  believer.  The  theory  of  "  wilful "  disbelief 
on  the  part  of  the  reprobate  is  thus  entirely  unplausible.  Such  dis- 
belief in  the  terms  of  the  case  would  be  uneasy,  as  involving  an 
element  of  incertitude ;  and  his  fear  of  retribution  could  never  be 
laid.  On  the  other  hand,  he  has  but  inwardly  to  avow  himself  a 
sinner  and  a  believer,  and  he  has  the  assurance  that  repentance  at 
the  last  moment  will  outweigh  all  his  sins. 

It  is  not,  of  course,  suggested  that  such  is  the  normal  or  frequent 
course  of  believing  Christians  ;  but  it  has  been  so  often  enough  to 
make  the  "libertine"  theory  of  unbelief  untenable.  Indeed,  the 
singular  diversity  between  profession  and  practice  among  Christians 
has  in  all  periods  called  out  declarations  by  the  more  fervid  believers 
that  their  average  fellow-Christians  are  '*  practical  atheists."  More 
judicial  minds  may  be  set  asking  instead  how  far  men  really 
"  believe  "  who  do  not  act  on  their  opinions.  As  one  high  authority 
has  put  it,  in  the  Middle  Ages  the  normal  opposition  of  theory  and 
practice  "  was  peculiarly  abrupt.  Men's  impulses  were  more 
violent,  and  their  conduct  more  reckless,  than  is  often  witnessed 
in  modern  society ;  while  the  absence  of  a  criticizing  and  measuring 
spirit  made  them  surrender  their  minds  more  unreservedly  than  they 

would  do  now  to  a  complete  and  imposing  theory Eesistance  to 

God's  Vicar  might  be,  and  indeed  was  admitted  to  be,  a  deadly  sin, 
but  it  was  one  which  nobody  hesitated  to  commit."  ^  And  so  with 
other  sins,  the  sinner  having  somewhere  in  the  rear  of  his  conscious- 
ness the  reflection  that  his  sins  could  be  absolved. 

And,  apart  from  such  half-purposive  forms  of  licence  among 
Christians,  there  have  been  countless  cases  of  purposive  licence. 
In  all  ages  there  have  been  antinomian  Christians,'*  whether  of  the 
sort  that  simply  rest  on  the  '*  seventy  times  seven  "  of  the  Gospel, 
or  of  the  more  articulately  logical  kind  who  dwell  on  the  doctrine  of 
faith  versus  works.     For  the  rest,  as  the  considerate  theologian  will 


1  Bryce.  The  Holy  Rcnnan  Empire,  8th  ed.,  P- 135.  ,  r^  .  j^. 

2  A  religious  basis  for  sexual  Ucence  is  of  course  a  common  feature  m  non-Cnristian 
religions  also.  Classic  instances  are  well  known.  As  to  sexual  promiscuity  iu  an 
"intensely  religious"  savage  community,  see  Turner,  Samoa  a  Hundred  Years  Ago^ 

1884.  p.  ago. 


readily  see,  insistence  on  the  possibility  of  a  sinister  motive  for  the 
unbeliever  brings  up  the  equal  possibility  of  a  sinister  motive  on  the 
part  of  the  convert  to  Christianity,  ancient  or  modern.  At  every 
turn,  then,  the  charge  of  perversity  of  the  will  recoils  on  the 
advocate  of  belief;  so  that  it  would  be  the  course  of  common 
prudence  to  abandon  it,  even  were  it  not  in  itself,  as  a  rule,  so 
plainly  an  expression  of  irritated  bias. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  need  not  be  disputed  that  unbelief  has 
been  often  enough  associated  with  some  species  of  libertinism  to 
give  a  passing  colour  for  the  pretence  of  causal  connection.     The 
fact,   however,    leads   us   to   a   less   superficial   explanation,  worth 
keeping  in  view  here.     Freethinking  being  taken  to  be  normally 
a  "variation"  of   intellectual  type  in  the   direction  of   a  critical 
demand  for  consistency  and  credibility  in  beliefs,  its  social  assertion 
will  be  a  matter  on  the  one  side  of  force  of  character  or  degree  of 
recklessness,  and  on  the  other  hand  of  force  of  circumstances.     The 
intellectual    potentiality    and    the    propagandist    purpose   will    be 
variously  developed  in  different  men  and  in  different  surroundings. 
If  we  ask  ourselves  how,  in  general,  the  critical  tendency  is  to  arise 
or  to  come  into  play,  we  are  almost  compelled  to  suppose  a  special 
stimulus  as  well  as  a  special  faculty.    Critical  doubt  is  made  possible, 
broadly  speaking,  by  the  accumulation  of  ideas  or  habits  of  certain 
kinds  which  insensibly  undo  a  previous  state  of   homogeneity  of 
thought.     For  instance,  a  community  subsiding  into  peace  and  order 
from  a  state  of  warfare  and  plunder  will  at  length  find  the  ethic  of 
its  daily  life  at  variance  with  the  conserved  ethic  of  its  early  religion 
of   human   sacrifice  and   special  family  or  tribal  sanctions  ;    or  a 
community  which  has  accumulated  a  certain  amount  of  accurate 
knowledge  of  astronomy  will  gradually  find  such  knowledge  irrecon- 
cilable with  its  primitive  cosmology.     A  specially  gifted  person  will 
anticipate  the  general  movement  of  thought ;  but  even  for  him  some 
standing-ground  must  be  supposed  ;  and  for  the  majority  the  advance 
in  moral  practice  or  scientific  knowledge  is  the  condition  of  any 
effective  freethinking. 

Between  top  and  bottom,  however,  there  are  all  grades  of 
vivacity,  earnestness,  and  courage  ;  and  on  the  side  of  the  normal 
resistance  there  are  all  varieties  of  political  and  economic  circum- 
stance. It  follows,  then,  that  the  avoived  freethinker  may  be  so  in 
virtue  either  of  special  courage  or  of  antecedent  circumstances  which 
make  the  attitude  on  his  part  less  courageous.  And  it  may  even  be 
granted  to  the  quietist  that  the  courage  is  at  times  that  of  ill- 
balanced  judgment   or    heady   temperament ;    just   as   it   may   be 


20 


INTEODUCTOKY 


conceded  to  the  conservative  that  it  is  at  times  that  which  goes 
with  or  follows  on  disregard  of  wise  ways  of  life.  It  is  well  that  the 
full  force  of  this  position  be  realized  at  the  outset.  When  we  find, 
as  we  shall,  some  historic  freethinkers  displaying  either  extreme 
imprudence  ov-  personal  indiscipline,  we  shall  be  prepared,  in  terms 
of  this  preliminary  questioning,  to  realize  anew  that  humanity  has 
owed  a  great  deal  to  some  of  its  "  unbalanced "  types  ;  and  that, 
though  discipline  is  nearly  the  last  word  of  wisdom,  indiscipUne  may 
at  times  be  the  morbid  accompaniment  or  excess  of  a  certain  open- 
ness of  view  and  spontaneity  of  action  which  are  more  favourable  to 
moral   and   intellectual   advance   than  a  cold  prudence  or   a  safe 

insusceptibility. 

But  cold  or  calm  prudence  in  turn  is  not  a  vice ;  and  it  is  hardly 
possible  to  doubt  that  there  have  been  in  all  ages  varying  numbers 
of  unbelievers  who  shrugged  their  shoulders  over  the  follies  of  faith, 
and  declined  to  tilt  against  the  windmills  of  fanaticism.  There  is 
much  reason  for  surmising  that  Shakespeare  was  a  case  in  point.  It 
is  not  to  be  supposed,  then,  because  some  freethinkers  who  came 
out  into  the  open  were  unbalanced  types,  that  their  psychology  is 
the  psychology  of  freethought,  any  more  than  that  of  General 
Gordon  or  Francis  of  Assisi  is  to  be  reckoned  typical  on  the  side  of 
belief.  There  must  have  been  myriads  of  quiet  unbelievers,  rational 
all  round,  whose  unbelief  was  a  strictly  intellectual  process,  undis- 
turbed by  temperament.  In  our  own  day  such  types  abound,  and  it 
is  rather  in  them  than  in  the  abnormal  types  of  past  freethought— 
the  Brunos  and  the  Voltaires— that  the  average  psychology  of  free- 
thought  is  to  be  looked  for  and  understood. 

As  for  the  case  of  the  man  who,  already  at  odds  with  his  fellows 
in  the  matter  of  his  conduct,  may  in  some  phases  of  society  feel  it 
the  easier  to  brave  them  in  the  matter  of  his  avowed  creed,  we  have 
already  seen  that  even  this  does  not  convict  him  of  intellectual 
dishonesty.  And  were  such  cases  relatively  as  numerous  as  they  are 
scarce— were  the  debauched  deists  even  commoner  than  the  vinous 
Steeles  and  Fieldings— the  use  of  the  fact  as  an  argument  would  still 
be  an  oblique  course  on  the  side  of  a  religion  which  claims  to  have 
found  its  first  and  readiest  hearing  among  publicans  and  sinners. 
For  the  rest,  the  harm  done  in  the  world's  history  by  unbalanced 
freethinkers  is  as  dust  in  the  balance  against  the  immeasurable  evil 
deliberately  wrought  on  serious  religious  motives,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  constant  deviation  of   the  mass  of   believers  from  their   own 

professed  code. 

It  may,  finally,  help  a  religious  reader  to  a  judicial  view  of  the 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  FEEETHINKING 


21 


phenomenon  of  freethought  if  he  is  reminded  that  every  step  forward 
in  the  alleged  historic  evolution  of  his  own  creed  would  depend,  in 
the  case  put,  on  the  existence  of  persons  capable  of  rejecting  a 
current  and  prevailing  code  in  favour  of  one  either  denounced  as 
impious  or  marked  off  by  circumstances  as  dangerous.  The 
Israelites  in  Egypt,  the  prophets  and  their  supporters,  the  Gospel 
Jesus  and  his  adherents,  all  ostensibly  stand  in  some  degree  for 
positions  of  "  negation,"  of  hardy  innovation,  of  disregard  to  things 
and  persons  popularly  venerated  ;  wherefore  Collins,  in  the  Discourse 
above  mentioned,  smilingly  claimed  at  least  the  prophets  as  great 
freethinkers.  On  that  head  it  may  suffice  to  say  that  some  of  the 
temperamental  qualifications  would  probably  be  very  much  the 
same  for  those  who  of  old  brought  about  religious  innovation  in 
terms  of  supernatural  beliefs,  and  for  those  who  in  later  times 
innovate  by  way  of  minimizing  or  repudiating  such  beliefs,  though 
the  intellectual  qualifications  might  be  different.  Bruno  and  Dolet 
and  Vanini  and  Voltaire,  faulty  men  all  four,  could  at  least  be  more 
readily  conceived  as  prophets  in  early  Jewry,  or  reformers  under 
Herod,  than  as  Pharisees,  or  even  Sadducees,  under  either  regimen. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  however,  the  issues  between  freethought  and 
creed  are  ultimately  to  be  settled  only  in  respect  of  their  argumenta- 
tive bases,  as  appreciable  by  men  in  society  at  any  given  time.  It 
is  with  the  notion  of  making  the  process  of  judicial  appreciation  a 
Httle  easier,  by  historically  exhibiting  the  varying  conditions  under 
which  it  has  been  undertaken  in  the  past,  that  these  pages  are 
written. 


Chaptek  II 


PKIMITIVE  FKEETHINKING 


To  consider  the  normal  aspects  of  primitive  life,  as  we  see  them  in 
savage  communities  and  trace  them  in  early  Hterature,  is  to  realize 
the  enormous  hindrance  offered  to  critical  thinking  in  the  primary 
stages  of  culture  by  the  mere  force  of  habit.     **  The  savage,"  says 
our  leading  anthropologist,  "by  no  means  goes  through  life  with 
the  intention  of  gathering  more  knowledge  and  framing  better  laws 
than  his  fathers.     On  the  contrary,  his  tendency  is  to  consider  his 
ancestors  as  having  handed  down  to  him  the  perfection  of  wisdom, 
which  it  would  be  impiety  to  make  the  least  alteration  in.     Hence 
among  the  lower  races  there  is  obstinate  resistance  to  the  most 
desirable  reforms,  and  progress  can  only  force  its  way  with  a  slow- 
ness and  difficulty  which  we  of  this  century  can  hardly  imagine."  ^ 
Among  the  Bantu  of  South  Africa,  before  the  spread  of  European 
rule,  **  any  person  in  advance  of  his  fellows  was  specially  liable  to 
suspicion  [of  sorcery! ,  so  that  progress  of  any  kind  towards  what 
we  should  term  higher  civilization  was  made  exceedingly  difficult 
by  this  belief."'*    The  real  or  would-be  sorcerer  could  thus  secure 
the  elimination  of  the  honest  inventor ;  fear  of  sorcery  being  most 
potent  as  against  the  supposed  irregular  practitioner.     The  relative 
obstinacy  of  conservatism  in  periods  and  places  of  narrow  know- 
ledge is  again  illustrated  in  Lane's  account  of  the  modern  Egyptians 
in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century :  "  Some  Egyptians  who 
had  studied  for  a  few  years  in  France  declared  to  me  that  they 
could  not  instil  any  of  the  notions  which  they  had  there  acquired 
even  into  the  minds  of  their  most  intimate  friends."  ^     So  in  modern 
Japan  there  were  many  assassinations  of  reformers,  and  some  civil 
war,  before  Western  ideas   could  gain   a   footing.*     The   less    the 
knowledge,  in  short,  the  harder  to  add  to  it. 

1  E.  B.  Tylor.  Anthropology,  1881,  p.  439.    Cp.  Lang.  Custom  and  Myth,  ed.  1893,  p.  72 ; 
J.  G.  Frazer.  Lectures  oil  the  Early  History  of  the  Kivgship,  1905.  pp.  86-87. 

2  Theal,  The  Beginning  of  South  African  History,  1902.  p.  57.    See  also  the  Rev.  J. 
Macdonald,  Light  in  Africa,  1890.  p.  192. 

8  Account  of  the  Manners  and  Customs  of  the  Modem  Egyptians,  5th  ed.  1871,  i,  280, 7iote. 
4  Life  of  Mr.  YuTcichi  Fukuzawa,  Tokyo,  1902.  pp.  48-63. 56-69. 

22 


PBIMITIVE  FKEETHINKING 


23 


It  is  hardly  possible  to  estimate  with  any  confidence  the  relative 
rates  of  progress  ;  but,  though  all  are  extremely  slow,  it  would 
seem  that  reason  could  sooner  play  correctively  on  errors  of  secular 
practice^  than  on  any  species  of  proposition  in  religion — taking  that 
word  to  connote  at  once  mythology,  early  cosmology,  and  ritual 
ethic.  Mere  disbelief  in  a  particular  medicine-man  or  rain-maker 
who  failed  would  not  lead  to  any  reflective  disbelief  in  all ;  any 
more  than  the  beating  or  renunciation  of  his  fetish  by  a  savage  or 
barbarian  means  rejection  of  his  fetishism,  or  than  the  renunciation 
of  a  particular  saint  by  a  modern  Catholic'^  means  abandonment  of 
prayer  to  saints  for  intercession. 

The  question  as  to  whether  savages  do  beat  their  idols  is  a 
matter  in   some   dispute.     Sir  A.  B.  Ellis,  a  high  authority, 
offers  a  notable  denial  to  the  current  belief  that  negroes  "  beat 
their  Gods  if  their  prayers  are  unanswered."     "  After  an  expe- 
rience of   the  Gold  Coast  extending  over  thirteen  years,"  he 
writes,  "  I  have  never  heard  of,  much  less  witnessed,  anything 
of  the  kind,  although  I  have  made  inquiries  in  every  direction  " 
(The  T&hi-speaking  Peoples,  1887,  p.  194).    Other  anthropologists 
have  collected  many  instances  in  other  races — e.g.,  Fr.  Schultze, 
Der  Fetischismus,  1871,  p.  130.     In  one  case,  a  priest  beats  a 
fetish  in  advance,  to   secure   his   careful   attention.     (Id.  pp. 
90-91,  citing  the  personal  narrative  of  Bastian.)     It  seems  to 
be  a  matter  of  psychic  stage.     The  more  primitive  negro  is  as 
it  were  too  religious,  too  much  afraid  of  his  Gods,  who  are  not 
for   him    "  idols,"  but   spirits   residing   in   images   or   objects. 
Where  the  state  of  fear  is  only  chronic  another  temper  may 
arise.     Among  the  Bataks  of  Sumatra  disappointed  worshippers 
often  scold  a  God ;  and  their  legends  tell  of  men  who  declared 
war  on  a  deity  and  shot  at  him  from  a  mountain.     (Wameck, 
Die  Beligion  des   Batak,  1909,  p.  7.     Cp.  Gen.  ii,  4-9.)     A 
temper  of  defiance  towards  deity  has  been  noted  in  an  Aryan 
Kafir  of  the  Hindu-Kush.     (Sir  G.  S.  Kobertson,  The  Kafirs  of 
the  Hindu-Kush,  1899,  p.  182.)     Some  peoples  go  much  further. 
Among  the  Polynesians,  when  a  God  failed  to  cure  a  sick  chief 
or  notable,  he  *'  was  regarded  as  inexorable,  and  was  usually 
banished  from  the  temple  and  his  image  destroyed  "  (W.  Ellis, 
Polynesian  Besearches,  2nd  ed.  1831,  i,  350).     So  among  the 
Chinese,  *'  if  the  God  does  not  give  rain  they  will  threaten  and 
beat  him ;  sometimes  they  publicly  depose  him  from  the  rank 


1  See  Tylor,  IPrimitive  Culture,  3rd  ed.  i,  71,  as  to  savage  conservatism  in  handicraft ; 
but  compare  his  Besearches  into  the  Early  History  of  Mankind,  1865.  p.  160,  as  to  counter- 
VfltiliQiz  f oirc6S 

2  E.g.,  in  the  first  chapter  of  Saint-Simon's  Mimoires,  the  account  of  the  French 
soldiers  who  at  the  siege  of  Namur  burned  and  broke  the  images  of  Saint  M6dard  for 
sending  so  much  rain.  Cp.  Irvine,  Letters  on  Sicily,  1813,  p.  72;  and  Ramage,  Wanderings 
through  Italy,  ed.  1868,  p.  113.  Constant,  De  la  religion,  1824,  vol.  i,  ptie.  ii,  p.  34,  gives  a 
number  of  Christian  instances. 


24  PKIMITIVE  FKEETHINKING 

of  deity"  (Frazer,  Lectures  on  the  Early  History  of  Kingship, 
1905,  pp.  98-101.     Cp.  Boss,  Fansebeia,  4th  ed.,  1672,  p.  80). 

There  are  many  analogous  phenomena.  In  old  Samoa,  in  the 
ritual  of  mourning  for  the  dead,  the  family  God  was  first 
implored  to  restore  the  deceased,  and  then  fiercely  abused  and 
menaced.*  See,  too,  the  story  of  the  people  of  Niue  or  Savage 
Island  in  the  South  Pacific,  who  in  the  time  of  a  great 
pestilence,  thinking  the  sickness  was  caused  by  a  certain  idol, 
broke  it  in  pieces  and  threw  it  away  (Turner,  Samoa  a  Hundred 
Years  Ago,  1884,  p.  306).  See  further  the  cases  cited  by 
Constant,  De  la  religion,  1824,  vol.  i,  ptie.  ii,  pp.  32-34  ;  and  by 
Peschel,  The  Races  of  Man,  Eng.  tr.  1876,  pp.  247-8,  m 
particular  that  of  Rastus,  the  last  pagan  Lapp  in  Europe,  who 
quarrelled  with  his  fetish  stone  for  killing  his  reindeer  in  revenge 
for  the  withholding  of  its  customary  offering  of  brandy,  and 
*'  immediately  embraced  Christianity."  (Compare  E.  Rae,  The 
White  Sea  Peninsula,  1881,  p.  276.)  See  again  the  testimony  of 
Herman  Melville  in  his  Typee,  ch.  xxiv  ;  and  that  of  T.  Williams, 
Fiji  and  the  Fijians,  ed.  1858,  i,  236 :  "  Sometimes  the  natives  get 
angry  with  their  deities,  and  abuse  and  even  challenge  them  to 
fight."  Herodotos  has  similar  stories  of  barbarians  who  defy 
their  own  and  other  deities  (iv,  172,  183,  184).  Compare  the 
case  of  King  Rum  Bahadur  of  Nepau],  who  cannonaded  his 
Gods.  Spencer,  Study  of  Sociology,  pp.  301-2.  Also  the  anec- 
dote cited  by  Spencer  {Id.  p.  160)  from  Sir  R.  Burton's  Goa, 
p.  167.  Here  there  is  no  disbelief,  no  reflection,  but  simple 
resentment.  Compare,  too,  the  amusing  story  of  a  blasphemy 
by  Rossini,  told  by  Louis  Viardot,  Libre  Examen,  6e  6d. 
pp.  166-67,  note.  That  threats  against  the  Gods  are  possible  at 
a  semi-civilized  stage  is  proved  by  various  passages  in  medieval 
literature.  Thus  in  Caxton's  Charles  the  Grete,  a  translation 
from  an  older  French  original,  Charles  is  made  to  say  :  "  0  lord 
God,  if  ye  suffre  that  Olyver  be  overcome  and  that  my  ryght  at 
thys  tyme  be  loste  and  def vied,  I  make  a  vowe  that  al  Crystyante 
shal  be  destroyed.  I  shal  not  leve  in  Fraunce  chirche  ne 
monasterye,  ymage  ne  aulter,"  etc.  (Early  Eng.  Text  Soc.  rep. 
1881,  pp.  70-71.)  Such  language  was  probably  used  by  not  a 
few  medieval  kings  in  moments  of  fury ;  and  there  is  even  record 
that  at  the  battle  of  Dunbar  certain  of  the  Scots  Presbyterian 
clergy  intimated  to  their  deity  that  he  would  not  be  their  God  if 
he  failed  them  on  that  day. 

If  such  flights  be  reckoned  possible  for  Christian  kings  and 
clerics  in  the  Christian  era,  there  would  seem  to  be  no  unlikeli- 
hood about  the  many  stories  of  God-beating  and  God- defying 
among  contemporary  savages,  though  so  good  an  observer  as 
Sir  A.  B.  Ellis  may  not  have  witnessed  them  in  the  part  of 

1  Rev.  J.  B.  stair.  Old  Samoa,  1897.  pp.  181-8i2. 


PRIMITIVE  FREETHINKING 


25 


Africa  best  known  to  him.  The  conclusion  reached  by  Sir 
A.  B.  Ellis  is  that  the  negroes  of  the  Gold  Coast  are  not 
properly  to  be  described  as  fetishists.  Fetishism,  on  his  view, 
is  a  worship  of  objects  as  in  themselves  endowed  with  magical 
power  ;  whereas  the  Gold  Coast  negro  ascribes  no  virtue  to  the 
object  commonly  called  his  fetish,  regarding  it  simply  as 
inhabited  by  a  supernatural  power.  This  writer  sees  "true 
fetishism  "  in  the  attitude  of  Italian  peasants  and  fishermen 
who  beat  and  ill-treat  their  images  when  prayers  are  not 
answered,  and  in  that  of  Spaniards  who  cover  the  faces  of  their 
images  or  turn  them  to  the  wall  when  about  to  do  anything 
which  they  think  the  saint  or  deity  would  disapprove  of.  On 
this  view,  fetishism  is  a  later  yet  lower  stage  of  religious  evolu- 
tion than  that  of  the  negro.  On  the  other  hand,  Miss  Kingsley 
takes  fetishism  to  be  the  proper  name  of  the  attitude  of  the 
negro  towards  particular  objects  as  divinely  inhabited,  and 
represents  it  as  a  kind  of  pantheism  {West  African  Studies, 
2nd  ed.  1901,  ch.  v).  And  since,  by  her  definition,  "  Gods  of 
fetish  "  do  not  necessarily  **  require  a  material  object  to  manifest 
themselves  in  "  fp.  96),  the  term  "  fetish  "  is  thus  detached  from 
all  of  its  former  meanings.  It  seems  expedient,  as  a  matter  of 
terminology,  to  let  fetishism  mean  both  object-  or  image-worship 
and  the  belief  in  the  special  inhabiting  of  objects  by  deities, 
with  a  recognition  that  the  beliefs  may  be  different  stages  in  an 
evolution,  though,  on  the  other  hand,  they  are  obviously  likely 
to  coalesce  or  concur.  In  the  "  Obeah  "  system  of  the  negroes 
of  the  West  Indies  the  former  belief  in  the  indwelling  spirit  has 
become,  or  has  coalesced  with,  belief  in  the  magical  powers  of 
the  object  (Keane,  Man,  Past  and  Present,  1900,  p.  57). 

As  to  defiance  or  contumely  towards  the  Gods,  finally,  we 
have  the  testimony  of  the  Swiss  missionary  Junod  that  the 
South  African  Thonga,  whom  he  studied  very  closely,  have  in 
their  ritual  "  a  regular  insulting  of  the  Gods."  {Life  of  a  South 
African  Tribe,  ii,  1912,  p.  384.)     Why  not  ?     "  Prayers  to  the 

ancestors are absolutely  devoid  of  awe  "  (p.  385),  though 

"  the  ancestor-Gods  are  certainly  the  most  powerful  spiritual 
agency  acting  on  man's  life  "  (p.  361) ;  and  "  the  spirits  of  the 
ancestors  are  the  main  objects  of  religious  worship  "  (p.  344). 
The  Thonga,  again,  use  "  neither  idolatry  nor  fetishism,"  having 
no  "idols"  (p.  388),  though  they  recognize  " hidden  virtues  " 
in  plants,  animals,  and  stones  (p.  345).  They  simply  regard 
their  ancestor-Gods  very  much  as  they  do  their  aged  people, 
whom  they  generally  treat  with  little  consideration.  But 
the  dead  can  do  harm,  and  must  therefore  be  propitiated — 
as  savages  propitiate,  with  fear  or  malice  or  derision  in  their 
hearts,  as  the  case  may  be.  (Cp.  p.  379.)  On  the  other  hand, 
despite  the  denial  of  their  "  fetishism,"  they  believe  that  ancestor- 
Gods  may  come  in  the  shape  of  animals  ;  and  they  so  venerate 


26  PEIMITIVE  FEEETHINKING 

a  kind  of  palladium  (made  up  like  a  medicine-man's  amulet)  as 
to  raise  the  question  whether  this  kind  of  belief  is  not  just  that 
which  Miss  Kingsley  called  "  fetish."     (Junod,  pp.  358,  373-74.) 

Whatever  may  be  the  essence,  or  the  varieties,  of  fetishism,  it  is 
clear  that  the  beating  of  idols  or  threatening  of  Gods  does  not  amount 
to  rational  doubt  concerning  the  supernatural.    Some  general  approach 
to  that  attitude  may  perhaps  be  inferred  in  the  case  of  an  economic 
revolt  against  the  burdens  of  a  highly  specialized  religious  system, 
which  may  often  have    occurred  in  unwritten  history.     We  shall 
note  a  recorded  instance  of  the  kind  in  connection  with  the  question 
whether  there  are  any  savage  tribes  without  religion.     But  it  occurs 
in  the  somewhat  highly  evolved  barbarism  of  pre-Christian  Hawaii ; 
and  it  can  set  up  no  inference  as  to  any  development  of  critical 
unbelief  at  lower  levels.     In  the  long  stage  of  lower  savagery,  then, 
the  only  approach  to  freethinking  that  would  seriously  affect  general 
belief  would  presumably  be  that  very  credulity  which  gave  foothold 
to  religious  beliefs  to  begin  with.     That  is  to  say,  without  anything 
in  the  nature  of  general  criticism  of  any  story  or  doctrine,  one  such 
might  to  some  extent  supersede  another,  in  virtue  of  the  relative  gift 
of  persuasion  or  personal  weight  of  the  propounders.    Up  to  a  certain 
point  persons  with  a  turn  for  myth  or  ritual-making  would  compete, 
and  might  even  call  in  question  each  other's  honesty,  as  well  as  each 
other's  inspiration. 

Since  the  rise  of  scientific  hierology  there  has  been  a  disposition 
among  students  to  take  for  granted  the  good  faith  of  all  early 
religion-makers,  and  to  dismiss  entirely  that  assumption  of  fraud 
which  was  so  long  made  by  Christian  writers  concerning  the  greater 
part  of  every  non-Christian  system.  The  assumption  had  been 
passed  on  from  the  freethinkers  of  antiquity  who  formulated  the 
view  that  all  religious  doctrine  had  been  invented  by  politicians  in 
order  to  control  the  people.^  Christian  polemists,  of  course,  applied 
it  to  all  systems  but  their  own.  When,  however,  all  systems  are 
seen  to  be  ahke  natural  in  origin,  such  charges  are  felt  to  recoil  on 
the  system  which  makes  them;  and  latterly^  Christian  writers, 
seeing  as  much,  have  been  fain  to  abandon  the  conception  of  "  priest- 

1  Sextus  Empiricus,  Adv.  Mathemnticos,  fx,  14,  29;  Pseudo-Plutarch.  De  placitis 
DhiloscwJwrum,  i.  7;  Lactantius.  De  ira  Dei.  x,  47;  Cicero,  De  natura  Deorum,  i,  42; 
Augustine,  De  civitate  Dei,  iv,  32.  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  skeptic  Sextus  rejects  the 
opinion  as  absurd,  even  as  does  the  high-priest  Cotta  in  Cicero. 

a  Vico  was  one  of  the  first,  after  Sextus  Empiricus  and  his  modern  commentator 
Fabricius.  to  insist  (following  the  saying  of  Petronius,  Pri^nu.s  tnorbe  deos  fecit  txmor) 
that  "  False  religions  were  founded  not  by  the  imposture  of  some,  but  by  the  credulity  oi 
all"  {Scienza  Nuova  [1725],  lib.  i,  prop.  40).  Yet  when  denying  (id.,  De'  Priiwipii  ed.  1852, 
V  lU)  the  assertions  of  travellers  as  to  tribes  without  religion,  he  msisted  that  they  were 
mere  fictions  planned  to  sell  the  authors'  books— here  imputing  fraud  as  lightly  as  othera 
had  done  in  the  case  of  the  supposed  founders  of  religions. 


PEIMITIVE  FREETHINKING 


27 


I 


craft,"  adroitly  representing  it  as  an  extravagance  of  rationalism.  It 
certainly  served  rationalistic  purposes,  and  the  title  of  the  supposi- 
titious medieval  work  on  "The  Three  Impostors"  points  to  its 
currency  among  unbelievers  long  ago ;  but  when  we  first  find  it 
popularly  current  in  the  seventeenth  century,  it  is  in  a  Christian 
atmosphere.^  Some  of  the  early  deists  and  others  have  probably  in 
turn  exaggerated  the  amount  of  deliberate  deceit  involved  in  the 
formation  of  religious  systems ;  but  nevertheless  "  priestcraft "  is 
a  demonstrable  factor  in  the  process.  What  is  called  the  psychology 
of  religion  has  been  much  obscured  in  response  to  the  demand  of 
religious  persons  to  have  it  so  presented  as  to  flatter  them  in  that 
capacity.^  Such  a  claim  cannot  be  permitted  to  overrule  the  fair 
inductions  of  comparative  science. 

Anthropological  evidence  suggests  that,  while  religion  clearly 
begins  in  primordial  fear  and  fancy,  wilful  fraud  must  to  some 
extent  have  entered  into  all  religious  systems  alike,  even  in  the 
period  of  primeval  credulity,  were  it  only  because  the  credulity  was 
so  great.  Dne  of  the  most  judicial  and  sympathetic  of  the  Christian 
scholars  who  have  written  the  history  of  Greece  treats  as  unquestion- 
able the  view  that  alike  in  pagan  and  Christian  cults  **  priestcraft " 
has  been  "  fertile  in  profitable  devices,  in  the  invention  of  legends, 
the  fabrication  of  relics,  and  other  modes  of  imposture";^  and  the 
leading  hierologist  of  the  last  generation  pronounces  decisively  as  to 
an  element  of  intentional  deceit  in  the  Koran-making  of  Mohammed* 
— a  judgment  which,  if  upheld,  can  hardly  fail  to  be  extended  to 
some  portions  of  all  other  sacred  books.  However  that  may  be,  we 
have  positive  evidence  that  wilful  and  systematic  fraud  enters  into 
the  doctrine  of  contemporary  savages,  and  that  among  some 
"primitives  "  known  myths  are  deliberately  propounded  to  the  boys 
and  women  by  the  male  adults.*^  Indeed,  the  majority  of  modern 
travellers  among  primitives  seem  to  have  regarded  their  priests  and 
sorcerers  in  the  mass  as  conscious  deceivers.'^    If,  then,  we  can  point 

*  E.g.,  the  Elizabethan  play  Selimus  (Huth  Lib.  ed.  of  Greene,  vol.  xiv,  ed.  Grosart), 
dated  1594,  vv.  258-262.  (In  "Temple  Dramatists"  ed.,  vv.  330-331.)  See  also  below, 
vol.  ii,  ch.  xiii.  „  ,  •   • 

2  On  the  principle  of  self-expression  in  religion,  cp.  Feuerbach,  Das  Wesen  der  Beltgion, 
in  Werke.  ed.  1846-1849,  i,  413,  445.  498,  etc.  .    ,  .    , 

8  Bishop  Thirlwall,  History  of  Greece,  ed.  1839,  i.  186,  204.  Cp.  Curtius,  Griechtsche 
Geschichte,  1858.  i,  389.  „     .^,     ^^    ^,_, 

*  Tiele,  Outlines  of  the  Hist,  of  Beligions,  Eng.  tr.,  p.  96.  Cp.  Robertson  Smith,  The  Old 
Testament  in  the  Jewish  Church,  2nd  ed..  p.  141, 7wte. 

^  Spencer  and  Gillen,  The  Northern  Tribes  of  Central  Australia,  1904,  pp.  258,  347, 

6  See  the  article  by  E.  J.  Glave,  of  Stanley's  force,  on  "  Fetishism  in  Congoland,"  in  the 
Century  Magazine,  April.  1891,  p.  836.  Compare  F.  Schultze.  Der  Feiichismus,  1871, 
pp.  137, 141,  142, 144,  etc.;  Theal,  The  Beginning  of  South  African  History,  1902,  pp.  49,  52; 
Kranz,  Natur-  und  Kulturleben  der  Zulus,  1880,  pp.  110.  113-14 ;  Moffat,  Missionary 
Labours,  35th  thous.,  pp.  69,  81-64 ;  A.  B.  Ellis,  The  Tshi-Speaking  Peoples,  1887,  pp.  125-29, 
137-39, 


I 


28 


PBIMITIVE  FBEETHINKING 


to  deliberate  imposture  alike  in  the  charm-mongering  and  myth- 
mongering  of  contemporary  savages  and  in  the  sacred-book-makmg 
of  the  higher  historical  systems,  it  seems  reasonable  to  hold  that 
conscious  deceit,  as  distinguished  from  childHke  fabrication,  would 
chronically  enter  into  the  tale-making  of  primitive  men,  as  into  their 
simpler  relations  with  each  other.  It  is  indeed  impossible  to 
conceive  how  a  copious  mythology  could  ever  arise  without  the  play 
of  a  kind  of  imaginativeness  that  is  hardly  compatible  with  veracity  ; 
and  it  is  probably  only  the  exigencies  of  ecclesiastical  life  that  cause 
modern  critics  still  to  treat  the  most  dehberate  fabrications  and 
forgeries  in  the  Hebrew  sacred  books  as  somehow  produced  in  a 
spirit  of  the  deepest  concern  for  truth.  An  all-round  concern  for 
truth  is,  in  fact,  a  late  intellectual  development,  the  product  of  much 
criticism  and  much  doubt ;  hence,  perhaps,  the  lenity  of  the  verdicts 
under  notice.  Certain  wild  tribes  here  and  there,  living  in  a  state  of 
great  simplicity,  are  in  our  own  day  described  as  remarkably  truthful ; 
but  they  are  not  remarkable  for  range  of  supernatural  belief ;  and 
their  truthfulness  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  product  of  their  special 
stability  and  simplicity  of  life.  The  trickery  of  a  primitive  medicine- 
man, of  course,  is  a  much  more  childHke  thing  than  the  frauds  of 
educated  priesthoods  ;  and  it  is  compatible  with  so  much  of  spon- 
taneous pietism  as  is  implied  in  the  common  passing  of  the  operator 
into  the  state  of  convulsion  and  trance— a  transition  which  comes 
easily  to  many  savages."*  But  even  at  that  stage  of  psychosis,  and 
in  a  community  where  simple  secular  lying  is  very  rare,  the  profes- 
sional wizard-priest  becomes  an  adept  in  playing  upon  credulity .^^ 

It  belongs,  in  short,  to  the  very  nature  of  the  priestly  function, 
in  its  earlier  forms,  to  develop  in  a  special  degree  the  normal  bias 
of  the  undisciplined  mind  to  intellectual  fraud.  Granting  that  there 
are  all  degrees  of  self-consciousness  in  the  process,  we  are  bound 
to  recognize  that  in  all  of  us  there  is  "  the  sophist  within,"  who 
stands  between  us  and  candour  in  every  problem  either  of  self- 
criticism  or  of  self-defence.  And,  if  the  instructed  man  recognizes 
this  clearly  and  the  uninstructed  does  not,  none  the  less  is  the 
latter  an  exemplification  of  the  fact.  His  mental  obliquities  are 
not  any  less  real  because  of  his  indifference  to  them  than  are  the 

142;  Sir  G.  S.  Eobertson,  The  Edfirs  of  the  Hindu-Kush,  ed.  1899,  pp.  405.  417;  E.  Rae. 
The  White  Sea  Peninsula,  1881.  p.  149;  Turner.  Samoa,  1884.  p.  272.  It  is  certain  tbat  the 
wizards  of  contemporary  savage  races  are  frequently  killed  as  impostors  by  tneir  own 
people.    See  below,  p.  35.  ,     ,    .  „„ 

1  Tylor,  Anthrovology,pA06;  Primitive  Culture,  Zrded.,  I,  38.  ^v,    o     *i, 

2  The  fact  that  this  phenomenon  occurs  everywhere  among  primitives,  from  the  bouth 
Seas  to  Lapland,  should  be  noted  in  connection  with  the  latterly  revived  claims  of  so-called 
"Mysticism."  „  „„„ 

8  Cp.  E.  Eae,  The  White  Sea  Peninsula,  1881,  pp.  149,  263. 


PKIMITIVE  FBEETHINKING 


29 


acts  of  the  hereditary  thief  because  he  does  them  without  shame. 
And  if  we  consider  how  the  fetish-priest  is  at  every  turn  tempted  to 
invent  and  prevaricate,  simply  because  his  pretensions  are  funda- 
mentally preposterous  ;  and  how  in  turn  the  priest  of  a  higher 
grade,  even  when  he  sincerely  "  believes  "  in  his  deity,  is  bound  to 
put  forward  as  matters  of  knowledge  or  revelation  the  hypotheses 
he  frames  to  account  for  either  the  acts  or  the  abstentions  of  the 
God,  we  shall  see  that  the  priestly  office  is  really  as  incompatible 
with  a  high  sincerity  in  the  primitive  stages  as  in  those  in  which 
it  is  held  by  men  who  consciously  propound  falsities,  whether  for 
their  mere  gain  or  in  the  hope  of  doing  good.  It  may  be  true  that 
the  priestly  claim  of  supernatural  sanction  for  an  ethical  command 
is  at  times  motived  by  an  intense  conviction  of  the  rightness  of  the 
course  of  conduct  prescribed ;  but  none  the  less  is  such  a  habit  of 
mind  fatal  to  intellectual  sincerity.  Either  there  is  sheer  hallucina- 
tion or  there  is  pious  fraud. 

Given,  however,  the  tendency  to  deceit  among  primitive  folk, 
distrust  and  detection  in  a  certain  number  of  cases  would  presumably 
follow,  constituting  a  measure  of  simple  skepticism.  By  force  partly 
of  this  and  partly  of  sheer  instability  of  thought,  early  belief  would 
be  apt  to  subsist  for  ages  like  that  of  contemporary  African  tribes,^ 
in  a  state  of  flux.^  Comparative  fixity  would  presumably  arise  with 
the  approach  to  stability  of  life,  of  industry,  and  of  political  institu- 
tions, whether  with  or  without  a  special  priesthood.  The  usages  of 
early  family  worship  would  seem  to  have  been  no  less  rigid  than 
those  of  the  tribal  and  public  cults.  For  primitive  man  as  for  the 
moderns  definite  organization  and  ritual  custom  must  have  been  a 
great  estabhshing  force  as  regards  every  phase  of  religious  belief;^ 
and  it  may  well  have  been  that  there  was  thus  less  intellectual 
liberty  of  a  kind  in  the  long  ages  of  what  we  regard  as  primitive 
civilization  than  in  those  of  savagery  and  barbarism  which  preceded 
them.  On  that  view,  systems  which  are  supposed  to  represent  in 
the  fullest  degree  the  primeval  spontaneity  of  religion  may  have 
been  in  part  priestly  reactions  against  habits  of  freedom  accom- 
panied by  a  certain  amount  of  skepticism.  A  modern  inquirer'  has 
in  some  such  sense  advanced  the  theory  that  in  ancient  India,  in 
even  the  earlier  period  of  collection  of  the  Eig-Veda,  which  itself 


*  Glave,  article  cited,  pp.  835-36.  ^    ^,         7.7  •f>^T-'-.'^«  looo  «  i«;n. 
^  Cp.  Max  Mtiller,  Natural  Beligion,  1889.  p.  133;  Anthropologtcal  Beltgtoii,  1892,  p.  150, 

"Lsing,  Myth,  Bitual,  and  Beligion, '2nd  ed.  ii,  3^  aa-  ^  tj-  i,«« -iiir^*./qeT»7rtvfVi 

8  Compare  Bishop  Butler's  Charge  to  the  Clergy  of  Durham,  and  Bishop  Wordsworth 
On  Beligious  Bestoration  in  England.  lS5i,V'^5,  etc.  100c  «  hk 

*  P.  von  Bradke,  Dydus  Asura,  Ahura  Mazda,  und  die  Amras,  Halle.  18B5,  p.  iia. 


30 


PKIMITIVE  FBEETHINKING 


undermined  the  monarchic  character  of  the  pre-Vedic  religion,  there 
was  a  decay  of  belief,  which  the  final  redaction  served  to  accelerate. 
Such  a  theory  can  hardly  pass  beyond  the  stage  of  hypothesis  in 
view  of  the  entire  absence  of  history  proper  in  early  Indian 
literature ;  but  we  seem  at  least  to  have  the  evidence  of  the  Veda 
itself  that  while  it  was  being  collected  there  were  deniers  of  the 
existence  of  its  Gods/ 

The  latter  testimony  alone  may  serve  as  ground  for  raising 
afresh  an  old  question  which  recent  anthropology  has  somewhat 
inexactly  decided — that,  namely,  as  to  whether  there  are  any 
savages  without  religious  beliefs. 

[For  old  discussions  on  the  subject  see  Cicero,  De  natura 
deorum,  i,  23  ;  Cumberland,  Disquisitio  de  legibiis  naturcB,  1672, 
introd.  (rejecting  negative  view  as  resting  on  inadequate  testi- 
mony) ;  Locke,  Essay  on  the  Human  Ujiderstariding ,  Bk.  I, 
ch.  iii,  §  9  ;  ch.  iv,  §  8  (accepting  negative  view)  ;  protests 
against  it  by  Vico  {Scienza  Nuova,  1725,  as  cited  above,  p.  26) ; 
by  Shaftesbury  (Letters  to  a  Student,  1716,  rep.  in  Letters, 
1746,  pp.  32-33) ;  by  Kev.  John  Milne,  An  Account  of  Mr. 
Loch's  Beligion  (anon.),  1700,  pp.  5-8 ;  and  by  Sir  W. 
Anstruther,  Essays  Moral  afid  Divine,  Edinburgh,  1701,  p.  24  ; 
further  protests  by  Lafitau  (Mosurs  des  sauvages  anieriquains 
comparies  aux  niceurs  des  premiers  temps,  1724,  i,  5),  following 
Boyle,  to  the  effect  that  the  very  travellers  and  missionaries 
who  denied  all  religion  to  savages  avow  facts  which  confute 
them  ;  and  general  view  by  Fabricius,  Delectus  argumentoncm 
et  Syllabus  scriptorum,  Hamburghi,  1725,  ch.  viii.  Cp.  also 
Swift,  Discourse  Concerning  the  Mechanical  Operation  of  the 
Spirit,  §  2. 

Biichner  {Force  and  Matter,  ch.  on  "  The  Idea  of  God ") ; 
Lord  Avebury  =  Sir  John  Lubbock  {Prehistoric  Times,  5th  ed., 
pp.  574-80 ;  Origin  of  Civilization,  5th  ed.,  pp.  213-17) ; 
and  Mr.  Spencer  {Principles  of  Sociology,  iii,  §  583)  have 
collected  modern  travellers'  testimonies  as  to  the  absence  of 
religious  ideas  in  certain  tribes.  Cp.  also  J.  A.  St.  John's 
(Bohn)  ed.  of  Locke,  notes  on  passages  above  cited,  and  on 
Bk.  IV,  ch.  X,  §  6.  As  Lord  Avebury  points  out,  the  word 
"religion  "  is  by  some  loosely  or  narrowly  used  to  signify  only 
a  higher  theology  as  distinct  from  lower  supernaturalist  beliefs. 


*  Rig-Veda,  x,  121  (as  translated  by  Muir.  MUller,  Dutt,  ancl  von  Bradke);  and  x,  82 
(Dutt's  rendering).  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  refrain  "  Who  is  the  God  whom  we  should 
worship?"  is  entirely  diflferent  in  Ludwig's  rendering  of  x.  1'21.  [Bertholet's  i2e?tj7tons- 
geschichtliches Lesebuch  (1908)  compiled  on  the  principle  that  "the  best  translations  are 
good  enough  for  us,"  follows  the  rendering  of  Muir,  Mtiller.  Dutt,  and  von  Bradke  (p.  165).] 
Cp.  Max  Mtiller,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  302.  and  Natural  Religion,  pp.  227-'229,  citing  R.  V., 
viii,  100,  3,  etc.,  for  an  apparently  undisputed  case  of  skepticism.  See  again  Langlois's 
version  of  vi.  7,  iii,  3  (p.  459).  He  cannot  diverge  much  more  from  the  German  and 
English  translators  than  they  do  from  each  other. 


PEIMITIVE  FEEETHINKING 


31 


He  himself,  however,  excludes  from  the  field  of  "  religion  "  a 
belief  in  evil  spirits  and  in  magic — here  coinciding  with  the 
later  anthropologists  who  represented  magic  and  religion  as 
fundamentally  *'  opposed " — a  view  rejected  even  by  some 
religionists.  Cp.  Avebui'y,  Marriage,  Totemism,  and  Beligion 
(1911),  p.  116  sq.;  Kev.  E.  Crawley,  The  Mystic  Bose,  1902, 
p.  3  ;  Prof.  T.  Witten  Davies,  Magic,  Divination,  and  Demono- 
logy,  1898,  pp.  18-24.  The  proved  erroneousness  of  many  of 
the  negative  testimonies  has  been  insisted  on  by  Benjamin 
Constant  {De  la  Beligion,  1824,  i,  3-4) ;  Theodore  Parker 
{Discourse  of  Matters  Pertaining  to  Beligio?i,  1842  and  1855, 
ed.  1877,  p.  16) ;  G.  Koskoff  {Das  Beligionswesen  der  rohesten 
Naturvolker,  1880,  Abschn.  I  and  II)  ;  Dr.  Tylor  {Primitive 
Culture,  3rd  ed.,  i,  pp.  417-25) ;  and  Dr.  Max  Miiller  {Introd. 
to  the  Science  of  Beligion,  ed.  1882,  p.  42  sq.;  Hibbert  Lectures, 
p.  91  sq.;  Natural  Beligion,  1889,  pp.  81-89  ;  Anthropological 
Beligion,  1892,  pp.  428-35. 

The  Kev.  H.  A.  Junod  {Life  of  a  South  African  Tribe,  vol.  ii, 
1913,  p.  346)  shows  how  easily  misconception  on  the  subject 
may  arise.  Galton  {Narrative  of  an  Explorer,  ch.  viii,  ed.  1891, 
p.  138)  writes  :  "  I  have  no  conception  to  this  day  whether  or 
no  the  Ovampo  have  any  religion,  for  Click  was  frightened  and 
angry  if  the  subject  of  death  was  alluded  to."  The  context 
shows  that  the  native  regarded  all  questions  on  religious  matters 
with  suspicion.  Schweinfurth,  again,  contradicts  himself  twice 
within  three  pages  as  to  the  beliefs  of  the  Bongo  in  a  "  Supreme 
Being  "  and  in  a  future  state ;  and  thus  leaves  us  doubting  his 
statement  that  the  neighbouring  race,  the  Dyoor,  "  put  no  faith 
at  all  in  any  witchcraft "  {The  Heart  of  Africa,  3rd  ed.  i,  143-45). 
Much  of  the  confusion  turns  on  the  fact  that  savages  who 
practise  no  loorship  have  religious  beliefs  (cp.  Max  Miiller, 
Hibbert  Lectures,  ed.  1878,  p.  17,  citing  Monsignor  Salvado  ; 
and  Carl  Lumholtz,  Among  Cannibals,  1889,  p.  284).  The 
dispute,  as  it  now  stands,  mainly  turns  on  the  definition  of 
religion  (cp.  Chantepie  de  la  Saussaye,  Manual  of  the  Science  of 
Beligion,  Eng.  tr.  1891,  pp.  16-18,  where  Lubbock's  position  is 
partly  misunderstood).  Dr.  Tylor,  while  deciding  that  no  tribes 
known  to  us  are  religionless,  leaves  open  the  question  of  their 
existence  in  the  past. 

A  notable  example  of  the  prolongation  of  error  on  this 
subject  through  orthodox  assumptions  is  seen  in  Dr.  A.  W. 
Howitt's  otherwise  valuable  work  on  The  Native  Tribes  of  South 
Australia  (1904).  Dr.  Howitt  produces  (pp.  488-508)  abundant 
evidence  to  show  that  a  number  of  tribes  believe  in  a  "  super- 
natural anthropomorphic  being,"  variously  named  Nurrundere, 
Nurelli,  Bunjil,  Mungan-ngaua,  Daramalun,  and  Baiame  C*  the 
same  being  under  different  names,"  writes  Dr.  Howitt,  p.  499). 
This  being  he  describes  as  "  the  tribal  All-Father,"  "  a  venerable 


■! 


32  PKIMITIVE  FEEETHINKING 

kindly  Headman  of  a  tribe,  full  of  knowledge  and  tribal  wisdom, 
and  all-powerful  in  magic,  of  which  he  is  the  source,  with 
virtues,  failings,  and  passions  such  as  the  aborigines  regard 
them  "  (pp.  500-1).  But  he  insists  (p.  506)  that  in  this  being, 
though  supernatural,  there  is  no  trace  of  a  divine  nature,"  and, 
again,  that  "  the  Australian  aborigines  do  not  recognize  any 
divinity,  good  or  evil"  (p.  756),  though  (p.  501)  it  is  most 
difficult  for  one  of  us  to  divest  himself  of  the  tendency  to  endow 
such  a  supernatural  being  [as  the  All-Father]  with  a  nature 
quasi-divine,  if  not  altogether  so."  Dr.  Howitt  does  not  name 
any  European  deity  who  satisfies  him  on  the  point  of  divinity  ! 
Obviously  the  Australian  deities  have  evolved  in  exactly  the 
same  way  as  those  of  other  peoples,  Yahweh  included.  Dr. 
Howitt,  indeed,  admits  (p.  507)  that  the  Australian  notions 
"may  have  been  at  the  root  of  monotheistic  beliefs."  They 
certainly  were ;  and  when  he  adds  that,  "  although  it  cannot  be 
alleged  that  these  aborigines  have  consciously  any  form  of  religion, 
it  may  be  said  that  their  beUefs  are  such  that,  under  favourable 
conditions,  they  might  have  developed  into  an  actual  religion," 
he  indicates  afresh  the  confusion  possible  from  unscientific 
definitions.  The  sole  content  of  his  thesis  is,  finally,  that  a 
"supernatural"  being  is  not  "divine"  till  the  priests  have 
somewhat  trimmed  him,  and  that  a  rehgion  is  not  "  actual  "  till  it 
has  been  sacerdotally  formulated.  Dr.  Hewitt's  negations  are 
as  untenable  as  Mr.  Andrew  Lang's  magnification  of  the 
Australian  All-Father  into  a  perfect  Supreme  Being. 

The  really  important  part  of  Dr.  Howitt's  survey  of  the 
problem  is  his  conclusion  that  the  kind  of  belief  he  has  described 
exists  only  in  a  specified  area  of  Australia,  and  that  this  area  is 

"the  habitat  of  tribes where  there  has  been  the  advance 

from  group  marriage  to  individual  marriage,  from  descent  in  the 
female  line  to  that  in  the  male  line  "  (p.  500).  Messrs.  Spencer 
and  Gillen's  denial  of  the  existence  of  any  belief  in  a  personal 
deity  among  the  tribes  of  Central  Australia  {Northern  Tribes, 
1904,  p.  491)  appears  to  stand  for  actual  fact. 

As  to  the  "divinity  "  of  the  ancestor-gods  of  the  primitives, 
see  Pagan  Christs,  2nd  ed.  p.  41  sq.] 

The  problem  has  been  unduly  narrowed  to  the  question  whether 
there  are  any  whole  tribes  so  developed.  It  is  obviously  pertinent  to 
ask  whether  there  may  not  be  diversity  of  opinion  within  a  given 
tribe.  Such  testimonies  as  those  collected  by  Sir  John  Lubbock 
[Lord  Avebury]  and  others,  as  to  the  existence  of  religionless 
savages,  are  held  to  be  disposed  of  by  further  proof  that  tribes  of 
savages  who  had  been  set  down  as  religionless  on  the  evidence  of 
some  of  themselves  had  in  reality  a  number  of  religious  beliefs. 
Travellers'   questions    had    been  falsely  aoaswered,  either    on    the 


PEIMITIVE  FEEETHINKING 


33 


principle  that  non-initiates  must  not  be  told  the  mysteries,  or  from 
that  sudden  perception  of  the  oddity  of  their  behefs  which  comes 
even  to  some  civilized  people  when  they  try  to  state  them  to  an 
unbelieving  outsider.  Questions,  again,  could  easily  be  misunderstood, 
and  answers  likewise.  We  find,  for  instance,  that  savages  who  scout 
the  idea  that  the  dead  can  "  rise  again  "  do  believe  in  the  continued 
disembodied  existence  of  all  their  dead,  and  even  at  times  conceive 
of  them  as  marrying  and  procreating !  On  the  whole,  they  conceive 
of  a  continuity  of  spirit-life  on  earth  in  human  shape.  To  speak  of 
such  people  as  having  no  idea  of  "  a  life  beyond  the  grave  "  would 
obviously  be  misleading,  though  they  have  no  notion  of  a  judgment 
day  or  of  future  rewards  or  punishments.^ 

Undoubtedly,  then,  the  negative  view  of  savage  religion  had  in  a 
number  of  cases  been  hastily  taken  ;  but  there  remains  the  question, 
as  a  rule  surprisingly  ignored,  whether  some  of  the  savages  who 
disavowed  all  belief  in  things  supernatural  may  not  have  been  telling 
the  simple  truth  about  themselves,  or  even  about  their  families  and 
their  comrades.  As  one  sympathetic  traveller  notes  of  the 
Samoyedes  :  "  There  can  be  no  such  thing  as  strict  accuracy  of 
grammar  or  expression  among  an  illiterate  people ;  nor  can  there  be 
among  these  simple  creatures  any  consistent  or  fixed  appreciation 

even  of  their  own  forms  of belief Havingno  object  in  arriving 

at  a  common  view  of  such  matters,  each  Samoyede,  if  questioned 
separately,  will  give  more  or  less  his  own  disconnected  impression  of 
his  faith."  ^  And  this  holds  of  unfaith.  A  savage  asked  by  a  traveller, 
Do  you  believe  "  so-and-so,  might  very  well  give  a  true  negative 
answer  for  himself;^  and  the  traveller's  resulting  misconception 
would  be  due  to  his  own  arbitrary  assumption  that  all  members  of 
any  tribe  must  think  alike. 

A  good  witness  expressly  testifies :  "In  the  tribe  [of 
Australians]  with  which  I  was  best  acquainted,  while  the 
blacks  had  a  term  for  ghost  and  believed  that  there  were 
departed  spirits  who  were  sometimes  to  be  seen  among  the 
foliage,  individual  men  would  tell  you  upon  inquiry  that  they 
believed  that  death  was  the  last  of  them "  (Eaglehawk  and 
Crow :  A  Stiidy  of  the  Australian  Aborigines,  by  John 
Mathew,  M.A.,  B.D.,  1899,  p.  146).  As  to  the  risk  of  wrong 
negative  inferences,  on  the  other  hand,  see  pp.  145,  147. 

J  Junod,  as  above  cited,  pp.  341,  343,  350,  388.    Cp.  Dal  ton,  as  cited,  p.  115. 

^  E.  Rae.  The  White  Sea  Peninsula,  1881.  pp.  146-7. 
,,    On  the  other  hand,  there  might  be  genuine  defect  of  knowledge  of  the  religion  of 
oiners  of  the  tribe.    This  is  said  to  occur  in  thousands  of  cases  in  Christian  countries  : 
wnynot  also  among  savages?    See  the  express  testimony  of  Sir  G.  S.  Robertson,  The 
Ji-dfira  of  the  Hindu-Kush,  ed.  1899,  pp.  377,  409. 

D 


I 


34  PRIMITIVE  FREETHINKING 

One  of  the  best  of  our  missionary  witnesses,  H.  A.  Junod,  in 
his  valuable  study  of  the  South  African  Thonga,  testifies  both 
to  the  commonness  of  individual  variation  in  the  way  of  religious 
fancy  and  the  occurrence  of  sporadic  unbehef,  usually  ended  by 
fear.  Individuals  freely  indulge  in  concrete  speculations— e.j/., 
as  to  the  existence  of  animal  souls — which  do  not  win  vogue 
{Life  of  a  South  African  Tribe,  vol.  ii,  1913,  p.  342  sqX  though 
the  reporter  seems  to  overlook  the  possibihty  that  such  ideas 
viay  be  adopted  by  a  tribe.  Freethinking^ideas  have,  of  course, 
by  far  the  least  chance  of  currency.  "The  young  folks  of 
Libombo  used  to  blaspheme  in  their  hearts,  saying,  '  There  are 
no  Gods.'  But,"  added  the  witness,  "we  very  soon  saw  that 
there  were  some,  when  they  killed  one  of  us,"  who  trod  on  a 
snake  (work  cited,  pp.  354-55).  Tiiat  testimony  illustrates  well 
the  difficulties  of  rational  progress  in  a  primitive  community. 
But  at  times  the  process  may  be  encouraged  by  the  environ- 
ment. The  early  missionary  Ellis  gives  an  instance  of  a 
community  in  Hawaii  that  had  abandoned  all  religious  practices  : 
"  We  asked  them  who  was  their  God.  They  said  they  had  no 
God  ;  formerly  they  had  many  :  but  now  they  had  cast  them  all 
away.  We  asked  them  if  they  had  done  well  in  abolishing 
them.  They  said  '  Yes,'  for  tabu  had  occasioned  much  labour 
and  inconvenience,  and  drained  off  the  best  of  their  property. 

We  asked  them  if  it  was  a  good  thing  to  have  no  God They 

said  perhaps  it  was ;  for  they  had  nothing  to  provide  for  the 
great  sacrifices,  and  were  under  no  fear  of  punishment  for 
breaking  tabu ;  that  now  one  fire  cooked  their  food,  and  men 
and  women  ate  together  the  same  kind  of  provisions."  (W.  Ellis, 
Tour  Through  Hawaii  or  Owhyhee,  1827,  p.  100.)  The  com- 
munity in  question  had  in  their  own  way  reached  the  Lucretian 
verdict,  Tantum  relligio  potuit  suadere  malorum. 

Unless,  again,  such  witnesses  as  Moffat  be  unfaithful  reporters 
as  well  as  mistaken  in  their  inferences,  some  of  the  natives  with 
whom  they  dealt  were  all  but  devoid  of  the  ordinary  religious 
notions^  which  in  the  case  of  other  natives  have  enabled  the 
missionaries  to  plant  their  doctrines.  Nor  is  there  anything  hard  of 
belief  in  the  idea  that,  just  as  special  rehgious  movements  spread 
credence  in  certain  periods,  a  lack  of  active  teachers  in  certain  tribes 
may  for  a  time  have  let  previously  common  beliefs  pass  almost  out 
of  knowledge.  If  it  be  true  that  the  Black  Death  wrought  a  great 
decline  in  the  ecclesiastical  life  of  England  in  the  fourteenth  century,'^ 
a  long  period  of  life-destroying  conditions  might  eliminate  from  the 
life  of  a  savage  tribe  all  lore  save  that  of  primary  self-preservation. 

»  E.g.,  Moffat.  Missionary  Labours,  end  of  cb.  rd  and  beginning  of  ch.  xix. 
2  See  Dr.  Gasquet,  Tiie  Great  Festilence,  1893. 


PEIMITIVE  FBEETHINKING 


35 


Moffat  incidentally  notes  the  significant  fact  that  rain-makers  in  his 
time  were  usually  foreigners  to  the  tribes  in  which  they  operated.^ 

The  explanation  is  partly  that  given  by  him  later,  that  "  a  rain- 
maker seldom  dies  a  natural  death,"  ^  most  being  executed  as 
impostors  for  their  failures.  To  this  effect  there  are  many  testi- 
monies.^ Among  the  Bushmen,  says  Lichtenstein,  when  a  magician 
"  happens  to  have  predicted  falsely  several  times  in  succession,  he  is 
thrust  out  of  the  kraal,  and  very  likely  burned  or  put  to  death  in 
some  other  way."*  **A  celebrated  magician,"  says  Burton  again, 
"  rarely  if  ever  dies  a  natural  death."  ^  And  it  is  told  of  the  people  of 
Nine,  or  Savage  Island,  in  the  South  Pacific,  that  "of  old  they  had 
kings  ;  but  as  they  were  the  high  priests  as  well,  and  were  supposed 
to  cause  the  food  to  grow,  the  people  got  angry  with  them  in  times 
of  scarcity,  and  killed  them ;  and  as  one  after  the  other  was  killed, 
the  end  of  it  was  that  no  one  wished  to  be  king."  ^  So,  in  Uganda, 
if  a  chief  and  his  medicine-men  cannot  make  rain,  "  his  whole 
existence  is  at  stake  in  times  of  distress."  One  chief  was  actually 
driven  out ;  and  the  rain-doctors  always  live  on  sufferance.^  In  such 
a  state  of  things  religion  might  well  lose  vogue. 

Among  some  peoples  of  the  Slave  Coast,  it  appears,  the  regular 
priests,  despite  their  power  and  prestige,  are  always  under  suspicion 
by  reason  of  their  frequent  miscarriages  ;  and  they  are — or  were — 
not  unfrequently  put  to  death. ^  Here  there  is  disbelief  in  the  priest 
without  disbelief  in  the  God.  But  a  disbelief  in  the  priest  which 
tended  to  exterminate  him  might  well  diminish  religion. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  relative  indifference  to  religion  in  a  given 
tribe  might  result  from  the  influence  of  one  or  more  leading  men 
who  spontaneously  doubted  the  religious  doctrine  offered  to  them,  as 
many  in  Israel,  on  the  face  of  the  priestly  records,  disbelieved  in  the 
whole  theocratic  polity.  In  modern  times  preachers  are  constantly 
found  charging  **  unbelief  "  on  their  own  flocks,  in  respect  not  of  any 
criticism  of  religious  narrative  or  dogma,  but  of  simple  lack  of 
ostensible  faith  in  doctrines  of  prayer  and  Providence  nominally 

^  Missionary  Labours,  ch.  xix :  stereo,  ed.  pp.  81,  82.  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  women 
were  the  first  to  avow  unbelief  in  an  unsuccessful  rainmaker  (Id.  p.  84). 

*  Missionary  Labours,  as  cited,  p.  85. 

8  Cp.  Schultze,  Der  Fetischismus,  1871,  pp.  155-56  ;  A.  H.  Keane,  Man,  Past  and  Present, 
1900,  p.  49 ;  Thurston,  Castes  and  Tribes  of  Southern  Iiulia,  1909,  i,  86. 

/  Travels  in  Southern  Africa  in  the  Years  1803-1806, 1815,  ii,  61.  Cp.  Rev.  J.  Macdonald, 
Light  in  Africa,  1890,  p.  192,  as  to  the  compulsion  on  men  of  superior  intelligence  to  play 
the  wizard,  by  reason  of  the  common  connection  of  wizardry  with  any  display  of  mental 
power.    There  is  no  more  tragical  aspect  in  the  life-conditions  of  primitive  peoples. 

5  The  Lake  Regions  of  Central  Africa,  1860,  ii.  351. 

"  Turner.  Saynoa  a  Hundred  Years  Ago,  1884.  pp.  304-305.  Cp.  Herodotos,  iv,  68,  as  to 
the  slaying  of  "  false  prophets"  among  the  Scythians ;  and  i,  128,  as  to  the  impaling  of  the 
Magi  by  Astyages. 

I  Paul  Kollmann,  The  Victoria  Nyanza,  1899,  p.  168. 

«  Sir  A.  B.  Ellis.  TJie  Tshi-Speaking  Peoples  of  the  Gold  Coast,  1887.  p.  127. 


36 


PKIMITIVE  FEEETHINKING 


accepted/  Among  peasants  who  have  never  seen  a  freethinking 
book  or  heard  a  professed  freethinker's  arguments  may  be  heard 
expressions  of  spontaneous  unfaith  in  current  doctrines  of 
Providence. 

This  is  but  a  type  of  variations  possible  in  primitive  societies. 
Despite  the  social  potency  of  primitive  custom,  variation  may  be 
surmised  to  occur  in  the  mental  as  in  the  physical  life  at  all  stages ; 
and  what  normally  happens  in  savagery  and  low  civiUzation  appears 
to  be  a  cancelment  of  the  skeptical  variation  by  the  total  circum- 
stances— the  strength  of  the  general  lead  to  supernaturahsm,  the 
plausibihty  of  such  beliefs  to  the  average  intelligence,  and  the 
impossibility  of  setting  up  skeptical  institutions  to  oppose  the 
others.  In  civilized  ages  skeptical  movements  are  repeatedly  seen 
to  dwindle  for  simple  lack  of  institutions  ;  which,  however,  are 
spontaneously  set  up  by  and  servo  as  sustainers  of  religious 
systems.  On  the  simpler  level  of  savagery,  skeptical  personalities 
w^ould  in  the  long  run  fail  to  affirm  themselves  as  against  the 
institutions  of  ordinary  savage  religion — the  seasonal  feasts,  the 
ceremonies  attending  birth  and  death,  the  use  of  rituals,  images, 
charms,  sorcery,  all  tending  to  stimulate  and  conserve  supernatural 
beliefs  in  general.  Only  the  abnormally  courageous  would  dare 
outspokenly  to  doubt  or  deny  at  all ;  and  their  daring  would  put 
them  in  special  jeopardy.^  The  ancient  maxim,  Primus  in  orbe  deos 
fecit  timor,  is  verified  by  all  modern  study  of  primitive  life.**  It  is 
a  recent  traveller  who  gives  the  definition  :  "  Fetishism  is  the  result 
of  the  efforts  of  the  savage  intelligence  seeking  after  a  theory  which 
will  account  for  the  apparent  hostility  of  nature  to  man.'*  *  And  this 
incalculable  force  of  fear  is  constantly  exploited  by  the  religious  bias 
from  the  earliest  stages  of  sorcery.  '^ 


1  E.g.,  an  aged  female  relative  of  the  writer,  quite  orthodox  in  all  her  habits,  and 
devout  to  the  extent  of  calling  the  Book  of  Esther  "  Godless  "  because  the  word  "  God  " 
does  not  occur  in  it,  yet  at  a  pinch  declared  that  she  had  "  never  heard  of  Providence 
putting  a  boll  of  meal  inside  anybody's  door."  Her  daughter-in-law,  also  of  quite  religious 
habits,  quoted  the  saying  with  a  certain  sense  of  its  audacity,  but  endorsed  it,  as  she  had 
cause  to  do.    Yet  both  regularly  practised  prayer  and  asserted  divine  beneficence. 

2  See  B.  Seeman.  "  Fiji  and  the  Fijians."  in  Galton's  Vacation  Touristft,  1862,  pp.  275-76, 
as  to  the  terrorism  resorted  to  by  Fijian  priests  against  unbelievers.  "  Punishment  was 
sure  to  overtake  the  skeptic,  let  his  station  in  life  be  what  it  might  "—i.e.,  supernatural 
punishment  was  threatened,  and  the  priests  were  not  likely  to  let  it  fail.  Cp.  Basil 
Thomson,  The  Fijians:  A  Study  of  the  Decay  of  Custom,  1909,  introd.,  p.  xi :  "The 
reformers  of  primitive  races  never  lived  long  :  if  they  were  low-born  they  were  clubbed, 
and  that  was  the  end  of  them  and  their  reforms ;  if  they  were  chiefs,  and  something 
happened  to  them,  either  by  disease  or  accident,  men  saw  therein  the  figure  of  an  offended 
deity ;  and  obedience  to  the  existing  order  of  things  became  stronger  than  before." 
Cp.  JPagan  Christs,  2nd  ed.,  pp.  60-62,  as  to  kings  who  wished  to  put  down  human 
sacrifices. 

8  See  Pagan  Christs,  2nd  ed.,  pp.  1-2. 

*  E.  J.  Glave,  art.  cited,  p.  825.    Cp.  Lubbock.  Prehistoric  Times,  pp.  582.  594. 

8  Cp.  the  Rev.  J.  Macdonald,  Light  in  Africa,  1890,  pp.  222-23,  as  to  the  "universal 
suspicion  "  which  falls  upon  tribesmen  of  rationalistic  and  anti-superstitious  tendencies, 
making  them  "  almost  doubt  their  own  sanity." 


PKIMITIVE  FREETHINKING 


37 


The  check  to  intellectual  evolution  would  here  be  on  all  fours 
with  some  of  the  checks  inferribly  at  work  in  early  moral  evolution, 
where  the  types  with  the  higher  ideals  would  seem  often  to  be 
positively  endangered  by  their  peculiarity,  and  would  thus  be  the 
less  likely  to  multiply.  And  what  happened  as  between  man  and 
man  would  further  tend  to  happen  at  times  as  between  communities. 
Given  the  possible  case  of  a  tribe  so  well  placed  as  to  be  unusually 
little  affected  by  fear  of  enemies  and  the  natural  forces,  the  influence 
of  rationalistic  chiefs  or  of  respected  tribesmen  might  set  up  for 
a  time  a  considerable  anti-religious  variation,  involving  at  least  a 
minimizing  of  religious  doctrine  and  practices.  Such  a  case  is 
actually  seen  among  the  prosperous  peoples  of  the  Upper  Congo, 
some  of  whom,  like  the  poorer  tribes  known  to  Moffat,  have  no 
medicine-men  "  of  their  own,  and  very  vague  notions  of  deity. ^ 
But  when  such  a  tribe  did  chance  to  come  into  conflict  with  others 
more  religious,  it  would  be  peculiarly  obnoxious  to  them ;  and, 
being  in  the  terms  of  the  case  unwarlike,  its  chance  of  survival  on 
the  old  lines'would  be  small. 

Such  a  possibility  is  suggested  with  some  vividness  by  the 
familiar  contrast  between  the  modern  communities  of  Fiji  and 
Samoa — the  former  cruel,  cannibalistic,  and  religious,  the  latter 
much  less  austerely  religious  and  much  more  humane.  The 
ferocious  Fijians  "looked  upon  the  Samoans  with  horror, 
because  they  had  no  religion,  no  belief  in  any  such  deities 
[as  the  Fijians'] ,  nor  any  of  the  sanguinary  rites  which 
prevailed  in  other  islands "  (Spencer,  Study  of  Sociology, 
pp.  293-94,  following  J.  Williams,  Narrative  of  Missionary 
Enterprise  i7\  the  South  Sea  Islands,  ed.  1837,  pp.  540-41 ;  cp. 
the  Rev.  A.W.  Murray,  Forty  Years'  Mission  Work,  1876,  p.  171). 
The  "  no  religion  "  is,  of  course,  only  relatively  true.  Mr.  Lang 
has  noticed  the  error  of  the  phrase  "the  godless  Samoans" 
(cp.  Turner,  Samoa  a  Hundred  Years  Ago,  1884,  pp.  16-17) ; 
but,  while  suggesting  that  the  facts  are  the  other  way,  he 
admits  that  in  their  creed  "the  religious  sentiment  has  already 
become  more  or  less  self-conscious,  and  has  begun  to  reason  on 
its  own  practices  "  {Myth,  Ritual,  and  Beligion,  ii,  34 ;  2nd  ed., 
ii,  58). 

Taking  the  phenomena  all  along  the  line  of  evolution,  we  are 
led  to  the  generalization  that  the  rationalistic  tendency,  early  or 
late,  like  the  rehgious  tendency,  is  a  variation  which  prospers  at 
ditt'erent  times  in  different  degrees  relatively  to  the  favourableness 
of  the  environment.  This  view  will  be  set  forth  in  some  detail  in 
the  course  of  our  history. 

*  Sir  H.  H.  Johnston,  The  River  Congo,  ed.  1895.  p.  289.    Cp.  Moffat,  as  cited  above, 


38 


PEIMITIVE  FEEETHINKING 


It  is  not,  finally,  a  mere  surmise  that  individual  savages  and 
semi-savages  in  our  own  time  vary  towards  disbelief  in  the  super- 
naturalism  of  their  fellows.  To  say  nothing  of  the  rational  skepticism 
exhibited  by  the  Zulu  converts  of  Bishop  Colenso,  which  was  the 
means  of  opening  his  eyes  to  the  incredibility  of  the  Pentateuch, 
or  of  the  rationalism  of  the  African  chief  who  debated  with  Sir 
Samuel  Baker  the  possibility  of  a  future  state,'"^  we  have  the  express 
missionary  record  that  the  forcible  suppression  of  idolatry  and  tabu 
and  the  priesthood  by  King  Kihoriho  in  the  island  of  Hawaii,  in 
1819,  was  accomplished  not  only  "before  the  arrival  of  any 
missionary,"  but  on  purely  common-sense  grounds,  and  with  no 
thought  of  furthering  Christianity,  though  he  had  heard  of  the 
substitution  of  Christianity  for  the  native  religion  by  Pomare  in 
Tahiti.  Kihoriho  simply  desired  to  save  his  wives  and  other 
women  from  the  cruel  pressure  of  the  tabu  system,  and  to  divert 
the  priests'  revenues  to  secular  purposes  ;  and  he  actually  had  some 
strong  priestly  support.**  Had  not  the  missionary  system  soon 
followed,  however,  the  old  worship,  which  had  been  desperately 
defended  in  battle  at  the  instigation  of  the  conservative  priests, 
would  in  all  probabihty  have  grown  up  afresh,  though  perhaps  with 
modifications.  The  savage  and  semi-savage  social  conditions,  taken 
as  a  whole,  are  fatally  unpropitious  to  rationalism. 

A  parallel  case  to  that  of  Eihoriho  is  that  of  King  Finow  of  the 
Tonga  Islands,  described  by  Mariner,  who  was  his  intimate.  Finow 
was  noted  for  his  want  of  religion.  "  He  used  to  say  that  the  Gods 
would  always  favour  that  party  in  war  in  which  there  were  the 
greatest  chiefs  and  warriors  " — the  European  mot  strictly  adapted 
to  Fiji  conditions.  "  He  did  not  believe  that  the  Gods  paid  much 
attention  in  other  respects  to  the  affairs  of  mankind  ;  nor  did  he 
think  that  they  could  have  any  reason  for  doing  so — no  more  than 
men  could  have  any  reason  or  interest  in  attending  to  the  affairs 
of  the  Gods."  For  the  rest,  "it  is  certain  that  he  disbelieved  most 
of  the  oracles  delivered  by  the  priests,"  though  he  carefully  used 
them  for  poHtical  and  military  purposes ;  and  he  acquiesced  in  the 
usage  of  human  sacrifices — particularly  on  his  own  account — while 
professing  to  deplore  the  taste  of  the  Gods  in  these  matters.  His 
own  death  seems  to  have  been  the  result  of  poisoning  by  a  priest, 
whom  the  king  had  planned  to  strangle.  The  king's  daughter  was 
sick,  and  the  priest,  instead  of  bringing  about  her  recovery  by  his 

1  Colenso,  The  Pentateuch,  vol.  i,  pref.  p.  vii ;  introd.  p.  9- 

2  Spencer,  Principles  of  Sociology,  iii,  §  583. 

3  W.  Ellis.  Polynesian  Researches,  1831,  iv.  30-31, 126-28. 


PEIMITIVE  FEEETHINKING 


39 


prayers,  hardily  explained  that  the  illness  was  the  act  of  the  Gods 
in  punishment  of  the  king's  frequent  disrespect  to  them.  Daughter 
and  father  were  alternately  ill,  till  the  former  died  ;  and  then  it  was 
that  the  king,  by  disclosing  his  resolve  to  strangle  the  priest,  brought 
on  his  own  death  (1810).  A  few  warriors  were  disposed  to  take 
revenge  on  the  priest;  but  the  majority,  on  learning  the  facts, 
shuddered  at  the  impious  design  of  the  late  king,  and  regarded  his 
death  as  the  natural  vengeance  of  the  Gods.  But,  though  such 
"  impiety  "  as  his  was  very  rare,  his  son  after  him  decided  to  abolish 
the  priestly  office  of  "  divine  chieftain,"  on  the  score  that  it  was 
seen  to  avail  for  nothing,  while  it  cost  a  good  deal ;  and  the  chiefs 
and  common  people  were  soon  brought  to  acquiesce  in  the  policy. 

Such  cases  appear  to  occur  in  many  barbarous  communities.  It 
is  recorded  of  the  Kaffir  chief  Go  that  he  was  perfectly  aware  of  the 
hollowness  of  the  pretensions  of  the  magicians  and  rain-makers  of 
his  tribe,  though  he  held  it  impolitic  to  break  with  them,  and  called 
them  in  and  followed  their  prescriptions,  as  did  his  subjects.^  Of 
the  Galeka  chief  Segidi  it  is  similarly  told  that,  while  his  medicine- 
men went  into  trances  for  occult  knowledge  preparatory  to  a  military 
expedition,  he  carefully  obtained  real  information  through  spies, 
and,  while  liberally  rewarding  his  wizards,  sent  his  sons  to  school 
at  Blythswood.*  Yet  again,  in  Bede's  Ecclesiastical  History,  we 
have  the  story  of  King  Edwin's  priest,  Coifi,  naively  avowing  that 
he  saw  no  virtue  in  his  religion,**  inasmuch  as  many  men  received 
more  royal  favours  than  he,  who  had  been  most  diligent  in  serving 
the  Gods.*^  Such  a  declaration  might  very  well  have  been  arranged 
for  by  the  Christian  Bishop  Paulinus,  who  was  converting  the  king, 
and  would  naturally  provide  for  Coifi  ;  but  on  any  view  a  process 
of  skepticism  had  taken  place  in  the  barbarian's  mind.^ 

Other  illustrations  come  from  the  history  of  ancient  Scandi- 
navia. Grimm  notes  in  several  Norse  sagas  and  songs  expressions 
of  contempt  for  various  Gods,  which  appear  to  be  independent  of 

-  1  Account  of  the  Natives  of  the  Tonga  Islands,  compiled  from  the  communications  of 
W.  Mariner,  by  John  Martin,  M.D..  3rd  ed.  1827.  i.  289-300,  306-307,  338-39;  ii.  27-28,  83-86, 
134.  Mariner,  who  saw  much  of  the  priests,  found  no  reason  to  suspect  them  of  any 
systematic  deception.  See  ii,  129.  But  his  narrative  leaves  small  room  for  doubt  as  to 
the  procedure  of  the  priest  of  Toobo  Totai. 

2  Dr.  A.  Kropf,  Das  Volk  der  Xosa-Kaffern  in  dstlichen  Sudafrika,  Berlm,  1899,  pp.  203- 
204.  Dr.  Kropf,  a  missionary  of  forty  years'  experience,  states  that  many  of  the  Kaffirs 
latterly  disbelieve  in  their  sorcerers ;  but  this  may  be  partly  a  result  of  missionary 
teaching— not  so  much  the  religious  as  the  scientific.  See  the  testimony  of  the  Eev.  J. 
Macdonald,  Life  in  Africa,  1890,  pp.  47-48. 

3  Rev.  J.  Macdonald.  Life  in  Africa,  pp.  225-26.  ^      *  ^i         ^  4. 

4  It  is  clear  that  in  the  Christianization  of  Europe  much  use  was  made  of  the  argument 
that  the  best  lands  had  fallen  to  the  Christian  peoples.  See  the  epistle  of  Bishop  Daniel 
of  Winchester  to  St.  Boniface  (Ep.  Ixvii)  cited  in  Schlegel's  note  to  Mosheim,  Reid  s  ed.  of 
Murdock's  translation,  p.  262. 

5  Bede,  Eccles.  Hist.,  ii,  13. 

6  Cp.  A.  H.  Mann  in  Social  England,  illustr.  ed,  i.  217. 


40 


PKIMITIVE  FKEETHINKING 


Christian  influence;^  and  many  warriors  continued  alike  the 
Christian  and  the  Pagan  deities.  In  the  saga  of  King  Olaf 
Tryggvason,  who  enforced  Christianity  on  Norway,  it  is  declared 
by  one  chief  that  he  relied  much  more  on  his  own  arm  than  on 
Thor  and  Odin ;  while  another  announced  that  he  was  neither 
Christian  nor  Pagan,  adding :  "  My  companions  and  I  have  no  other 
rehgion  than  the  confidence  of  our  own  strength  and  in  the  good 
success  which  always  attends  us  in  war."  Similar  sentiments  are 
recorded  to  have  been  uttered  by  Kolf  Krake,  a  legendary  king  of 
Denmark  (circa  500)  ;^  and  we  have  in  the  JEJTieid  the  classic  type 
— doubtless  drawn  from  barbaric  life — of  Mezentius,  divum  con- 
temptor,  who  calls  his  right  arm  his  God,  and  in  dying  declares 
that  he  appeals  to  no  deity. ^  Such  utterances,  indeed,  do  not 
amount  to  rational  freethinking ;  but,  where  some  could  be  thus 
capable  of  anti-theism,  it  is  reasonable  to  surmise  that  among  the 
more  reflective  there  were  some  capable  of  simple  atheism  or 
non-belief,  and  of  the  prudence  of  keeping  the  fact  to  themselves. 
Partial  skepticism,  of  course,  would  be  much  more  common,  as 
among  the  Aryan  Kafirs  of  the  Hindu-Kush,  with  whom,  before 
their  conquest  by  the  Ameer  of  Afghanistan,  a  British  agent  found 
among  the  younger  men  an  inclination  to  be  skeptical  about  some 
sacred  ceremonies,  while  very  sincere  in  their  worship  of  their 
favourite  deity,  the  God  of  war.* 

It  is  thus  seen  to  be  inaccurate  to  say,  as  has  been  said  by  an 
accomplished  antagonist  of  apriorism,  that  "  under  the  yoke  of  tribal 
custom  skepticism  can  hardly  arise :  there  is  no  place  for  the  half- 
hearted :  as  all  men  feel  ahke,  so  all  think  alike :  skepticism  arises 
when  beliefs  are  put  into  formal  propositions."*  It  is  broadly  true 
that  "  there  is  no  place  for "  the  doubter  as  such  in  the  tribal 
society  ;  but  doubters  do  exist.  Skepticism — in  the  sense  in  which 
the  term  is  here  used,  that  of  rational  disbelief — may  even  be 
commoner  in  some  stages  of  the  life  of  tribal  customs  than 
in  some  stages  of  backward  civilization  loaded  with  formulated 
creeds.  What  is  true  is  that  in  the  primitive  life  the  rationalism 
necessarily  fails,  for  lack  of  culture  and  institutions,  to  diffuse  and 

1  Teutonic  My  Otology,  Eng.  trans.  1883, 1,  T. 

2  Crichton  and  Wheaton,  Scandinavia,  1837,  i.  198,  note.  Compare  Dr.  Ph.  Schweitzer. 
Geschichte  der  Skandinavischen  Litteratur,  i.  25:  "la  the  higher  circles  [in  the  pagan 
period]  from  an  early  date  {achon  lange)  unbelief  and  even  contempt  of  religion  flourished 

probably  never  reaching  the  lower  grades  of  the   people."    See  also  C.  F.  Allen. 

Miatoire  de.  Danernark,  French  trans.,  Copenhagen.  1878.  i.  55. 

*  Mneid,  vii,  648;  x,  773.  880.    Mezentius  does  not  deny  that  Gods  exist :  see  x,  743. 

*  Sir  G.  8.  Robertson.  The  Kdfirs  of  the  HiMu-Kush,  ed.  1899.  p.  379. 

fi  Professor  T.  Clifford  Allbutt,  Harvoian  Oration  on  Science  and  Medieval  Thought, 
1901,  p.  82. 


PEIMITIVE  FEEETHINKING 


41 


establish  itself,  whereas  superstition  succeeds,  being  naturally 
institution-making.  Under  such  conditions  skepticism  is  but  a 
recurrent  variation.* 

It  is  significant,  further,  that  in  the  foregoing  cases  of  unbelief  at 
the  lower  levels  of  civilization  it  is  only  the  high  rank  of  the  doubter 
that  secures  publication  for  the  fact  of  the  doubt.  In  Hawaii,  or 
Tonga,  only  a  king's  unbelief  could  make  itself  historically  heard. 
So  in  the  familiar  story  of  the  doubting  Inca  of  Peru,  who  in 
public  religious  assembly  is  said  to  have  avowed  his  conclusion  that 
the  deified  Sun  was  not  really  a  living  thing,  it  is  the  status  of  the 
speaker  that  gives  his  words  a  record.  The  doubt  had  in  all  likeli- 
hood been  long  current  among  the  wise  men  of  Peru ;  it  is  indeed 
ascribed  to  two  or  three  different  Incas;^  but,  save  for  the  Incas' 
promulgation  of  it,  history  would  bear  no  trace  of  Peruvian 
skepticism.  So  again  in  the  Acolhuan  State  of  Tezcuco,  the  most 
civilized  in  the  New  World  before  the  Spanish  conquest,  the  great 
King  Netzahualcoyotl  is  found  opposing  the  cults  of  human  sacrifice 
and  worshipping  an  "  unknown  God,"  without  an  image  and  with 
only  incense  for  offering.^  Only  the  king  in  such  an  environment 
could  put  on  record  such  a  conception.  There  is,  in  fact,  reason  to 
believe  that  all  ancient  ameliorations  of  bloody  rites  were  the  work 
of  humane  kings  or  chiefs,*  as  they  are  known  to  have  been  among 
semi-savages  in  our  own  day.'^  In  bare  justice  we  are  bound  to 
surmise  that  similar  developments  of  rationalism  have  been  fairly 
frequent  in  unwritten  history,  and  that  there  must  have  been  much 
of  it  among  the  common  folk ;  though,  on  the  other  hand,  the  very 
position  of  a  savage  king,  and  the  special  energy  of  character  which 
usually  goes  to  secure  it,  may  count  for  much  in  giving  him  the 
courage  to  think  in  defiance  of  custom.  In  modern  as  in  early 
Christian  times,  it  is  always  to  the  chief  or  king  of  a  savage  or 
barbarous  tribe  that  the  missionary  looks  for  permission  to  proceed 
against  the  force  of  popular  conservatism.^     Apart  from  kings  and 


1  Mr.  Basil  Thomson,  in  the  able  introduction  to  his  excellent  work  on  The  Fijians, 
speaks  of  primitive  reformers  (p.  xi)  as  "rare  souls  born  before  their  time."  But  there  is 
no  special  "  time  "  for  reformers,  who,  as  such,  must  be  in  advance  of  their  average  con- 
temporaries. 

2  Qarcilasso,  1.  viii,  c.  8;  1.  ix,  c.  10;  Herrera,  Dec.  v,  1.  iv,  c.  4.  See  the  passages  m 
R6ville's  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  162-65. 

8  Prescott,  Conquest  of  Mexico,  Kirk's  ed..  pp.  81  sa.,  91-93.  97 ;  H.  H.  Bancroft,  Native 
Races  of  the  Pacific  States,  v.  427-29;  Clavigero,  History  of  Mexico,  Eng.  tr.  ed.  1807,  B.  iv, 
8§  4, 15;  vii,  §42.  ,      ,.     „ 

*  See  the  author's  Pagan  Christs,  2nd  ed.  pp.  60-62,  361.    Cp.  Lafcadio  Hearn,  Japan, 

1904.  pp.  313-14.  „  „  rr        ^       ^ 

5  Cp.  T.  Williams,  Fiji  and  the  Fijians,  ed.  1870.  i,  231 ;  Turner.  Samoa  a  Hundred 
Tears  Ago,  1884,  p.  mi.  .-,... 

6  "  A  long  time  elapses  between  each  step  that  their  [missionaries']  stations  advance  : 
and  when  they  do  it  invariably  is  under  the  influence  of  some  chief  that  they  are  even 
then  led  on."    Dalton,  Narrative  of  an  Explorer  in  Tropical  South  Africa,  ed.  1891.  p.  102. 


42 


PRIMITIVE  FREETHINKING 


chiefs,  the  priesthood  itself  would  be  the  likeliest  soil  for  skepticism, 
though,  of  course,  not  for  the  open  avowal  of  it. 

There  are  to  be  noted,  finally,  the  facts  collected  as  to  marked 
skeptical  variation  among  children;^  and  the  express  evidence  that 
"  it  has  not  been  found  in  a  single  instance  that  an  uneducated 
deaf-mute  has  had  any  conception  of  the  existence  of  a  Supreme 
Being  as  the  Creator  and  Ruler  of  the  Universe."'  These  latter 
phenomena  do  not,  of  course,  entitle  us  to  accept  Professor  Gruppe's 
sweeping  theorem  that  it  is  the  religious  variation  that  is  abnormal, 
and  that  religion  can  have  spread  only  by  way  of  the  hereditary 
imposition  of  the  original  insanity  of  one  or  two  on  the  imagination 
of  the  many.'  Deaf-mutes  are  not  normal  organisms.  But  all  the 
facts  together  entitle  us  to  decide  that  religion,  broadly  speaking,  is 
but  the  variation  that  has  chiefly  flourished,  by  reason  of  its  adapta- 
tion to  the  prevailing  environment  thus  far;  and  to  reject  as 
unscientific  the  formulas  which,  even  in  the  face  of  the  rapidly- 
spreading  rationalism  of  the  more  civilized  nations,  still  affirm 
supernaturalist  beliefs  to  be  a  universal  necessity  of  the  human 
mind. 

On  the  same  grounds,  we  must  reject  the  claim— arbitrarily  set 
up  by  one  historian  in  the  very  act  of  showing  how  religion  histori- 
cally oppugns  science — that  all  sacred  books  as  such  "  are  true 
because  they  have  been  developed  in  accordance  with  the  laws 
governing  the  evolution  of  truth  in  human  history  ;  and  because  in 
poem,  chronicle,  code,  legend,  myth,  apologue,  or  parable,  they 
reflect  this  development  of  what  is  best  in  the  onward  march  of 
humanity.'"  In  this  proposition  the  opening  words,  "are  true 
because,''  are  strictly  meaningless.  All  literature  whatever  has  been 
developed  under  the  same  general  laws.  But  if  it  be  meant  that 
sacred  books  were  specially  likely  to  garner  truth  as  such,  the  claim 
must  be  negated.  In  terms  of  the  whole  demonstration  of  the  bias 
of  theology  against  new  truth  in  modern  times,  the  irresistible  pre- 
sumption is  that  in  earlier  times  also  the  theological  and  theocratic 
spirit  was  in  general  hostile  to  every  process   by  which  truth  is 

1  See  Professor  Sully's  Sh»7te.so/C/nW7joofl.  1895.  ..  :,  ^,     o 

2  Rev.  S.  Smith,  Church  Work  among  the  Deaf  ami  Dumb,  1875,  cited  by  Spencer. 
Principles  of  Sociology,  iii.  §  583.    Cp.  the  testimony  cited  there  from  Dr.  Kitto.  Lost 

»  Diegriechischen  Citlte  nnd  Mythen,  1887,  pp.  263. 276.  277,  etc.  What  is  true  as  regards 
the  thesis  is  that  some  of  the  central  insanities  of  religion,  such  as  the  cult  of  human 
sacrifice,  seem  to  have  been  propagated  in  all  directions  from  an  Asiatic  centre.  ^See  the 
author's  Fagan  Christs,  2nd  ed.  pp.  273.  292.  343.  354, 362.  etc.  Cp.  the  Rev.  IX  Macdonald'a 
Asiatic  Origin  of  the  Oceanic  Languages,  Luzac  &  Co.,  1894 ;  the  NubischeOrammattk  of 
Lepsius,  1880;  and  Terrien  de  Lacouperie,  Western  Origin  of  the  Early  Chinese  Ctvtliza- 

tim,  1894,  pp.  134. 362-63.  ,  ,  ^  .  .^,  ^i.    ,        •    ^t.      ..     j 

*  Dr.  Andrew  White,  A  History  of  the  Warfare  of  Sctenee  tutth  Theology  tn  Chrtstendomf 

1896.  i,  23. 


PRIMITIVE  FREETHINKING 


43 


normally  attained.  And  if  the  thesis  be  limited  to  moral  truth,  it  is 
still  less  credible.  It  is,  in  fact,  inconceivable  that  literature  so  near 
the  popular  level  as  to  suit  whole  priesthoods  should  be  morally  the 
best  of  which  even  the  age  producing  it  is  capable ;  and  nothing  is 
more  certain  than  that  enlightened  ethic  has  always  had  to  impeach 
or  explain  away  the  barbarisms  of  some  sacred  books.  The  true 
summary  is  that  in  all  cases  the  accepted  sacred  books  have  of 
necessity  fallen  short  not  only  of  scientific  truth  and  of  pure  ethic, 
but  even  of  the  best  speculation  and  the  best  ethic  of  the  time  of 
their  acceptance,  inasmuch  as  they  excluded  the  criticism  of  the 
freethinking  few  on  the  sacred  books  themselves.  There  is  socio- 
logical as  well  as  physical  science,  and  the  former  is  flouted  when 
the  whole  freethinking  of  the  human  race  in  the  period  of  Bible- 
making  is  either  ignored  or  treated  as  worthless. 

It  is  probable,  for  instance,  that  in  all  stages  of  primitive  religion 
there  have  been  disbelievers  in  the  value  of  sacrifice,  who  might  or 
might  not  dare  to  denounce  the  practice.  The  demurrers  to  it  in  the 
Hebrew  prophetic  literature  are  probably  late ;  but  they  were  in  all 
likelihood  anticipated  in  early  times.  Among  the  Fijians,  for  whom 
cannibalism  was  an  essentially  religious  act,-  and  the  privilege  of  the 
males  of  the  aristocracy,  there  were  a  number  of  the  latter  who, 
before  and  apart  from  the  entrance  of  Christianity,  abominated  and 
denounced  the  practice,  reasoning  against  it  also  on  utilitarian 
grounds,  while  the  orthodox  made  it  out  to  be  a  social  duty.  There 
were  even  whole  towns  which  revolted  against  it  and  made  it  tabu ; 
and  it  was  by  force  mainly  of  this  rationalistic  reaction  that  the 
missionaries  succeeded  so  readily  in  putting  down  the  usage.  It  is 
impossible  to  estimate  how  often  in  the  past  such  a  revolt  of  reason 
aSainst  religious  insanity  has  been  overborne  by  the  forces  of 
pious  habit. 


1  Dr.  B.  Seeman,  Viti,  1862,  pp.  179-82. 


Chapter  III 
PKOGRESS  UNDER  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS 

§  1.  Early  Association  and  Competition  of  Cults 

When  religion  has  entered  on  the  stage  of  quasi-civilized  organiza- 
tion, with  fixed  legends  or  documents,  temples,  and  the  rudiments  of 
hierarchies,  the  increased  forces  of  terrorism  and  conservatism  are  in 
nearly  aU  cases  seen  to  be  in  part  countervailed  by  the  simple  inter- 
action of  the  systems  of  different  communities.  There  is  no  more 
ubiquitous  force  in  the  whole  history  of  the  subject,  operating  as  it 
does  in  ancient  Assyria,  in  the  life  of  Vedic  India  and  Confucian 
China,  and  in  the  diverse  histories  of  progressive  Greece  and 
relatively  stationary  Egypt,  down  through  the  Christian  Middle 
Ages  to  our  own  period  of  comparative  studies. 

In     ages    when     any    dispassionate     comparative    study    was 
impossible,    religious   systems    appear    to   have   been   considerably 
modified  by  the  influence  of  those  of  conquered  peoples  on  those 
of  their  conquerors,  and  vice  versd.     Peoples  who  while  at  arm's 
length  would  insult  and  affect  to  despise  each  other's  Gods,  and 
would  deride  each  other's  myths,'  appear  frequently  to  have  altered 
their  attitude  when  one  had  conquered   the  other;    and  this  not 
because  of  any  special  growth  of  sympathy,  but  by  force  of  the  old 
motive  of  fear.     In  the  stage  of  natural  polytheism  no  nation  really 
doubted  the  existence  of  the  Gods  of  another;  at  most,  like  the 
Hebrews  of  the  early  historic  period,  it  would  set  its  own  God  above 
the  others,  caUing  him  "  Lord  of  Lords."     But,  every  community 
having  its  own  God,  he  remained  a  local  power  even  when  his  own 
w^orshippers  were  conquered,  and  his  cult  and  lore  were  respected 
accordingly.     This  procedure,  which  has  been  sometimes  attributed 
to  the  Romans  in  particular  as  a  stroke  of  political  sagacity,  was  the 
normal  and  natural  course  of  polytheism.     Thus  in  the  Hebrew 
books  the  Assyrian  conqueror  is  represented  as  admitting  that  it  is 

o«J«5i"  ^^niS^y^^'  ^»f^«''  and  Religion,  i.  91)  aa  to  the  contemptuous  disbelief  of 
?.tlw^  i^  ^^isji^n  myths.  Mr.  Lang  observes  that  this  shows  savages  and  civiHzed 
St«  inf.rpnl  ^'S^^'Z''^  f^'^'^^'i^l  °'  Credulity."  That,  however,  does  not  seem  to  be  the 
others.  °  believer  accepts  the  myths  of  his  own  creed,  and  derides 

H 


EARLY  ASSOCIATION  AND  COMPETITION  OF  CULTS     45 

necessary  to  leave  a  priest  who  knows  "  the  manner  of  the  God  of 
the  land  "  among  the  new  inhabitants  he  has  planted  there. 

See  2  Kings  xvii,  26.  Cp.  Ruth  i,  16,  and  Judges  xvii,  13. 
The  account  by  Herodotos  (ii,  171)  of  the  preservation  of  the 
Pelasgic  rites  of  D6m6t6r  by  the  women  of  Arcadia  points  to 
the  same  principle.  See  also  hereinafter,  ch.  vi,  §  1 ;  K.  O. 
Miiller,  Introd.  to  a  Sci.  Stivdy  of  MythoL,  Eng.  trans.,  p.  193  ; 
Adolf  Bastian,  Der  Mensch  in  der  Geschichte,  1860,  i,  189; 
Rhys,  Celtic  Britain,  2nd  ed.,  p.  69 ;  Max  Miiller,  Anthropo- 
logical Beligion,  p.  164  ;  Gibbon,  ch.  xxxiv — Bohn  ed.,  iii,  554, 
note ;  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  i,  113-15 ;  and  Dr.  F.  B. 
Jevons's  Introd,  to  the  Hist,  of  Belig.,  1896,  pp.  36-40,  where 
the  fear  felt  by  conquering  races  for  the  occult  powers  of  the 
conquered  is  limited  to  the  sphere  of  "magic."  But  when 
Dr.  Jevons  so  defines  magic  as  to  admit  of  his  proposition 
(p.  38)  that  **  the  hostility  from  the  beginning  between  religion 
and  magic  is  universally  admitted,"  he  throws  into  confusion 
the  whole,  phenomena  of  the  early  official-religious  practice  of 
magic,  of  which  sacrifice  and  prayer  are  the  type-forms  that 
have  best  survived.  And  in  the  end  he  upsets  his  definition  by 
noting  (p.  40)  how  magic,  "  even  where  its  relation  to  religion  is 
one  of  avowed  hostility,"  will  imitate  religion.  Obviously  magic 
is  a  function  or  aspect  or  element  of  primitive  religion  (cp. 
Roskoff,  Das  Beligionsweseri  der  rohesten  Naturvolker,  1880, 
p.  144  ;  Sayce,  pp.  315,  319,  327,  and  passim ;  and  Tiele, 
Egyptian  Bel.,  pp.  22,  32) ;  and  any  "  hostility,"  far  from  being 
universal,  is  either  a  social  or  a  philosophical  differentiation. 
On  the  whole  question  compare  the  author's  Pagan  Christs, 
2nd  ed.,  pp.  11-38.  In  the  opinion  of  Weber  {Hist,  of  Ind.  Lit., 
p.  264)  the  magic  arts  "  found  a  more  and  more  fruitful  soil  as 
the  religious  development  of  the  Hindus  progressed  ";  **  so  that 
they  now,  in  fact,  reign  almost  supreme."  See  again  Dr.  Jevons's 
own  later  admission,  p.  395,  where  the  exception  of  Christianity 
is  somewhat  arbitrary.  On  this  compare  Kant,  Beligion 
innerhalh  der  Grenzen  der  blossen  Vemunft,  B.  iv,  Th.  ii,  §  3. 

Similar  cases  have  been  noted  in  primitive  cults  still  surviving. 
Fear  of  the  magic  powers  of  "lower"  or  conquered  races  is  in  fact 
normal  wherever  belief  in  wizardry  survives;  and  to  the  general 
tendency  may  be  conjecturally  ascribed  such  phenomena  as  that  of 
the  Saturnalia,  in  which  masters  and  slaves  changed  places,  and  the 
institution  of  the  Levites  among  the  Hebrews,  otherwise  only 
mythically  explained.  But  if  conquerors  and  conquered  thus  tended 
to  amalgamate  or  associate  their  cults,  equally  would  allied  tribes 
tend  to  do  so ;  and,  when  particular  Gods  of  different  groups  w^ere 
seen  to  correspond  in  respect  of  special  attributes,  a  further  analysis 


46 


PKOGKBSS  UNDER  ANCIENT  EELIGIONS 


EAKLY  ASSOCIATION  AND  COMPETITION  OF  CULTS    47 


would  be  encouraged.  Hence,  with  every  extension  of  every  State, 
every  advance  in  intercourse  made  in  peace  or  through  war,  there 
would  be  a  fui'ther  comparison  of  credences,  a  further  challenge  to 
the  reasoning  powers  of  thoughtful  men. 

On  the  normal  tendency  to  defer  to  local  deities,  compare 
Tylor,    Primitive    Culture,    as   last   cited ;    B.    Thomson,    The 
Fijians,  1908,  p.  112  ;  A.  B.  EUis,   The   Tshi-Speaking  Peoples 
of  the  Gold  Coast,  1887,  p.  147,  and  The  Eive-Speakifig  Peoples, 
1890,  p.  55  ;  P.  Wurm,  Handhuch  der  Beligionsgeschichte,   2te 
Aufi.,  p.  43  (as  to  Madagascar) ;  Sir  H.  Johnston,  The  Uganda 
Protectorate,   1902,  ii,  589;  Waitz,  Anthropologie   der  Natur- 
volker,   iii,    186 ;    P.    Kropotkin,   Memoirs   of  a   Revolutionist, 
ed.  1908,  p.  191 ;  W.  W.  Skeat,  Malay  Magic,  1900,  pp.  56,  84 ; 
Thurston,  Castes  ami  Tribes  of  Southern  India,  1909,  i,  86-87, 
94,  100 ;  iii,  188 ;  iv,  170 ;  v,  467-68 ;  W.   H.  R.  Rivers,  The 
Todas,    1906,  p.  263  ;  Rae,  TJie  WJiite   Sea   Peninsula,   1881. 
p.  262  ;  Elie  Reclus,  Primitive  Folk,  pp.  254-56  ;  Grant  Allen, 
Evolution  of  the  Idea  of  God,  1897,  pp.  289,  301-302  ;  Gastrin, 
Vorlesungen    iiher    die    Finnische    Mythologie,    1853,    p.    281 ; 
Gummere,  Germanic  Origins,   1892,  p.  140,  citing  Weinhold, 
Deutsche  Frauen,  i,  105 ;  Gobineau,  Les  religions  et  les  philo- 
sophies dans  VAsie  centrale,  2e  6d.  p.  67;  E.  Higgins,  Hebrew 
Idolatry  and  Superstition,  1893,  pp.  20,  24  ;  Robertson  Smith, 
Religion  of  the  Semites,  1889.  p.  77  ;  Wellhausen,  Heidenthum, 
pp.  129,  183,  cited  by  Smith,  p.  79  ;  Lang,  Making  of  Religion, 
p.  65  ;  Frazer,   Golden  Bough,  2nd  ed.  ii,  72.     Above  all,  see 
the  record  in  Old  Neiv  Zealand,  **by  a  Pakeha  Maori "  (2nd  ed. 
Auckland,  1863,  p.  154),  of  the  believing  resort  of  some  white 
men  to  native  wizards  in  New  Zealand. 

Stevenson,  again,  is  evidently  proceeding  upon  observation 
when  he  makes  his  trader  in  The  Beach  of  Falesd  say  :  **  We 
laugh  at  the  natives  and  their  superstitions  ;  but  see  how  many 
traders  take  them  up,  splendidly  educated  white  men  that  have 
been  bookkeepers  (some  of  them)  and  clerks  in  the  old  country  " 
(Island  Nights*  Enter taiyiinents,  1893,  pp.  104-105).  In 
Abyssinia,  "  Galla  sorceresses  are  frequently  caUed  in  by  the 
Christians  of  Shoa  to  transfer  sickness  or  to  rid  the  house  of 
evil  spirits  "  (Major  W.  Cornwallis  Harris,  The  Highlands  of 
Aethiopia,  1844,  iii,  50).  On  the  other  hand,  some  Sudanese 
tribes  *' believe  in  the  virtue  both  of  Christian  and  Moslem 
amulets,  but  have  hitherto  lent  a  deaf  ear  to  the  preachers  of 
both  these  religions "  (A.  H.  Keane,  Man,  Past  afid  Present, 
1900,  p.  50). 

This  tendency  did  not  exclude,  but  would  in  certain  cases 
conflict  with,  the  strong  primitive  tendency  to  associate  every 
God  permanently  with  his  supposed  original  locality.  Tiele 
writes  {Hist,  of  the  Egypt.  Relig.,  Eng.  trans,  introd.  p.  xvii) 


i 


that  in  no  case  was  a  place  given  to  the  Gods  of  one  nation  in 
another's  pantheon  "  if  they  did  not  wholly  alter  their  form, 
character,  appearance,  and  not  seldom  their  very  name."  This 
seems  an  over-statement,  and  is  inconsistent  with  Tide's  own 
statement  (Hist,  compardc  des  anc.  relig.  egyptiennes  et  sdmitiques, 
French  trans.,  1882,  pp.  174-80)  as  to  the  adoption  of  Sumerian 
and  Akkadian  Gods  and  creeds  by  the  Semites.  What  is  clear 
is  that  local  cults  resisted  the  removal  of  their  Gods'  images  ; 
and  the  attempt  to  deport  such  images  to  Babylon,  thus  affect- 
ing the  monopoly  of  the  God  of  Babylon  himself,  was  a  main 
cause  of  the  fall  of  Nabonidos,  who  was  driven  out  by  Cyrus. 
(E.  Meyer,  Geschichte  des  Alterthums,  i  (1884),  599.)  But  the 
Assyrians  invoked  Bel  Merodach  of  Babylon,  after  they  had 
conquered  Babylon,  in  terms  of  his  own  ritual ;  even  as 
Israelites  often  invoked  the  Gods  of  Canaan  (cp.  Sayce,  Hibbert 
Lectures,  Relig.  of  the  Anc.  Babylonians,  p.  123).  And  King 
Mardouk-nadinakhe  of  Babylon,  in  the  twelfth  century  B.C., 
carried  off  statues  of  the  Assyrian  Gods  from  the  town  of 
Hekali  to  ^Babylon,  wh^re  they  were  kept  captive  for  418  years 
(Maspero,  Hist.  anc.  des  peuples  de  V orient,  4e  ed.  p.  300).  A 
God  could  migrate  with  his  worshippers  from  city  to  city 
(Meyer,  iii,  169 ;  Sayce,  p.  124)  ;  and  the  Assyrian  scribe  class 
maintained  the  worship  of  their  special  God  Nebo  wherever 
they  went,  though  he  was  a  local  God  to  start  with  (Sayce, 
pp.  117,  119,  121).  And  as  to  the  recognition  of  the  Gods  of 
different  Egyptian  cities  by  politic  kings,  see  Tiele's  own  state- 
ment, p.  36.     Cp.  his  Outlines,  pp.  73,  84,  207. 

A  concrete  knowledge  of  the  multiplicity  of  cults,  then,  was 
obtruded  on  the  leisured  and  travelled  men  of  the  early  empires  and 
of  such  a  civiHzation  as  that  of  Hellas  ;^  and  when  to  such  know- 
ledge there  was  added  a  scientific  astronomy  (the  earliest  to  be 
constituted  of  the  concrete  sciences),  a  revision  of  beliefs  by  such 
men  was  inevitable.'"^  It  might  take  the  form  either  of  a  guarded 
skepticism  or  of  a  monarchic  theology,  answering  to  the  organization 
of  the  actual  earthly  empire ;  and  the  latter  view,  in  the  nature  of 
the  case,  would  much  the  more  easily  gain  ground.  The  freethought 
of  early  civilization,  then,  would  be  practically  limited  for  a  long 
time  to  movements  in  the  direction  of  co-ordinating  polytheism,  to 
the  end  of  setting  up  a  supreme  though  not  a  sole  deity  ;  the  chief 

1  Cp.  Decharme,  La  Critique  des  trad,  relig.  chez  les  Grecs,  1904,  p.  121. 

2  The  same  process  will  be  recorded  later  in  the  case  of  the  intercourse  of  Crusaders 
and  Saracens;  and  in  the  seventeenth  century  it  is  noted  by  La  Bruy^re  (Caract^res, 
ch.  xvi,  Des  esprits  forts,  par.  3)  as  occurring  in  his  day.  The  anonymous  English  author 
of  an  essay  on  The  Agreement  of  the  Customs  of  the  East  Indians  with  those  of  the  Jews 
(1705.  pp.  152-53)  naively  endorses  La  Bruydre.  Macaulay's  remark  to  the  Edinburgh 
electors,  on  the  view  taken  of  sectarian  strifes  by  a  man  who  in  India  had  seen  the 
worship  of  the  cow,  is  well  known. 


48 


PEOGEESS  UNDEE  ANCIENT  EELIGIONS 


God  in  any  given  case  being  apt  to  be  the  God  specially  affected  by 
the  reigning  monarch.  Allocation  of  spheres  of  influence  to  the 
principal  deities  would  be  the  working  minimum  of  plausible  adjust- 
ment, since  only  in  some  such  way  could  the  established  principle 
of  the  regularity  of  the  heavens  be  formally  accommodated  to  the 
current  worship;  and  wherever  there  was  monarchy,  even  if  the 
monarch  were  polytheistic,  there  was  a  lead  to  gradation  among  the 
Gods.*  A  pantheistic  conception  would  be  the  highest  stretch  of 
rationahsm  that  could  have  any  vogue  even  among  the  educated 
class.  All  the  while  every  advance  was  liable  to  the  ill-fortune  of 
overthrow  or  arrest  at  the  hands  of  an  invading  barbarism,  which 
even  in  adopting  the  system  of  an  established  priesthood  would  be 
more  hkely  to  stiffen  than  to  develop  it.  Early  rationalism,  in 
short,  would  share  in  the  fluctuations  of  early  civilization  ;  and 
achievements  of  thought  would  repeatedly  be  swept  away,  even  as 
were  the  achievements  of  the  constructive  arts. 


§  2.  The  Process  in  India 

The  process  thus  deducible  from  the  main  conditions  is  found 
actually  happening  in  more  than  one  of  the  ancient  cultures,  as 
their  history  is  now  sketched.  In  the  Eig-Veda,  which  if  not  the 
oldest  is  the  least  altered  of  the  Eastern  Sacred  Books,  the  main 
line  of  change  is  obvious  enough.  It  remains  so  far  matter  of 
conjecture  to  what  extent  the  early  Vedic  cults  contain  matter 
adopted  from  non-Aryan  Asiatic  peoples  ;  but  no  other  hypothesis 
seems  to  account  for  the  special  development  of  the  cult  of  Agni 
in  India  as  compared  with  the  content  and  development  of  the 
other  early  Aryan  systems,  in  which,  though  there  are  developments 
of  fire  worship,  the  God  Agni  does  not  appear.'*  The  specially 
priestly  character  of  the  Agni  worship,  and  the  precedence  it  takes 
in  the  Vedas  over  the  solar  cult  of  Mitra,  which  among  the  kindred 
Aryans  of  Iran  receives  in  turn  a  special  development,  suggest 
some  such  grafting,  though  the  relations  between  Aryans  and  the 
Hindu  aborigines,  as  indicated  in  the  Veda,  seem  to  exclude  the 
possibility   of    their    adopting    the    fire-cult    from   the   conquered 


1  Cp.  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  96, 121-22;  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites, 
p.  74  ;  Tiele,  Egyptian  Religion,  p.  36;  and  Outlines,  p.  52. 

2  Cp.  Tiele,  Outlines,  pp.  10&-110,  and  Fischer.  Heidenthum  und  Offenbarung,  p.  59. 
Professor  Max  Mtiller's  insistence  that  the  lines  of  Vedic  religion  could  not  have  been 
"crossed  by  trains  of  thought  which  started  from  China,  from  Babylon,  or  from  Egypt" 
{Physical  Religion,  p.  251),  does  not  affect  the  hypothesis  put  above.  The  Professor  admits 
(p.  250)  the  exact  likeness  of  the  Babylonian  fire-cult  to  that  of  Agni. 


THE  PEOCESS  IN  INDIA 


49 


I 


inhabitants,^  who,  besides,  are  often  spoken  of  in  the  Vedas  as 
"non-sacrificers,"^  and  at  times  as  "without  Gods."^  But  this  is 
sometimes  asserted  even  of  hostile  Aryans.*  In  any  case  the 
carrying  on  of  the  two  main  cults  of  Agni  and  Indra  side  by  side 
points  to  an  original  and  marked  heterogeneity  of  racial  elements ; 
while  the  varying  combination  with  them  of  the  worship  of  other 
deities,  the  old  Aryan  Varuna,  the  three  forms  of  the  Sun-God 
Aditya,  the  Goddess  Aditi  and  the  eight  Adityas,  the  solar  Mitra, 
Vishnu,  Eudra,  and  the  Maruts,  imply  the  adaptation  of  further 
varieties  of  hereditary  creed.  The  outcome  is  a  sufificiently  chaotic 
medley,  in  which  the  attributes  and  status  of  the  various  Gods  are 
reducible  to  no  code,*  the  same  feats  being  assigned  to  several,  and 
the  attributes  of  all  claimed  for  almost  any  one.  Here,  then,  were 
the  conditions  provocative  of  doubt  among  the  critical ;  and  while 
it  is  only  in  the  later  books  of  the  Eig-Veda  that  such  doubt  finds 
priestly  expression,  it  must  be  inferred  that  it  was  current  in  some 
degree  among  daymen  before  the  hymn-makers  avowed  that  they 
shared  it.  The  God  Soma,  the  personification  of  wine,  identified 
with  the  Moon-God  Chandra,^  "  hurls  the  irreligious  into  the 
abyss."  ^  This  may  mean  that  his  cult,  like  that  of  his  congener 
Dionysos  in  Greece,  was  at  first  forcibly  resisted,  and  forcibly 
triumphed.  At  an  earlier  period  doubt  is  directed  against  the  most 
popular  God,  Indra,  perhaps  on  behalf  of  a  rival  cult.®  Later  it 
seems  to  take  the  shape  of  a  half-skeptical,  half-mystical  questioning 
as  to  which,  if  any,  God  is  real. 

From  the  Catholic  standpoint.  Dr.  E.  L.  Fischer  has  argued 
that  "  Varuna  is  in  the  ontological,  physical,  and  ethical  relation 
the  highest,  indeed  the  unique,  God  of  ancient  India  ";  and  that 
the  Nature-Gods  of  the  Veda  can  belong  only  to  a  later  period 
in  the  religious  consciousness  {Heidenthum  und  Offenharung, 
1878,  pp.  36-37).  Such  a  development,  had  it  really  occurred, 
might  be  said  to  represent  a  movement  of  primitive  freethought 
from  an  unsatisfying  monotheism  to  a  polytheism  that  seemed 
better  to  explain  natural  facts.  A  more  plausible  view  of  the 
process,  however,  is  that  of  von  Bradke,  to  the  effect  that  "  the 

*  But  cp.  Mllller,  Anthropolog.  Relig.,  p.  164,  as  to  possible  later  developments;  and 
see  above,  pp.  45-47,  as  to  the  many  cases  in  which  conquering  races  have  actually  adopted 
the  Gods  of  the  conquered. 

2  Muir,  Original  SansJcHt  Texts,  ii  {2nd  ed.),  372,  379,  384.  3  Id.  p.  395. 

^  Max  Miiller,  Selected  Essays,  1881,  ii,  207-208. 

*  Cp.  Oldenberg.  Die  Religion  des  Veda,  1894,  pp.  94,  98-99;  Ghosha,  Hist,  of  Hindu 
Civ.  as  illust.  in  the  Vedas,  Calcutta,  1889,  pp.  190-91;  Max  Mtiller,  Phys.  Relig.,  1891, 
pp.  197-98. 

I  Max  MUller.  Selected  Essays,  ii.  237.  7  Muir,  Original  Sanskrit  Texts,  v,  268. 

8  Max  Mtiller.  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  302,  citing  R.  V.,  viii,  100,  3 ;  and  ii,  12,  5.  The  first 
passage  runs :  "If  you  wish  for  strength,  offer  to  Indra  a  hymn  of  praise:  a  true  hymn,  if 
u  1 1*  ^^"■^y  exist ;  for  some  one  says,  Indra  does  not  exist  I  Who  has  seen  hiw  ?  Whom 
shall  we  praise."    The  hymn  of  course  asseverates  his  existence, 

£ 


50  PEOGEESS  UNDEE  ANCIENT  EELIGIONS 

old  Indo-Germanic  polytheism,  with  its  pronounced  monarchic 

apex,  which constituted  the  religion  of  the  pre-Vedic  [Aryan] 

Hindus,  lost  its  monarchic  apex  shortly  before  and  during  the 
Eig-Veda  period,  and  set  up  for  itself  the  so-called  Henotheism 
[worship  of  deities  severally  as  if  each  were  the  only  one] , 
which  thus  represented  in  India  a  time  of  rehgious  decline; 
a  decline  that,  at  the  end  of  the  period  to  which  the  Eig-Veda 
hymns  belong,  led  to  an  almost  complete  dissolution  of  the  old 
beliefs.     The  earlier  collection  of  the  hymns  must  have  pro- 
moted the  decline  ;  and  the  final  redaction  must  have  completed 
it.     The  collected  hymns  show  only  too  plainly  how  the  very 
deity  before  whom  in  one  song  all  the  remaining  Gods  bow 
themselves,  in  the  next  sinks  almost  in  the  dust  before  another. 
Then   there   sounds   from   the  Eig-Veda   (x,  121)  the  wistful 
question :    Who   is     the   God   whom    we    should   worship  ? " 
{Dydus  Asura,   Ahiiramazda,   und    die    Asuras,   Halle,    1885, 
p.  115;  cp.  note,  supra,  p.  30).     On  this  view  the  growth  of 
monotheism  went  on  alongside  of  a  growth  of  critical  unbelief, 
but,  instead  of  expressing  that,  provoked  it  by  way  of  reaction. 
Dr.  Muir  more  specifically  argues  {Sanskrit  Texts,  v,  116)  that  in 
the  Vedic  hymns  Varuna  is  a  God  in  a  state  of  decadence  ;  and, 
despite  the  dissent  of  M.  Barth  [Beligions  of  hidia,  p.  18),  this 
seems  true.     But  the  recession  of  Varuna  is  only  in  the  normal 
way  of  the  eclipse  of  the  old  Supreme  God  by  a  nearer  deity, 
and    does    not    suffice    to   prove    a    growth    of    agnosticism. 
M.  Fontane    {hide    VMique,    1881,   p.   305)    asserts   on   other 
grounds  a  popular  movement  of  negation  in  the  Vedic  period, 
but  offers  rather  slender  evidence.     There  is  better  ground  for 
his  account  of  the  system  as  one  in  which  different  cults  had 
the  upper  hand  at  different  times,  the  devotees  of  Indra  rejecting 
Agni,  and  so  on  (pp.  310-11). 

To  meet  such  a  doubt,  a  pantheistic  view  of  things  would 
naturally  arise,  and  in  the  Vedas  it  often  emerges.^  Thus  "  Agni  is 
all  the  Gods";  and  "the  Gods  are  only  a  single  being  under 
different  names."  ^  For  ancient  as  for  more  civilized  peoples  such 
a  doctrine  had  the  attraction  of  nominally  reconciling  the  popular 
cult  with  the  skepticism  it  had  aroused.  Eising  thus  as  freethought, 
the  pantheistic  doctrine  in  itself  ultimately  became  in  India  a 
dogmatic  system,  the  monopoly  of  a  priestly  caste,  whosQ  training 

1  Cp.  Big-Veda,  i,  164.  46 :  x.  90  (cited  by  Ghosa.  pp.  191,  198) ;  viii.  10  (cited  by  Mtiller, 
Natural  Religiem,  pp.  227-29)  ;  and  x,  82, 121. 129  (cited  by  Romesh  Chunder  Dutt,  Hist,  of 
Civ.  in  Anc.  India,  ed.  189d,  i,  95-97);  Muir.  Sanskrit  Texts,  v,  353  sq.;  Tiele,  Outlines, 
p.  125;  Weber,  Hist,  of  Ind.  Lit.,  Eng.  trans.,  p.  5;  Max  Mtiller,  Hibbert  Lectures, 
ed.  1880,  pp.  298-304.  310.  315;  Phys.  Belig.,  p.  187;  Barth,  Beligions  of  India,  Eng.  trans., 
p.  8 ;  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  ii,  354. 

2  Barth.  Beligions  of  India,  pp.  26,  31,  citing  Big-Veda,  v,  3, 1 ;  i,  164,  46 ;  viii,  58, 2.  The 
phrase  as  to  Agni  is  common  in  the  Br&hmanas,  but  is  not  yet  so  in  the  Vedas.  The  second 
text  cited  is  rendered  by  Mtiller  :  "  That  which  is  one  the  sages  speak  of  in  many  ways — 
they  call  it  -Agni,  Yama,  MAtarisvan"  (Selected  Essays,  1881.  ii,  240). 


THE  PEOCESS  IN  INDIA 


51 


in  mystical  dialectic  made  them  able  to  repel  or  baffle  amateur 
criticism.  Such  fortifying  of  a  sophisticated  creed  by  institutions — of 
which  the  Brahmanic  caste  system  is  perhaps  the  strongest  type — is 
one  of  the  main  conditions  of  relative  permanence  for  any  set  of 
opinions ;  yet  even  within  the  Brahmanic  system,  by  reason, 
presumably,  of  the  principle  that  the  higher  truth  was  for  the 
adept  and  need  not  interfere  with  the  popular  cult,  there  were  again 
successive  critical  revisions  of  the  pantheistic  idea. 

Prof.  Garbe  {Fhilosopluj  of  Anc.  India,  sect,  on  Hindu 
Monism)  argues  that  all  monistic,  and  indeed  all  progressive, 
thinking  in  ancient  India  arose  not  among  the  Brahmans,  who 
were  conscienceless  oppressors,  but  among  the  warrior  caste ; 
citing  stories  in  the  Upanishads  in  which  Brahmans  are 
represented  as  receiving  such  ideas  from  warriors.  The  thesis 
is  much  weakened  by  the  Professor's  acceptance  of  Krishna  as 
primarily  a  historic  character,  of  the  warrior  class.  But  there 
is  grounds  for  his  general  thesis,  which  recognizes  (p.  78)  that 
the  Brahmans  at  length  assimilated  the  higher  thought  ot 
laymen.  Max  Miiller  puts  it  that  '*  No  nation  was  ever  so 
completely  priestridden  as  the  Hindus  were  under  the  sway  of 
the  Brahmanic  law.  Yet,  on  the  other  side,  the  same  people 
were  allowed  to  indulge  in  the  most  unrestrained  freedom  of 
thought,  and  in  the  schools  of  their  philosophy  the  very  names 
of   their   Gods   were   never   mentioned.     Their   existence   was 

neither   denied   nor   asserted "   {Selected   Essays,   1881,  ii, 

244).  "  Sankhya  philosophy "  [on  which  Buddhism  is  sup- 
posed to  be  based],  "in  its  original  form,  claims  the  name  of 
an-isvara,  *  lordless '  or  'atheistic,'  as  its  distinctive  title" 
{ibid.  p.  283). 

Of  the  nature  of  a  freethinking  departure,  among  the  early 
Brahmanists  as  in  other  societies,  was  the  substitution  of  non- 
human  for  human  sacrifices — a  development  of  peaceful  life- 
conditions  which,  though  not  primitive,  must  have  ante-dated 
Buddhism.  See  Tiele,  Outliiies,  pp.  126-27  and  refs.;  Barth, 
Beligions  of  India,  pp.  57-59  ;  and  Miiller,  Physical  Eeligion, 
p.  101.  Prof.  Eobertson  Smith  {Religion  of  the  Semites,  p.  346) 
appears  to  hold  that  animal  sacrifice  was  never  a  substitute 
for  human ;  but  his  ingenious  argument,  on  analysis,  is  found 
to  prove  only  that  in  certain  cases  the  idea  of  such  a  substitu- 
tion having  taken  place  may  have  been  unhistorical.  If  it  be 
granted  that  human  sacrifices  ever  occurred — and  all  the 
evidence  goes  to  show  that  they  were  once  universal — sub- 
stitution would  be  an  obvious  way  of  abolishing  them.  His- 
torical analogy  is  in  favour  of  the  view  that  the  change  was 
forced  on  the  priesthood  from  the  outside,  and  only  after  a  time 
accepted  by  the  Brahmans.     Thus  we  find  the  Kharv^kas,  a 


52  PEOGEESS  UNDBE  ANCIENT  EELIGIONS 

school  of  freethinkers,  rising  in  the  Alexandrian  period,  making 
it  part  of  their  business  to  denounce  the  Brahmanic  doctrine 
and  practice  of  sacrifice,  and  to  argue  against  all  blood 
sacrifices;  but  they  had  no  practical  success  (Tiele  p.  l^b; 
until  Buddhism  triumphed  (Mitchell,  Einduism,  l^^^'  P*  ^^^  ' 
Ehys  Davids,  tr.  of  Dialogues  of  the  Buddha,  1899,  p.  165;. 

In  the  earliest  Upanishads  the  World-Being  seems  to  have  been 
figured  as  the  totality  of  matter,'  an  atheistic  view  associated  in 
particular  with  the  teaching  of  Kapila,^  who  himself,  however,  was 
at  length  raised  to  divine  status. '  though  his  system  continues  to 
pass  as  substantially  atheistic/  This  view  being  open  to  all  manner 
of  anti-rehgious  criticism,  which  it  incurred  even  withm  the 
Brahmanic  pale,*  there  was  evolved  an  ideal  formula  in  which  the 
source  of  all  things  is  "  the  invisible,  intangible,  unrelated,  colourless 
one  who  has  neither  eyes  nor  ears,  neither  hands  nor  feet,  eternal, 
all-pervading,  subtile,  and  undecaying." «  At  the  same  time,  the 
Upanishads  exhibit  a  stringent  reaction  against  the  whole  content 
of  the  Yedas.  Their  ostensible  object  is  "  to  show  the  utter  useless- 
ness—nay.  the  mischievousness— of  all  ritual  performances;  to 
condemn 'every  sacrificial  act  which  has  for  its  motive  a  desire  or 
hope  of  reward  ;  to  deny,  if  not  the  existence,  at  least  the  exceptional 
and  exalted  character  of  the  Devas ;  and  to  teach  that  there  is  no 
hope  of  salvation  and  deliverance  except  by  the  individual  self 
recognizing  the  true  and  universal  self  and  finding  rest  there,  where 

alone  rest  can  be  found."  ^, 

And  the  critical  development  does  not  end  there.  In  the  old 
Upanishads,  in  which  the  hymns  and  sacrifices  of  the  Veda  are  looked 
upon  as  useless,  and  as  superseded  by  the  higher  knowledge  taught 
by  the  forest-sages,  they  are  not  yet  attacked  as  mere  impositions. 
That  opposition,  however,  sets  in  very  decidedly  in  the  Sutra  period. 
In  the  NimMa  (i,  15)  Yaska  quotes  the  opinion  of  Kautsa.  that  the 
hymns  of  the  Veda  have  no  meaning  at  all.'"  In  short,  every  form 
of  critical  revolt  against  incredible  doctrine  that  has  arisen  in  later 

Der  Buddha,  smn  Leben,  seim  Lehre,  seine  Gemeinde,  3te  Aufl..  Excurs,  pp.  443. 

2  H.  H.  Wilson,  Works,  186'2-71.  ii.  346. 

8  Weber  Hist.Ind.  ^J:{'^'-^r^\.^^^  Manual  of  Hindu  Pantheism,  1881,  p.  13.        . 
llXTumlr  CMv^^^^^  ed.  1880,  i   2'2a,232,  and  Banerjea'8 

B^loaue^tn  t^iSni;/  P/uLap^^y.  P.  73.  cited  by  Major  Jacob,  Htndu  Panthetsm,  p.  13. 

?  Max  Mmier!  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  34CM1.    Cp.  Barth.  Beligions  of  India,  p.  81. 
8  MtiUer,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  139. 


THE  PEOCESS  IN  INDIA 


53 


Europe  had  taken  place  in  ancient  India  long  before  the  Alexandrian 
conquest.^  And  the  same  attitude  continued  to  be  common  within 
the  post- Alexandrian  period  ;  for  Panini.  who  must  apparently  be 
dated  then,'''  "was  acquainted  with  infidels  and  nihilists";^  and  the 
teaching  of  Brihaspati,^  on  which  was  founded  the  system  of  the 
Khg^rv^kas — apparently  one  of  several  sections  of  a  freethinking 
school  called  the  Lok^yatas^  or  Lok§,yatikas— is  extremely  destruc- 
tive of  Vedic  pretensions.     "  The  Veda  is  tainted  by  the  three  faults 

of  untruth,  self-contradiction,  and  tautology The  impostors  who 

call    themselves  Vedic    pandits    are    mutually  destructive The 

three  authors  of  the  Vedas  were  buffoons,  knaves,  and  demons :  All 
the  well-known  formulas  of  the  pandits,  and  all  the  horrid  rites  for  the 
queen  commanded  in  the  Asvamedha — these  were  invented  by 
buffoons,  and  so  all  the  various  kinds  of  presents  to  the  priests ; 
while  the  eating  of  flesh  was  similarly  commanded  by  night- 
prowling  demons."® 

To  what  extent  such  aggressive  rationaUsm  ever  spread  it  is  now 
quite  impossible  to  ascertain.  It  seems  probable  that  the  word 
Lokayata,  defined  by  Sanskrit  scholars  as  signifying  "directed  to  the 
world  of  sense,"^  originally,  or  about  500  B.C.,  signified  "  Nature-lore," 
and  that  this  passed  as  a  branch  of  Brahman  learning.^  Signifi- 
cantly enough,  while  the  lore  was  not  extensive,  it  came  to  be 
regarded  as  disposing  men  to  unbelief,  though  it  does  not  seem  to 
have  suggested  any  thorough  training.  At  length,  in  the  eighth 
century  of  our  era,  it  is  found  applied  as  a  term  of  abuse,  in  the 
sense  of  "  infidel,"  by  Kumarila  in  controversy  with  opponents  as 
orthodox  as  himself ;  and  about  the  same  period  Sankara  connects 
with  it  a  denial  of  the  existence  of  a  separate  and  immortal  soul;^ 
though  that  opinion  had  been  debated,  and  not  called  Lokayata, 
long  before,  when  the  word  was  current  in  the  broader  sense. 
Latterly,  in  the  fourteenth  century,  on  the  strength  of  some  doggrel 
verses  which  cannot  have  belonged  to  the  early  Brahmanic 
Lok&yata,  it  stands  for  extreme  atheism  and  a  materialism  not 
professed  by  any  known  school  speaking  for  itself."  The  evidence, 
such  as  it  is,  is  preserved  only  in  Sarva-darsaiia-samcjraha,  a  com- 


2  jS: ^'^'.'2^1^:  ^''^«  Max'lSliner.  Hibbert  Lectures  p.  139. ^^otefingl^nim^^^^ 
*  Apparently  belonging  to  the  later  or   middle  Buddhist  period.     Miiller.  Hibbert 

^^' On^Jiiese  ip.  MUller,  p.  139.  note;  Garbe,  Philm.of  Anc.  India,  Eng.trjnded.  Chicago 
1899.  p.  25;  and  Weber.  Lid.  Lit.  p.  246,  note,  with  the  very  full  research  of  Professor  Rhys 
Davids.  Bialogues  of  the  Buddha,  1899.  pp.  166-72. 

6  MUller.  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  140-41.    Cp.  Garbe.  p.  28.  7^7,^   „  i-n 

7  Garbe.  as  cited  ^  Rhys  Davids,  Dialogues  of  the  Bitddha,  p.  171. 
»  Id.  pp.  169-71.                             ^0  Id.  p.m.  nid.xb. 


54 


PKOGKESS  UNDEK  ANCIENT  EELIGIONS 


pendium  of  all  philosophical  systems,  compiled  in  the  fourteenth 
century  by  the  Vedantic  teacher  Madhavclchara.^  One  source  speaks 
of  an  early  text-book  of  materialism,  the  Sutras  of  Brihaspati ;"  but 
this  has  not  been  preserved.  Thus  in  Hindu  as  in  later  European 
freethought  for  a  long  period  we  have  had  to  rely  for  our  knowledge 
of  freethinkers'  ideas  upon  the  repHes  made  by  their  opponents.  It 
is   reasonable  to  conclude   that,  save  insofar  as  the  arguments  of 

■ft 

Brihaspati  were  common  to  the  Kharvakas  and  the  Buddhists,  such 
doctrine  as  his  or  that  of  the  later  Lokayatikas  cannot  conceivably 
have  been  more  than  the  revolt  of  a  thoughtful  minority  against 
official  as  well  as  popular  religion  ;  and  to  speak  of  a  time  when 
"  the  Aryan  settlers  in  India  had  arrived  at  the  conviction  that  all 
their  Devas  or  Gods  were  mere  names''^  is  to  suggest  a  general 
evolution  of  rational  thought  which  can  no  more  have  taken  place  in 
ancient  India  than  it  has  done  to-day  in  Europe.  The  old  creeds 
would  always  have  defenders  ;  and  every  revolt  was  sure  to  incur  a 
reaction.  In  the  Hitopadesa  or  "Book  of  Good  Counsel"  (an  un- 
dated recension  of  the  earlier  Panchatantra,  "  The  Five  Books," 
which  in  its  first  form  may  be  placed  about  the  fifth  century  of  our 
era)  there  occur  both  passages  disparaging  mere  study  of  the  Sacred 
Books  *  and  passages  insisting  upon  it  as  a  virtue  in  itself  ^  and 
otherwise  insisting  on  ritual  observances.''  They  seem  to  come  from 
different  hands. 

The  phenomenon  of  the  schism  represented  by  the  two 
divisions  of  the  Yazur  Veda,  the  *'  White  "  and  the  "  Black,"  is 
plausibly  accounted  for  as  the  outcome  of  the  tendencies  of  a 
new  and  an  old  school,  who  selected  from  their  Brahmanas,  or 
treatises  of  ritual  and  theology,  the  portions  which  respectively 
suited  them.  The  implied  critical  movement  would  tend  to 
affect  official  thought  in  general.  This  schism  is  held  by  Weber 
to  have  arisen  only  in  the  period  of  ferment  set  up  by 
Buddhism  ;  but  other  disputes  seem  to  have  taken  place  in 
abundance  in  the  Brahmanical  schools  before  that  time.  (Cp. 
Tiele,  Outlines,  p.  123 ;  Weber,  Hist.  hid.  Lit.,  pp.  10,  27,  232 ; 
Max  Miiller,  Anthropol.  Belig.,  1892,  pp.  36-37;  and  Khys 
Davids,  Buddhism,  p.  34.)  Again,  the  ascetic  and  penance- 
bearing  hermits,  who  were  encouraged  by  the  veneration  paid 
them  to  exalt  themselves  above  all  save  the  highest  Gods, 
would  by  their  utterances  of  necessity  affect  the  course  of 
doctrine.  Compare  the  same  tendency  as  seen  in  Buddhism 
and  Jainism  (Tiele,  pp.  135,  140). 

1  Trans,  in  English  by  Cowell  and  Gough,  1882. 

2  Garbe.  as  cited,  p.25.  »  See  Mttller,  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  141-42.  citing  Burnouf. 
*  Miiller,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  310. 

6  Bk.  I.  Stories  ii.  7. 8. 16 ;  vii,  180.  «  Bk.  1. 11,  40 ;  St.  ii.  32.  1  St.  vi.  162. 


THE  PEOCESS  IN  INDIA 


65 


T 


But  in  the  later  form  of  the  Ved^nta,  **  the  end  of  the  Veda,"  a 
monistic  and  pantheistic  teaching  holds  its  ground  in  our  own  day, 
after  all  the  ups  and  downs  of  Brahmanism,  alongside  of  the 
aboriginal  cults  which  Brahmanism  adopted  in  its  battle  with 
Buddhism ;  alongside,  too,  of  the  worship  of  the  Veda  itself  as  an 
eternal  and  miraculous  document.  "  The  leading  tenets  [of  the 
Vedanta]  are  known  to  some  extent  in  every  village."  ^  Yet  the 
Vedantists,  again,  treat  the  Upanishads  in  turn  as  a  miraculous  and 
inspired  system,^  and  repeat  in  their  case  the  process  of  the  Vedas  : 
so  sure  is  the  law  of  fixation  in  religious  thought,  while  the  habit  of 
worship  subsists. 

The  highest  activity  of  rationalistic  speculation  within  the 
Brahmanic  fold  is  seen  to  have  followed  intelligibly  on  the  most 
powerful  reaction  against  the  Brahmans'  authority.  This  took 
place  when  their  sphere  had  been  extended  from  the  region  of  the 
Punjaub,  of  which  alone  the  Eig-Veda  shows  knowledge,  to  the 
great  kingdoms  of  Southern  India,  pointed  to  in  the  Sutras,^  or  short 
digests  of  ritual  and  law  designed  for  general  official  use.  In  the 
new  environment  "  there  was  a  well-marked  lay-feeling,  a  widespread 
antagonism  to  the  priests,  a  real  sense  of  humour,  a  strong  fund  of 
common  sense.  Above  all  there  was  the  most  complete  and 
unquestioned  freedom  of  thought  and  expression  in  religious 
matters  that  the  world  had  yet  witnessed."  ^ 

The  most  popular  basis  for  rejection  of  a  given  system — belief  in 
another — made  ultimately  possible  there  the  rise  of  a  practically 
atheistic  system  capable,  wherever  embraced,  of  annulling  the 
burdensome  and  exclusive  system  of  the  Brahmans,  which  had 
been  obtruded  in  its  worst  form,^  though  not  dominantly,  in  the  new 
environment.  Buddhism,  though  it  cannot  have  arisen  on  one 
man's  initiative  in  the  manner  claimed  in  the  legends,  even  as 
stripped  of  their  supernaturalist  element,®  was  in  its  origin  essen- 
tially a  movement  of  freethought,  such  as  could  have  arisen  only 


^  Major  Jacob,  as  cited,  preface. 

2  MUUer,  Psychol.  Belig.,  pp.  95.97, 126;  Led.  on  the  Veddnta  Philos.,  1894,  p.  32. 

8  Chunder  Dutt,  Hist,  of  Civ.  in  Anc.  India,  as  cited,  i,  112-13. 

4  Rhys  Davids,  trans,  of  Dialogues  of  tlie  Buddha,  p.  166.  Cp.  his  Buddhism,  p.  143,  as  to 
Buddhist  censures  of  au  extravagant  skepticism  which  denied  every  religious  theory.  In 
one  of  the  Dialogues  (ii,  25,  p.  74)  a  contemporary  sophist  is  cited  as  flatly  denying  a  future 
state.  Mr.  Lillie,  however  (Buddhism  in  Christendom,  1887,  p.  187),  contends  as  against 
Professor  Rhys  Davids  that  the  Upanishads  were  only  "  whispered  to  pupils  who  had  gone 
through  a  severe  probation." 

5  Prof.  Weber  (Hist.  Ind.  Lit.,  p.  4)  says  the  peoples  of  the  Punjaub  never  at  all 
submitted  to  the  Brahmanical  rule  and  caste  system.  But  the  subject  natives  there  must 
at  the  outset  have  been  treated  as  an  inferior  order.  Cp.  Tiele,  Outlines^  p.  120  and  refs.; 
and  Rhys  Davids,  Buddhism,  p.  23. 

6  Cp.  Weber,  Hist.  Ind.  Lit.,  pp.  236,  284-85;  Max  Muller,  Chips,  i,  228-32;  Kuenen, 
Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  258-64 ;  and  the  general  discussion  of  the  problem  in  the  author's 
Paflfaji  C/jrisfs,  2nd  ed.  pp.  239-63. 


1 


56 


PEOGEESS  UNDEB  ANCIENT  EELIGIONS 


in  the  atmosphere  of  a  much  mixed  society*  where  the  extreme 
Brahmanical  claims  were  on  various  grounds  discredited,  perhaps 
even  within  their  own  newly- adjusted  body.  It  was  stigmatized  as 
"the  science  of  reason,"  a  term  equivalent  to  "heresy"  in  the 
Christian  sphere;'*  and  its  definite  rejection  of  the  Vedas  made  it 
anti-sacerdotal  even  while  it  retained  the  modes  of  speech  of 
polytheism.  The  tradition  which  makes  the  Buddha^  a  prince 
suggests  an  upper-class  origin  for  the  reaction;  and  there  are 
traces  of  a  chronic  resistance  to  the  Brahmans'  rule  among  their 
feUow- Aryans  before  the  Buddhist  period. 

"  The  royal  families,  the  warriors,  who,  it  may  be  supposed, 
strenuously  supported  the  priesthood  so  long  as  it  was  a 
question  of  robbing  the  people  of  their  rights,  now  that  this 
was  effected  turned  against  their  former  aUies,  and  sought  to 
throw  off  the  yoke  that  was  likewise  laid  upon  them.  These 
efforts  were,  however,  unavailing :  the  colossus  was  too  firmly 
estabUshed.  Obscure  legends  and  isolated  allusions  are  the 
only  records  left  to  us  in  tlie  later  writings  of  the  sacrilegious 
hands  which  ventured  to  attack  the  sacred  and  divinely  conse- 
crated majesty  of  the  Brahmans ;  and  these  are  careful  to  note 
at  the  same  time  the  terrible  punishments  which  befel  those 
impious  offenders  "  (Weber,  Hist.  Ind,  Lit.,  p.  19). 

The  circumstances,  however,  that  the  Buddhist  writings  were 
from  the  first  in  vernacular  dialects,  not  in  Sanskrit,*  and  that  the 
mythical  matter  which  accumulated  round  the  story  of  the  Buddha 
is  in  the  main  aboriginal,  and  largely  common  to  the  myth  of 
Krishna,*^  go  to  prove  that  Buddhism  spread  specially  in  the  non- 
Aryan  sphere.®  Its  practical  (not  theoretic)"^  atheism  seems  to  have 
rested  fundamentally  on  the  conception  of  Karma,  the  transition  of 
the  soul,  or  rather  of  the  personality,  through  many  stages  up  to 
that  in  which,  by  self-discipline,  it  attains  the  impersonal  peace  of 
Nirvana  ;  and  of  this  conception  there  is  no  trace  in  the  Vedas,® 
though  it  became  a  leading  tenet  of  Brahmanism. 

To  the  dissolvent  influence  of  Greek  culture  may  possibly 
be  due  some  part  of  the  success  of  Buddhism  before  our  era, 
and  even  later.     Hindu  astronomy  in  the  Vedic  period  was  but 

1  Brahmanism  had  itself  been  by  this  time  influenced  by  aboriginal  elements,  even  to 
the  extent  of  affecting  its  language.  Weber,  as  cited,  p.  177.  Cp.  MUller,  Anthrop. 
Belig..  p.  164. 

a  Major  Jacob,  as  cited,  p.  12.  ,     „t  u  no* 

3  I  e    "the  enlightened."  a  title  given  to  sages  in  general.    Weber,  p.  284. 

*  Wei)er.  Hist.  Ind.  Lit.,  pp.  179.  299;  MUller.  Natural  BeUoion,  p.  299. 

6  See  Senart.  Essai  8ur  la  Ugende  de  Buddha,  2e  6dit.,  p.  297  ff. 

«  Cp.  Weber,  pp.  286-87. 303.  ,  _  .  ,„„.,, 

7  See  Weber,  pp.  301,  307 ;  also  Rhys  Davids,  Buddhism,  pp.  43.  83,  etc. 
«  Tiele,  Outliyies,  p.  117. 


THE  PEOCESS  IN  INDIA 


57 


slightly  developed  (Weber,  Hist.  Ltd.  Lit.,  pp.  246,  249,  250) ; 
and  "  it  was  Greek  influence  that  first  infused  a  real  life  into 
Indian  astronomy "  {Id.  p.  251 ;  cp.  Letronne,  Melanges 
d' Erudition,  1860  (?),  p.  40  ;  Narrien,  Histor.  Ace.  of  Orig.  and 
Prog,  of  Astron.,  p.  33,  and  Lib.  Use.  Kn.  Hist,  of  Astron.,  c.  ii). 
This  implies  other  interactions.  It  is  presumably  to  Greek 
stimulus  that  we  must  trace  the  knowledge  by  Aryabhata 
(Colebrooke's  Essays,  ed.  1873,  ii,  404 ;  cp.  Weber,  p.  257)  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  earth's  diurnal  revolution  on  its  axis ;  and 
the  fact  that  in  India  as  in  the  Mediterranean  world  the  truth 
was  later  lost  from  men's  hands  may  be  taken  as  one  of  the 
proofs  that  the  two  civilizations  alike  retrograded  owing  to 
evil  political  conditions.  In  the  progressive  period  (from  about 
320  B.C.  onwards  for  perhaps  some  centuries)  Greek  ideas 
might  well  help  to  discredit  traditionalism  ;  and  their  acceptance 
at  royal  courts  would  be  favourable  to  toleration  of  the  new 
teaching.  At  the  same  time.  Buddhism  must  have  been 
favoured  by  the  native  mental  climate  in  which  it  arose. 

The  main, differentiation  of  Buddhism  from  Brahmanism,  again, 
is  its  ethical  spirit,  which  sets  aside  formalism  and  seeks  salvation 
in  an  inward  reverie  and  discipline ;  and  tjiis  element  in  turn  can 
hardly  be  conceived  as  arising  save  in  an  old  society,  far  removed 
from  the  warlike  stage  represented  by  the  Vedas.  Whatever  may 
have  been  its  early  association  with  Brahmanism^  then,  it  must  be 
regarded  as  essentially  a  reaction  against  Brahmanical  doctrine  and 
ideals ;  a  circumstance  which  would  account  for  its  early  acceptance 
in  the  Punjaub,  where  Brahmanism  had  never  attained  absolute 
power  and  was  jealously  resisted  by  the  free  population.^  And  the 
fact  that  Jainism,  so  closely  akin  to  Buddhism,  has  its  sacred  books 
in  a  dialect  belonging  to  the  region  in  which  Buddhism  arose, 
further  supports  the  view  that  the  reaction  grew  out  of  the  thought 
of  a  type  of  society  differing  widely  from  that  in  which  Brahmanism 
arose.  Jainism,  like  Buddhism,  is  substantially  atheistic,  and  like 
it  has  an  ancient  monkish  organization  to  which  women  were  early 
admitted.  The  original  crypto-atheism  or  agnosticism  of  the 
Buddhist  movement  thus  appears  as  a  product  of  a  relatively  high, 
because  complex,  moral  and  intellectual  evolution.  It  certainly 
never  impugned  the  belief  in  the  Gods;  on  the  contrary,  the 
Buddha  is  often  represented  as  speaking  of  their  existence,*  and  at 
times  as  approving  of  their  customary  worship;*  but  he  is  never 

1  Cp.  Weber.  Hist.  Ind.  Lit.,  pp.  27.  284-87;  Max  MQller,  Natural  Beligion,  p.  555; 
Jacobi.  as  there  cited ;  Tiele.  Outlines,  pp.  135-36 ;  Rhys  Davids,  American  Lectures  on 
Buddhimi,   pp.   115-16;   Buddhism,   p.  84;   and   the   author's   Fagan   Chrtsts,  pt.   u, 


PP 
ch.  ii,  §S  8-13. 

2  Weber.  Hist.  Ind.  Lit,  pp.  4,  39. 

*  Rhys  Davids,  Buddhism,  pp.  35, 79,  99. 


8  Barth,  Beligions  of  India,  p.  146 
5  Cp.  Pagan  Christs,  pp.  248-50. 


58 


PROGKESS  UNDER  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS 


THE  PROCESS  IN  INDIA 


59 


said  to  counsel  his  own  order  to  pray  to  them ;  he  makes  light  of 
sacrifice ;  and  above  all  he  is  made  quite  negative  as  to  a  future 
life,  preaching  the  doctrine  of  Karma  in  a  sense  which  excludes 
individual  immortahty/  "  It  cannot  be  denied  that  if  we  call  the 
old  Gods  of  the  Veda— Indra  and  Agni  and  Yama— Gods,  Buddha 
was  an  atheist.  He  does  not  believe  in  the  divinity  of  these 
deities.     "What  is  noteworthy  is  that  he  does  not  by  any  means 

deny  their  bare  existence The  founder  of  Buddhism  treats  the 

old  Gods  as  superhuman  beings."'  Thus  it  is  permissible  to  say 
both  that  Buddhism  recognizes  Gods  and  that  it  is  practically 
atheistic. 

"  The  fact    cannot   be   disputed    away  that    the   religion  of 
Buddha  w^as  from  the  beginning  purely  atheistic.     The  idea  of 

the  Godhead was  for  a  time    at   least  expelled  from  the 

sanctuary  of  the  human  mind,*  and  the  highest  morality  that 
was  ever  taught  before  the  rise  of  Christianity  was  taught  by 
men  with  whom  the  Gods  had  become  mere  phantoms,  without 
any  altars,  not  even  an  altar  to  the  unknown  God"  (Max 
Miiller,  Introd.  to  the  Science  of  Religion,  ed.  1882,  p.  81.  Cp. 
the  same  author's  Selected  Essays,  1881,  ii,  300.) 

"He  [Buddha]  ignores  God  in  so  complete  a  way  that  he 
does  not  even  seek  to  deny  him ;  he  does  not  suppress  him,  but 
he  does  not  speak  of  him  either  to  explain  the  origin  and 
anterior  existence  of  man  or  to  explain  the  present  life,  or  to 
conjecture  his  future  life  and  definitive  deliverance.  The 
Buddha  knows  God  in  no  fashion  whatever"  (Barth^lemy 
Saint-Hilaire,  Le  Boiiddha  et  sa  Eeligion,  1866,  p.  v). 

"Buddhism  and  Christianity  are  indeed  the  two  opposite 
poles  with  regard  to  the  most  essential  points  of  religion: 
Buddhism  ignoring  all  feeHng  of  dependence  on  a  higher  power, 
and  therefore  denying  the  very  existence  of  a  supreme  deity  " 
(Miiller,  hitrod.  to  Sc.  of  Bel,  p.  171). 

"  Lastly,  the  Buddha  declared  that  he  had  arrived  at  [his] 
conclusions,  not  by  study  of  the  Vedas,  nor  from  the  teachings  of 
others,  but  by  the  light  of  reason  and  intuition  alone  "  (Rhys 
Davids,  Buddhism,  p.  48).  "The  most  ancient  Buddhism 
despises  dreams  and  visions  "  {Id.,  p.  177).  "  Agnostic  atheism 
is  the  characteristic  of  his  [Buddha's]  system  of  philo- 
sophy" (M,p.207). 

"Belief  in  a  Supreme  Being,  the  Creator  and  Ruler  of  the 
Universe,  is  unquestionably  a  modern  graft  upon  the  unqualified 
atheism  of  S4kya  Muni :  it  is  still  of  very  limited  recognition. 
In  none  of  the  standard  authorities is  there  the  sHghtest 

J  Rhys  Davids,  trans,  of  Dialogues,  pp.  188-89 ;  Amer.Lec.  07i Buddhism,  1896,  pp.  127-34 ; 
Hibbert  Lectures,  1881.  p.  109;  Buddhism,  pp.  95,  98-99. 
2  Max  MttUer.  Selected  Essays.  1881,  ii,  295. 
8  As  the  context  in  Professor  Mttller's  work  shows,  these  phrases  are  inaccurate. 


allusion  to  such  a  First  Cause,  the  existence  of  which  is  incom- 
patible with  the  fundamental  Buddhist  dogma  of  the  eternity  of 
all  existence"  (H.  H.  Wilson,  Buddha  and  Buddhism,  in  Essays 
and  Lectures,  ed.  by  Dr.  R.  Rost,  1862,  ii,  361.     Cp.  p.  363). 

On  the  other  hand,  the  gradual  colouring  of  Buddhism  with 
popular  mythology,  the  reversion  (if,  indeed,  this  were  not  early) 
to  adoration  and  worship  of  the  Buddha  himself,  and  the  final 
collapse  of  the  system  in  India  before  the  pressure  of  Brahmanized 
Hinduism,  all  prove  the  potency  of  the  sociological  conditions  of 
success  and  failure  for  creeds  and  criticisms.  Buddhism  took  the 
monastic  form  for  its  institutions,  thus  incurring  ultimate  petrifaction 
alike  morally  and  intellectually ;  and  in  any  case  the  normal  Indian 
social  conditions  of  abundant  population,  cheap  food,  and  general 
ignorance  involved  an  overwhelming  vitality  for  the  popular  cults. 
These  the  orthodox  Brahmans  naturally  took  under  their  protection 
as  a  means  of  maintaining  their  hold  over  the  multitude ;  ^  and 
though  their  own  highest  philosophy  has  been  poetically  grafted  on 
that  basis,  as  in  the  epic  of  the  Mahabharata  and  in  the  Bhagavat 
Gita,'^  the  ordinary  worship  of  the  deities  of  these  poems  is  perforce 
utterly  unphilosophical,  varying  between  a  primitive  sensualism  and 
an  emotionalism  closely  akin  to  that  of  popular  forms  of  Christianity. 
Buddhism  itself,  where  it  still  prevails,  exhibits  similar  tendencies.^ 

It  is  disputed  whether  the  Brahman  influence  drove  Buddhism 
out  of  India  by  physical  force,  or  whether  the  latter  decayed 
because  of  maladaptation  to  its  environment.  Its  vogue  for  some 
seven  hundred  years,  from  about  300  B.C.  to  about  400  A.C., 
seems  to  have  been  largely  due  to  its  protection  and  final 
acceptance  as  a  State  religion  by  the  dynasty  of  Chandragupta 
(the  Sandracottos  of  the  Greek  historians),  whose  grandson  Asoka 
showed  it  special  favour.  His  rock-inscribed  edicts  (for  which 
see  Max  Mul\eY,l7itrod.  to  Science  of  Bel,  pp.  5-6,  23  ;  Anthrop. 
Belig.,  pp.  40-43 ;  Rhys  Davids,  Buddhism,  pp.  220-28 ; 
Wheeler's  Hist,  of  India,  vol.  iii,  app.  1 ;  Asiatic  Society's 
Jonrnals,  vols,  viii  and  xii ;  Indian  Antiquary,  1877,  vol.  vi) 
show  a  general  concern  for  natural  ethics,  and  especially  for 
tolerance;  but  his  mention  of  "The  Terrors  of  the  Future" 
among  the  religious  works  he  specially  honours  shows  (if 
genuine)  that  normal  superstition,  if  ever  widely  repudiated 
(which  is  doubtful),  had  interpenetrated  the  system.     The  king, 

*  Cp.  Weber.  Ind.  Lit.  p.  289,  note ;  and  Banerjea,  Dialogues  on  the  Hindu  Philosophy, 
p.  520.  cited  by  Major  Jacob,  pp.  29-30. 

2  See  Muir,  Sanskrit  Texts,  iv.  50  (cited  by  Jacob,  pp.  30-31),  as  to  the  Brahman  view 
of  the  licence  ascribed  to  Krishna.  And  see  iii,  32  (cited  by  Jacob,  p.  14),  as  to  a  remark- 
able disparagement  of  Vedisin  in  the  Bhagavat  Gita. 

8  MttUer,  Selected  Essays,  ii,  363 ;  H.  H.  Wilson,  as  last  cited,  ii,  368  sq. 


if 


r 


I 


60  PKOGKESS  UNDER  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS 

too.  called  himself  "  the  dehght  of  the  Gods/'  ^s  /id  his  co^ 
temporary  the  Buddhist  king  of    Ceylon  (Davids.  Buddhism 
IsT),     Under  Asoka.  however.  Buddhism  was  Powerful  enough 
to  react  somewhat  on  the  West,  then  m  contact  with  Indm.  as 
a  result  of  the  Alexandrian  conquest  (cp.  Mahaffy  Greek  World 
under  Roman  Sway,  ch.  ii ;  Weber's  lecture  on  Ancient  India 
Eng.  tr..  pp.   25-26;   Indische    Skzzzen    p.  28    Lilted   in   the 
prefent   writer's    Christiamty   and    Mythology    P-    165];    and 
Weber's  HzsL  of  Ind.  LzL,  p.  255  and  p.  309.  note) ;  and  the 
fact   that   after   his   time  it  entered   on  a  long  conflict  with 
Brahmanism  proves  that  it  remained  practically  dangerous  to 
That   system.     In   the   fifth   and   sixth   centuries   of    our   era 
Buddhism  in  India  "  rapidly  decHned  "—a  circumstance  hard  y 
SS  saie  as  a  result' of  violence.     Tiele  after  expressly 
asserting  the  *'  rapid  decline  "  {Outlines    p.   139).  in  the  next 
breath  asserts   that  there  are  no  satisfactory  proofs  of    such 
violence,  and  that.  '*  on  the  contrary,  Buddhism  appears  to  have 
pined  away  slowly^  (p.  140:  contras    his  Egypt- Bejv.^^^^^ 
Rhys  Davids,  in  his  Buddhism,  p.  246  (so  also  Max  Mullei, 
Anthrop,  Bel,  p.  43).  argues  for  a  process  of  violent  extinction . 
but  in  his  later  work.  Buddhist  India,  he  retmcts  this  view  and 
decides  for  a  gradual  decline  in  the  face  of  a  Brahmamc  revival. 
The  evidences  for  violence  and  persecution  are  however  pretty 
strong      (See   H.   H.   Wilson,   Essays,  as   cited,   n,   365-57.; 
Internal  decay  certainly  appears  to  have  occurred.     Already  m 
Gautama's    own    life,   according   to   the  legends    there   weie 
doctrinal   disputes   within    his    party    (Pulley,  ^^i^^rc^-   i^^^. 
D  38) ;  and  soon  heresies  and  censures  abounded  (Introd.  to  be, 
of  Bel,  p.  23).  tiU  schisms  arose  and  no  fewer  then  eighteen 
sects  took  shape  (Davids,  Buddhism,  pp.  213-18). 

Thus  early  in  our  inquiry  we  may  gather,  from  a  fairly  complete 
historical  case,  the  primary  laws  of  causation  as  regards  alike  the 
progress  and  the  decadence  of  movements  of  rationalistic  thought. 
The  fundamental  economic  dilemma,  seen  already  m  the  hfe  of  the 
savage,  presses  at  all  stages  of  civilization.     The  credent  multitude 
save  in  the  very  lowest  stages  of  savage  destitution,  always  feeds  and 
houses  those  who  furnish  it  with  its  appropriate  mental  food ;  and 
so  long  as  there  remains  the  individual  struggle  for  existence,  there 
wiU  always  be  teachers  ready.     If  the  higher  minds  in  any  priest- 
hood  awaking  to  the  character  of  their  traditional  teaching,  with- 
draw from  it.  lower  minds,  howbeit  "  sincere,"  will  always  take  their 
place      The  innovating  teacher,  in  turn,  is  only  at  the  beginning  of 
his  troubles  when  he  contrives,  on  whatever  bases,  to  set  up  a  new 
organized  movement.     The  very  process  of  organization,  on  the  one 
hand,  sets  up  the  call  for  special  economic  sustenance-a  constant 


MESOPOTAMIA 


61 


motive  to  compromise  with  popular  ignorance — and,  on  the  other 
hand,  tends  to  establish  merely  a  new  traditionalism,  devoid  of  the 
critical  impulse  in  which  it  arose.^  x\nd  without  organization  the 
innovating  thought  cannot  communicate  itself,  cannot  hold  its  own 
against  the  huge  social  pressures  of  tradition. 

In  ancient  society,  in  short,  there  could  be  no  continuous 
progress  in  freethinking  :  at  best,  there  could  but  be  periods  or  lines 
of  relative  progress,  the  result  of  special  conjunctures  of  social  and 
poHtical  circumstance.  So  much  will  appear,  further,  from  the 
varying  instances  of  still  more  ancient  civiHzations,  the  evolution  of 
which  may  be  the  better  understood  from  our  survey  of  that  of 
India. 

§  3.  Mesopotamia 

The  nature  of  the  remains  we  possess  of  the  ancient  Babylonian 
and  Assyrian  religions  is  not  such  as  to  yield  a  direct  record  of  their 
development ;  but  they  sufiBce  to  show  that  there,  as  elsew^iere, 
a  measure  of  rationaUstic  evolution  occurred.  Were  there  no  other 
ground  for  the  inference,  it  might  not  unreasonably  be  drawn  from 
the  post-exilic  monotheism  of  the  Hebrews,  who,  drawing  so  much 
of  their  cosmology  and  temple  ritual  from  Babylon,  may  be  presumed 
to  have  been  influenced  by  the  higher  Semitic  civilizations  in  other 
ways  also.^  But  there  is  concrete  evidence.  What  appears  to  have 
happened  in  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  whose  rehgious  systems  were 
grafted  on  that  of  the  more  ancient  Sumer- Akkadian  civiHzation,  is 
a  gradual  subordination  of  the  numerous  local  Gods  (at  least  in  the 
thought  of  the  more  philosophic,  including  some  of  the  priests)  to 
the  conception  of  one  all-pervading  power.  This  process  would  be 
assisted  by  that  of  imperialism  ;  and  in  the  recently-recovered  code 
of  Hammurabi  we  actually  find  references  to  Ilu  "  God"  (as  in  the 
European  legal  phrase,  '*  the  act  of  God  ")  without  any  further  God- 
name.'  On  the  other  hand,  the  unifying  tendency  would  be  resisted 
by  the  strength  of  the  traditions  of  the  Babylonian  cities,  all  of 
which  had  ancient  cults  before  the  later  empires  were  built  up.*  Yet, 
again,  peoples  who  failed  in  war  would  be  in  some  measure  led  to 
renounce  their  God  as  weak  ;  while  those  who  clung  to  their  faith 

\See  this  brought  out  in  a  strikingly  dramatic  way  in  Mr.  Dennis  Hird's  novel,  The 

^^a*cp!^Dr.*'A^Jeremias,  Monotheistische  Stromungen  innerhalb  der  Babylmischen 
Jieltorio?i,  1904,  p.  44— a  very  candid  research.  nntRKoAn  oaq  o/ja^     tvio 

^  The  Hammurabi  Code,  by  Chilperic  Edwards,  1904.  PP- 67.  68.  70  (§§  m  249^^^  The 

invocations  of  named  Gods  by  Hammurabi  at  the  close  f  .^^f^ode.  however  suggest  tha^^ 
the  force  of  the  word  was  "  a  God."  Cp.  p.  76  with  what  follows ;  and  see  note  on  p.  93. 
On  this  question  compare  Jeremias,  as  cited,  pp.  39,  43.  ,«^Ti,KTnof    ««  loi  oiq 

*  Maspero,  Hist.  anc.  des  peup.  de  V orient,  4e  ^d.  p.  139  Sayce  Hib  Lect.,  pp.  121, 213, 
215;  E.  Meyer,  Gesch.  deaAlt.,  i  (1884),  161  (§  133);  m  (1901),  157  sq.  (§  103). 


62 


PROGKESS  UNDER  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS 


MESOPOTAMIA 


63 


would  be  led,  as  in  Jewry,  to  recast  its  ethic.  The  result  was  a  set 
of  compromises  in  which  the  provincial  and  foreign  deities  were 
either  treated  genealogically  or  grouped  in  family  or  other  relations 
with  the  chief  God  or  Gods  of  the  time  being/  Certain  cults,  again, 
were  either  kept  always  at  a  higher  ethical  level  than  the  popular 
one,  or  were  treated  by  the  more  refined  and  more  critical  wor- 
shippers in  an  elevated  spirit  ;^  and  this  tendency  seems  to  have  led 
to  conceptions  of  purified  deities  who  underlay  or  transcended  the 
popular  types,  the  names  of  the  latter  being  held  to  point  to  one  who 
was  misconceived  under  their  grosser  aspects."  Astronomical  know- 
ledge, again,  gave  rise  to  cosmological  theories  which  pointed  to 
a  ruling  and  creating  God,^  wlio  as  such  would  have  a  specially 
ethical  character.  In  some  such  way  was  reached  a  conception  of 
a  Creator-God  as  the  unity  represented  by  the  fifty  names  of  the 
Great  Gods,  who  lost  their  personality  when  their  names  were 
liturgically  given  to  him*^ — a  conception  which  in  some  statements 
even  had  a  pantheistic  aspect^  among  a  "group  of  priestly  thinkers," 
and  in  others  took  the  form  of  an  ideal  theocracy.'  There  is  record 
that  the  Babylonian  schools  were  divided  into  different  sects,^  and 
their  science  was  likely  to  make  some  of  these  rationalistic.^ 
Professor  Sayce  even  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  in  the  later 
cosmogony,  '*  under  a  thin  disguise  of  theological  nomenclature, 
the  Babylonian  theory  of  the  universe  has  become  a  philosophical 
materialism."  ^° 

It  might  be  taken  for  granted,  further,  that  disbelief  would 
be  set  up  by  such  a  primitive  fraud  as  the  alleged  pretence  of 
the  priests  of  Bel  Merodach  that  the  God  cohabited  nightly  with 
the  concubine  set  apart  for  him  (Herodotos,  i,  181-82),  as  was 
similarly  pretended  by  the  priests  of  Amun  at  Thebes.  Hero- 
dotos could  not  believe  the  story,  which,  indeed,  is  probably  a 
late  Greek  fable  ;  but  there  must  have  been  some  skeptics 
within  the  sphere  of  the  Semitic  cult  of  sacred  prostitution. 

As  regards  freethinking  in  general,  much  would  depend  on 
the  development  of  the  Chaldaean  astronomy.     That  science, 

*  Sayce.  pp.  219,  344  ;  Lenormant,  Chaldean  Magic,  Eng.  ed.  p.  127. 
2  Jastrow,  Religions  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  1898,  p.  318. 

8  Jastrow,  p.  187 ;  Sayce,  pp.  128,  267-68.  Cp.  Kuenen,  Religion  of  Israel.  Eng.  tr.,  i,  91 ; 
Menzies,  History  of  Religion,  1895,  p.  171;  Gunkel.  Israel  und  Babylonieii,  1903.  p.  30; 
Jeremias.  as  cited,  pp.  5-6. 

*  Meyer,  iii.  168;  Jastrow,  p.  79;  Sayce,  p.  331  sq.,  367  sq.;  Lenormant,  Chaldean  Magic, 
p.  112;  Jeremias,  pp.  7-23. 

5  Sayce,  p.  3tt5.    Cp.  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  p.  452. 

6  Jastrow.  p.  190,  note,  p.  319;  Sayce,  pp.  191-92,  367;  Lenormant,  pp.  112,  113, 119, 133; 
Jeremias,  p.  26. 

7  Tiele.  Outlines,  p.  78 ;  Sayce,  Ancient  Empires  of  the  East,  pp.  152-53  ;  Rawlinson,  Five 
Great  Monarchies,  2nd  ed.  iii,  13:  Maspero.  p.  139. 

8  strabo,  xvi,  c.  1,  §  6.  »  Cp.  Rawlinson.  Five  Great  Moiiarchiea,  i.  110;  iii,  12-13. 
lo  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  385. 


growing  out  of  primitive  astrology  (cp.  Whewell,  Hist,  of  the 
Induct.  Sciences,  3rd  ed.  i,  108),  would  tend  to  discredit, 
among  its  experts,  much  of  the  prevailing  religious  thought  ; 
and  they  seem  to  have  carried  it  so  far  as  to  frame  a  scientific 
theory  of  comets  (Seneca,  citing  Apollonius  Myndius,  Quaest. 
Nat.,  vii,  3 ;  cp.  Lib.  Use.  Kn.  Hist,  of  Astron.,  c.  3  ;  E. 
Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alterthums,  i,  186  ;  and  Weber,  Ind.  Lit., 
p.  248).  Such  knowledge  would  greatly  favour  skepticism,  as 
well  as  monotheism  and  pantheism.  It  was  sought  to  be 
astrologically  applied ;  but,  as  the  horoscopes  varied,  this  was 
again  a  source  of  unbelief  (Meyer,  p.  179).  Medicine,  again, 
made  httle  progress  (Herod.,  i,  197). 

It  can  hardly  be  doubted,  finally,  that  in  Babylonia  and 
Assyria  there  were  idealists  who,  like  the  Hebrew  prophets, 
repudiated  alike  image-worship  and  the  religion  of  sacrifices. 
The  latter  repudiation  occurs  frequently  in  later  Greece  and 
Eome.  There,  as  in  Jerusalem,  it  could  make  itself  heard  in 
virtue  of  the  restrictedness  of  the  power  of  the  priests,  who  in 
imperial  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  on  the  other  hand,  might  be 
trusted  to  suppress  or  override  any  such  propaganda,  as  we 
have  seen  was  done  in  Brahmanical  India. 

Concerning  image-worship,  apart  from  the  proved  fact  of 
pantheistic  doctrine,  and  the  parallels  in  Egypt  and  India,  it 
is  to  be  noted  that  Isaiah  actually  puts  in  the  mouth  of  the 
Assyrian  king  a  tirade  against  the  "kingdoms  of  the  idols" 
or  "false  gods,"  including  in  these  Jerusalem  and  Samaria 
(Isa.  X,  10,  11).  The  passage  is  dramatic,  but  it  points  to  the 
possibility  that  in  Assyria  just  as  in  Israel  a  disbelief  in  idols 
could  arise  from  reflection  on  the  spectacle  of  their  multitude. 

The  chequered  political  history  of  Babylon  and  Assyria,  however, 
made  impossible  any  long-continued  development  of  critical  and 
philosophical  thought.  Their  amalgamations  of  creeds  and  races 
had  in  a  measure  favoured  such  development  ;^  and  it  was  probably 
the  setting  up  of  a  single  rule  over  large  populations  formerly  at 
chronic  war  that  reduced  to  a  minimum,  if  it  did  not  wholly 
abohsh,  human  sacrifice  in  the  later  pre-Persian  empires;^  but  the 
inevitably  subject  state  of  the  mass  of  the  people,  and  the  chronic 
military  upset  of  the  government,  were  conditions  fatally  favourable 
to  ordinary  superstition.  The  new  universalist  conceptions,  instead 
of  dissolving  the  special  cults  in  pantheism,  led  only  to  a  fresh 
competition  of  cults  on  cosmopolitan  lines,  all  making  the  same 
pretensions,  and  stressing  their  most  artificial  peculiarities  as  all- 

l  Meyer,  iii.  §  103  ;  Sayce,  pp.  192,  345. 

^  Cp.  Jastrow.  p.  662 ;  Sayce.  p.  78 ;  and  Tiele.  Hist.  Comparie,  p.  209.    It  seems  probable 
that  human  sacrifice  was  latterly  restricted  to  the  case  of  criminals. 


\ 


64  PEOGEESS  UNDEE  ANCIENT  EELIGI0N8 

important.    Thus,  when  old  tribal  or  local  religions  went  proselytizing 
in   the   enlarged   imperial   field,  they  made   their   most   worthless 
stipulations— as  Jewish  circumcision  and  abstinence  from  pork,  and 
the  self-mutilation  of  the  followers  of  Cybel6-the  very  grounds  of 
salvation/     Culture  remained  wholly  in  the  hands  of  the  priestly 
and  official  class.^  who.  like  the  priesthoods  of  Egypf.,  were^  held  to 
conservatism  by  their  vast  wealth.^     Accordingly  we  nud  ine  early 
religion   of    sorcery   maintaining    itself    in   the   literature    of    the 
advanced  empires/     The  attitude  of  the  Semitic  priests  and  fribes 
towards  the  old  Akkadic  as  a  sacred  language  was  m  itself,  like  the 
use  of  sacred  books  in  general,  long  a  check  upon  new  thought ; 
and  though  the  Assyrian  life  seems  to  have  set  this  check  aside,  by 
reason  of  the  lack  of  a  culture  class  in  Assyria,  the  later  Babylonian 
kingdom  which  rose  on  the  fall  of  Assyria  was  too  short-lived  to 
profit  much  by  the  gain,  being  in  turn  overthrown  in  the  second 
generation   by   Cyrus.     It   is   significant   that   the   conqueror   was 
welcomed  by  the  Babylonian  priests  as  against  their  last  king,  the 
inquiring  and  innovating  Nabonidos*^  (Nabu-nahid),  who  had  aimed 
at  a  monarchic  polytheism  or  quasi-monotheism      He  is  described 
as  having  turned  away  from  Mardouk  (Merodach),  the  great  Baby- 
lonian God,  who  accordingly  accepted  Cyrus  in  his  stead.     It  is 
thus  clear  that  Cyrus,  who  restored  the  old  state  of  things,  was  no 
strict  monotheist   of   the  later  Persian   type,  but  a  schemer  who 
relied  everywhere  on  popular  religious  interests,  and  conciliated  the 
polytheists   and   henotheists   of   Babylon   as   he  did  the  Yahweh- 
worshipping  Jews.'    The  Persian  quasi-monotheism  and  anti-idolatry, 
however,  already  existed,  and  it  is  conceivable  that  they  may  have 
been   intensified   among   the   more  cultured  through   the  pecuUar 
juxtaposition  of  cults  set  up  by  the  Persian  conquest. 

Mr.  Sayce's  dictum  (Hib.  Lect.,  p.  314).  that  the  later 
ethical  element  in  the  Akkado-Babylonian  system  is  neces- 
sarily "  due  to  Semitic  race  elements,  is  seen  to  be  fallacious 
in  the  Hght  of  his  own  subsequent  admission  (p.  353)  as  to  the 
lateness  of  the  development  among  the  Semites.  The  difference 
between  early  Akkadian  and  later  Babylonian  was  simply  one 
of  culture-stage.  See  Mr.  Sayce's  own  remarks  on  p.  300  ;  and 
compare   E.    Meyer    {Gesch.  des  AIL,  i.  178.   182,  183).   who 

J  Cp  ^.T^'pinchS  The  Old  Testam^it  in  the  IZhtofule  Hi8t!Vecord8  of  Assyria 
'''^^f^^iTvv'mi,''^^^^  m  ^;  Meyer,  i.  183;  Lenormant.  p.  UO; 

6  Sayce.  pp.  326.  341;  cp.  Jastrow.  p.  317.  ,       j,.- 

6  Meyer,  i  599 ;  Sayce.  Hib.  Lect..  pp.  85-91;  Anc.  Emp.  of  the  J^^ast,  p.  315. 

7  Meyer,  iii.  §  57. 


ANCIENT  PEESIA 


65 


entirely  rejects  the  claim  made  for  Semitic  ethics.  See,  again, 
Tiele,  Outlines,  p.  78,  and  Mr.  Sayce's  own  account  {A^ic.  Em 
of  the  East,  p.  202)  of  the  Phoenician  religion  as  "  impure  and 
cruel."  Other  writers  take  the  line  of  arguing  that  the  Phoeni- 
cians were  "not  Semites,"  and  that  they  differed  in  all  things 
from  the  true  Semites  (cp.  Dr.  Marcus  Dods,  Israel's  Iron  Age, 
1874,  p.  10,  and  Farrar,  as  there  cited).  The  explanation  of 
such  arbitrary  judgments  seems  to  be  that  the  Semites  are 
assumed  to  have  had  a  primordial  religious  gift  as  compared 
with  Turanians,"  and  that  the  Hebrews  in  turn  are  assumed 
to  have  been  so  gifted  above  other  Semites.  We  shall  best 
guard  against  k  priori  injustice  to  the  Semites  themselves,  in 
the^  conjunctures  in  which  they  really  advanced  civilization,  by 
entirely  discarding  the  unscientific  method  of  explaining  the 
history  of  races  in  terms  of  hereditary  character  (see  below, 
§  6,  end), 

§  4.  Ancient  Persia 

The  Mazdean  system,  or  worship  of   Ahura  Mazda  (Ormazd), 
of  which  we  find  in  Herodotos  positive  historical  record  as  an  anti- 
idolatrous  and  nominally  monotheistic  creed  ^  in  the  fifth  century  B.C., 
is  the  first  to  which  these  aspects  can  be  ascribed  with  certainty. 
As   the   Jews   are   found   represented   in   the   Book   of  Jeremiah^ 
(assumed  to  have  been  written  in  the  sixth  century  B.C.)  worshipping 
numerous  Gods  with  images:    and  as  polytheistic  and  idolatrous 
practices  are  still  described  in  the  Book  of  Ezekiel '  (assumed  to 
have  been  written  during  or  after  the  Babylonian  Captivity),  it  is 
inadmissible  to  accept  the  unauthenticated  writings    of   ostensibly 
earlier  prophets  as  proving  even  a  propaganda  of  monotheism  on 
their  part,  the  so-called  Mosaic  law  being  known  to  be  in  large  part 
of  late  invention  and  of  Babylonian  derivation.^     In  any  case,  the 
mass  of  the  people  were  clearly  image-worshippers.     The  Persians, 
on  the  other  hand,  can  be  taken  with  certainty  to  have  had  in  the 
sixth  century  an  imageless  worship  (though  images  existed  for  other 
purposes),  with  a  supreme  God  set  above  all  others.     The  Magian  or 
Mazdean  creed,  as  we  have  seen,  was  not  very  devoutly  held   by 
Cyrus  ;  but  Dareios  a  generation  later  is  found  holding  it  with  zeal ; 
and  it  cannot  have  grown  in  a  generation  to  the  form  it  then  bore. 
It  must  therefore  be  regarded  as  a  development  of  the  religion  of 
some  section  of  the  "  Iranian  "  race,  centring  as  it  does  round  some 
deities  common  to  the  Vedic  Aryans. 

The  Mazdean  system,  as  we  first  trace  it  in  history,  was  the 

1  S^'^?^-  »•  131- ,  ,.,  2  jer.  xi.  13.  etc.  3  Ezek.  chs.  vi.  viii. 

^.^P.  tne  recent  literature  on  the  recovered  Code  of  Hammurabi. 


66 


PBOGRESS  UNDEE  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS 


religion  of  the  Medes,  a  people  joined  with  the  Persians  proper  under 
Cyrus  ;  and  the  Magi  or  priests  were  one  of  the  seven  tribes  of  the 
Medes/  as  the  Levites  were  one  of  the  tribes  of  Israel.     It  may  then 
be   conjectured   that   the   Magi  were  the  priests  of   a  people  who 
previously  conquered  or  were   conquered   by  the  Medes,  who  had 
then  adopted  their  religion,  as  did  the  Persians  after  their  conquest 
by  or  union  with  the  Medes.     Cyrus,  a  semi-Persian,  may  well  have 
regarded  the  Medes  with  some  racial  distrust,  and,  while  using  them 
as   the   national    priests,   would   naturally   not   be   devout   in    his 
adherence  at  a  time  when  the  two  peoples  were  still  mutually  jealous. 
When,  later,  after  the  assassination  of  his  son  Smerdis  (Bardes  or 
Bardija)  by  the  elder  son,  King  Cambyses,  and  the  death   of   the 
latter,  the  Median  and  Magian  interest  set  up  the  *'  false  Smerdis," 
Persian    conspirators   overthrew   the    pretender    and   crowned   the 
Persian  Dareios  Hystaspis,  marking  their  sense  of  hostility  to  the 
Median  and  Magian  element  by  a  general  massacre  of  Magi.'*    Those 
Magi  who  survived  would  naturally  cultivate  the  more  their  priestly 
influence,  the  poHtical  being  thus  for  the  time  destroyed  ;  though 
they  seem  to  have   stirred  up  a  Median    insurrection  in  the  next 
century   against   Dareios    II.'*     However   that   may  be,  Dareios   I 
became  a  zealous  devotee  of  their  creed,^  doubtless  finding  that  a 
useful  means  of  conciliating  the  Medes  in  general,  who  at  the  outset 
of  his  reign  seem  to  have  given  him  much  trouble.^      The  richest 
part  of  his  dominions^  was  East-Iran,  which  appears  to  have  been 
the  original  home  of  the  worship  of  Ahura-Mazda. 

Such  is  the  view  of  the  case  derivable  from  Herodotos,  who 
remains  the  main  authority ;  but  recent  critics  have  raised  some 
difficulties.  That  the  Magians  were  originally  a  non-Median 
tribe  seems  clear;  Dr.  Tiele  (Outlines,  pp.  163,  165)  even 
decides  that  they  were  certainly  non- Aryan.  Compare  Ed. 
Meyer  (Gesch.  des  Alt.  i,  530,  note,  531,  §§  439,  440),  who 
holds  that  the  Mazdean  system  was  in  its  nature  not  national 
but  abstract,  and  could  therefore  take  in  any  race.  Several 
modern  writers,  however  (Canon  Rawlinson,  ed.  of  Herodotos, 
i,  426-31 ;  Five  Great  Monarchies,  2nd  ed.  ii,  345-55,  iii,  402- 
404  ;  Lenormant,  Chaldean  Magic,  Eng.  tr.  pp.  197,  218-39 ; 
Sayce,  A71C.  Emp.  of  the  East,  p.  248),  represent  the  Magians 
as  not  only  anti- Aryan  (  =  anti-Persian),  but  opposed  to  the 
very  worship  of  Ormazd,  which  is  specially  associated  with 
their  name.     It  seems  difficult  to  reconcile  this  view  with  the 


1  Herod,  i,  101.  ^  Ici.  iii,  79. 

8  Cp.  Grote.  History  of  Greece,  pt.  ii,  ch.  33  (ed.  1888,  iii.  442).  note. 

*  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  i,  505  (§  417).  542  (§  451).  617  (§  515) ;  Tiele.  Outlines,  p.  164. 

6  Herod,  i.  130.  «  Cp.  Herod,  iii.  94.  98;  Grote,  vol.  lii,  p.  448. 

7  Meyer,  as  cited,  i.  505,  530  (§  439) ;  Tiele,  OuUiiies,  pp.  163, 165. 


ANCIENT  PERSIA 


67 


facts ;  at  least  it  involves  the  assumption  of  two  opposed 
sets  of  Magi.  The  main  basis  for  the  theory  seems  to  be  the 
allusion  in  the  Behistun  inscription  of  Dareios  to  some  acts  of 
temple-destruction  by  the  usurping  Magian  Gomates,  brother 
and  controller  of  the  pretender  Smerdis.  (See  the  inscription 
translated  in  Becords  of  the  Past,  i,  111-15.)  This  Meyer  sets 
aside  as  an  unsettled  problem,  without  inferring  that  the 
Magians  were  anti-Mazdean  (cp.  §  449  and  §  511,  note).  As  to 
the  massacre,  however,  Meyer  decides  (i,  613)  that  Herodotos 
blundered,  magnifying  the  killing  of  "the  Magus"  into  a 
slaughter  of  "the  Magi."  But  this  is  one  of  the  few  points  at 
which  Herodotos  is  corroborated  by  Ktesias  (cp.  Grote,  iii,  440, 
note).  A  clue  to  a  solution  may  perhaps  be  found  in  the  facts 
that,  while  the  priestly  system  remained  opposed  to  all  image- 
worship,  Dareios  made  emblematic  images  of  the  Supreme  God 
(Meyer,  i,  213,  617)  and  of  Mithra ;  and  that  Artaxerxes 
Mnemon  later  put  an  image  of  Mithra  in  the  royal  temple  of 
Susa,  besides  erecting  many  images  to  Anaitis.  (RawHnson, 
Five  Great  Monarchies,  iii,  320-21,  360-61.)  There  may  have 
been  opposing  tendencies  ;  the  conquest  of  Babylon  being  likely 
to  have  introduced  new  elements.  The  Persian  art  now  arising 
shows  the  most  marked  Assyrian  influences. 

The  religion  thus  imposed  on  the  Persians  seems  to  have  been 
imageless  by  reason  of  the  simple  defect  of  art  among  its  cultivators  ;^ 
and  to  have  been  monotheistic  only  in  the  sense  that  its  chief  deity 
was  supreme  over  all  others,  including  even  the  great  Evil  Power, 
Ahriman  (Angra  Mainyu).  Its  God-group  included  Mithra,  once 
the  equal  of  Ahura-Mazda,^  and  later  more  prominent  than  he  ;®  as 
well  as  a  Goddess,  Anahita,  apparently  of  Akkadian  origin.  Before 
the  period  of  Cyrus,  the  eastern  part  of  Persia  seems  to  have  been 
but  little  civilized  ;^  and  it  was  probably  there  that  its  original  lack 
of  images  became  an  essential  element  in  the  doctrine  of  its  priests. 
As  we  find  it  in  history,  and  still  more  in  its  sacred  book,  the 
Zendavesta,  which  as  we  have  it  represents  a  late  liturgical  compila- 
tion,**  Mazdeism  is  a  priest-made  religion  rather  than  the  work 
of  one  Zarathustra  or  any  one  reformer ;  and  its  rejection  of  images, 
however  originated,  is  to  be  counted  to  the  credit  of  its  priests,  like 
the  pantheism  or  nominal  monotheism  of  the  Mesopotamian,  Brah- 
manic,  and  Egyptian  religions.  The  original  popular  faith  had 
clearly  been  a  normal  polytheism.^     For  the  rest,  the  Mazdean  ethic 

J  Meyer,  i,  528  (§  438). 
Darmesteter.  The  Zendavesta  (S.  B.  E.  ser.).  vol.  i.  introd.,  p.  Ix  (1st  ed.). 
Rawlinson.  Religions  of  the  Anc  World,  p.  105;  Meyer,  §§  417.  450-51. 
J  Meyer,  i.  507  (§418). 
o«/j  2P'  m?^®'^'^'  ^06-508 ;  Renan,  as  cited  by  him,  p.  508;  Darmesteter.  as  cited,  cc.  iv-ix. 
-tod  ed.;  Tiele,  Outlines,  p.  165.  6  Meyer,  i,  520  (§  428). 


68 


PKOGEESS  UNDER  ANCIENT  BELIGIONS 


has  the  usual  priestly  character  as  regards  the  virtue  it  assigns  to 
sacrifice  ;^  but  otherwise  compares  favourably  with  Brahmanism. 

As  to  this  cult  being  priest-made,  see  Meyer,  i,  523,  540,  541. 
Tiele  {Outlines,  pp.  167,  178)  assumes  a  special  reformation 
such  as  is  traditionally  associated  with  Zarathustra,  holding 
that  either  a  remarkable  man  or  a  sect  must  have  estabHshed 
the  monotheistic  idea.  Meyer  (i,  537)  holds  with  M.  Darmes- 
teter  that  Zarathustra  is  a  purely  mythical  personage,  made 
out  of  a  Storm-God.  Dr.  Menzies  (Hist,  of  Belig.  p.  384) 
holds  strongly  by  his  historic  actuality.  The  problem  is  analo- 
gous to  those  concerning  Moses  and  Buddha;  but  though  the 
historic  case  of  Mohammed  bars  a  confident  decision  in  the 
negative,  the  balance  of  presumption  is  strongly  against  the 
traditional  view.     See  the  author's  Pagan  Christs,  pp.  286-88. 

There  is  no  reason  to  believe,  how^ever,  that  among  the  Persian 
peoples  the  higher  view  of  things  fared  any  better  than  elsewhere.* 
The  priesthood,  however  enlightened  it  may  have  been  in  its  inner 
culture,  never  slackened  the  practice  of  sacrifice  and  ceremonial; 
and  the  worship  of  subordinate  spirits  and  the  propitiation  of 
demons  figured  as  largely  in  their  beliefs  as  in  any  other.  In  time 
the  cult  of  the  Saviour-God  Mithra  came  to  the  front  very  much  as 
did  that  of  Jesus  later ;  and  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other,  despite 
ethical  elements,  superstition  was  furthered.  When,  still  later,  the 
recognition  of  Ahriman  was  found  to  endanger  the  monotheistic 
principle,  an  attempt  seems  to  have  been  made  under  the  Sassanian 
dynasty,  in  our  own  era,  to  save  it  by  positing  a  deity  who  was 
father  of  both  Ahura-Mazda  and  Angra-mainyu  ;^  but  this  last  shght 
effort  of  freethinking  speculation  came  to  nothing.  Social  and 
poUtical  obstacles  determined  the  fate  of  Magian  as  of  other  ancient 
rationalism. 

According  to  Rawlinson,  Zoroastrianism  under  the  Parthian 
(Arsacide)  empire  was  gradually  converted  into  a  complex 
system  of  idolatry,  involving  a  worship  of  ancestors  and  dead 
kings  {Sixth  Orient.  Mon.  p.  399 ;  Seventh  Mon.  pp.  8-9,  56). 
Gutschmid,  however,  following  Justin  (xli,  3,  5-6),  pronounces 
the  Parthians  zealous  followers  of  Zoroastrianism,  dutifully 
obeying  it  in  the  treatment  of  their  dead  {Geschichte  Irans  von 
Alexander  bis  zimi  Untergang  der  Arsakiden,  1888.  pp.  57-58) — 
a  law  not  fully  obeyed  even  by  Dareios  and  his  dynasty 
(Heeren,  Asiatic  Nations,  Eng.  tr.  i,  127).  Rawlinson,  on  the 
contrary,  says  the  Parthians  burned  their  dead—an  abomination 

»  Meyer,  i,  524  (5  433);  Tiele,  Outlines,p.  178;  Darmesteter.  Ormazd  et  Ahriman,  1877. 
PP.  7-18.  a  Meyer,  i.  §450  (p.  641).  ^^  ..    ^      ^. 

8  Tiele.  Outlines,  p.  167.  Cp.  Lenormant  (Chaldean  Magic,  p.  229).  who  attributes  the 
heresy  to  immoral  Median  Magi;  and  Spiegel  Uvesta,  1852.  i.  271),  who  considers  it  a 
derivation  from  Bebylon. 


- 


EGYPT 


69 


to  Zoroastrians.  Certainly  the  name  of  the  Parthian  King 
Mithradates  implies  acceptance  of  Mazdeism.  At  the  same 
time  Kawlinson  admits  that  in  Persia  itself,  under  the  Parthian 
dynasty,  Zoroastrianism  remained  pure  {Seventh  Mon.  pp.  9-10), 
and  that,  even  when  ultimately  it  became  mixed  up  with 
normal  polytheism,  the  dualistic  faith  and  the  supremacy  of 
Ormazd  were  maintained  {Five  Monarchies,  2nd  ed.  iii,  362-63  ; 
cp.  Darmesteter,  Zeiidavesta,  i,  Ixvi,  2nd  ed.). 

§  5.  Egypt 

The  relatively  rich   store   of   memorials   left   by  the   Egyptian 
religions  yields  us  hardly  any  more  direct  light  on  the  growth  of 
religious   rationalism   than   do   those   of    Mesopotamia,  though    it 
supplies  much  fuller  proof  that  such  a  growth  took  place.     All  that 
is  clear  is  that  the  comparison  and  competition  of  henotheistic  cults 
there  as  elsewhere  led  to  a  measure  of  relative  skepticism,  which 
took  doctrinal  shape  in  a  loose  monism  or  pantheism.     The  language 
is  often  monotheistic,  but  never,  in  the  early  period,  is  polytheism 
excluded ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  affirmed  in  the  same  breath.^     The 
alternate  ascendancy  of   different   dynasties,  with   different   Gods, 
forced  on  the  process,  which  included,  as  in  Babylon,  a  priestly 
grouping  of  deities  in  families  and  triads^ — the  latter  arrangement, 
indeed,  being  only  a  return  to  a  primitive  African  conception.^     It 
involved  further  a  syncretism  or  a  combining  of  various  Gods  into 
one,^  and  also  an  esoteric  explanation  of  the  God-myths  as  symbolical 
of  natural   processes,  or  else  of  mystical  ideas.^     There  are  even 
evidences  of  quasi-atheism  in  the  shape  of  materialistic  hymns  on 
Lucretian  Hnes.^     At  the  beginning  of  the  New  Kingdom  (1500  B.C.) 
it  had  been  fully  established  for  all  the  priesthoods  that  the  Sun- 
God  was  the  one  real  God,  and  that  it  was  he  who  was  worshipped 
in  all  the  others.'     He  in  turn  was  conceived  as  a  pervading  spiritual 
force,  of  anthropomorphic  character  and  strong  moral  bias.^     This 
seems  to  have  been  by  way  of  a  purification  of  one  pre-eminent 
compound  deity,  Amen-Ka,  to  begin  with,  whose  model  was  followed 
in  other  cults.^     "Theocracies    of   this   kind   could  not  have  been 

^  Le  Page  Renouf,  Hibbert  Lectures  on  Relig.  of  Anc.  Egypt,  2nd  ed.  p.  92  ;  Wiedemann, 
Religion  of  the  Ancient  Egyptians,  Eng.  tr.  1897,  p.  109.  Cp.  p.  260.  Renouf  (pp.  93-103) 
supplies  an  interesting  analysis. 

*  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  i,  83 ;  Wiedemann,  as  cited,  p.  103  sq. 

J  Cp.  Major  Glyn  Leonard,  The  Lower  Niger  and  its  Tribes,  1906,  pp.  354,  417,  433. 

*  Wiedemann,  as  cited,  p.  136. 

I  Meyer,  p.  81  (§  66);  Tiele,  Hist,  of  the  Egypt.  Relig.  Eng.  tr.,  pp.  119, 154. 

°  Le  Page  Renouf.  Hibbert  Lectures,  2nd  ed.  p.  240. 

"  Meyer,  Geschichte  des  Alien  Egyptens,  in  Oncken's  series,  1877,  B.  iii,  Kap.  3,  p.  249; 
Gesch.  des  Alt.  i.  109;  Tiele,  Egypt.  Relig.  pp.  149,  151,  157;  Maspero,  Hist.  anc.  des 
peuples  de.  Vorient,  46  ed.,  pp.  278-80:  Le  Page  Renouf,  as  cited,  pp.  215-30;  Wiedemann, 
pp.  12, 13, 301 ;  Erman,  Handbook  of  Egyptian  Religion,  Eng.  tr.  1907,  p.  57. 

«  Erman,  pp.  59,  60.  9  Tiele.  Egypt.  Rel.  pp.  153, 155, 156. 


70 


PKOGKESS  UNDER  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS 


formed  unconsciously.  Men  knew  perfectly  well  that  they  were 
taking  a  great  step  in  advance  of  their  fathers."*  There  had 
occurred,  in  short,  among  the  educated  and  priestly  class  a  con- 
siderable development,  going  on  through  many  centuries,  alike  in 
philosophical  and  in  ethical  thought ;  the  ethics  of  the  Egyptian 
"  Book  of  the  Dead  "  being  quite  as  altruistic  as  those  of  any  portion 
of  the  much  later  Christian  Gospels.'*  Such  a  development  could 
arise  only  in  long  periods  of  peace  and  law-abiding  life  ;  though  it 
is  found  to  be  accelerated  after  the  Persian  conquest,  which  would 
force  upon  the  Egyptian  priesthood  new  comparisons  and  accom- 
modations."  And  yet  all  this  was  done  "  without  ever  sacrificing 
the  least  particle  of  the  beliefs  of  the  past."^  The  popular  poly- 
theism, resting  on  absolute  ignorance,  was  indestructible  ;  and  the 
most  philosophic  priests  seem  never  to  have  dreamt  of  unsettling  it, 
though,  as  we  shall  see,  a  masterful  king  did. 

An  eminent  Egyptologist  has  written  that,  "  whatever  literary 
treasures  may  be  brought  to  light  in  the  future  as  the  result  of 
excavations  in  Egypt,  it  is  most  improbable  that  w^e  shall  ever 
receive  from  that  country  any  ancient  Egyptian  work  which  can 
properly  be  classed  among  the  literature  of  atheism  or  freethought ; 
the  Egyptian  might  be  more  or  less  religious  according  to  his  nature 
and  temperament,  but,  judging  from  the  writings  of  his  priests  and 
teachers  tvhich  are  now  in  our  hands,  the  man  who  was  without 
religion  and  God  in  some  form  or  other  was  most  rare,  if  not 
unknown."^  It  is  not  clear  w^hat  significance  the  writer  attaches 
to  this  statement.  Unquestionably  the  mass  of  the  Egyptians 
w^ere  always  naif  believers  in  all  that  was  given  them  as  religion ; 
and  among  the  common  people  even  the  minds  which,  as  elsewhere, 
varied  from  the  norm  of  credulity  would  be  too  much  cowed  by  the 
universal  parade  of  religion  to  impugn  it ;  while  their  ignorance  and 
general  crudity  of  life  would  preclude  coherent  critical  thought  on 
the  subject.  But  to  conclude  that  among  the  priesthood  and  the 
upper  classes  there  was  never  any  "  freethinking  "  in  the  sense  of 
disbelief  in  the  popular  and  official  religion,  even  up  to  the  point  of 
pantheism  or  atheism,  is  to  ignore  the  general  lesson  of  culture 
history  elsewhere.  Necessarily  there  was  no  '*  literature  of  atheism 
or  freethought."     Such  literature  could  have  no  public,  and,  as  a 

1  Tiele,  p.  157. 

2  Brugsch.   Religion  und   Mythologie  der  alien  Aegypter,  1884:   1  Haifte.  pp.  90-91; 
Kuenen,  Religion  of  Israel,  Eng.  trans,  i,  395-97  :  Tiele.  pp.  226-30  ;  Erman,  pp.  71, 103-105. 

8  Cp.  Wiedemann,  p.  302. 

*  Tiele,  pp.  114, 118, 154.    Cp.  Meyer.  Geschichte  des  Alterthiims,  i,  101-102  (§  85).    Wiede- 
mann, p.  260. 

^  Dr.  Wallis  Budge,  Egyptian  Magic,  1899,  end. 


EGYPT 


71 


/ 


> 
/ 


menace  to  the  wealth  and  status  of  the  priesthood,  would  have 
brought  death  on  the  writer.  But  in  such  a  multitudinous  priest- 
hood there  must  have  been,  at  some  stages,  many  who  realized  the 
mummery  of  the  routine  religion,  and  some  who  transcended  the 
commonplaces  of  theistic  thought.  From  the  former,  if  not  from 
the  latter,  would  come  esoteric  explanations  for  the  benefit  of  the 
more  intelligent  of  the  laity  of  the  official  class,  who  could  read ; 
and  it  is  idle  to  decide  that  deeper  unbelief  was  privately 
**  unknown." 

It  is  contended,  as  against  the  notion  of  an  esoteric  and  an 
exoteric  doctrine,  that  the  scribes  **  did  not,  as  is  generally  supposed, 
keep  their  new  ideas  carefully  concealed,  so  as  to  leave  to  the 
multitude  nothing  but  coarse  superstitions.  The  contrary  is  evident 
from  a  number  of  inscriptions  w4iich  can  be  read  by  anybody,  and 
from  books  which  anyone  can  buy."  ^  But  the  assumption  that 
"anyone"  could  read  or  buy  books  in  ancient  Egypt  is  a  serious 
misconception.  Even  in  our  own  civilization,  where  "anyone"  can 
presumably  buy  freethought  journals  or  works  on  anthropology  and 
the  history  of  religions,  the  mass  of  the  people  are  so  placed  that 
only  by  chance  does  such  knowledge  reach  them  ;  and  multitudes 
are  so  little  cultured  that  they  would  pass  it  by  with  uncomprehend- 
ing indifference  were  it  put  before  them.  In  ancient  Egypt,  however, 
the  great  mass  of  the  people  could  not  even  read;  and  no  man 
thought  of  teaching  them. 

This  fact  alone  goes  far  to  harmonize  the  ancient  Greek 
testimonies  as  to  the  existence  of  an  esoteric  teaching  in  Egypt 
with  Tide's  contention  to  the  contrary.  See  the  pros  and  co7is 
set  forth  and  confusedly  pronounced  upon  by  Professor  Chan- 
tepie  de  la  Saussaye,  Manual  of  the  Science  of  Beligion,  Eng. 
tr.  pp.  400-401.  We  know  from  Diodorus  (i,  81),  what  we 
could  deduce  from  our  other  knowledge  of  Egyptian  conditions, 
that,  apart  from  the  priests  and  the  ojfficial  class,  no  one 
received  any  literary  culture  save  in  some  degree  the  higher 
grades  of  artificers,  who  needed  some  little  knowledge  of  letters 
for  their  w^ork  in  connection  with  monuments,  sepulchres, 
mummy-cases,  and  so  forth.  Cp.  Maspero,  Hist.  anc.  des 
peuples  de  V orient,  p.  285.  Even  the  images  of  the  higher 
Gods  were  shown  to  the  people  only  on  festival- days  (Meyer 
Gesch.  des  Alter thuvis,  i,  82). 

The  Egyptian  civilization  was  thus,  through  all  its  stages, 
obviously  conditioned  by  its  material  basis,  which  in  turn  ultimately 
determined  its  polity,  there  being  no  higher  contemporary  civilization 

1  Tiele,  p.  157.    Cp.  p.  217. 


72 


PEOGRESS  UNDEE  ANCIENT  EELIGIONS 


to  lead  ifc  otherwise.  An  abundant,  cheap,  and  regular  food  supply 
maintained  in  perpetuity  a  dense  and  easily-exploited  population, 
whose  lot  through  thousands  of  years  was  toil,  ignorance,  political 
subjection,  and  a  primitive  mental  life/  For  such  a  population 
general  ideas  had  no  light  and  no  comfort ;  for  them  was  the  simple 
human  worship  of  the  local  natural  Gods  or  the  presiding  Gods  of 
the  kingdom,  alike  confusedly  conceived  as  great  powers,  figured 
often  as  some  animal,  which  for  the  primeval  mind  signified  indefinite 
capacity  and  unknown  possibility  of  power  and  knowledge.**  Myths 
and  not  theories,  magic  and  not  ethics,  were  their  spiritual  food, 
albeit  their  peaceful  animal  lives  conformed  sufficiently  to  their 
code.  And  the  life-conditions  of  the  mass  determined  the  policy  of 
priest  and  king.  The  enormous  priestly  revenue  came  from  the 
people,  and  the  king's  power  rested  on  both  orders. 

As  to  this  revenue  see  Diodorus  Siculus,  i,  73 ;  and  Erman, 
Handbook  of  Egyptian  Beligion,  Eng.  tr.  1907,  p.  71.  Accord- 
ing to  Diodorus,  a  third  of  the  whole  land  of  the  kingdom  was 
allotted  to  the  priesthoods.  About  a  sixth  of  the  whole  land 
seems  to  have  been  given  to  the  Gods  by  Eamessu  III  alone, 
besides  113,000  slaves,  490,000  cattle,  and  immense  wealth  of 
other  kinds  (FHnders  Petrie,  Hist,  of  Egypt,  iii  (1905),  154-55). 
The  bulk  of  the  possessions  here  enumerated  seems  to  have 
gone  to  the  temple  of  Amen  at  Thebes  and  that  of  the  Sun-God 
at  Heliopolis  (Erman,  as  cited).  It  is  to  be  noted,  however, 
that  the  priestly  order  included  all  the  physicians,  lawyers, 
clerks,  schoolmasters,  sculptors,  painters,  land  measurers,  drug 
sellers,  conjurers,  diviners,  and  undertakers.  Wilkinson,  Ancient 
Egyptians,  ed.  Birch,  1878,  i,  157-58 ;  Sharpe,  Egypt.  Mythol. 
p.  26;  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  i,  §  68.  "The  sacred  domains 
included  herds  of  cattle,  birds,  fishermen,  serfs,  and  temple 
servants"  (Flinders  Petrie,  as  cited,  iii,  42).  When  the 
revenues  assigned  for  a  temple  of  Seti  I  were  found  to  be 
misappropriated,  and  the  building  stopped,  his  son,  Eamessu  II, 
assigned  a  double  revenue  for  the  completion  of  the  work  and 
the  worship  (id.).  Like  the  later  priesthood  of  Christendom, 
that  of  Egypt  forged  documents  to  establish  claims  to  revenue 
(id.  p.  69).  Captured  cattle  in  great  quantities  were  bestowed 
on  temples  of  Amen  {id.  p.  149),  whose  priests  were  especially 
grasping  (id.  p.  153).  Thus  in  the  one  reign  of  Eamessu  III 
they  received  fifty-six  towns  of  Egypt  and  nine  of  Syria  and 
62,000  serfs  {id.  p.  155). 

This  was  fully  seen  when  King  Akhunaton  (otherwise  Echnaton, 
or  Icheniton,  or  Akhunaton,  or  Akhunaten,  or  Chuenaten,  or  Khu-en- 


1  Cp.  Maspero.  as  cited,  pp.  274-76. 


*  Meier,  i,  72. 


EGYPT 


73 


aten,  or  Kku-n-aten,  or  Khouniatonou,  or  Khounaton  !)  =  Amen- 
hetep  or  Amun-hotep  (or  Amenophis)  IV,  moved  by  monotheistic  zeal, 
departed  so  far  from  the  customary  royal  policy  as  to  put  under  the 
ban  all  deities  save  that  he  had  chosen  for  himself,  repudiating  the 
God-name  Amen  in  his  own  name,  and  making  one  from  that  of  his 
chosen  Sun-God,  Aten  ("the  sun's  disk")  or  Aton  or  Atonou^  or 
Iton^  (latterly  held  to  be  =  the  Syrian  Adon, "  the  Lord,"  symbohzed 
by  the  sun's  disk).     There  is  reason  to  think  that  his  was  not  a 
mere  Sun-worship,  but  the  cult  of  a  deity,  "  Lord  of  the  Disk,"  who 
looked  through  the  sun's  disk  as  through  a  window.^     In  any  inter- 
pretation, however,  the  doctrine  was  wholly  inacceptable  to  a  priest- 
hood whose  multitudinous  shrines  its  success  would  have  emptied. 
Of  all  the  host  of  God-names,  by  one  account  only  that  of  the  old 
Sun-God  Ea-Harmachis  was  spared,*  as  being  held  identical  with 
that  of  Aten  ;  and  by  one  account'^  the  disaffection  of  priests  and 
people  rose  to  the  point  of  open  rebellion.     At  length  Akhunaton, 
"  Glory  of  the  Disk,"  as  he  elected  to  name  himself,  built  for  himself 
and  his  God  a  new  capital  city  in  Middle  Egypt,  Akhet- Aten  (or 
Khut-Aten),  the  modern  Tell-el-Amarna,  where  he  assembled  around 
him  a  society  after  his  own  heart,  and  carried  on  his  Aten-worship, 
while   his   foreign    empire   was   crumbling.      The   "Tell-el-Amarna 
tablets  "  were  found  in  the  ruins  of  his  city,  which  was  deserted  a 
generation    after   his   death.     Though   the   king   enforced   his   will 
while  he  lived,  his  movement  "  bore  no  fruit  whatever,"  his  policy 
being  reversed  after  his  family  had  died  out,  and  his  own  monuments 
and  capital  city  razed  to  the  ground  by  orthodox  successors.®     In 
the  same  way  the  earlier  attempt  of  the  ahen  Hyksos  to  suppress 
the  native  polytheism  and  image- worship  had  come  to  nothing.^ 

The  history  of  Akhunaton  is  established  by  the  later 
Egyptology.  Sharpe  makes  no  mention  of  it,  though  the 
point  had  been  discussed  from  1839  onwards.  Cp.  Lepsius, 
Letters  from  Egypt,  etc.,  Bohn  trans.  1853,  p.  27 ;  and  Nott 
and  Gliddon's  Types  of  Mankind,  1854,  p.  147,  and  Indigenous 
Baces  of  the  Earth,  1857,  pp.  116-17,  in  both  of  which  places 


J  Maspero'B  spelling.  2  von  Bissing's  spelling. 

^  De  Garis  Da  vies,  The  Tombs  of  Amarna. 

f  Maspero  {Hist.  anc.  des  peuples  de  V orient,  ed.  1905,  p.  251)  says  he  respected  also 
Osiris  and  Horus. 

*  Brugsch,  Egypt  under  the  Pharaohs,  ed.  1891,  p.  216.  Maspero  (as  cited,  p.  250) 
recognizes  no  such  revolt. 

6  Maspero,  Hist.  anc.  ds  Vorient,  7e  6d.  pp.  248-54;  Brugsch,  Hist,  of  Egypt  under  the 
■Fharaohs,  Eng.  trans,  ed.  1S91,  ch.  x;  Meyer,  Geschichte  des  alten  Aegyptens,  B.  iii. 
Kap.  4,  5;  Qesch.  des  Alterthums,  i,  271-74;  Tiele,  pp.  161-65;  Flinders  Petrie,  History  of 
Egypt,  iii  (1905),  10;  Wiedemann,  pp.  35-39 ;  Erman,  pp.  61-70;  L.  W.  King  and  H.  H.  Hall. 
Egypt  and  Western  Asia  in  the  Light  of  Recent  Discoveries,  1907,  pp.  383-87;  F.  W.  von 
Bissing,  Geschichte  Aegyptens  in  Umriss,  1904,  pp.  52-53. 

7  Tiele,  p.  144  ;  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  i,  135. 


74  PEOGRESS  UNDER  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS 

will  be  found  the  king's  portrait.  See  last  reference  for  the  idle 
theory  that  he  had  been  emasculated,  as  to  which  the  confuta- 
tion by  Wiedemann  (Aegyptische  Geschichte,  p.  397,  cited  by 
Budge,  Hist  of  Egypt,  1902.  iv,  128)  is  sufficient.  In  pomt  of 
fact,  he  figures  in  the  monuments  as  father  of  three  or  seven 
children  (Wiedemann,  Bel  of  Anc.  Eg,  p.  37  ;  Erman,  p.  69  ; 

Budge,  iv,  123,  127). 

Dispute  still  reigns  as  to  the  origm  of  the  cult  to  which  he 
devoted  himself.  A  theory  of  its  nature  and  derivation,  based 
on  that  of  Mr.  J.  H.  Breasted  {History  of  Egypt,  1906,  p.  396), 
is  set  forth  in  an  article  by  Mr.  A.  E.  P.  Weigall  on  Religion 
and  Empire  in  Ancient  Egypt"  in  the  Qmrterly  Review,  Jan. 
1909.  On  this  view  Aten  or  Aton  is  simply  Adon=  the  Lord 
—a  name  ultimately  identified  with  Adonis,  the  Syrian  Sun-God 
and  Vegetation-God.  The  king's  grandfather  was  appai^ntly 
a  Syrian,  presumably  of  royal  lineage  ;  and  Queen  Tu  or  Thiy, 
the  king's  mother,  who  with  her  following  had  wrought  a 
revolution  against  the  priesthood  of  Amen,  brought  him  up  a-. 
a  devotee  of  her  own  faith.  On  her  death  he  became  more  and 
more  fanatical,  getting  out  of  touch  with  people  and  priesthood, 
so  that  "his  empire  fell  to  pieces  rapidly."  Letters  still  exist 
(among  the  Tell-el-Amarna  tablets)  which  were  sent  by  his 
generals  in  Asia,  vainly  imploring  help.  He  died  at  the  age  of 
twenty-eight ;  and  if  the  body  lately  found,  and  supposed  to  be 
his.  is  really  so,  his  malady  was  water  on  the  brain. 

Mr.  Breasted,  finding  that  Akhunaton's  God  is  described  by 
him  in  inscriptions  as  "  the  father  and  the  mother  of  all  that  he 
made,"  ranks  the  cult  very  high  in  the  scale  of  .theism 
Mr  Weigall  (art.  cited,  p.  60;  so  also  Budge,  Hist,  iv,  llo) 
compares  a  hymn  of  the  king's  with  Ps.  civ,  24  sg.,  and  praises 
it  accordingly.  The  parallel  is  certainly  close,  but  the  document 
is  not  thereby  certificated  as  philosophic.  On  the  strength  of 
the  fact  that  Akhunaton  "  had  dreamed  that  the  Aton  religion 
would  bind  the  nations  together,"  Mr.  Weigall  credits  him  with 
harbouring  "  an  illusive  ideal  towards  which,  thirty-two  cen- 
turies later,  mankind  is  still  struggling  in  vain"  (p.  66).  The 
ideal  of  subjugating  the  nations  to  one  God.  cherished  later  by 
Jews,  and  still  later  by  Moslems,  is  hardly  to  be  thus  identified 
with  the  modern  ideal  of  international  peace.  Brugsch,  in  turn, 
credits  the  king  with  having  "  willingly  received  the  teaching 
about  the  one  God  of  Light,"  while  admitting  that  Aten  simply 
meant  the  sun's  disk  {Hist,  of  Egypt,  1-vol.  ed.  p.  216). 

Maspero,  again,  declares  Tii  to  have  been  an  Egyptian  of  old 
stock,  and  the  God  "  Atonou  "  to  have  been  the  deity  of  her 
tribe  {Hist,  anc,  as  cited,  p.  249) ;  and  he  pronounces  the  cult 
probably  the  most  ancient  variant  of  the  rehgions  of  Ra  (p.  250j. 
Messrs.  King  and  Hall,  who  also  do  not  accept  the  theory  of  a 
Syrian  derivation,  coincide  with  Messrs.  Breasted  and  Weigall 


EGYPT 


75 


J 


in  extoUing  Akhunaton's  creed.  In  a  somewhat  summary 
fashion  they  pronounce  (work  cited,  p.  383)  that,  "  given  an 
ignorance  of  the  true  astronomical  character  of  the  sun,  we  see 
how  eminently  rational  a  religion  "  was  this.  The  conception 
of  a  moving  window  in  the  heavens,  which  appears  to  be  the 
core  of  it,  seems  rather  a  darkening  than  a  development  of  the 
**  philosophical  speculations  of  the  priests  of  the  Sun  at  Helio- 
polis,"  from  which  it  is  held  by  Messrs.  King  and  Hall  to  have 
been  derived.    Similarly  ill- warranted  is  the  decision  (id.  p.  384) 

that  in  Akhunaton's  heresy  "we  see the  highest  attitude 

[?  altitude]  to  which  religious  ideas  had  attained  before  the  days 
of  the  Hebrew  prophets."  AHke  in  India  and  in  Egypt,  pan- 
theistic ideas  of  a  larger  scope  than  his  or  those  of  the  Hebrew 
prophets  had  been  attained  before  Akhunaton's  time. 

Dr.  E.  A.  Wallis  Budge,  on  the  other  hand,  points  out  that 
the  cult  of  the  Aten  is  really  an  ancient  one  in  Egypt,  and  was 
carried  on  by  Thothmes  III,  father  of  Amen-hetep  II,  a  century 
before  Akhunaton  (Amen-hetep  IV),  its  "  original  home"  being 
HeHopolis  {History  of  Egypt,  1902,  iv,  48,  119).  So  also  von 
Bissing,  Gesch.  Aeg.  in  Umriss,  p.  52  (reading  "Iton"). 
Rejecting  the  view  that  "Aten"  is  only  a  form  of  "  Adon," 
Dr.  Budge  pronounces  that  "  as  far  as  can  be  seen  now  the 
worship  of  Aten  was  something  like  a  glorified  materialism  " — 
whatever  that  may  be — "  which  had  to  be  expounded  by  priests 
who  performed  ceremonies  similar  to  those  which  belonged  to 
the  old  Heliopolitan  sun-worship,  without  any  connection 
whatsoever  with  the  worship  of  Yahweh  ;  and  a  being  of  the 
character  of  the  Semitic  God  Adon  had  no  place  in  it  any- 
where." Further,  he  considers  that  it  "  contained  no  doctrines 
on  the  unity  or  oneness  of  Aten  similar  to  those  which  are 
found  in  the  hymns  to  Ra,  and  none  of  the  beautiful  ideas  on 
the  future  life  with  which  we  are  familiar  from  the  hymns  and 
other  compositions  in  the  Book  of  the  Dead  "  {lb.  pp.  120-21). 

By  Prof.  Flinders  Petrie  Queen  Tii  or  Thiy  is  surmised  to 
have  been  of  Armenian  origin  (see  Budge,  iv,  96-98,  as  to  her 
being  "  Mesopotamian  ")  ;  and  Prof.  Petrie,  like  Mr.  Breasted, 
has  inferred  that  she  brought  w^ith  her  the  cult  of  which  her 
son  became  the  devotee.  (So  also  Brugsch,  p.  214.)  Messrs. 
King  and  Hall  recognize  that  the  cult  had  made  some  headway 
before  Akhunaton  took  it  up ;  but  deny  that  there  is  any 
reason  for  supposing  Queen  Tii  to  have  been  of  foreign  origin  ; 
adding  :  "  It  seems  undoubted  that  the  Aten  cult  was  a  develop- 
ment of  pure  Egyptian  religious  thought."  Certainty  on  such 
an  issue  seems  hardly  possible ;  but  it  may  be  said,  as  against 
the  theory  of  a  foreign  importation,  that  there  is  no  evidence 
whatever  of  any  high  theistic  cult  of  Adonis  in  Syria  at  the 
period  in  question.  Adonis  was  primarily  a  Vegetation-God ; 
and  the  older  view  that  Aten  simply  means  "  the  sun's  disk" 


\ 


76  PROGEESS  UNDER  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS 

is  hardly  disposed  of.  It  is  noteworthy  that  under  Akhtmaton's 
patronage  Egyptian  sculpture  enjoyed  a  term  of  freedom  from 
the  paralyzing  convention  which  reigned  before  and  after 
(King  and  Hall,  as  cited,  pp.  383-84).  This  seems  to  have 
been  the  result  of  the  innovating  taste  of  the  king  (Budge, 
Hist,  iv,  124-26). 

As  the  centuries  lapsed  the  course  of  popular  religion  was  rather 
downward  than  upward,  if  it  can  be  measured  by  the  multiplication 
of  superstitions.^  When  under  the  Ramesside  dynasty  the  high- 
priests  of  Amen  became  by  marriage  with  the  royal  family  the 
virtual  rulers,  sacerdotalism  went  from  bad  to  worse.'^  The  priests, 
who  held  the  allegorical  key  to  mythology,  seem  to  have  been  the 
main  multipliers  of  magic  and  fable,  mummery,  ceremonial,  and 
symbol;  and  they  jealously  guarded  their  specialty  against  lay 
competition.*  Esoteric  and  exoteric  doctrine  flourished  in  their 
degrees  side  by  side,^  the  instructed  few  apparently  often  accepting 
or  acting  upon  both  ;  and  primitive  rites  all  the  while  flourished  on 
the  level  of  the  lowest  savagery,''  though  the  higher  ethical  teaching 
even  improves,  as  in  India. 

Conflicts,  conquests,  and  changes  of  dynasties  seem  to  have 
made  little  difference  in  the  life  of  the  common  people.^  Rehgion 
was  the  thread  by  which  any  ruler  could  lead  them  ;  and  after  the 
brief  destructive  outbreak  of  Cambyses,'  himself  at  first  tolerant, 
the  Persian  conquerors  allowed  the  old  faiths  to  subsist,  caring 
only,  like  their  predecessors,  to  prevent  strife  between  the  cults 
which  would  not  tolerate  each  other.^  The  Ptolemies  are  found 
adopting  and  using  the  native  cults  as  the  native  kings  had  done 
ages  before  them  ;^  and  in  the  learned  Greek-speaking  society 
created  by  their  dynasty  at  Alexandria  there  can  have  been  at  least 
as  little  concrete  belief  as  prevailed  in  the  priesthood  of  the  older 
civiUzation.  It  developed  a  pantheistic  philosophy  which  ultimately, 
in  the  hands  of  Plotinus,  compares  very  well  with  that  of  the 
Upanishads  and  of  later  European  systems.     But  this  was  a  hot- 

1  "  We  do  not  find  magic  predominant  [in  the  tales]  until  the  Ptolemaic  age.  At  that 
time  the  physical  magic  of  the  early  times  reappears  in  full  force"  (Petrie.  Behgton  and 
Cotiscie7ice  in  Aiicient  Egypt,  1898.  p.  29.  Cp.  Maspero.  p.  286;  Budge,  Egyptian  Magic, 
pp.  61.233). 

2  Petrie.  Htsf.  lii,  174-75, 180-  .  .  -,.  ,  ,„.  «-  ,„..  r.^- 

8  Tiele  pp.  180-82  ;  Meyer.  Gesch.  des  Alt.  1. 140-43.  *  Tiele.  pp.  184-85, 196.  217. 

fi  Herodotos.  ii,  48.  60-61.  etc.    Cp.  Maspero,  p.  286.  i-,    *v,    *U4       * 

6  '•  The  Osiride  and  Cosmic  Gods  rose  in  importance  as  time  went  on,  while  the  Abstract 
Gods  continually  sank  on  the  whole.  Thisragrees  with  the  general  idea  that  the  imported 
Gods  have  to  yield  their  position  gradually  to  the  older  and  more  deeply-rooted  faiths" 

(Petrie.  as  last  cited,  p.  95).  ^  ^      ^t.  i,       ^ 

7  The  familiar  narrative  of  Herodotos  is  put  in  doubt  by  the  monuments.  Sayce, 
Ancient  Empires,  p.  246.    But  cp.  Meyer,  i,  611  {§  508). 

®  Tiele  p  158 

9  See  figures  209,  212,  221,  235.  242,  249.  250,  in  Sharpe'a  Hist,  of  Egypt,  7th  ed. 


EGYPT 


77 


house  flower ;  and  in  the  open  world  outside,  where  Roman  rule 
had  broken  the  power  of  the  ancient  priesthood  and  Greek  immi- 
gration had  overlaid  the  native  element,  Christianity  found  an  easy 
entrance,  and  in  a  declining  society  flourished  at  its  lowest  level.* 
The  ancient  ferment,  indeed,  produced  many  stirrings  of  relative 
freethought  in  the  form  of  Christian  heresies  to  be  noted  hereafter  ; 
one  of  the  most  notable  being  that  of  Arius,  who,  like  his  antagonits 
Athanasius,  was  an  Alexandrian.  But  the  cast  of  mind  which 
elaborated  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity  is  as  directly  an  outcome  of 
Egyptian  culture-history  as  that  which  sought  to  rationalize  the 
dogma  by  making  the  popular  deity  a  created  person  ;  ^  and  the 
long  and  manifold  internecine  struggles  of  the  sects  were  the  due 
duplication  of  the  older  strifes  between  the  worshippers  of  the 
various  sacred  animals  in  the  several  cities.^  In  the  end  the  entire 
population  was  but  so  much  clay  to  take  the  impress  of  the  Arab 
conquerors,  with  their  new  fanatic  monotheism  standing  for  the 
minimum  of  rational  thought. 

For  the  rest,  the  higher  forms  of  the  ancient  religion  had  been 
able  to  hold  their  own  till  they  were  absolutely  suppressed,  with  the 
philosophic  schools,  by  the  Byzantine  government,  which  at  the 
same  time  marked  the  end  of  the  ancient  civilization  by  destroying 
or  scattering  the  vast  collection  of  books  in  the  Serapeion,  annihilat- 
ing at  once  the  last  pagan  cult  and  the  stored  treasure  of  pagan 
culture.  With  that  culture  too,  however,  there  had  been  associated 
to  the  last  the  boundless  credulity  which  had  so  long  kept  it  company. 
In  the  second  century  of  our  era,  under  the  Antonines,  we  have 
Apuleius  teUing  of  Isis  worshipped  as  "  Nature,  parent  of  things, 
mistress  of  all  elements,  the  primordial  birth  of  the  ages,  highest  of 
divinities,  queen  of  departed  spirits,  first  of  the  heavenly  ones,  the 
single  manifestation  of  all  Gods  and  Goddesses,"  who  rules  all 
things  in  earth  and  heaven,  and  who  stands  for  the  sole  deity 
worshipped  throughout  the  world  under  many  names  ;  *  the  while 
her  worshipper  cherishes  all  manner  of  the  wildest  superstitions, 
which  even  the  subtle  philosophy  of  the  Alexandrian  Neo-Platonic 
school  did  not  discard.  All  ahke,  with  the  machinery  of  exorcism, 
were  passed  on  to  the  worship  of  the  Christian  Queen  of  Heaven, 
leaving  out  only  the  pantheism ;  and  when  that  worship  in  turn 
was  overthrown,  the  One  God  of  Islam  enrolled  in  his  train  the 

1  Cp.  Sharpe,  ii,  287-95 ;  Budge,  Egyptian  Magic,  p.  64. 

2  Compare  the  orthodox  view  of  Bishop  Westcott,  Essays  in  tlie  History  of  Religious 
Thought  in  the  West,  1891,  pp.  197-200. 

3  These  fights  had  not  ceased  even  in  the  time  of  Julian  (Sharpe,  ii,  280).    Cp.  Juvenal, 
Sat.  XV,  33  sq. 

*  Metamorphoses,  B.  xi. 


\ 


?8 


PBOGEESS  UNDEK  ANCIENT  KELIGIONS 


1 


same  host  of  ancient  hallucinations.^     The  fatality  of  circumstance 
was  supreme. 

§  6.  Phoenicia 

Of  the  inner  workings  of  thought  in  the  Phoenician  rehgion  we 
know  even  less,  directly,  than  can  be  gathered  as  to  any  other 
ancient  system  of  similar  notoriety,^  so  completely  did  the  Eoman 
conquest  of  Carthage,  and  the  Macedonian  conquest  of  Tyre  and 
Sidon,  blot  out  the  Hterary  remains  of  their  peoples.  Yet  there  are 
some  indirect  clues  of  a  remarkable  sort. 

It  is  hardly  to  be  doubted,  in  the  first  place,  that  Punic  specula- 
tion took  the  same  main  lines  as  the  early  thought  of  Egypt  and 
Mesopotamia,  whose  cultures,  mixing  in  Syria  as  early  as  the 
fifteenth  century  B.C.,  had  laid  the  basis  of  the  later  Phoenician 
civilization.*  The  simple  fact  that  among  the  Syro-Phoenicians 
was  elaborated  the  alphabet  adopted  by  all  the  later  civihzations  of 
the  West  almost  implies  a  special  measure  of  intellectual  progress. 
We  can  indeed  trace  the  normal  movement  of  syncretism  in  the 
cults,  and  the  normal  tendency  to  improve  their  ethics.  The  theory 
of  an  original  pure  monotheism*  is  no  more  tenable  here  than  any- 
where else  ;  we  can  see  that  the  general  designation  of  the  chief 
God  of  any  city,  usually  recognizable  as  a  Sun-God,  by  a  title 
rather  than  a  name,^  though  it  pointed  to  a  general  worship  of  a 
pre-eminent  power,  in  no  sense  excluded  a  behef  in  minor  powers, 
ranking  even  as  deities.  It  did  not  do  so  in  the  admittedly  poly- 
theistic period ;  and  it  cannot  therefore  be  supposed  to  have  done 
so  previously. 

The  chief  Phoenician  Gods,  it  is  admitted,  were  everywhere 
called  by  one  or  several  of  the  titles  Baal  (Lord),  Ram  or 
Rimmon  (High),  Melech  or  Molech  (King),  Melkarth  (King  of 
the  City),  Eliun  (Supreme),  Adonai  (Lord),  Bel-Samin  (Lord 
of  Heaven),  etc.  (Cp.  Rawlinson,  History  of  Phoenicia,  p.  231  ; 
Tiele,  Hist.  comp.  des  anc.  relig.,  etc.,  Fr.  tr.  1882,  ch.  iii, 
pp.  281-87;  Outlines,  p.  82;  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  i,  246, 
and  art. '' Phoenicia  "  in  Encyc.  Biblica,  iii,  3742-5;  Sayce, 
Ancient  Empires,  p.  200.)  The  just  inference  is  that  the  Sun- 
God  was  generally  worshipped,  the  sun  being  for  the  Semitic 
peoples  the  pre-eminent  Nature-power.  **  He  alone  of  all  the 
Gods  is  by  Philo  explained  not  as  a  deified  man,  but  as  the 
sun,  who  had  been  invoked  from  the  earliest  times  "  (Meyer, 
last  cit.).     (All   Gods  were   not   Baals:  the   division   between 

1  Cp.  Lane.  Manners  and  Custmns  of  the  Modem  Egyptians,  passim. 

a  Cp.  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  i,  332-33.  ^  Meyer,  i,  237. 

*  Put  by  Canon  Rawlinson.  History  of  Phoenicia,  1889,  p.  321. 

»  As  to  the  universality  of  this  tendency,  see  Meyer,  ii,  97. 


1>H0ENICIA 


79 


them  and  lesser  powers  corresponded  somewhat,  as  Tiele  notes, 
to  that  between  Theoi  and  Daimones  with  the  Greeks,  and 
Ases  and  Vanes  with  the  old  Scandinavians.  So  in  Babylonia 
and  India  the  Bels  and  Asuras  were  marked  off  from  lesser 
deities.)  The  fact  that  the  Western  Semites  thus  carried  with 
them  the  worship  of  their  chief  deities  in  all  their  colonies 
would  seem  to  make  an  end  of  the  assumption  (Gomme, 
Ethnology  of  Folklore,  p.  68;  Menzies,  History  of  Religion, 
pp.  284,  250)  that  there  is  something  specially  **  Aryan  "  in  the 
"  conception  of  Gods  who  could  and  did  accompany  the  tribes 
wheresoever  they  travelled."  Cp.  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt. 
iii,  169. 

The  worship  of  the  Baal,  however,  being  that  of  a  special 
Nature-power,  cannot  in  early  any  more  than  in  later  times 
have  been  monotheistic.  What  happened  was  a  preponderance 
of  the  double  cult  of  the  God  and  Goddess,  Baal  and  Ashtoreth, 
as  in  the  unquestionably  polytheistic  period  (Rawlinson,  p.  323  ; 
Tiele,  Hist.  Comp.,  as  cited,  p.  319). 

Apart  from  this  normal  tendency  to  identify  Gods  called  by  the 
same  title  (a  state  of  things  which,  however,  in  ancient  as  in 
modern  Catholic  countries,  tended  at  the  same  time  to  set  up 
special  adoration  of  a  given  image),  there  is  seen  in  the  later  religion 
of  Phoenicia  a  spirit  of  syncretism  which  operated  in  a  manner  the 
reverse  of  that  seen  in  later  Jewry.  In  the  latter  case  the  national 
God  was  ultimately  conceived,  however  fanatically,  as  universal, 
all  others  being  negated:  in  commercial  Phoenicia,  many  foreign 
Gods  were  adopted,^  the  tendency  being  finally  to  conceive  them  as 
all  manifestations  of  one  Power.^  And  there  is  reason  to  suppose 
that  in  the  cosmopolitan  world  of  the  Phoenician  cities  the  higher 
intelligence  reached  a  yet  more  subversive,  though  still  fallacious, 
theory  of  religion.  The  pretended  ancient  Phoenician  cosmogony 
of  Sanchoniathon,  preserved  by  Eusebius,^  while  worthless  as  a 
record  of  the  most  ancient  beliefs,*  may  be  taken  as  representing 
views  current  not  only  in  the  time  and  society  of  Philo  of  Byblos 
(100  C.E.),  who  had  pretended  to  translate  it,  but  in  a  period  con- 
siderably earlier.  This  cosmogony  is,  as  Eusebius  complains, 
deliberately  atheistic ;  and  it  further  systematically  explains  away 
all  God  stories  as  being  originally  true  of  remarkable  men. 

Where  this  primitive  form  of  atheistic  rationalism  originated  we 
cannot  now  tell.  But  it  was  in  some  form  current  before  the  time 
of    the   Greek   Evdmeros,  who   systematically  developed   it   about 

*  Meyer.  Geschichte  des  Alterthums,  i,  251,  §  209;  Tiele,  Outlines,  p.  84;  Histoire  com- 
Varee  des  onciennes  religions,  Fr.  tr.  pp.  320-21. 

^  Rawlinson,  Plwenicia,  p.  340;  Sayce,  Anc.Emp.  p.  204;  Menzies,  Hist,  o/  Relig.  p.  168. 
»  PrcBvaratio  Evangelica,  B.  i,  c.  9-10.  *  Meyer,  i,  249. 


80 


PROGBESS  UNDEE  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS 


300  B.C.;  for  in  a  monotheistic  application  it  more  or  less  clearly 
underlies  the  redaction  of  much  of  the  Hebrew  Bible,  where  both 
patriarchal  and  regal  names  of  the  early  period  are  found  to  be  old 
God-names  ;  and  where  the  Sun-God  Samson  is  made  a  "judge"  — 
having  originally  been  the  Judge-God.  In  the  Byblian  writer, 
however,  the  purpose  is  not  monotheistic,  but  atheistic  ;  and  the 
problem  is  whether  this  or  that  was  the  earlier  development  of  the 
method.  The  natural  presumption  seems  to  be  that  the  Hebrew 
adaptors  of  the  old  mythology  used  an  already  applied  method,  as 
the  Christian  Fathers  later  used  the  work  of  Ev^meros  ;  and  the 
citation  from  Thallos  by  Lactantius'*  suggests  that  the  method  had 
been  applied  in  Chaldea,  as  it  was  spontaneously  appUed  by  the 
Greek  epic  poets  who  made  memorable  mortals  out  of  the  ancient 
deities  Odysseus  and  Aeneas,"  Helen,  Castor  and  Pollux,  Achilles, 
and  many  more.'*  It  is  in  any  case  credible  enough  that  among  the 
much-travelling  Phoenicians,  with  their  open  pantheon,  an  atheistic 
Ev^merism  was  thought  out  by  the  skeptical  types  before  Ev^meros  ; 
and  that  the  latter  really  drew  his  principles  from  Phoenicia.*  At 
any  rate,  they  were  there  received,  doubtless  by  a  select  few,  as  a 
means  of  answering  the  customary  demand  for  "  something  in  place 
of "  the  rejected  Gods.  Concerning  the  tradition  that  an  ancient 
Phoenician,  Moschus,  had  sketched  an  atomic  theory,  we  may 
again  say  that,  though  there  is  no  valid  evidence  for  the  statement, 
it  counts  for  something  as  proof  that  the  Phoenicians  had  an  old 
repute  for  rationalism. 

The  Byblian  cosmogony  may  be  conceived  as  an  atheistic 
refinement  on  those  of  Babylon,  adopted  by  the  Jews.  It 
connects  with  the  theogony  ascribed  to  Hesiod  (which  has 
Asiatic  aspects),  in  that  both  begin  with  Chaos,  and  the  Gods 
of  Hesiod  are  born  later.  But  whereas  in  Hesiod  Chaos  brings 
forth  Erebos  and  Night  (Eros  being  causal  force),  and  Night 
bears  ^ther  and  Day  to  Erebos,  while  Earth  virginally  brings 
forth  Heaven  (Uranos)  and  the  Sea,  and  then  bears  the  first 
Gods  in  union  with  Heaven,  the  Phoenician  fragment  proceeds 
from  black  chaos  and  wind,  after  long  ages,  through  Eros  or 
Desire,  to  a  kind  of  primeval    slime,  from  which  arise  first 

1  Cp.  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  159,  as  to  Persian  methods  of  the  same  kind. 

2  JXv.  Inst.  i.  23.  ^  e.  Meyer,  Geschtchte  des  Alterthums,  ii.  104, 105. 

<  As  to  Greek  instances,  cp.  Bury.  Hist,  of  Greece,  ed.  1906.  pp.  53.  65.  65,  92,  104 ;  and  as 
to  Roman,  see  Ettore  Pais,  Ancient  Legends  of  Boman  History,  Eng.  trans.  1906.  ch.  x, 
where  it  is  shown  that  Virginia  and  Lucretia  are  primarily  ancient  Latin  divinities;  and 
(ch.  vii)  that  both  Numa  and  Servius  Tullius  are  probably  in  the  same  case.  Servius  Rex 
being  in  all  likelihood  the  servus  rex  Nemorensis  of  the  Arician  grove,  round  whom  turns 
the  research  of  Dr.  J.  G.  Frazer's  Oolden  Bough  ;  while  tullius  is  an  old  Latin  word  for  a 
spring.  See  also  ch.  iv  as  to  Acca  Larentia,  another  Goddess  reduced  by  the  historians  to 
the  status  of  a  hetaira,  as  was  Flora.  Horatius  Codes  (id.  p.  1.57)  is  also  a  God  reduced  to 
a  hero.  *  So  Sayce,  Ancient  Empires,  p.  204. 


PHOENICIA 


81 


I  I 


animals  without  intelligence,  who  in  turn  produce  some  with 
intelhgence.  The  effort  to  expel  Deity  must  have  been  consider- 
able, for  sun  and  moon  and  stars  seem  to  arise  uncreated,  and 
the  sun's  action  spontaneously  produces  further  developments. 
The  first  man  and  his  wife  are  created  by  male  and  female 
principles  of  wind,  and  their  offspring  proceed  to  worship  the 
Sun,  calling  him  Beel  Samin.  The  other  Gods  are  explained  as 
eminent  mortals  deified  after  their  death.  See  the  details  in 
Cory's  Ancient  Fragments,  Hodges'  ed.  pp.  1-22.  As  to 
Moschus,  cp.  Eenouvier,  Manuel  de  philos.  ancienne,  1844,  i, 
238;^  and  Mosheim's  ed.  of  Cud  worth's  Intellectual  System, 
Harrison's  tr.  i,  20  ;  also  Cudworth's  Eternal  and  Immutahle 
Morality,  same  ed.  iii,  548.  On  the  general  question  of 
Phoenician  rationaHsm,  compare  Pausanias's  account  (vii,  23) 
of  his  discussion  with  a  Sidonian,  who  explained  that  Apollo 
was  simply  the  sun,  and  his  son  iEsculapius  simply  the  heaHng 
art. 

At  the  same  time  there  are  signs  even  in  Phoenician  worship  of 
an  effort  after  an  ethical  as  well  as  an  intellectual  purification  of  the 
common  religion.  To  call  "  the  "  Phoenician  religion  "  impure  and 
cruel " '  is  to  obscure  the  fact  that  in  all  civilizations  certain  types 
and  cults  vary  from  the  norm.  In  Phoenicia  as  in  Israel  there  were 
humane  anti-sensualists  who  either  avoided  or  impugned  the  sensual 
and  the  cruel  cults  around  them ;  as  well  as  ascetics  who  stood  by 
human  sacrifice  while  resisting  sexual  licence.  That  the  better  types 
remained  the  minority  is  to  be  understood  in  terms  of  the  balance 
of  the  social  and  cultural  forces  of  their  civilization,  not  of  any  racial 
bias  or  defect,  intellectual  or  moral. 

The  remark  of  E.  Meyer  [Gesch.  des  Alt.  i,  211,  §  175),  that 
an  ethical  or  mystical  conception  of  the  God  was  "  entirely 
alien"  to  "the  Semite,"  reproduces  the  old  fallacy  of  definite 
race-characters  ;  and  Mr.  Sayce,  in  remarking  that  "  the  im- 
morality performed  in  the  name  of  religion  was  the  invention  of 
the  Semitic  race  itself"  {Anc.  Emp,  p.  203;  contrast  Tiele, 
Outlines,  p.  83),  after  crediting  the  Semitic  race  with  an  ethical 
faculty  ahen  to  the  Akkadian  (above,  p.  66),  suggests  another 
phase  of  the  same  error.  There  is  nothing  special  to  the 
Semites  in  the  case  save  degree  of  development,  similar  pheno- 
mena being  found  in  many  savage  religions,  in  Mexico,  and  in 
India.  (Meyer  in  later  passages  and  in  his  article  on  Ba'al  in 
Eoscher's  Lexikon  modifies  his  position  as  to  Semitic  versus 
other  rehgions.)  On  the  other  hand,  there  was  a  chaste  as  well 
as  an  unchaste  worship  of  the  Phoenician  Ashtoreth.  Ashtoreth 
Karnaim,  or  Tanit,  the  Virgin,  as  opposed  to  Atergates  and 


^  Sayce,  Ancient  Empires,  p.  202. 


O 


I 


82  PKOGEESS  UNDER  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS 

Annit,  the  Mother-Goddesses,  had  the  characteristics  of  Artemis. 
Cp.  Tiele,  Religion  comparde,  as  cited,  pp.  318-19  ;  Menzies, 
History  of  Beligion,  pp.  159, 168-71 ;  Kuenen,  Religion  of  Israel, 
i,  91 ;  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  pp.  292,  458.  [In  Rome, 
Venus  Cloacina,  sometimes  ignorantly  described  as  a  Goddess  of 
Vice,  was  anciently  '*  the  Goddess  of  chaste  and  holy  matri- 
mony "  (Ettore  Pais,  Ancient  Legends  of  Roman  History,  Eng. 
tr.  1906,  p.  199)] .  For  the  rest,  the  cruelty  of  the  Phoenician 
cults,  in  the  matter  of  human  sacrifice,  was  fully  paralleled 
among  the  early  Teutons.  See  Tiele,  Outlines,  p,  199  ;  and  the 
author's  Pagan  Christs,  Pt.  ii,  ch.  i,  §  4. 


§  7.  Ancient  China 

Of  all  the  ancient  Asiatic  systems  that  of  China  yields  us  the 
first  clear  biographical  trace  of  a  practical  rationalist,  albeit  a  ration- 
alist stamped  somewhat  by  Chinese  conservatism.  Confucius  {Kung- 
fu-tse  =  K\ing  the  Master)  is  a  tangible  person,  despite  some  mythic 
accretions,  whereas  Zarathustra  and  Buddha  are  at  best  but  doubtful 
possibilities,  and  even  Lao-Tsze  (said  to  have  been  born  604  B.C.)  is 
somewhat  elusive. 

Before  Confucius  (551-478  B.C.),  it  is  evident,  there  had  been  a 
slackening  in  religious  belief  among  the  governing  classes.  It  is 
claimed  for  the  Chinese,  as  for  so  many  other  races,  that  they  had 
anciently  a  "pure"  monotheism;^  but  the  ascription,  as  usual,  is 
misleading.  They  saw  in  the  expanse  of  heaven  the  "  Supreme  " 
Power,  not  as  a  result  of  reflection  on  the  claims  of  other  deities 
among  other  races,  but  simply  as  expressing  their  primordial  tribal 
recognition  of  that  special  God,  before  contact  with  the  God-ideas 
of  other  peoples.  Monotheistic  in  the  modern  sense  they  could  not 
be.  Concerning  them  as  concerning  the  Semites  we  may  say  that 
the  claim  of  a  primary  monotheism  for  them  **is  also  true  of  all 
primitive  totemistic  or  clannish  communities.  A  man  is  born  into 
a  community  with  such  a  divine  head,  and  the  worship  of  that  God 
is  the  only  one  possible  to  him."'^  Beside  the  belief  in  the  Heaven- 
God,  there  stood  beliefs  in  heavenly  and  earthly  spirits,  and  in 
ancestors,  who  were  worshipped  with  altars.^ 

The  remark  of  Professor  Legge  (Religioiis  of  China,  p.  11), 
that  the  relation  of  the  names  Shang-Ti  =  Supreme  Ruler,  and 
T'ien  =  the  sky,  ''has  kept  the  monotheistic  element  promi- 
nent in  the  religion  proper  of  China  down  to  the  present  time,'* 

1  Legge,  Religions  of  China.  1880.  pp.  11.  16;  Douglas.  Confucianism  and  Taouism, 
1879,  pp.  12,  82. 

2  Menzies,  History  of  Beligion,  p.  158. 

«  Legge,  pp.  12. 19,  23,  25,  26;  Tiele,  Outlines,  p.  27;  Douglas,  p.  79. 


ANCIENT  CHINA 


83 


may  serve  to  avert  disputation.  It  may  be  agreed  that  the 
Chinese  were  anciently  monotheists  "  in  the  way  in  which 
they  are  at  present,  when  they  worship  spirits  innumerable 
When,  however,  Professor  Legge  further  says  (p.  16)  that  the 
ancient  monotheism  five  thousand  years  ago  was  "in  danger  of 
being  corrupted"  by  nature  worship  and  divination,  he  puts  in 
doubt  the  meaning  of  the  other  expression  above  cited.  He  states 
several  times  (pp.  46,  51,  52)  that  the  old  monotheism  remains  • 
but  speaks  (p.  84)  of  the  mass  of  the  people  as  "cut  off  from' 
the  worship  of  God  for  themselves."  And  see  p.  91  as  to 
ancestor-worship  by  the  Emperor.  Tiele  {Outlines,  p.  27)  in 
comparison  somewhat  overstresses  the  polytheistic  aspect  of 
the  Chinese  religion  in  his  opening  definition ;  but  he  adds  the 
essential  facts.  Dr.  Legge's  remark  that  "the  idea  of  revela- 
tion did  not  shock  "  the  ancient  Chinese  (p.  13)  is  obscure.  He 
is  dealing  with  the  ordinary  Akkado-Babylonian  astrology. 
Pauthier,  on  the  contrary  {Chine  Moderne,  1853,  p.  250), 
asserts  that  in  China  "no  doctrine  has  ever  been  put  forth  as 
revealed." 

As  regards  ancestral  worship,  we  have  record  of  a  display  of 
disregard  for  it  by  the  lords  of  Lil  in  Confucius's  time;'  and  the 
general  attitude  of  Confucius  himself,  religious  only  in  his  adherence 
to  old  ceremonies,  is  incompatible  with  a  devout  environment.  It 
has  been  disputed  whether  he  makes  a  "skeptic  denial  of  any 
relation  between  man  and  a  living  God";'  but  an  authority  who 
disputes  this  complains  that  his  "avoiding  the  personal  name  of 
Ti,  or  God,  and  only  using  the  more  indefinite  term  Heaven," 
suggests  "a  coldness  of  temperament  and  intellect  in  the  matter 
of  religion."^  He  was,  indeed,  above  all  things  a  moralist;  and 
concerning  the  spirits  in  general  he  taught  that  "  To  give  one's  self 
to  the  duties  due  to  men,  and,  while  respecting  spiritual  beings,  to 
keep  aloof  from  them,  may  be  called  wisdom."'  He  would  never 
expressman  opinion  concerning  the  fate  of  souls,'  or  encourage 
prayer  ;^  and  in  his  redaction  of  the  old  records  he  seems  deliberately 
to  have  eliminated  mythological  expressions.^  "I  would  say," 
writes  Dr.  Legge  (who  never  forgets  to  be  a  missionary),  "  that  he 
was  unreligious  rather  than  irreligious  ;  yet,  by  the  coldness  of  his 
temperament  and  intellect  in  this  matter,  his  influence  is  unfavour- 
able to  the  development  of  true  religious  feeling  among  the  Chinese 
people  generally,  and  he  prepared  the  way  for  the  speculations  of 

8  TVf  T'i^?'^'*''\^r  ""^  ^^^^^'  P-  ^^^-  ?  See  the  citations  made  by  Legge.  p.  5. 

s  ieaae  f .ySK;,?!^"^'^?;.^^^^-       .  ^      J  ^^^S^'  P'  ^^^ ;  cp.  p.  117 ;  Douglas,  p.  81. 
P.  687Se  oif/i^;^^:  ^:^^^'  ^'-^^  "^"^  Teachings  of  Cmxfucius,  4th  ed.  p.  101 ;  Douglas, 

7  m-%^*^'  P-  31 ;  ^e^ge^ Religions,  p.  143. 
iiele.  pp.  31-32 ;  Douglas,  pp.  68,  84.    But  cp.  Legge.  Religions,  pp.  123, 127. 


I 


84 


PEOGRESS  UNDER  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS 


ANCIENT  CHINA 


85 


the  literati   of   medieval   and  modern   times,  which  have  exposed 
them  to  the  charge  of  atheism."  ^ 

The  view  that  there  was  a  very  early  "  arrest  of  growth  " 
in  the  Chinese  rehgion  (Menzies,  History  of  Religion,  p.  108), 
"  before  the  ordinary  developments  of  myiJiologij  and  doctrine, 
priesthood,"  etc.,  had  "  time  to  take  place,"  is  untenable 
as  to  the  mythology.  The  same  writer  had  previously  spoken 
(p.  107)  of  the  Chinese  system  before  Confucius  as  having 
"  already  parted  tvith  all  savage  and  irrational  elements."  That 
Confucius  would  seek  to  ehminate  these  seems  likely  enough, 
though  the  documentary  fact  is  disputed. 

In  the  elder  contemporary  of  Confucius,  Lao-Tsze  C*  Old  Philo- 
sopher"), the  founder  of  Taouism,  may  be  recognized  another  and 
more  remarkable  early  freethinker  of  a  different  stamp,  in  some 
essential  respects  much  less  conservative,  and  in  intellectual  cast 
markedly  more  original.  Where  Confucius  was  an  admirer  and 
student  of  antiquity,  Lao-Tsze  expressly  put  such  concern  aside,** 
seeking  a  law  of  life  within  himself,  in  a  manner  suggestive  of  much 
Indian  and  other  Oriental  thought.  So  far  as  our  records  go,  he  is 
the  first  known  philosoplier  wlio  denied  that  men  could  form  an 
idea  of  deity,  that  being  the  infinite ;  and  he  avowedly  evolved,  by 
way  of  makeshift,  the  idea  of  a  primordial  and  governing  Reason 
(Tan),  closely  analogous  to  the  Logos  of  later  Platonism.  Since 
the  same  idea  is  traceable  in  more  primitive  forms  alike  in  the 
Babylonian  and  Brahmanic  systems,'^  it  is  arguable  that  he  may 
have  derived  it  from  one  of  these  sources  ;  but  the  problem  is  very 
obscure.     In  any  case,  his  system  is  one  of  rationalistic  pantheism/ 

His  personal  relation  to  Confucius  was  that  of  a  self-poised 
sage,  impatient  of  the  other's  formalism  and  regard  to  prescription 
and  precedent.  Where  they  compare  is  in  their  avoidance  of 
supernaturalism,  and  in  the  sometimes  singular  rationality  of  their 
views  of  social  science ;  in  which  latter  respect,  however,  they  were 
the  recipients  and  transmitters  of  an  already  classic  tradition/ 
Thus  both  had  a  strong  bias  to  conservatism  ;  and  in  Lao-Tsze  it 
went  the  length  of  prescribing  that  the  people  should  not  be 
instructed.^  Despite  this,  it  is  not  going  too  far  to  say  that  no 
ancient  people  appears  to  have  produced  sane  thinkers  and  scientific 

1  Lefe'ge,  Life  and  Teachi)w>^^  PP-  lOQ-101.  ^  Douglas,  pp.  179. 18i. 

8  See  the  author's  Pagan  Ch  rists,  pp.  21-1-2-2. 

■*  Pauthier.  Chine  Moderne,  p.  :351.  There  is  a  tradition  that  Lao-Tsze  took  his  doctrine 
from  an  ancient  sage  who  flourished  before  1120  B.C.;  and  he  himself  {Tau  Teh  King, 
trans,  by  Chalmers,  The  Speculations  of  Lao-Tsze,  1868.  ch.  41)  cites  doctrine  as  to  Tan 
from  "  those  who  have  spoken  (before  mo)."    Cp.  cc.  22,  41.  62,  65, 70. 

^  Cp.  E.  J.  Simcox.  Primitive  Civilizations,  18£'4,  ii.  18. 

6  Pauthier,  p.  358 ;  Chalmers,  pp.  14,  37. 


^  m 


I 


moralists  earlier  than  the  Chinese.  The  Golden  Rule,  repeatedly 
formulated  by  Confucius,  seems  to  be  but  a  condensation  on  his 
part  of  doctrine  he  found  in  the  older  classics/  and  as  against 
Lao-Tsze  he  is  seen  maintaining  the  practical  form  of  the  principle 
of  reciprocity.  The  older  man,  hke  some  later  teachers,  preached 
the  rule  of  returning  kindness  for  evil,^  without  leaving  any 
biographical  trace  of  such  practice  on  his  own  part.  Confucius, 
dealing  with  human  nature  as  it  actually  is,  argued  that  evil  should 
be  met  by  justice,  and  kindness  with  kindness,  else  the  evil  were 
as  much  fostered  as  the  good.^ 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  Christian  writers  should  keep  up  the 
form  of  condemning  Confucius  (so  Legge,  Beligions  of  China, 
p.  144  ;    Life  and  Teachings  of  Confucius,  4th  ed.  p.  Ill  sq.; 
Douglas,  p.  144)  for  a  teaching  the  practice  of  which  is  normally 
possible,  and  is  never  transcended  in  their  own  Church,  where 
the  profession  of  returning  good  for  evil  merely  constitutes  one 
of  the  great  hypocrisies  of  civihzation.      Dr.  Legge  does  not 
scruple  to  resort  to  a  bad  sophism  in  this  connection.     "  If,"  he 
says,  "  we   only  do  good  to  them   that  do  good  to  us,  what 
reward  have  we?"     He  thus  insinuates  that  Confucius  vetoed 
any  spontaneous  act  of   benevolence.      The  question  is  not  of 
such  acts,  but  of  kind  acts  to  those  who  seek  to  injure  us.     On 
the  other  hand,  Mr.  Chalmers,  who  dedicates  his  translation  of 
Lao-Tsze  to  Dr.  Legge,  actually  taunts  Lao-Tsze  (p.  38)  with 
absurdity  in  respect  of  his  doctrine.     Such  is  the  sincerity  of 
orthodox  polemic.     How  little  effect  the  self-abnegating  teach- 
ing of  Lao-Tsze,  in  turn,  has  had  on  his  followers  may  be  gathered 
from    their   very  legends   concerning   him    (Douglas,    p.    182). 
There  is  a  fallacy,  further,  in  the  Christian  claim  that  Confucius 
{Analects,  v,  11;  xv,  23)  put  the  Golden  Eule  in  a  lower  form 
than  that  of  the  Gospels,  in  that  he  gave  it  the  negative  form, 
"  Do  not  that  which  ye  would  not  have  done  unto  you."     This  is 
really  the  rational  and  valid  form  of  the  Rule.    The  positive  form, 
unless  construed  in  the  restrictive  sense,  would  merely  prescribe 
a  non-moral  doing  of  favours  in  the  hope  of  receiving  favours  in 
return.  It  appears,  further,  from  the  passage  in  the  Analects,  v,  11, 
that  the  doctrine  in  this  form  was  familiar  before  Confucius. 

Lao-Tsze,  on  his  part,  had  reduced  religion  to  a  minimum. 
"There  is  not  a  word  in  the  Tao  T^h  King  [by  Lao-Tsze]  of  the 
sixth  century  B.C.  that  savours  either  of  superstition  or  religion 


>>4 


J  Legge,  Religions,  p.  137. 

^  TaiiT^h  King,  as  cited,  pp.  38.  49,  ch.  49,  63;  Pauthier,  p.  358;  Legge,  p.  223. 

^  Analects,  xxv,  36  ;  Legge,  Religions,  p.  143 ;  Life  and  Teachings,  p.  113 ;  Douglas,  p.  144. 
♦\,  -V^gge,  Religions,  p.  164.  We  do  find,  however,  an  occasional  allusion  to  deity,  as  in 
jne  phrase  the  Great  Architect"  (Chalmers*  trans.  1868.  ch.  Ixxiv.  p.  57),  and  "Heaven" 
tv.o^?T  rJ?^  ^°,^  somewhat  personalized  sense.  Still,  Mr.  Chalmers  complains  (p.  xv) 
inac  ijao-isze  did  not  recognize  a  personal  God,  but  put  "an  indefinite,  impersonal,  and 
unconscious  Tau  "  above  all  things  (ch.  iv). 


86 


PBOGEESS  UNDEK  ANCIENT  BELIGIONS 


But  the  quietist  and  mystical  philosophy  of  Lao-Tsze  and  the 
practicality  of  Confucius  alike  failed  to  check  the  growth  of  supersti- 
tion among  the  ever-increasing  ignorant  Chinese  population.  Says 
our  Christian  autliority  :  **  In  the  works  of  Lieh-Tsze  and  Chwang- 
Tsze,  followers  of  Lao-Tsze,  two  or  three  centuries  later,  we  find 
abundance  of  grotesque  superstition,  though  we  are  never  sure  how 
far  those  writers  really  believed  the  things  they  relate."  In  point 
of  fact,  Lieh-Tsze  is  now  commonly  held  by  scholars  to  be  an 
imaginary  personage,  whose  name  is  given  to  a  miscellaneous  collec- 
tion of  teachings  and  moral  tales,  much  interpolated  and  added  to  long 
after  the  date  assigned  to  him — circa  400  B.C.*  It  contains  a  purely 
pantheistic  statement  of  the  cosmic  problem,^  and  among  the 
apologues  is  one  in  which  a  boy  of  twelve  years  is  made  tersely  and 
cogently  to  rebut  the  teleological  view  of  things.^  The  writers  of 
such  sections  are  not  likely  to  have  held  the  superstitions  set  forth 
in  others.  But  that  superstition  should  supervene  upon  light  where 
the  means  of  light  were  dwindling  was  a  matter  of  course.  It  was 
but  the  old  fatality,  seen  in  Brahmanism,  in  Buddhism,  in  Egypt, 
in  Islam,  and  in  Christianity. 

Confucius  himself  was  soon  worshipped.^  A  reaction  against 
him  set  in  after  a  century  or  two,  doctrines  of  pessimism  on  the  one 
hand,  and  of  universal  love  on  the  other,  finding  a  hearing  i'^  but 
the  influence  of  the  great  Confucian  teacher  Mencius  (Meng-Tse) 
carried  his  school  through  the  struggle.  **In  his  teaching,  the 
religious  element  retires  still  further  into  the  background"^  than  in 
that  of  Confucius  ;  and  he  is  memorable  for  his  insistence  on  the 
remarkable  principle  of  Confucius, that  "the  people  are  born  good"; 
that  they  are  the  main  part  of  the  State  ;  and  that  it  is  the  ruler's 
fault  if  they  go  astray.'  Some  rulers  seem  to  have  fully  risen  to 
this  view  of  things,  for  we  have  an  account  of  a  rationalistic  duke, 
w^io  lived  earlier  than  250  B.C.,  refusing  to  permit  the  sacrifice  of  a 
man  as  a  scapegoat  on  his  behalf ;  and  in  the  year  166  B.C.  such 
sacrifices  were  permanently  abolished  by  the  Han  Emperor  Wen.® 
But  Mencius,  who,  as  a  sociologist,  excels  not  only  Lao-Tsze  but 
Confucius,  put  his  finger  on  the  central  force  in  Chinese  history 
when  he  taught  that  "  it  is  only  men  of  education  who,  without  a 
certain  livelihood,  are  able  to  maintain  a  fixed  heart.  As  to  the 
people,  if  they  have  not  a  certain  livelihood,  it  follows  that  they 

*  F.  H.Balfour,  Art.  "A  Thilosopher  who  Never  Lived,"  in  Leaves  from  my  Chinese 
Scrap-hook,  1887,  p.  83  sq.  2  M.pp.  86-90.  »  Id.  p.  134. 

*  Legge,  Beligioiis  of  China,  p.  147;  Tiele,  Outlines,  p.  33. 

5  Legge.  Life  and  Works  of  Mencius,  1875.  pp.  29,  50,  77.  etc.  6  Tiele,  p.  33. 

7  Legge,  Life  and  Works  of  Mencius,  pp.  44.  47.  56.  57,  etc. 

8  Miss  Simcox,  Primitive  Civilizations,  ii.  36-37,  following  Chavannes. 


ANCIENT  CHINA 


87 


i 


'> 


will  not  have  a  fixed  heart."  ^  So  clearly  was  the  truth  seen  in 
China  over  two  thousand  years  ago.  But  whether  under  feudalism 
or  under  imperialism,  under  anarchy  or  under  peace — and  the  teach- 
ings of  Lao-Tsze  and  Mencius  combined  to  discredit  militarism'^ — 
the  Chinese  mass  always  pullulated  on  cheap  food,  at  a  low  standard 
of  comfort,  and  in  a  state  of  utter  ignorance.  Hence  the  cult  of 
Confucius  was  maintained  among  them  only  by  recognizing  their 
normal  superstition ;  but  on  that  basis  it  has  remained  secure, 
despite  competition,  and  even  a  term  of  early  persecution.  One 
iconoclastic  emperor,  the  founder  of  the  Ch'in  or  Ts'in  dynasty 
(221  or  212  B.C.),  sought  to  extirpate  Confucianism  as  a  means  to  a 
revolution  in  the  government ;  but  the  efi'ort  came  to  nothing.^ 

In  the  same  way  Lao-Tsze  came  to  be  worshipped  as  a  God  * 
under  the  religion  called  Taouism,  a  title  sometimes  mistranslated 
as  rationalism,  **  a  name  admirably  calculated  to  lead  the  mind 
astray  as  to  what  the  religion  is."^  It  would  seem  as  if  the  older 
notion  of  the  Tan,  philosophically  purified  by  Lao-Tsze,  remained 
a  popular  basis  for  his  school,  and  so  wrought  its  degradation.  The 
Taoists  or  Tao-sse  "  do  their  utmost  to  be  as  unreasonable  as 
possible."  ^  They  soon  reverted  from  the  philosophic  mysticism  of 
Lao-Tsze,  after  a  stage  of  indifferentism,"^  to  a  popular  super- 
naturalism,®  which  "  the  cultivated  Chinese  now  regard  with 
unmixed  contempt";^  the  crystallized  common-sense  of  Confucius, 
on  the  other  hand,  allied  as  it  is  with  official  ceremonialism,  retain- 
ing its  hold  as  an  esoteric  code  for  the  learned.  The  evolution  has 
thus  closely  resembled  that  which  took  place  in  India. 

Nowhere,  perhaps,  is  our  sociological  lesson  more  clearly  to  be 
read  than  in  China.  Centuries  before  our  era  it  had  a  rationalistic 
literature,  an  ethic  no  less  earnest  and  far  more  sane  that  that  of  the 
Hebrews,  and  a  line  of  known  teachers  as  remarkable  in  their  way 
as  those  of  ancient  Greece  who  flourished  about  the  same  period. 
But  where  even  Greece,  wrought  upon  by  all  the  other  cultures  of 
antiquity,  ultimately  retrograded,  till  under  Christianity  it  stayed  at 
a  Chinese  level  of  unprogressiveness  for  a  thousand  years,  isolated 
China,  helped  by  no  neighbouring  culture  adequate  to  the  need,  has 
stagnated  as  regards  the  main  mass  of  its  life,  despite  some  political 

^  Legge's  M^enciiis  p.  49 '  cp.  p.  48. 

2  Cp.  Legge's  Mencius,  pp.  47, 131 ;  Chalmers'  Lao-Tsze,  pp.  23,  28,  53,  58  (chs.  xxx,  xxxi, 
xxxvi.  Ixvii.  Ixxiv);  Douglas,  Taouism,  chs.  ii,  iii. 

^  Legge.  Religions  of  China,  p.  147.  The  ruler  in  question  seems  to  have  been  of  non- 
Chinese  descent.    E.  H.  Parker.  China,  1901,  p.  18.  *  Legge,  Religions  of  China,  p.  159. 

5  Id.v.  60.  6  Tiele.  p.  37.  '  Douglas,  p.  222.  8  id.  p.  239. 

9  Tiele,  p.  35;  Douglas,  p.  287.  Taouism,  however,  has  a  rather  noteworthy  ethical 
code.  See  Douglas,  ch.  vi.  It  has  to  be  noted  that  the  translations  of  the  T&o  T6h  King 
have  varied  to  a  disquieting  degree.    Cp,  Drews,  Qesch.  des  Monismus,  p.  121. 


I 


^ 


88 


PEOGBESS  UNDEB  ANCIENT  BELIGIONS 


MEXICO  AND  PEBU 


and  other  fluctuations,  till  our  own  day.  Its  social  problem,  like 
that  of  India,  is  now  more  or  less  dependent,  unfortunately,  on  the 
solutions  that  may  be  reached  in  Europe,  where  the  problem  is  only 
relatively  more  mature,  not  fundamentaUy  different. 

§  8.  Mexico  and  Peru 

In   the   religions   of  pre-Christian  Mexico  and   Peru  we  have 
peculiarly    interesting    examples    of     "early"    religious    systems, 
flourishing  at  some   such  culture-level   as   the  ancient    Akkadian, 
in  full  play  at  the  time  of  the  European  Renaissance.     In  Mexico 
a  partly     high  "  ethical  code,  as  the  phrase  goes,  went  concurrently 
with  the  most  frightful  indulgence  in  human  sacrifice,  sustained  by 
the  continuous  practice  of  indecisive  war  for  the  securing  of  captives, 
and  by  the  interest  of  a  vast  priesthood.     In  this  system  had  been 
developed  all  the  leading  features  of  those  of  the  Old  World— the 
identification  of  all  the  Gods  with  the  Sun ;  the  worship  of  fire,  and 
the  annual  renewal  of  it  by  special  means ;  the  conception  of  God- 
sacrifice  and  of  communion  wdth  the  God  by  the  act  of  eating  his 
slain  representative;    the  belief  in  a  Virgin-Mother-Goddess;    the 
connection  of  humanitarian  ethic  with  the  divine  command  ;    the 
opinion  that  cehbacy,  as  a  state  of  superior  virtue,  is  incumbent  on 
most  priests  and  on  all  would-be  saints ;  the  substitution  of  a  sacra- 
mental bread  for  the  "  body  and  blood  "  of  the  God-Man ;  the  idea 
of  an  interceding  Mother-Goddess  ;  the  hope  of  a  coming  Saviour ; 
the  regular  practice  of  prayer;  exorcism,  special  indulgences,  con- 
fession, absolution,  fasting,  and  so  on.*     In  Peru,  also,  many  of  those 
conceptions  were  in  force  ;    but  the  limitation  of   the  power  and 
numbers  of  the  priesthood  by  the  imperial  system  of  the  Incas,  and 
the  state  of  peace  normal  in  their  dominions,  prevented  the  Mexican 
development  of  human  sacrifice. 

It  seems  probable  that  the  Toltecs,  who  either  fled  before  or  were 
for  the  most  part  subdued  or  destroyed  by  the  barbarian  Chichimecs 
(in  turn  subdued  by  the  Aztecs)  a  few  centuries  before  Cortes,  were 
on  the  whole  a  less  warlike  and  more  civilized  people,  with  a  less 
bloody  worship.^  Their  God,  Quetzalcoatl,  retained  through  fear  by 
the  Aztecs,^  was  a  comparatively  benign  deity  opposed  to  human 

1  Details  are  given  in  the  author's  Pagan  Christs,  pt.  iv. 

2  Nadaillac  {L'AnieriQue  prehistorique,  1883,  pp.  273-84)  gives  them  little  of  this  credit 
pronouncing  them  at  once  cruel  and  degenerate.    He  credits  them,  however,  with  being 
the  first  makers  of  roads  and  aqueducts  in  Central  America,  and  cites  the  record  of  their 
free  public  hospitals,  maintained  by  the  sacerdotal  kings.    Prescott.  on  the  other  hand 
overstated  the  bloodlessnesa  of  their  religion  (Conquest  of  Mexico,  Kii-k's  ed.  1890.  p.  41  and 
ed.  note).  " 

8  R^ville,  Hibbert  Lectures.  On  the  Native  Eeligions  of  Mexico  and  Peru,  1884,  pp.  62-67. 


89 


sacrifice,  apparently  rather  a  late  purification  or  partial  rationaliza- 
tion of  an  earher  God-type  than  a  primitively  harmless  conception.^ 
Insofar  as  they  were  sundered  by  quarrels  between  the  sectaries  of 
the  God  Quetzalcoatl  and  the  God  Votan,  though  their  rehgious 
wars  seem  to  have  been  as  cruel  as  those  of  the  early  Christians  of 
North  Africa,  there  appears  to  have  been  at  work  among  them 
a  movement  towards  unbloody  religion.  In  any  case  their  overthrow 
seems  to  stand  for  the  military  inferiority  of  the  higher  and  more 
rational  civiHzation^  to  the  lower  and  more  rehgious,  which  in 
turn,  however,  was  latterly  being  destroyed  by  its  enormously 
burdensome  mihtary  and  priestly  system,  and  may  even  be  held 
to  have  been  ruined  by  its  own  superstitious  fears.^ 

Among  the  recognizable  signs  of  normal  progress  in  the  ordinary 
Aztec  religion  were  (1)  the  general  recognition  of  the  Sun  as  the  God 
really  worshipped   in   all   the  temples  of   the  deities  with   special 
names  ;^  (2)  the  substitution  in  some  cults  of  baked  bread-images 
for  a  crucified   human  victim.     The   question   arises  whether  the 
Aztecs,  but  for  their  overwhelming  priesthood,  might  conceivably 
have  risen  above  their  system  of    human  sacrifices,  as  the  Aryan 
Hindus   had  done  in  an  earlier  age.     Their  material  civilization, 
which  carried  on  that  of  the  kindred  Toltecs,  was  at  several  points 
superior  to  that  w^hich  the  Spaniards  put  in  its  place;  and  their 
priesthood,  being  a  leisured  and  wealthy  class,  might  have  developed 
intellectually  as  did  the  Brahmans,^  if  its  economic  basis  had  been 
changed.     But  only  a  conquest  or  other  great  poHtical  convulsion 
could    conceivably   have   overturned    the   vast    cultus    of    human 
sacrifice,  which  overran  all  life,  and  cherished  war  as  a  means  of 
procuring  victims. 

In  the  kindred  State  of  Tezcuco,  civilization  seems  to  have  gone 
further  than  in  Aztec  Anahuac ;  and  about  the  middle  of  the 
fifteenth  century  one  Tezcucan  king,  the  conqueror  Netzahualcoyotl, 
who  has  left  writings  in  both  prose  and  verse,  is  seen  attaining  to 

^  J.  G.  Miiller,  Oeschiclite  der  Amerikanischen  Urrelioionen,  ed.  1867,  pp.  577-90*  H  H 
Bancroft,  Native  Bac4s  of  the  Pacific  States,  iii.  279.  (Passage  cited  in  author's  Pagan 
y 'prists,  pp.  402-403;  where  is  also  noted  Dr.  Tylor's  early  view,  discarded  later,  that 
Quetzalcoatl  was  a  real  personage.) 

I  Cp.  Prescott,  as  cited. 

»  Reville.  p.  66. 

*  J-  .9-  Muller,  as  cited,  pp.  473-74 ;  Reville,  p.  46.  Dr.  R^ville  speaks  of  the  worship  of 
ine  unifjung  deity  as  pretty  much  "effaced  "  by  that  of  the  lower  Gods.  It  seems  rather 
10  have  been  a  priestly  effort  to  syncretize  these.  Still,  such  an  effacement  did  take 
place,  as  we  have  seen,  in  Central  Asia  in  ancient  times,  after  a  syncretic  idea  had  been 
reached  (above,  p.  45).  As  to  the  alleged  monotheism  of  King  Netzahuatl  (or  Netzahual- 
coyotl). of  Tezcuco,  mentioned  above,  p.  39,  see  Lang.  Making  of  Religion,  p.  270,  note  and 

^'    .„„' „-^^^^*^°^^-  Conquest   of  Mexico,  as   cited,  p.  92;   and   J.  G.  MUller,  as   cited 
pp.  473-74.  480. 

^  As  to  the  capabilities  of  the  Aztec  language,  see  Bancroft,  Native  Maces,  ii,  727-28 
^d^oted  in  Pagan  Christs,  v.iU,  note). 


I 


90 


PBOGKESS  UNDER  ANCIENT  BELIGIONS 


something  like  a  philosophic  creed,  of  a  monotheistic  stamp.^  He  is 
said  to  have  rejected  all  idol-worship,  and  erected,  as  aforesaid,  an 
altar  "to  the  Unknown  God," '  forbidding  all  sacrifices  of  blood  in 
that  worship.  But  among  the  Tezcucans  these  never  ceased  ;  three 
hundred  slaves  were  sacrificed  at  the  obsequies  of  the  conqueror's 
son,  NetzahualpilU ;  and  the  Aztec  influence  over  the  superior 
civilization  was  finally  complete. 

In  Peru,  again,  we  find  civiHzation  advancing  in  respect  of  the 
innovation  of  substituting  statuettes  for  wives  and  slaves  in  the 
tombs  of  the  rich;  and  we  have  already  noted ^  the  remarkable 
records  of  the  avowed  unbelief  of  several  Incas  in  the  divinity  of  the 
nationally  worshipped  Sun.  For  the  rest,  there  was  the  dubious 
quasi-monotheistic  cult  of  the  Creator-God,  Pachacamac,  concerning 
whom  every  fresh  discussion  raises  fresh  doubt. 

Mr.  Lang,  as  usual,  leans  to  the  view  that  Pachacamac  stands 
for  a  primordial  and  *'  elevated  "  monotheism  {Makifig  of  Religion, 
pp.  263-70),  while  admitting  the  slightness  of  the  evidence. 
Garcilasso,  the  most  eminent  authority,  who,  however,  is  con- 
tradicted by  others,  represents  that  the  conception  of  Pacha- 
camac as  Creator,  needing  no  temple  or  sacrifice,  was  '  philo- 
sophically "  reached  by  the  Incas  and  their  wdse  men  (Lang, 
p.  262).  The  historical  fact  seems  to  be  that  a  race  subdued 
by  the  Incas,  the  Yuncas,  had  one  temple  to  this  deity  ;  and 
that  the  Incas  adopted  the  cult.  Garcilasso  says  the  Yuncas 
had  human  sacrifices  and  idols,  which  the  Incas  abohshed, 
setting  up  their  monotheistic  cult  in  that  one  temple.  This  is 
sufi&ciently  unlikely ;  and  it  may  very  well  have  been  the  fact 
that  the  Yuncas  had  offered  no  sacrifices.  But  if  they  did  not, 
it  was  because  their  material  conditions,  like  those  of  the 
Australians  and  Fuegians,  had  not  facihtated  the  practice; 
and  in  that  case  their  "monotheism"  likewise  w^ould  merely 
represent  the  ignorant  simplicity  of  a  clan-cult.  (Compare 
Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  ii,  335  sq.;  Brinton,  Myths  of  the 
New  World,  p.  52.)  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  Incas  had  set 
up  a  cult  without  sacrifices  to  a  so-called  One  God,  their  idea 
would  be  philosophical,  as  taking  into  account  the  multitude  of 
clan-cults  as  well  as  their  own  national  worships,  and  tran- 
scending these. 

But  the  outstanding  sociological  fact  in  Incarial  Peru  was  the 

1  Refs.  above,  p.  41.  Cp.  Lang.  MaMng  of  Beligion,  p.  270,  note,  and  p.  282;  J.  G. 
Mtiller.  as  cited,  pp.  473-74;  and  Nadaillac,  as  cited,  p.  289.  ,  .^,      ,  .    ^t    - 

2  The  Christianized  descendant  of  the  Tezcucan  kinfis.  Ixtilxochitl,  who  wrote  their 
history,  adds  the  words,  "Cause  of  Causes"— a  very  unlikely  formula  in  the  place  and 
circumstances. 

8  Above,  p.  41.    Cp.  Lang,  as  last  cited,  pp.  263,282. 

4  Cp.  Kirk's  ed.  of  Prescott's  Conquest  of  Peru,  1889,  p.  44;  R6ville,  pp.  18&-90;  Lang, as 
cited  below. 


MEXICO  AND  PEEU 


91 


absolute  subjection  of  the  mass  of  the  people ;  and  though  its 
material  development  and  political  organization  were  comparable  to 
those  of  ancient  Persia  under  the  Akhamenidae,  so  that  the  Spanish 
Conquest  stood  here  for  mere  destruction,  there  is  no  reason  to  think 
that  at  the  best  its  intellectual  life  could  have  risen  higher  than  that 
of  pre-Alexandrian  Egypt,  to  which  it  offers  so  many  resemblances. 
The  Incas'  schools  w^ere  for  the  nobility  only.^  Rationalistic  Incas 
and  high  priests  might  have  ruled  over  a  docile,  unlettered  multitude, 
gradually  softening  their  moral  code,  in  connection  with  their  rather 
highly-developed  doctrine  (resembhng  the  Egyptian)  of  a  future  state. 
But  these  seem  the  natural  limits,  in  the  absence  of  contact  with 
another  civiHzation  not  too  disparate  for  a  fruitful  union. 

In  Mexico,  on  the  other  hand,  an  interaction  of  native  cultures 
had  already  occurred  to  some  purpose  ;  and  the  strange  humani- 
tarianism  of  the  man-slaying  priests,  who  made  free  public  hospitals 
of  part  of  their  blood-stained  temples,^  suggests  a  possibility  of 
esoteric  mental  culture  among  them.  They  had  certainly  gone 
relatively  far  in  their  moral  code,  as  apart  from  their  atrocious 
creed  of  sacrifice,  even  if  we  discount  the  testimony  of  the  benevolent 
priest  Sahagun  ;^  and  they  had  the  beginnings  of  a  system  of 
education  for  the  middle  classes.*  But  unless  one  of  the  States 
which  habitually  warred  for  captives  should  have  conquered  the 
others — in  which  case  a  strong  ruler  might  have  put  an  end  to  the 
wholesale  religious  slaughter  of  his  own  subjects,  as  appears  to  have 
been  done  anciently  in  Mesopotamia — the  priests  in  all  likelihood 
would  never  have  transcended  their  hideous  hallucination  of  sacrifice. 
Their  murdered  civilization  is  thus  the  "  great  perhaps  "  of  sociology  : 
organized  religion  being  the  most  sinister  factor  in  the  problem. 

§  9.  The  Commo7i  Forces  of  Degeneration 

It  is  implied  more  or  less  in  all  the  foregoing  summaries  that 
there  is  an  inherent  tendency  in  all  systematized  and  instituted 
religion  to  degenerate  intellectually  and  morally,  save  for  the 
constant  corrective  activity  of  freethought.  It  may  be  well, 
however,  to  note  specifically  the  forms  or  phases  of  the  tendency. 

1.  Dogmatic  and  ritual  religion  being,  to  begin  with,  a  more 
or  less  general  veto  on  fresh  thinking,  it  lies  in  its  nature  that  the 

1  R^ville,  p.  152,  citing  Garcilasso.  See  same  page  for  a  story  of  resistance  to  the 
invention  of  an  alphabet. 

'^  Reville,  p.  50,  citing  Torquemada,  1.  viii,  c.  20,  end. 

^  History  of  the  Affairs  of  I^ew  Spain,  French  trans.  1880,  1.  vi,  ch.  7,  pp.  342-43. 
Cp.  Prescott.  Conquest  of  Mexico,  Kirk's  ed.  pp.  31,  33. 

*  Prescott,  p.  34. 


92 


PROGRESS  UNDER  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS 


religious  person  is  as  such  less  intelligently  alive  to  all  problems  of 
thought  and  conduct  than  he  otherwise  might  be — a  fact  which  at 
least  outweighs,  in  a  whole  society,  the  gain  from  imposing  a 
terrorized  conformity  on  the  less  well-biassed  types.  Wherever 
conduct  is  a  matter  of  sheer  obedience  to  a  superhuman  code,  it  is 
ipso  facto  uncritical  and  unprogressive.  Thus  tlie  history  of  most 
religions  is  a  record  of  declines  and  reformations,  each  new  affirma- 
tion of  moral  freethought  ad  hoc  being  in  turn  erected  into  a  set  of 
sheer  commands.  To  set  up  the  necessary  ferment  of  corrective 
thought  even  for  a  time,  there  seems  to  be  needed  (a)  a  provocation 
to  the  intelligence,  as  in  the  spectacle  of  conflict  of  cults  ;  and  (b)  a 
provocation  to  the  moral  sense  and  to  self-interest  through  a  burden- 
some pressure  of  rites  or  priestly  exactions.  An  exceptional  per- 
sonahty,  of  course,  may  count  for  much  in  the  making  of  a  move- 
ment ;  though  the  accident  of  the  possession  of  kingly  power  by 
a  reformer  seems  to  count  for  much  more  than  does  genius. 

2.  The  fortunes  of  such  reactions  are  determined  by  socio- 
economic or  political  conditions.  They  are  seen  to  be  at  a 
minimum,  as  to  energy  and  social  effect,  in  the  conditions  of 
greatest  social  invariability,  as  in  ancient  Egypt,  where  progress 
in  thought,  slow  at  best,  was  confined  to  the  priestly  and  official 
class,  and  never  affected  popular  culture. 

3.  In  the  absence  of  social  conditions  fitted  to  raise  popular 
levels  of  life  and  thought,  every  religious  system  tends  to  worsen 
intellectually  in  the  sense  of  adding  to  its  range  of  superstition — 
that  is,  of  ignorant  and  unreasoning  belief.  Credulity  has  its  own 
momentum.  Even  the  possession  of  limitary  sacred  books  cannot 
check  this  tendency — e.g.,  Hinduism,  Judaism,  Mohammedanism, 
Mazdeism,  Christianity  up  till  the  age  of  doubt  and  science,  and  the 
systems  of  ancient  Egypt,  Babylon,  and  post-Confucian  China. 
This  worsening  can  take  place  alongside  of  a  theoretic  purification 
of  belief  within  the  sphere  of  the  educated  theological  class. 

Christian  writers  have  undertaken  to  show  that  such 
deterioration  went  on  continuously  in  India  from  the  beginning 
of  the  Vedic  period,  popular  religion  sinking  from  Varuna  to 
Indra,  from  Indra  to  the  deities  of  the  Atharva  Veda,  and  from 
these  to  the  Puranas  (cp.  Dr.  J.  Mun-ay  Mitchell,  Hinduism 
Past  and  Present,  1885,  pp.  22,  25,  26,  54).  The  argument, 
being  hostile  in  bias  from  the  beginning,  ignores  or  denies  the 
element  of  intellectual  advance  in  the  Upanishads  and  other 
later  literature ;  but  it  holds  good  of  the  general  phenomena. 
It  holds  good  equally,  how^ever,  of  the  history  of  Christianity 
in  the  period  of  the  supremacy  of  ignorant  faith  and  absence  of 


THE  COMMON  FORCES  OF  DEGENERATION         93 

doubt  and  science ;  and  is  relatively  applicable  to  the  religion  of 
the  uneducated  mass  at  any  time  and  place. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  at  all  true  that  religious  history 
is  from  the  beginning,  in  any  case,  a  process  of  mere  degenera- 
tion from  a  pure  ideal.  Simple  statements  as  to  primitive  ideas 
are  found  to  be  misleading  because  of  their  simphcity.  They 
can  connote  only  the  ethic  of  the  life  conditions  of  the  wor- 
shipper. ^  Now,  we  have  seen  (p.  28)  that  small  primitive 
peoples  living  at  peace  and  in  communism,  or  in  some  respects 
well  placed,  may  be  on  that  account  in  certain  moral  respects 
superior  to  the  average  or  mass  of  more  civilized  and  more 
intelligent  peoples.  [As  to  the  kindliness  and  unselfishness  of 
some  savages,  Hving  an  almost  communal  life,  and  as  to  the 
scrupulous  honesty  of  others,  there  is  plenty  of  evidence — e.g., 
as  to  Andaman  islanders,  Max  Miiller,  Anthrop.  Belig.,  citing 
Colonel  Cadell,  p.  177  ;  as  to  Malays  and  Papuans,  Dr.  Russel 
Wallace,  Malay  Archipelago,  p.  595  (but  cp.  pp.  585,  587,  589) ; 
as  to  Esquimaux,  Keane,  Ma7i,  p.  374  ;  Reclus,  Primitive  Folk, 
pp.  15,  37,  115  (but  cp.  pp.  41-42).  In  these  and  other  cases 
unselfishness  within  the  tribe  is  the  concomitant  of  the  com- 
munal life,  and  represents  no  conscious  ethical  volition,  being 
concurrent  with  phases  of  the  grossest  tribal  egoism,  in  some 
cases  with  cannibalism,  and  with  the  perpetual  oppression  of 
women.  In  the  case  of  the  preaching  of  unselfishness  to  the 
young  by  the  old  among  the  Australians,  where  Lubbock  and 
his  authorities  see  "  the  tyranny  of  the  old  "  {Origin  of  Civiliza' 
tion,  5th  ed.  pp.  451-52)  Mr.  Lang  sees  a  pure  primeval  ethic. 
Obviously  the  other  is  the  true  exi)lanation.  The  closest  and 
best  qualified  observers  testify,  as  regards  a  number  of  tribes : 
"  So  far  as  anything  like  moral  precepts  are  concerned  in  these 

tribes it  appears  to  us  to  be  most  probable  that  they  have 

originated  in  the  first  instance  in  association  with  the  purely 
selfish  ideas  of  the  older  men  to  keep  all  the  best  things  for 
themselves,  and  in  no  case  w^hatever  are  they  supposed  to  have 
the  sanction  of  a  superior  being  "  (Spencer  and  Gillen,  North. 
Tribes  of  Cent.  Australia,  1904,  p.  504).] 

The  transition  from  that  state  to  one  of  war  and  individualism 
w^ould  be  in  a  sense  degeneration ;  but  on  the  other  hand  the 
entirely  communistic  societies  are  unprogressive.  Broadly 
speaking,  it  is  by  the  path  of  social  individuation  that  progress 
in  civilization  has  been  made,  the  early  city  States  and  the 
later  large  military  States  ultimately  securing  within  themselves 
some  of  the  conditions  for  special  development  of  thought,  arts, 
and  knowledge.  The  residual  truth  is  that  the  simple  religion 
of  the  harmless  tribe  is  pro  tanto  superior  to  the  instituted 
religion  of  the  more  civilized  nation  with  greater  heights  and 
lower  depths  of  life,  the  popular  religion  in  the  latter  case 
standing  for  the  w^orse  conditions.     But   the   simple   religion 


4 


94 


PKOGEESS  UNDEE  ANCIENT  EELIGIONS 


did  not  spring  from  any  higher  stage  of  knowledge.  The  old 
theorem  revived  by  Mr.  Lang  {Making  of  Beligion),  as  to  religion 
having  originally  been  a  pure  and  highly  ethical  monotheism, 
from  which  it  degenerated  into  animism  and  non-moral  poly- 
theism, is  at  best  a  misreading  of  the  facts  just  stated.  Mr. 
Lang  never  asks  what  "Supreme  Being "  and  " monotheism " 
mean  for  savages  who  know  nothing  of  other  men's  religions  : 
he  virtually  takes  all  the  connotations  for  granted.  And  as 
regards  the  most  closely  studied  of  contemporary  savages  our 
authorities  come  to  an  emphatic  conclusion  that  they  have  no 
notion  whatever  of  anything  like  a  Supreme  Being  (Spencer 
and  Gillen,  North.  Tribes  of  Ceyit.  Austr.  pp.  491-92.  Cp.  A.  H. 
Keane,  Man,  p.  395,  as  to  the  "  Great  Spirit  "  of  the  Eedskins). 
For  the  rest,  Mr.  Lang's  theory  is  demonstrably  wrong  in  its 
ethical  interpretation  of  many  anthropological  facts,  and  as  it 
stands  is  quite  irreconcilable  with  the  law  of  evolution,  since 
it  assumes  an  abstract  monotheism  as  primordial.  In  general 
it  approximates  scientifically  to  the  eighteenth-century  doctrine 
of  the  superiority  of  savagery  to  civihzation.  (See  it  criticized 
in  the  author's  Studies  in  Beligious  Fallacy,  and  Christianity 
and  Mythology,  2nd  ed.  pp.  37-43,  46  sq) 

4.  Even  primary  conditions  of  material  well-being,  if  not  reacted 
upon  by  social  science  or  a  movement  of  freethought,  may  in  a 
comparatively  advanced  civilization  promote  religious  degeneration. 
Thus  abundance  of  food  is  favourable  to  multiplication  of  sacrifice, 
and  so  to  priestly  predominance.^  The  possession  of  domesticated 
animals,  so  important  to  civihzation,  lends  itself  to  sacrifice  in  a 
specially  demoralizing  degree.  But  abundant  cereal  food-supply, 
making  abundant  population,  may  greatly  promote  human  sacrifice 
— e.g.,  Mexico. 

The  error  of  Mr.  Lang's  method  is  seen  in  the  use  he  makes 
(work  cited,  pp.  286-289,  292)  of  the  fact  that  certain  "  low  " 
races— as  the  Austrahans,  Andamanese,  Bushmen,  and  Fue- 
gians— offer  no  animal  sacrifice.  He  misses  the  obvious  signi- 
ficance of  the  facts  that  these  unwarhke  races  have  as  a  rule 
no  domesticated  animals  and  no  agriculture,  and  that  their 
food  supply  is  thus  in  general  precarious.  The  Andamanese, 
sometimes  described  (Malthus,  Essay  on  Popidation,  ch.  iii,  and 
refs.;  G.  W.  Earl,  Papuans,  1853,  pp.  150-51)  as  very  ill-fed,  are 
sometimes  said  to  be  well  supphed  with  fish  and  game  (Peschel, 
Baces  of  Man,  Eng.  tr.  1876,  p.  147 ;  Max  Miiller,  Anthrop. 
Bel.  citing  Cadell,  p.  177)  ;  but  in  any  case  they  have  had  no 
agriculture,  and  seem  to  have  only  occasional  animal  food  in  the 
shape  of  a  wild  hog  (Colebrooke  in  Asiatic  Besearches,  iv,  390). 

.aL  "  "^^u  ^I'^-ff*  ^*^P' '  the  spirit  is  hungry.'  the  fact  being  that  he  himself  is  hungry.    He 
advises  the  kilhng  of  an  animal  "  (Max  MUller.  Anthropological  Religion,  p.  307). 


THE  COMMON  FOEGES  OF  DEGENEEATION 


95 


The  Australians  and  Fuegians,  again,  have  often  great  difi&- 
culty  in  feeding  themselves  (Peschel,  pp.  148, 159,  334  ;  Darwin, 
Voyage,  ch.  10).  It  is  argued  concerning  the  Australian 
aborigines  that  **  as  a  rule  they  have  an  abundance  "  (A.  F. 
Calvert,  The  Aborigines  of  Western  Australia,  1894,  p.  24)  ; 
but  this  abundance  is  made  out  by  cataloguing  the  whole 
edible  fauna  and  flora  of  the  coasts  and  the  interior,  and 
ignores  the  fact  that  for  all  hunting  peoples  food  supply  is 
precarious.  For  the  Australian,  **  the  difiBculty  of  capturing 
game  with  his  primitive  methods  compels  him  to  give  his 
whole  time  to  the  quest  of  food  "  (Keane,  Maji,  p.  148).  In 
the  contrary  case  of  the  primitive  Vedic  Aryans,  well  supplied 
with  animals,  sacrifices  were  abundant,  and  tended  to  become 
more  so  (Miiller,  Nat.  Belig.  pp.  136,  185 ;  Physical  Belig. 
p.  105 ;  but  cp.  pp.  98,  101 ;  Mitchell,  Hinduism,  p.  43 ; 
Lefmann,  Gcschichte  des  alten  Indiens,  in  Oncken's  series,  1890, 
pp.  49,  430-31).  Of  these  sacrifices  that  of  the  horse  seems 
to  have  been  in  Aryan  use  in  a  most  remote  period  (cp.  M. 
Miiller,  Nat.  Bel.  pp.  524-25 ;  H.  Bottger,  Sonnencidt  der 
Indogennanen,  Breslau,  1891,  pp.  41-44 ;  Preller,  Bomische 
Mythologie,  ed.  Kohler,  pp.  102,  299,  323  ;  Griechische  Mytho- 
logic,  2te  Aufg.  i,  462 ;  Frazer,  Golden  Bough,  ii,  315).  Max 
Miiller's  remark  {Physical  Beligion,  p.  106),  that  "  the  idea  of 
sacrifice  did  not  exist  at  a  very  early  period,"  because  there  is 
no  common  Aryan  term  for  it,  counts  for  nothing,  as  he  admits 
(p.  107)  that  the  Sanskrit  word  cannot  be  traced  back  to  any 
more  general  root ;  and  he  concedes  the  antiquity  of  the  practice. 
On  this  cp.  Mitchell,  Hinduism,  pp.  37-38  ;  and  the  author's 
Pagan  Christs,  2nd  ed.  p.  122.  The  reform  in  Hindu  sacrifice, 
consummated  by  Buddhism,  has  been  noted  above. 

5.  Even  scientific  knowledge,  while  enabling  the  thoughtful  to 
correct  their  religious  conceptions,  in  some  forms  lends  itself  easily 
to  the  promotion  of  popular  superstition.  Thus  the  astronomy  of 
the  Babylonians,  while  developing  some  skepticism,  served  in 
general  to  encourage  divination  and  fortune-telling  ;  and  seems  to 
have  had  the  same  effect  when  communicated  to  the  Chinese,  the 
Hindus,  and  the  Hebrews,  all  of  w^hom,  how^ever,  practised  divina- 
tion previously  on  other  bases. 

6.  Finally,  the  development  of  the  arts  of  sculpture  and  painting, 
unaccompanied  by  due  intellectual  culture,  tends  to  keep  religion  at 
a  low  anthropomorphic  level,  and  worsens  its  psychology  by  inviting 
image-worship.^  It  is  not  that  the  earlier  and  non-artistic  religions 
are  not  anthropomorphic,  but  that  they  give  more  play  for  intel- 


^  On  the  general  tendency  cp.  Chantepie  de  la  Saussaye,  Manual  of  the  Science  of 
Religion,  pp.  77-84. 


96 


PROGKESS  UNDER  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS 


lectual  imagination  than  does  a  cult  of  images.  But  where  the  arts 
have  been  developed,  idolatry  has  always  arisen  save  when  resisted 
by  a  special  activity  or  revival  of  freethought  to  that  end ;  and  even 
in  Protestant  Christendom,  where  image- worship  is  tabooed,  religious 
pictures  now  promote  popular  credulity  and  ritualism  as  they  did 
in  the  Italian  Renaissance/  So  manifold  arc  the  forces  of  intel- 
lectual degeneration — degeneration,  that  is,  from  an  attained  ideal 
or  stage  of  development,  not  from  any  primordial  knowledge. 


1  In  the  windows  of  the  shop  of  the  S.P.  C.  K..  in  London,  may  be  often  seen  largo 
displays  of  reproduced  Madonna-pictures,  by  Catholic  artists,  at  popular  prices. 


Chapter  IV 

RELATIVE  FREETHOUGHT  IN  ISRAEL 

The  modern  critical  analysis  of  the  Hebrew  Sacred  Books  has  made 
it  sufficiently  clear  that  in  Jewish  as  in  all  other  ancient  history 
progress  in  rehgion  was  by  way  of  evolving  an  ethical  and  sole  deity 
out  of  normal  primitive  polytheism.'  What  was  special  to  the 
Hebrews  was  the  set  of  social  conditions  under  which  the  evolution 
took  place.  Through  these  conditions  it  was  that  the  relative  free- 
thought  which  rejected  normal  polytheism  was  so  far  favoured  as  to 
lead  to  a  pronounced  monotheistic  cultus,  though  not  to  a  philosophic 
monotheism. 

§1 

As  seen  in  their  earliest  historical  documents  (especially  portions 
of  the  Book  of  Judges),  the  Hebrews  are  a  group  of  agricultural  and 
pastoral  but  warhke  tribes  of  Semitic  speech,  with  household  Gods 
and  local  deities,^  Hving  among  communities  at  the  same  or  a  higher 
culture  stage.  Their  ancestral  legends  show  similar  religious 
practice.^  Of  the  Hebrew  tribes  some  may  have  sojourned  for 
a  time  in  Egypt ;  but  this  is  uncertain,  the  written  record  being 
a  late  and  in  large  part  dehberately  fictitious  construction.^  At  one 
time  twelve  such  tribes  may  have  confederated,  in  conformity  with 
a  common  ancient  superstition,  seen  in  Arab  and  Greek  history  as 
well  as  in  the  Jewish,  as  to  the  number  twelve.  As  they  advanced 
in  civihzation,  on  a  basis  of  city  life  existing  among  a  population 
settled  in  Canaan  before  them,  parts  of  which  they  conquered,  one 
of  their  public  cults,  that  of  Yahu  or  Yahweh,  finally  fixed  at 
Jerusalem,  became  politically  important.  The  special  worshippers 
of  this  God  (supposed  to  have  been  at  first  a  Thunder-God  or 
Nature-God)^  were  in  that  sense  monotheists  ;  but  not  otherwise 
than  kindred  neighbouring  communities  such  as  the  Ammonites  and 
Moabites  and  Edomites,  each  of  which  had  its  special  God,  like  the 
cities  of  Babylonia  and  Egypt.     But  that  the  earHer  conceptions  of 


I  Compare  the  author's  Pagan  Christ s,  pp.  66-95. 
»  Gen.  xxxi,  19,  34,  35.  '   ' 


2  ju(j.  xvii,  xviii. 

-r-  "-.  —  ^  Compare  Hugo  Winckler,  Geschichte  Israels,  i.  56-58. 

v^ompare  Tiele.  Outlines,  p.  87;  Hist.  comp.  des  anc.  relig.  p.  342  sq.\  Kuenen,  Belig. 
K^v^\r,'^<;  I"'  ^'J^.'  ^^\  Winckler  (Gesch.  Israels,  i.  34-38)  pronounces  the  original 
ocmuic  Yahu,  and  the  lahweh  evolved  from  him,  to  have  been  each  a  "  Wetter-Gott." 


97 


98 


EELATIVE  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ISEAEL 


the  people  had  assumed  a  multiplicity  of  Gods  is  clear  from  the  fact 
that  even  in  the  later  literary  efforts  to  impose  the  sole  cult  of 
Yahweh  on  the  people,  the  plural  name  Elohivi,  "Powers"  or 
"  Gods  "  (in  general,  things  to  be  feared),'  is  retained,  either  alone 
or  with  that  of  Yahweh  prefixed,  though  cosmology  had  previously 
been  written  in  Yahweh's  name.  The  Yahwists  did  not  scruple  to 
combine  an  Elohistic  narrative,  varying  from  theirs  in  cosmology 
and  otherwise,  with  their  own.'^ 

As  to  the  original  similarity  of  Hebraic  and  other  Canaanite 
religions  cp.  E.  Meyer,  Gesch,  des  Alt.  ^  309-11  (i.  372-76) ; 
Kuenen,  i,  223  ;  Wellhausen.  Israel,  p.  440 ;  Winckler,  Gesch. 
Israels,  passim;  E^ville,  ProUg.  de  Vhist.  des  relig.  1881.  p.  85. 
'*  Before  being  monotheistic,  Israel  was  simply  vwnolatrous,  a.nd 
even  that  only  in  its  rehgious  ilite"  (E6ville).     "Their   [the 
Canaanites']    worship  was   the  same   in   principle  as  that  of 
Israel,  but  it  had  a  higher  organization"  (Menzies,  Hist,  of 
Bel  p.  179  ;  cp.  Tiele,  Outlines,  pp.  85-89).     On  the  side  of  the 
traditional  view,  Mr.  Lang,  while  sharply  challengmg  most  of 
the  propositions  of  the  higher  critics,  affirms  that     ive  knoio 
that  Israel  had,  in  an  early  age,  the  conception  of  the  moral 
Eternal;  we  know  that,  at  an  early  age,  the  conception  was 
contaminated  and  anthropomorphized;    and  we  know  that  it 
was   rescued,   in   a   great  degree,  from  this  corruption,  while 
always   retaining   its   original    ethical    aspect    and    sanction" 
(Making  of  Beligion,  p.  295).     If  "we  know"  this,  the  dis- 
cussion is  at  an  end.     But  Mr.  Lang's  sole  documentary  basis 
for  the  assertion  is  just  the  fabricated  record,  reluctantly  aban- 
doned by  theological  scholars  as  such.    When  this  is  challenged, 
Mr.  Lang  falls  back  on  the  position  that  such  low  races  as  the 
Australians  and  Fuegians  have  a  "  moral  Supreme  Being,"  and 
that  therefore  Israel  "  must  "  have  had  one  (p.  309).     It  will  be 
found,    however,   that   the   ethic   of    these   races   is   perfectly 
primitive,  on  Mr.  Lang's  own  showing,  and  that  his  estimate  is 
a  misinterpretation.     As   to   their   Supreme  Beings,  it  might 
suffice  to  compare  Mr.  Lang's  Making  of  Beligion,  chs.  ix,  xii, 
wnth  his  earlier  Myth,  Bitual,  and  Beligion,  i,  168,  335 ;  ii,  6, 
etc.;  but,  as  we  have  seen  (above,  p.  93),  the  Supreme  Being  of 
the  Australians  eludes  the  closest  search  in  a  number  of  tribes  ; 
and  the  "  moral "  factor  is  equally  intangible.     Mr.  Lang  in  his 


1  The  word  is  applied  to  the  apparition  of  Samuel  in  the  story  of  the  Witch  of  Endor 

^^  ^a^The^'irnlearned  reader  may  here  be  reminded,  that  in.  Gen  i  the  Hebrew  word 
translated  "God "  is  "Elohim  "  and  that  the  phrase  in  Gen.  u  rendered  the  i^ord  God 
iJ^^mir  versions  is  in  the  original  "  Yah-weh-Elohim."  The  first  chapter,  with  its  plural 
deitvil  ho wiver  probably  ^t^^  later  as  well  as  the  more  dignified  narrative,  and 
?e%le;ents^he'L'flue^nce''of  Babylonian  qtiasi-science  See.  for  ?„e«°fi  ^^^^^^^^^^.^^.X' 
of  the  case.  The  Witness  0/  Assyria,  by  C.  Edwards.  1893,  ch.  u.  CP-^^^[^^?",^/°' ,^7^- 
to  Hist,  of  Israel,  Eng.  tr.  pp.  196-306 ;  E.  J.  F ri pp.  Composition  0/* he  Book  of  Genesis.  189-2. 
passim:  Driver.  Introd.  to  the  Lit.  of  the  Old  Test.  1891.  pp.  18-19. 


EELATIVE  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ISEAEL 


99 


later  reasoning  has  merely  added  the  ambiguous  and  misleading 
epithet  **  Supreme,"  stressing  it  indefinitely,  to  the  ordinary 
God-idea  of  the  lower  races.  (Cp.  Cox,  Mythol.  of  Aryan  Baces, 
ed.  1882,  p.  155;  and  K.  0.  MuUer,  Introd.  to  Sci.  Mythol. 
Eng.  tr.  p.  184.) 

There  being  thus  no  highly  imagined  "  moral  Eternal "  in  the 
religion  of  primitive  man,  the  Hebrews  were  originally  in  the 
ordinary  position.     Their  early  practice  of  human  sacrifice  is 
implied  in  the  legend  of  Abraham  and  Isaac,  and  in  the  story  of 
Jephthah.      (Cp.  Micah  vi,  7,  and  Kuenen  on  the  passage,  i,  237.) 
In  their  reputed  earliest  prophetic  books  we  find  them  addicted 
to  divination  (Hosea  iv,  12  ;  Micah  v,  12.     Cp.  the  prohibition 
in  Lev.  xx,  6  ;  also  2  Kings  xxiii,  24,  and  Isa.  iii,  2 ;  as  to  the 
use  of  the  ephod,  teraphim,  and  urim  and  thummim,  see  Kuenen, 
Belig.  of  Israel,  Eng.  tr.  i,  97-100)  and  to  polytheism.     (Amos 
V,  26,  viii,  14  ;  Hosea  i,  13,  17,  etc.      Cp.  Jud.  viii,  27  ;  1  Sam. 
vii,  3.)     These  things  Mr.  Lang  seems  to  admit  (p.  309,  note), 
despite  his  previous  claim  ;  but  he  builds  (p.  332)  on  the  fact 
that  the  Hebrews  showed  little  concern  about  a  future  state — 
that  "  early  Israel,  having,  so  far  as  we  know,  a  singular  lack  of 
interest  in  the  future  of  the  soul,  was  born  to  give  himself  up  to 
developing,  undisturbed,  the  theistic  conception,  the  belief  in  a 
righteous  Eternal " — whereas  later  Greeks  and  Romans,  like 
Egyptians,  were  much  concerned  about  life  after  death.     Mr. 
Lang's  own  general  theory  would  really  require  that  all  peoples 
at  a  certain  stage  should  act  like  the  Israelites  ;  but  he  suspends 
it  in  the  interest  of  the  orthodox  view  as  to  the  early  Hebrews. 
At  the  same  time  he  omits  to  explain  why  the  Hebrews  failed 
to  adopt  the  future-state  creed  when  they  were  "  contaminated  " 
— a   proposition   hardly  reconcilable,   on   any  view,   with  the 
sentence  just  quoted.     The  solution,  however,  is  simple.     Israel 
was  not  at  all  **  singular  "  in  the  matter.     The  early  (Homeric) 
Greeks  and  Eomans  (cp.  as  to  Hades  the  Iliad, passim;  Odyssey, 
bk.   xi,  passim;    Tiele,   Outlines,  p.  209,  as   to  the   myth   of 
Persephone ;    and   Preller,    Bomische   Mythologie,   ed.    Kohler, 
1865,  pp.  452-55,  as  to  the  early  Eomans),  like  the  early  Vedic 
Aryans  (Tiele,  Outlines,  p.  117  ;  Miiller,  Anthropol.  Belig.  p.  269), 
and  the  early  Babylonians  and  Assyrians  (Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt. 
i,  181-82  ;  Sayce,  Hib.  Lect.  p.  364)  took  little  thought  of  a 
future  state. 

*  Homer  knows  no  influence  of  the  Psyche  on  the  realm  of 

the  visible,  and  also  no  cult  implying  it A  later  poet,  who 

made  the  last  addition  to  the  Odyssey,  first  introduced  Hermes 
the  '  leader  of  souls '  [perhaps  taken  from  a  popular  belief  in 

some  part  of  Hellas] Underneath,  in  the  gloomy  shades,  the 

souls  waver,  unconscious  or  at  the  best  in  a  glimmering  half- 
consciousness,  endowed  with  faint  voices,  feeble,  indifferent 

To  speak,  as  do  many  old  and  recent  scholars,  of  the  *  immortal 


100  KELATIYE  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ISKAEL 

life '  of  such  souls,  is  erroneous.    They  live  rather  as  the  spectre 

of  the  living  in  a  mirror If  the  Psyche  outhves  her  visible 

mate  (the  body),  she  is  powerless  without  him Thus  is  the 

Homeric  world  free  from  ghosts  (for  after  the  burning  of  the 

body  the  Psyche  appears  no  more  even  in  dream) The  living 

has  peace  from  the  dead No  daemonic  power  is  at  work  apart 

from  or  against  the  Gods ;  and  the  night  gives  to  the  disem- 
bodied spirits  no  freedom"  (Rohde,  Psyche,   4te   Autl.   lUU^ 

This  minimization  of  the  normal  primitive  belief  in  spirits  is 
one  of  the  reasons  for  seeing  in  the  Homeric  poems  the  outcome 
of  a  period  of  loosened  belief.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the 
pre-Homeric  Greeks,  like  the  easterns  with  whom  the  Greeks 
met  in  Ionia,  had  not  the  usual  ghost-lore  of  savages  and 
barbarians ;  and  it  may  ba  that  for  all  the  early  civilizations 
under  notice  the  explanation  is  that  primitive  ghost-cults  were 
abandoned  by  migrating  and  conquering  races,  who  rejected  the 
ghost-cults  of  the  races  whom  they  conquered,  though  they 
ostensibly  accepted  their  Gods.  In  any  case  they  made  little 
reUgious  account  of  a  future  state  for  themselves. 

This    attitude    has   again   been   erroneously   regarded   [e.g., 
Dickinson,   The  Greek  View  of  Life,  p.  35)  as  pecuhar  to  the 
Greeks.     Mr.  Lang's  assumption  may,  in  fact,  be  overthrown 
by  the  single  case  of  the  Phoenicians,  who  showed  no  more 
concern  about  a  future  life  tlian  did  the  Hebrews  (see  Canon 
Eawlinson's  History  of  Phoenicia,  1889,  pp.  351-52),  but  who 
are    not    pretended    to    have   given   themselves   up   much   to 
"developing,  undisturbed,  the  belief  in  a  righteous  Eternal. 
The  truth  seems  to  be  that  in  all  the  early  progressive  and 
combative  civihzations  the  main  concern  was  as  to  the  con- 
tinuance of   this   life.     On   that   head   the   Hebrews  were  as 
soHcitous   as   any    (cp.   Kuenen,  i.  65);    and   they   habitually 
practised  divination  on  that  score.     Further,  they  attached  the 
very  highest  importance  to  the  continuance  of  the  individual  in 
his  offspring.     The  idea  of  a  future  state  is  first  found  highly 
developed   in   the   long-lived   cults   of    the   long-civilized    but 
unprogressive  Egyptians  ;  and  the  Babylonians  were  developing 
in  the  same  direction.     Yet  the  Hebrews  took  it  up  (see  the 
evidence  in  Schurer,  Jewish  People  in  the  Tinie  of  Jesus,  Eng.  tr. 
Div.  II,  vol.  ii,  p.  179)  just  when,  according  to  Mr.  Lang,  their 
cult  was  "rescued,  in  a  great  degree,  from  corruption";  and, 
generally  speaking,  it  was  in  the  stage  of  maximum  monotheism 
that  they  reached  the  maximum  of  irrationality.     For  the  rest, 
belief  in  "  immortality  "  is  found  highly  developed  in  a  socio- 
logically "degenerate"  and  unprogressive  people  such  as  the 
Tasmanians  (Miiller,  Ayithrop.  Bel  p.  433),  who  are  yet  primi- 
tively pure  on  Mr.  Lang's  hypothesis ;    and  is  normal  among 
negroes  and  Australian  blackfellows. 


EELATIVE  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ISEAEL 


101 


I 


This  primary  polytheism  is  seen  to  the  full  in  that  constant 
resort  of  Israelites  to  neighbouring  cults,  against  w-hich  so  much  of 
the  Hebrew  doctrine  is  directed.  To  understand  their  practice  the 
modern  reader  has  to  get  rid  of  the  hallucination  imposed  on 
Christendom  by  its  idea  of  revelation.  The  cult  of  Yahweh  was 
no  primordial  Hebrew  creed,  deserted  by  backsliding  idolaters,  but 
a  finally  successful  tyranny  of  one  local  cult  over  others.  It  is 
probable  that  it  was  originally  not  Palestinian,  but  Sinaitic,  and 
that  Yahweh  became  the  God  of  Caleb-Judah  only  under  David.^ 
Therefore,  without  begging  the  question  as  to  the  moral  sincerity  of 
the  prophets  and  others  who  identified  Yahwism  wdth  morality,  we 
must  always  remember  that  they  were  on  their  own  showing 
devotees  of  a  special  local  worship,  and  so  far  fighting  for  their 
own  influence.  Similar  prophesying  may  conceivably  have  been 
carried  on  in  connection  with  the  same  or  other  God-names  in  other 
localities,  and  the  extant  prophets  freely  testify  that  they  had 
Yahwistic  opponents ;  but  the  circumstance  that  Yahweh  was 
worshipped  at  Jerusalem  without  any  image  might  be  an  important 
cause  of  differentiation  in  the  case  of  that  cult.  In  any  case  it  must 
have  been  through  simple  "  exclusivism  "  that  they  reached  any  form 
of  "  monotheism."  "^ 

The  inveterate  usage,  in  the  Bible-making  period,  of  forging  and 
interpolating  ancient  or  pretended  writings,  makes  it  impossible  to 
construct  any  detailed  history  of  the  rise  of  Yahwism.  We  can  but 
proceed  upon  data  which  do  not  appear  to  lend  themselves  to  the 
purposes  of  the  later  adaptors.  In  that  way  we  see  cause  to  believe 
that  at  one  early  centre  the  so-called  ark  of  Yahweh  contained 
various  objects  held  to  have  supernatural  virtue.^  In  the  older 
historic  documents  it  has,  however,  no  such  sacredness  as  accrues 
to  it  later,*  and  no  great  traditional  prestige.  This  ark,  previously 
moved  from  place  to  place  as  a  fetish,*^  is  said  to  have  been  trans- 
ferred to  Jerusalem  by  the  early  king  David,*'  whose  story,  like  that 
of  his  predecessors  Saul  and  his  son  Solomon,  is  in  part  blended 
with  myth. 

As  to  David,  compare  1  Sam.  xvi,  18,  with  xvii,  33,  42. 
Daoud  (  =  Dodo  =  Dumzi  =  Tammuz  =  Adonis)  w^as  a  Semitic 
deity  (Sayce,  Hib.  Lee.  pp.  52-57,  and  art.  "  The  Names  of  the 
First  Three  Kings  of  Israel,"  in  Modern  Beview,  Jan.  1884), 

1  Winckler,  Gesch.  Isr.  i,  29-30. 

2  Cp.  Meyer.  Oesch.  des  Alt.  i,  398. 

8  See  the  myth  of  the  offerings  put  in  it  by  the  Philistines  (1  Sam.  vi). 

*  1  Sam.  iii,  3.    Cp.  ch.  ii,  12-22.    Contrast  Lev.  xvi,  2,  ff. 

5  1  Sam.  iv.  3-11.    Cp.  v.  vii.  2.  «  2  Sam.  vi. 


102  RELATIVE  FREETHOUGHT  IN  ISRAEL 

whom  David  resembles  as  an  inventor  of  the  lyre  (Amos,  vi,  5  ; 
cp.  Hitzig,  Die  Psalmen,  2  Theil.  1836,  p.  3).  But  Saul  and 
Solomon  also  were  God-names  (Sayce,  as  cited),  as  was  Samuel 
(id.  pp.  54,  181  ;  cp.  Lenormant,  Chaldean  Magic,  Eng.  tr. 
p.  120) ;  and  when  we  note  these  data,  and  further  the  plain 
fact  that  Samson  is  a  solar  myth,  being  a  personage  Evemerized 
from  Samas,  the  Sun-God,  we  are  prepared  to  find  further  traces 
of  Evemeristic  redaction  in  the  Hebrew  books.  To  say 
nothing  of  other  figures  in  the  Book  of  Judges,  we  find  that 
Jacob  and  Joseph  were  old  Canaanitish  deities  (Sayce,  Lectures, 
p.  51 ;  Records  of  the  Past,  New  Series,  v,  48  ;  Hugo  Winckler, 
Geschichte  Israels,  ii,  57-77) ;  and  that  Moses,  as  might  be 
expected,  was  a  name  for  more  than  one  Semitic  God  (Sayce, 
pp.  46-47),  and  in  particular  stood  for  a  Sun-God.  Abraham 
and  Isaac  in  turn  appear  to  be  ancient  deities  (Meyer,  Gesch,  des 
Alt.  i,  374,  §  309  ;  Winckler,  Gesch.  Israels,  ii,  20-49).  Miriam 
was  probably  in  similar  case  (cp.  Pagan  Christs,  2nd  ed. 
pp.  165-66).  On  an  analysis  of  the  Joshua  myth  as  redacted, 
further,  we  may  surmise  another  reduction  of  an  ancient  cult  to 
the  form  of  history,  perhaps  obscuring  the  true  original  of  the 
w^orship  of  Mary  and  Jesus. 

It  seems  probable,  finally,  that  such  figures  as  Elijah,  who 
ascends  to  heaven  in  a  fiery  chariot,  and  Elisha,  the  "  bald 
head"  and  miracle- worker,  are  similar  constructions  of  person- 
ages out  of  Sun-God  lore.  In  such  material  lies  part  of  the 
refutation  of  the  thesis  of  Renan  {Hist,  des  Ungues  sirnit.  2e 
6dit.  pp.  7,  485)  that  the  Semites  were  natural  monotheists, 
devoid  of  mythology.  [Renan  is  followed  in  whole  or  in  part 
by  Noldeke,  Sketches  from  Eastern  Hist.  Eng.  tr.  p.  6; 
Soury,  Belig.  of  Israel,  Eng.  tr.  pp.  2,  10 ;  Spiegel,  Erdnische 
Alterthimskunde,  i,  389:  also  Roscher,  Draper,  Peschel,  and 
BluntschH,  as  cited  by  Goldziher,  Mythology  Among  the 
Hebreivs,  Eng.  tr.  p.  4,  note.  On  the  other  side  compare 
Goldziher,  ch.  i ;  Steinthal's  Prometheus  and  Samson,  Eng.  tr. 
(with  Goldziher),  pp.  391,  428,  etc.,  and  his  Geschichte  der 
SprachiL'issenschaft  hei  den  Griechen  tind  den  Bomern,  1863, 
pp.  15-17  ;  Kuenen,  Bel.  of  Israel,  i,  225  ;  Smith,  Bel.  of  the 
Se7nites,  p.  49  ;  Ewald,  Hist,  of  Israel,  Eng.  tr.  4th  ed.  i,  38-40 ; 
Miiller,  Chips,  i,  345  sq.;  Selected  Essays,  1881,  ii,  402  sq.; 
Nat.  Bel.  p.  314.]  Renan's  view  seems  to  be  generally 
connected  with  the  assumption  that  life  in  a  **  desert "  makes 
a  race  for  ever  unimaginative  or  unitary  in  its  thought.  The 
Arabian  Nights  might  be  supposed  a  sufficient  proof  to  the 
contrary.  The  historic  truth  seems  to  be  that,  stage  for  stage, 
the  ancient  Semites  were  as  mythological  as  any  other  race ; 
but  that  (to  say  nothing  of  the  Babylonians  and  Assyrians)  the 
mythologies  of  the  Hebrews  and  of  the  Arabs  ^  were  alike 
suppressed   as   far   as   possible   in   their    monotheistic    stage. 


RELATIVE  FREETHOUGHT  IN  ISRAEL 


103 


I 


Compare  Renan's  own  admissions,  pp.  27,  110,  475,  and  Hist, 
du  peiiple  d' Israel,  i,  49-50. 

At  other  places,  however,  Yahweh  was  symbolized  and 
worshipped  in  the  image  of  a  young  bull,^  a  usage  associated  with 
the  neighbouring  Semitic  cult  of  Molech,  but  probably  indigenous, 
or  at  least  early,  in  the  case  of  Yahweh  also.  A  God,  for  such 
worshippers,  needed  to  be  represented  by  something,  if  he  were  to  be 
individualized  as  against  others ;  and  where  there  was  not  an  ark  or 
a  sacred  stone  or  special  temple  or  idol  there  could  be  no  cult  at  all. 
The  practices  of  ancient  religion  require  a  fixed  meeting-place 
between  the  worshippers  and  their  God."^  The  pre-Exihc  history 
of  Yahweh -worship  seems  to  be  in  large  part  that  of  a  struggle 
between  the  devotees  of  the  imageless  worship  fixed  to  the  temple  at 
Jerusalem,  and  other  worships,  with  or  without  images,  at  other  and 
less  influential  shrines. 

So  far  as  can  be  gathered  from  the  documents,  it  was  long  before 
monotheistic  pretensions  were  made  in  connection  with  Yahwism. 
They  must  in  the  first  instance  have  seemed  iiot  only  tyrannical  but 
blasphemous  to  the  devotees  of  the  old  local  shrines,  who  in  the 
earlier  Hebrew  writings  figure  as  perfectly  good  Yahwists ;  and 
they  clearly  had  no  durable  success  before  the  period  of  the  Exile. 
Some  three  hundred  years  after  the  supposed  period  of  David,^  and 
again  eighty  years  later,  we  meet  with  ostensible  traces^  of  a  move- 
ment for  the  special  aggrandizement  of  the  Yahweh  cult  and  the 
suppression  of  the  others  which  competed  with  it,  as  well  as  of 
certain  licentious  and  vicious  practices  carried  on  in  connection  with 
Yahweh  worship.  Concerning  these,  it  could  be  claimed  by  those 
who  had  adhered  to  the  simpler  tradition  of  one  of  the  early 
worships  that  they  were  foreign  importations.  They  were,  in  fact, 
specialties  of  a  rich  ancient  society,  and  were  either  native  to 
Canaanite  cities  which  the  Hebrews  had  captured,  or  copied  by  them 
from  such  cities.  But  the  fact  that  they  were  thus,  on  the  showing 
of  the  later  Yahwistic  records,  long  associated  with  Yahwist  practice, 
proves  that  there  was  no  special  elevation  about  Yahwism  originally. 

Even  the  epithet  translated  "Holy"  {Kadosh)  had  originally 
no  high  moral  significance.  It  simply  meant  "set  apart,"  "not 
common  "  (cp.  Kuenen,  Beligion  of  Israel,  i,  43  ;  Wellhausen, 
Israel,  in  Prolegomena  vol.  p.  499)  ;  and  the  special  substantive 
(Kadesh  and  Kedeshah)  was  actually  the  name  for  the  most 

*  1  Kings  xii,  28:  Hosea  viii,  4-6.    Cp.  Jud.  viii,  27 ;  Hosea  viii,  5. 
^  Smith,  Beligion  of  the  Semites,  p.  196.    But  see  above,  p.  79. 
8  11th  cent.  B.C.  *  2  Kings  xviii,  4,  22 ;  xxiii,  48. 


J 

It 


I 


104  EELATIYE  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ISEAEL 

degraded  ministrants  of  both  sexes  in  the  Hcentious  worship  (see 
Deut.  xxiii,  17,  18,  and  marg.  Eev.  Vers.  Cp.  1  Kings  xiv,  25  ; 
XV,  12  ;  2  Kings  xxiii,  7).  On  the  question  of  early  Hebrew 
ethics  it  is  somewhat  misleading  to  cite  Wellhausen  (so  Lang, 
Making  of  Beligion,  p.  304)  as  saying  {Israel,  p.  437)  that 
religion  inspired  law  and  morals  in  Israel  with  exceptional 
purity.  In  the  context  Wellhausen  has  said  that  the  starting- 
point  of  Israel  was  normal ;  and  he  writes  in  the  Prolegomena 
(p.  302)  that  "  good  and  evil  in  Hebrew  mean  primarily  nothing 
more  than  salutary  and  hurtful :  the  application  of  the  words 
to  virtue  and  sin  is  a  secondary  one,  these  being  regarded  as 
serviceable  or  hurtful  in  their  effects,'* 

§  2 

Given  the  co-existence  of  a  multitude  of  local  cults,  and  of 
various  local  Yahweh-w^orships,  it  is  conceivable  that  the  Yahwists 
of  Jerusalem,  backed  by  a  priest-ridden  king,  should  seek  to  limit 
all  worship  to  their  own  temple,  whose  revenues  would  thereby  be 
much  increased.  But  insoluble  perplexities  are  set  up  as  to  the 
alleged  movement  by  the  incongruities  in  the  documents.  Passing 
over  for  the  moment  the  prophets  Amos  and  Hosea  and  others  who 
ostensibly  belong  to  the  eighth  century  B.C.,  we  find  the  second 
priestly  reform/  consequent  on  a  finding  or  framing  of  **  the  law," 
represented  as  occurring  early  in  the  reign  of  Josiah  (641-610  B.C.). 
But  later  in  the  same  reign  are  placed  the  writings  of  Jeremiah, 
who  constantly  contemns  the  scribes,  prophets,  and  priests  in  mass, 
and  makes  light  of  the  ark,'  besides  declaring  that  in  Judah'  there 
are  as  many  Gods  as  towns,  and  in  Jerusalem  as  many  Baal-altars 
as  streets.  The  difficulty  is  reduced  by  recognizing  the  quasi- 
historical  narrative  as  a  later  fabrication;  but  other  difficulties 
remain  as  to  the  prophetic  writings ;  and  for  our  present  purpose 
it  is  necessary  briefly  to  consider  these. 

1.  The  "  higher  criticism,"  seeking  solid  standing-ground  at  the 
beginning  of  the  tangible  historic  period,  the  eighth  century,  singles 
out*  the  books  of  Amos  and  Hosea,  setting  aside,  as  dubious  in 
date,  Nahum  and  Joel ;  and  recognizing  in  Isaiah  a  composite  of 
different  periods.  If  Amos,  the  "herdsman  of  Tekoa,"  could  be 
thus  regarded  as  an  indubitable  historical  person,  he  would  be  a 
remarkable  figure  in  the  history  of  freethought,  as  would  his  nominal 
contemporary  Hosea.  Amos  is  a  monotheist,  worshipping  not  a 
God  of  Israel  but  a  Yahweh  or  Elohim  of  Hosts,  called  also  by  the 

1  2  Kings  xxiii.  ...  ^         ...   ,„  ,   „.       •••   ,, 

2  Jer.i.18;  iii.  16;  vi.l3;  vii.4-22;  V111.8;  xvm,18;  xx,1.2;  xxia.n.       .  .    ^.    ^ 

8  jer.  ii,  28  ;  xi.  13.  *  So  Kuenen,  vol.  i,  App.  i  to  Cli.l. 


EELATIVE  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ISEAEL 


105 


name  Adon  or  Adonai,  the  Lord,"  who  rules  all  the  nations  and 
created  the  universe.  Further,  the  prophet  makes  Yahweh  "  hate 
and  despise"  the  feasts  and  burnt-offerings  and  solemn  assemblies 
of  his  w^orshippers  ;  ^  and  he  meddles  impartially  with  the  affairs  of 
the  kingdoms  of  Judah  and  Israel.  In  the  same  spirit  Hosea 
menaces  the  solemn  assemblies,  and  makes  Yahweh  desire  "  mercy 
and  not  sacrifice."  "^  Similar  doctrine  occurs  in  the  reputedly  genuine 
or  ancient  parts  of  Isaiah,^  and  in  Micah."*  Isaiah,  too,  disparages 
the  Sabbath  and  solemn  meetings,  staking  all  upon  righteousness. 

2.  These  utterances,  so  subversive  of  the  priestly  system,  are 
yet  held  to  have  been  preserved  through  the  ages — through  the 
Assyrian  conquest,  through  the  Babylonian  Captivity,  through  the 
later  period  of  priestly  reconstruction — by  the  priestly  system  itself. 
In  the  state  of  things  pictured  under  Ezra  and  Nehemiah,  only  the 
zealous  adherents  of  the  priestly  law  can  at  the  outset  have  had 
any  letters,  any  literature  ;  it  must  have  been  they,  then,  who 
treasured  the  anti-priestly  and  anti-ritual  writings  of  the  prophets — 
unless,  indeed,  the  latter  were  preserved  by  the  Jews  remaining  at 
Babylon. 

3.  The  perplexity  thus  set  up  is  greatly  deepened  when  w^e 
remember  that  the  period  assigned  to  the  earlier  prophets  is  near 
the  beginning  of  the  known  age  of  alphabetic  w^riting,®  and  before 
the  know^n  age  of  writing  on  scrolls.  A  herdsman  of  Judea,  w4th 
a  classic  and  flowing  style,  is  held  to  have  written  out  his  hortatory 
addresses  at  a  time  w^hen  such  waiting  is  not  certainly  known  to 
have  been  practised  anywhere  else;*^  and  the  pre-eminent  style  of 
Isaiah  is  held  to  belong  to  the  same  period. 

"  His  [Amos's]  language,  with  three  or  four  insignificant 
exceptions,  is  pure,  his  style  classical  and  refined.  His  literary 
power   is   shown   in   the   regularity  of   structure  w4iich    often 

characterizes  his  periods as  well  as  in  the  ease  with  w^iich 

he  evidently  writes Anything  of  the  nature  of  roughness  or 

rusticity  is  wholly  absent  from  his  WTitings  "  (Driver,  Introd. 
to  Lit.  of  Old  Test.  ch.  vi,  §  3,  p.  297,  ed.  1891).  Isaiah,  again, 
is  in  his  own  narrow  field  one  of  the  most  gifted  and  skilful 
writers  of  all  antiquity.     The  difficulty  is  thus  nearly  as  great 

1  Amos  V. 21,2-2.  2  Hosea  ii,  11 ;  vi,  6.  »  Isa.  i.  11-14.  ^  Mic.  vi,  6-8. 

5  Cp.  M.  Miiller,  Nat.  Bel.  pp.  500-61;  Psyclwl.  Bel.  pp.  30-32;  Wellhausen,  Israel, 
p.  465.  If  the  Moabite  Stone  be  genuine— and  it  is  accepted  by  St&de  {Gesch.  des  Volkes 
Israel,  in  Oncken's  Series,  1881,  i,  86)  and  by  most  contemporary  scholars— the  Hebrew 
alphabetic  writing  is  carried  back  to  the  ninth  century  b.c.  An  account  of  the  Stone  is 
given  in  The  Witiiess  of  Assyria,  by  C.  Edwards,  ch.  xi.  See  again  Mommsen,  Hist,  of 
Borne,  bk.  i,  ch.  14,  Eng.  tr.  1894,  i,  280,  for  a  theory  of  the  extreme  antiquity  of  the 
alphabet. 

c  Dr.  Cheyne  (Art.  Amos  in  Encyc.  Biblica)  gives  some  good  reasons  for  attaching  little 
weight  to  such  objections,  but  finally  joins  in  calling  Amos  "  a  surprising  phenomenon." 


I« 


106  RELATIVE  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  ISRAEL 

as  that  of  the  proposition  that  the  Hebrew  of  the  Pentateuch 
is  a  thousand  years  older  than  that  of  the  latest  prophetical 
books,  whose  language  is  substantially  the  same.  (Cp.  Andrews 
Norton.  The  Pentateuch,  ed.  1863,  pp.  47-48  ;  Renan,  Hist,  des 
langues  sdmit.  2e  6dit.  p.  118.) 

4.  The  specialist  critics,  all  trained  as  clergymen,  and  mostly 
loth  to  yield  more  than  is  absolutely  necessary  to  skepticism,  have 
surrendered  the  antiquity  claimed  for  Joel,  recognizing  that  the 
arguments  for  that  are  "  equally  consistent  with  a  date  after  the 
Captivity."  ^  One  of  the  conclusions  here  involved  is  that  "  Egypt 
is  probably  mentioned  only  as  the  typical  instance  of  a  Power 
hostile  to  Judah."  Thus,  when  we  remember  the  later  Jewish 
practice  of  speaking  of  Rome  as  "  Babylon,"  or  "Edom,"  allusions 
by  Amos  and  Hosea  to  "Assyria"  have  no  evidential  force.  The 
same  reasoning  applies  to  the  supposed  ancient  portions  of  Isaiah. 

5.  Even  on  the  clerical  side,  among  the  less  conservative  critics, 
it  is  already  conceded  that  there  are  late  "insertions"  in  Amos. 
Some  of  these  insertions  are  among,  or  analogous  to,  the  very 
passages  rehed  on  by  Kuenen  to  prove  the  lofty  monotheism  of 
Amos.  If  these  passages,  however,  suggest  a  late  date,  no  less  do 
the  others  disparaging  sacrifices.  The  same  critics  find  interpola- 
tions and  additions  in  Hosea.  But  they  offer  no  proof  of  the 
antiquity  of  what  they  retain. 

The  principal  passages  in  Amos  given  up  as  insertions  by 
Dr.  Cheyne,  the  most  perspicacious  of  the  English  Hebraists, 
are  :  iv,  13  ;  v,  8-9  ;  ix,  5-6 ;  and  ix,  8-15.  See  his  introduc- 
tion to  1895  ed.  of  Prof.  Robertson  Smith's  Prophets  of  Israel, 
p.  XV ;  and  his  art.  on  Amos  in  the  Encyclopcedia  Bihlica. 
Compare  Kuenen,  i,  46,  48.  Dr.  Cheyne  regards  as  insertions 
in  Hosea  the  following:  i,  10-ii,  1;  "and  David  their  King" 
in  iii,  5 ;  viii,  14  ;  and  xiv,  1-9  (as  cited,  pp.  xviii-xix). 
Obviously  these  admissions  entail  others. 

6.  The  same  school  of  criticism,  while  adhering  to  the  traditional 
dating  of  Amos  and  Hosea,  has  surrendered  the  claim  for  the  Psalms, 
placing  most  of  these  in  the  same  age  with  the  books  of  Job,  Proverbs, 
Ecclesiastes,  and  Ecclesiasticus.^  Now,  the  sentiment  of  opposition 
to  burnt-ofierings  is  found  in  some  of  the  Psalms  in  language  identical 
with  that  of  the  supposed  early  prophets.^     Instead  of  taking  the 


1  Driver  Introd.  to  Lit.  of  Old  Test.  ch.  vi,  §  2  (p.  290.  ed.  1891).    Cp.  Kuenen,  Eelig.  of 
Israeli, 86;  and  Robertson  Smith,  art.  Joel,  in  £j«cvc.Bnf. 

2  Cp.  Wellhausen.  Israel,  p.  501 ;  Driver,  ch.  vu  (1st  ed.  pp.  352  sq.,  esp.  pp.  3o5,  361,  362, 
365);  Stade,  Gesch.  des  FoiA-es  Israel,  i.  85.  ,     .       ,  .     .,        ,-,.^.  ^  * 

3  Ea.  Pa.  1,  8-15;  li.  16-17,  where  v.  19  is  obviously  a  priestly  addition,  meant  to 
countervail  vv.  16. 17. 


EELATIVE  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ISEAEL 


107 


former  for  late  echoes  of  the  latter,  we  may  reasonably  suspect  that 
they  belong  to  the  same  culture-stage. 

The  principle  is  in  efifect  recognized  by  Dr.  Cheyne  when 
he  writes :  "  Just  as  we  infer  from  the  reference  to  Cyrus  in 
xliv,  28  ;  xlv,  1,  that  the  prophecy  containing  it  proceeds  from 
the  age  of  the  conqueror,  so  we  may  infer  from  the  fraternal 
feeling  towards  Egypt  and  Assyria  (Syria)  in^  xix,  23-25,  that 
the  epilogue  was  written  when  hopes  of  the  union  and  fusion  of 
Israehtish  and  non-Israehtish  elements  first  became  natural  for 
the  Jews — i.e.,  in  the  early  Jewish  period  "  {Introd.  to  the  Book 
of  Isaiah,  1895,  pp.  109-10). 

7.  From  the  scientific  point  of  view,  finally,  the  element  of 
historical  prediction  in  the  prophets  is  one  of  the  strongest  grounds 
for  presuming  that  they  are  in  reality  late  documents.  In  regard  to 
similar  predictions  in  the  gospels  (Mt.  xxiv,  15 ;  Mk.  xiii,  2 ; 
Lk.  xxi,  20),  rational  criticism  decides  that  they  w^ere  written 
after  the  event.  No  other  course  can  consistently  be  taken  as  to 
early  Hebrew  predictions  of  captivity  and  restoration;  and  the 
adherence  of  many  Biblical  scholars  at  this  point  to  the  traditional 
view  is  psychologically  on  a  par  with  their  former  refusal  to  accept 
a  rational  estimate  of  the  Pentateuchal  narrative. 

On  some  points,  such  as  the  flagrant  pseudo-prediction  in 
Isaiah  xix,  18,  all  reasonable  critics  surrender.  Thus  "  Konig 
sees  rightly  that  xix,  18,  can  refer  only  to  Jewish  colonies  in 
Egypt,  and  refrains  from  the  arbitrary  suppositio7i  that  Isaiah 
ivas  supernaturally  iriformed  of  the  future  establishment  of  such 
colonies"  (Cheyne,  Introd.  to  Smith's  Prophets  of  Israel, 
p.  xxxiii).  But  in  other  cases  T>i\  Cheyne's  own  earher 
positions  appear  to  involve  such  an  "  arbitrary  supposition," 
as  do  Kuenen's  ;  and  Smith  explicitly  posited  it  as  to  the 
prophets  in  general.  And  even  as  to  Isaiah  xix,  18,  whereas 
Hitzig,  as  Havet  later,  rightly  brings  the  date  down  to  the 
actual  historic  time  of  the  estabUshment  of  the  temple  at 
HeliopoHs  by  Onias  (Josephus,  Ant.  xiii,  3,  1 ;  Wars,  vii,  10,  2), 
about  160  B.C.,  Dr.  Cheyne  {Introd.  to  Isaiah,  p.  108)  com- 
promises by  dating  it  about  275  B.C. 

The  lateness  of  the  bulk  of  the  prophetical  writings  has  been 
ably  argued  by  Ernest  Havet  {Le  Christianisrne  et  ses  Origines, 
vol.  iv,  1878,  ch.  vi ;  and  ia  the  posthumous  vol.,  La  Modernite 
des  Prophdtes,  1891),  who  supports  his  case  by  many  cogent 
reasonings.  For  instance,  besides  the  argument  as  to  Isaiah 
xix,  18,  above  noted  :  (l)  The  frequent  prediction  of  the  ruin 
of  Tyre  by  Nebuchadnezzar  (Isa.  ch.  xxiii ;  Jer.  xxv,  22 ; 
Ezek.  xxvi,  7  ;  ch.  xxvii),  false  as  to  him  (a  fact  which  might  be 
construed  as  a  proof  of  the  fallibility  of  the  prophets  and  the 


108 


EELATIVE  FREETHOUGHT  IN  ISRAEL 


\k 


candour  of  their  transcribers),  is  to  be  understood  in  the  light 
of  other  post-predictions  as  referring  to  the  actual  capture  of 
the  city  by  Alexander.     (2)  Hosea's  prediction  of  the  fall  of 
Judah  as  well  as  of  Israel,  and  of  their  being  united,  places  the 
passage  after  the  Exile,  and  may  even  be  held  to  bring  it  down 
to  the  period  of  the  Asmoneans.     So  with  many  other  details : 
the  whole  argument  deserves  careful  study.     M.  Havet's  views 
were,  of  course,  scouted  by  the  conservative  specialists,  as  their 
predecessors  scouted  the  entire  hypothesis  of  Graf,  no\y  taken 
in   its   essentials   as    the   basis    of    sound    Biblical    criticism. 
M.  Scherer  somewhat  unintelligently  objected  to  him  (Etudes 
sur  la  litt.  contemp.  vii,  268)  that   he  was  not   a   Hebraist. 
There    is    no   question   of    philology   involved.     It    was   non- 
Hebraists  who  first  pointed  out  the  practical  incredibility  of 
the   central   Pentateuchal   narrative,    on   the   truth   of   which 
Kuenen  himself  long  stood  with  other  Hebraists.     (Cp.  Well- 
hausen,    Froleg.   pp.   39,  347;    also   his    (4th)    ed.    of   Bleek's 
Einleit.  in  das  alte  Test.  1878,  p.  154 ;  and  Kuenen,  Hexateuch, 
Eng.  tr.  pp.  XV,  43.)     Colenso's  argument,  in  the  gist  of  ^yhich 
he  w^as  long  preceded  by  lay  freethinkers,  was  one  of  simple 
common   sense.     The  weak   side   of   M.  Havet's   case   is   his 
undertaking     to     bring     the    prophets    bodily    down    to    the 
Maccabean    period.     This   is   claiming   too   much.      But    his 
negative  argument  is  not  affected  by  the  reply  (Darmesteter, 
Les  Prophdtes  d'lsrael,  1895,  pp.  128-31)  to  his  constructive 

theory. 

[Since   the   above   was   written,   two   French   critics,    MM. 
Dujardin    and    Maurice   Vernes,   have    sought    vigorously   to 
reconstruct    the    history   of    the   prophetic   books   upon   new 
lines.     I   have   been   unable   to   acquiesce   in   their   views   at 
essential  points,  but  would  refer  the  reader  to  the  lucid  and 
interesting  survey  of  the  problem  in  Mr.  T.  Whittaker's  Priests, 
Philosophers,  and  Prophets  (Black,  1911),  ch.  vi.] 
It    is    true    that   where    hardly   any   documentary    datum    is 
intrinsically  sure,  it  is  difficult  to  prove  a  negative  for  one  more 
than   for  another.     The  historical  narratives  being  systematically 
tampered  with  by  one  writer  after  another,  and  even  presumptively 
late  writings  being  interpolated  by  still  later  scribes,  we  can  never 
have  demonstrative  proof  as  to  the  original  date  of  any  one  prophet. 
Thus  it  is  arguable  that  fragments  of  utterance  from  eighth-century 
prophets  may  have  survived  orally  and  been  made  the  nucleus  of 
later  documents.     This  view  would  be  reconcilable  with  the  fact 
that  the  prophets  Isaiah,  Hosea,  Amos,  and  Micah  are  all  intro- 
duced with  some  modification  of  the  formula  that  they  prophesied 
"in  the  days  of  Uzziah,  Jotham,  Ahaz,  and  Hezekiah,  kings  of 
Judah,"  Jeroboam's  name  being  added  in  the  cases  of  Hosea  and 


RELATIVE  FREETHOUGHT  IN  ISRAEL 


109 


4 


Amos.  But  that  detail  is  also  reconcilable  with  absolute  fabrication. 
To  say  nothing  of  sheer  bad  faith  in  a  community  whose  moral  code 
said  nothing  against  fraud  save  in  the  form  of  judicial  perjury,  the 
Hebrew  literature  is  profoundly  compromised  by  the  simple  fact 
that  the  religious  development  of  the  people  made  the  prestige  of 
antiquity  more  essential  there  for  the  purposes  of  propaganda  than 
in  almost  any  other  society  known  to  us.  Hence  an  all-pervading 
principle  of  literary  dissimulation  ;  and  what  freethinking  there  was 
had  in  general  to  wear  the  guise  of  the  very  force  of  unreasoning 
traditionalism  to  which  it  was  inwardly  most  opposed.  Only  thus 
could  new  thought  find  a  hearing  and  secure  its  preservation  at  the 
hands  of  the  tribe  of  formalists.  Even  the  pessimist  Koheleth, 
wearied  with  groping  science,  yet  believing  nothing  of  the  doctrine 
of  immortality,  must  needs  follow  precedent  and  pose  as  the  fabulous 
King  Solomon,  son  of  the  half-mythic  David. 

§3 

We  are  forced,  then,  to  regard  with  distrust  all  passages  in  the 
"early"  prophets  which  express  either  a  disregard  of  sacrifice  and 
ritual,  or  a  universalism  incongruous  with  all  that  we  know  of  the 
native  culture  of  their  period.  The  strongest  ground  for  surmising 
a  really  "high"  development  of  monotheism  in  Judah  before  the 
Captivity  is  the  stability  of  the  life  there  as  compared  with  northern 
Israel.^  In  this  respect  the  conditions  might  indeed  be  considered 
favourable  to  priestly  or  other  culture ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
records  themselves  exhibit  a  predominant  polytheism.  The  pre- 
sumption, then,  is  strong  that  the  "advanced"  passages  in  the 
prophets  concerning  sacrifice  belong  to  an  age  when  such  ideas  had 
been  reached  in  more  civilized  nations,  with  whose  thought  travelled 
Jews  could  come  in  contact. 

It  is  true  that  some  such  ideas  were  current  in  Egypt  many 
centuries  before  the  period  under  notice — a  fact  which  alone 
discounts  the  ethical  originality  claimed  for  the  Hebrew 
prophets.  E.g.,  the  following  passage  from  the  papyrus  of 
Ani,  belonging  to  the  Nineteenth  Dynasty,  not  later  than 
1288  B.C.:  "That  which  is  detestable  in  the  sanctuary  of  God 
is  noisy  feasts;  if  thou  implore  him  with  a  loving  heart  of 
which  all  the  words  are  mysterious,  he  will  do  thy  matters,  he 
hears  thy  words,  he  accepts  thine  offerings"  {Religion  and 
Conscience  in  Ancient  Egypt,  by  Flinders  Petrie,  1898,  p.  160). 
The  word  rendered  "mysterious"  here  may  mean     magical" 

1  Cp.  Kuenen,  i,  156;  Wellhausen,  Prolegomena,  p.  139;  Israel,  p.  478. 


I  ■  :> 


h 


no  EELATIVE  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  ISEAEL 

or  "liturgical,"  or  may  merely  prescribe  privacy  or  silence ;  and 
this  last  is  the  construction  put  upon  it  by  ^^f ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Lectures,  2nd  ed.  p.  102)  and  Erman  {Handbook  of  Eg.  Melig. 
Eng.  tr.  p.  84).     The  same  doctrine  is  put  m  a  hymn  to  ihotii 
(id).     But  in  any  case  we  must  look  for  later  culture- contacts 
as  the  source  of  the  later   Hebrew  radicalism   under   notice, 
though  Egyptian  sources  are  not  ^^^e  wholly  se    aside      See 
Kuenen,  i,  395 ;    and  Brugsch.  as  there  cited ;  but  cp.  Well- 
hausen,  Israel,  p.  440. 
It  is  clear  that  not  only  did  they  accept  a  cosmogony  from  the 
Babylonians,  but  they  were  influenced  by  the  lore  of  the  Zoroastrian 
Persians,  with  whom,  as  with   the  monotheists   or   pantheists   of 
Babylon,  they  would  have  grounds  of  sympathy.     It  is  an  open 
question  whether  their  special  hostility  to  images  does  not   date 
from  the  time  of  Persian  contact/     Concerning  the  restoration,  it 
has  been  argued  that  only  a  few  Jewish  exiles  returned  to  Jerusalem 
"  both  under  Cyrus  and  under  Dareios  " ;  and  that,  though  the  temple 
was  rebuilt  under  Dareios  Hystaspis,  the  builders  were  not  the  Gola 
or  returned  exiles,  but  that  part  of  the  Judahite  population  which 
had  not  been  deported  to  Babylon.^     The  problem  is  obscure ;    but 
at  least,  the  separatist  spirit  of  the  redacted  narratives  of  Ezra  and 
Nehemiah  (which  in  any  case  tell  of  an  opposite  spirit)  is  not  to  be 
taken  as  a  decisive  clue  to  the  character  of  the  new  religion.     For 
the  rest,  the  many  Jews  who  remained  in  Babylon  or  spread  else- 
where in  the  Persian  Empire,  and  who  developed  their  creed  on 
a  non-local  basis,  were  bound  to  be  in  some  way  affected  by  the 
surrounding  theology.     And  it  is  tolerably  certain  that  not  only  was 
the  notion  of  angels  derived  by  the  Jews  from  either  the  Babylonians 
or  the  Persians,  but  their  rigid  Sabbath  and  their  weekly  synagogue 
meetings  came  from  one  or  both  of  these  sources. 

That  the  Sabbath  was  an  Akkado-Babylonian  and  Assyrian 
institution  is  now  well  established  (G.  Smith,  Ass^yrian  Eponym 
Canon,  1875,  p.  20  ;  Jastrow,  Belicj.  of  Bab.  mid  ^ssyrm,V-  377  ; 
Sayce,  Hib.  Lect.  p.  76,  and  in  Variorum  Teacher  s  Bible,  ed 
1885  Aids  p.  71).  It  was  before  the  fact  was  ascertained  that 
Kuenen  wiote  of  the  Sabbath  (i,  245)  as  peculiar  to  Israel. 
The  Hebrews  may  have  had  it  before  the  Exile  ;  but  it  was 


EELATIVE  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ISEAEL 


111 


^'^  Cheyne.  Introd.  to  Isaiah,  Prol.  pp.  fj^^^^^.^^^^'^'l  {fe^lmJ^^tnflt  the  time  of  the 
8  There  is  a  cognate  dispute  as  to  the  condition  of  the  »a^Yhev  were  numerous  and 
Return.    Stade  (Gesch.  des  Volkes  Inrael   i    b02)  j^oJ.'^i^.^JJ^^.^^oTI  areues  that  on  the 
weU-placed.    Winckler  (Alttestamenthche  ^^'^'''^'''''''if''^  fS  help.    So  also 

contrary,  they  were  poor  and  unorganized,  and  looked  to  the  Jews  lor  neip.    do  ai^u 

E.  Meyer.  Gesch.  des  Alt.  iii  (1901),  214. 


I 


clearly   not   then   a   great   institution ;    and    the   mention   of 
Sabbaths  in  Amos  (viii,  5)  and  Isaiah   (i,  13)  is  one  of  the 
reasons  for  doubting  the  antiquity  of  those  books.     The  custom 
of  synagogue  meetings  on  the  Sabbath  is  post-exilic,  and  may 
have  arisen  either  in  Babylon  itself  (so   Wellhausen,  Israel, 
p.  492)  or  in  imitation  of  Parsee  practice  (so  Tiele,  cited  by 
Kuenen,  iii,  35).     Compare  E.  Meyer,  Gesch,  des  Alt.  iii  (1901), 
§  131.     The  same  alternative  arises  with  regard  to  the  behef 
in    angels,   usually   regarded   as   certainly   Persian    in    origin 
(cp.   Kuenen,  iii,   37;    Tiele,   Outlines,  p.   90;    and  Sack,   Die 
altjildische    Beligion,    1889,   p.    133).     This    also   could   have 
been  Babylonian  (Sayce,  in  Var.  Bible,  as  cited,  p.  71) ;  even 
the  demon  Asmodeus  in  the  Book  of  Tobit,  usually  taken  as 
Persian,  being  of   Babylonian  derivation   {id).     Cp.  Darmes- 
teter's  introd.  to  Zendavesta,  2nd  ed.  ch.  v.     On  the  other  hand, 
the  conception  of  Satan,  the  Adversary,  as  seen  in  1  Chr.  xxi,  1 ; 
Zech.  iii,  1,  2,  seems  to  come  from  the  Persian  Ahriman,  though 
the  Satan  of  Job  has  not  Ahriman's  status.    Such  a  modification 
would  come  of  the  wish  to  insist  on  the  supremacy  of  the  good 
God.     And  this  quasi-monotheistic  view,  again,  we  are  led  to 
regard,  in  the  case  of  the  prophets,  as  a  possible  Babylonian 
derivation,  or  at  least  as  a  result  of  the  contact  of  Yahwists 
with  Babylonian  culture.     To  a  foreign  influence,  finally,  must 
be  definitely  attributed    the    later   Priestly    Code,    over-ruling 
Deuteronomy,  lowering  the  Levites,  setting  up  a  high  priest, 
caUing  the  dues  into  the  sanctuary,  resting  on  the  Torah  the 
cultus  which  before  was  rested  on  the  patriarchs,  and  providing 
cities  and  land  for  the  Aaronidae  and  the  Levites  (Wellhausen, 
Prolegomena,  pp.  123, 127, 147, 149.  347  ;  Israel,  pp.  495,  497)— 
the  latter  an  arrangement  impossible  in  mountainous  Palestine, 
as  regards  the  land-measurements  {id.  Proleg.  p.  159,  following 
Gramberg   and   Graf),   and   clearly  deriving   from   some   such 
country  as  Babylonia  or  Persia.    As  to  the  high-priest  principle 
in  Babylon  and  Assyria,  see  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  59-61 ; 
Jastrow,  as  cited,  p.  658. 

Of  the  general  effect  of  such  contacts  we  have  clear  traces  in 
two  of  the  most  remarkable  of  the  later  books  of  the  Old  Testament, 
Job  and  Ecclesiastes,  both  of  which  clearly  belong  to  a  late  period 
in  religious  development.  The  majority  of  the  critics  still  confi- 
dently describe  Job  as  an  original  Hebrew  work,  mainly  on  the 
ground,  apparently,  that  it  shows  no  clear  marks  of  translation, 
though  its  names  and  its  local  colour  are  all  non-Jewish.  In  any 
case  it  represents,  for  its  time,  a  cosmopolitan  culture,  and  contains 
the  work  of  more  than  one  hand,  the  prologue  and  epilogue  being 
probably  older  than  the  rest ;  while  much  of  the  dialogue  is 
obviously  late  interpolation. 


♦ 


112  KELATIVE  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ISRAEL 

Compare  Cheyne,  Job  and  Solonwrh  1887,  p.  72  ;  Bradley, 
Lectures  on  Job,  p.  171 ;  Bleek-Wellhausen,  Einleitung,  §  268 
(291),  ed.  1878.  p.  542;  Driver,  Introd.  pp.  405-8;  Cornill, 
Einleit,  in  das  alte  Test.  2te.  Aufl.  1892,  §  §  38,  42 ;  Sharpe, 
Hist,  of  the  Hebreiv  Nation,  4tli  ed.  p.  282  sq.;  Dillon,  Skeptics 
of  the  Old  Test.  1895,  pp.  36-39.  Kenan's  dating  of  the  book 
six  or  seven  centuries  before  Ecclesiastes  (U Ecclesiaste,  p.  26 ; 
Job,  pp.  xv-xliii)  is  oddly  uncritical.  It  must  clearly  be  dated 
after  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  (Dillon,  as  cited)  ;  and  Cornill  even 
ascribes  it  to  the  fourth  or  third  century  B.C.  Dr.  Cheyne  notes 
that  in  the  skeptical  passages  the  name  Yahweh  is  very  seldom 
used  (only  once  or  twice,  as  in  xii,  9  ;  xxviii,  28) ;  and  Dr. 
Driver  admics  that  the  whole  book  not  only  abounds  in  Aramaic 
words,  but  lias  a  good  many  "  explicable  only  from  the  Arabic." 
Other  details  in  the  book  suggest  the  possible  culture-influence 
of  the  Himyarite  Arabs,  who  had  reached  a  high  civiUzation 
before  500  B.C.  Dr.  Driver's  remark  that  "  the  thoughts  are 
thoroughly  Hebraic "  burkes  the  entire  problem  as  to  the 
manifest  innovation  the  book  makes  in  Hebrew  thought  and 
literary  method  aUke.  Sharpe  (p.  287)  is  equally  arbitrary. 
Cp.  Renan,  Job,  1859,  pp.  xxv,  w^iere  the  newness  of  the  whole 
treatment  is  admitted. 

Dr.  Dillon  (pp.  43-59),  following  Bickell,  has  pointed  out 
more  or  less  convincingly  the  many  interpolations  made  in  the 
book  after,  and  even  before,  the  making  of  the  Septuagint 
translation,  which  originally  lacked  400  lines  of  the  matter  in 
the  present  Hebrew  version.  The  discovery  of  the  Saidic 
version  of  the  LXX  text  of  Job  decides  the  main  fact.  (See 
Professor  Bickell's  Das  Bach  Job,  1894.)  "  It  is  quite  possible 
even  now  to  point  out,  by  the  help  of  a  few  disjointed  fragments 
still  preserved,  the  position,  and  to  divine  the  sense,  of  certain 
spiteful  and  defiant  passages,  which,  in  the  interest  of  *  rehgion 
and  morals,'  were  remorselessly  suppressed ;  to  indicate  others 
which  were  split  up  and  transposed ;  and  to  distinguish  many 
prolix  discourses,  feeble  or  powerful  word-pictures,  and  trite 
commonplaces,  which  were  deliberately  inserted  later  on,  for  the 
sole  purpose  of  toning  down  the  most  audacious  piece  of  ration- 
alistic philosophy  which  has  ever  yet  been  clothed  in  the  music 
of  sublime  verse  "  (Dillon,  pp.  45-46). 

"  Besides  the  four  hundred  verses  which  must  be  excluded  on 
the  ground  that  they  are  wanting  in  the  Septuagint  version,  and 
were  therefore  added  to  the  text  at  a  comparatively  recent 
period,  the  long-winded  discourse  of  Eiihu  must  be  struck  out, 
most  [?much]   of  which  w^as  composed  before  the  book  \vas 

first   translated    into  Greek In  the  prologue  in  prose 

Ehhu  is  not  once  alluded  to  ;  and  in  the  epilogue,  where  all  the 

[other]  debaters  are  named  and  censured,  he is  absolutely 

ignored Elihu's  style  is  toto  coclo  different  from  that  of  the 


RELATIVE  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ISRAEL 


113 


other  parts  of  the  poem ; while  his  doctrinal  peculiarities, 

particularly  his  mention  of  interceding  angels,  while  they 
coincide  with   those  of    the   New   Testament,  are   absolutely 

unknown  to  Job  and  his  friends The  confusion  introduced 

into  the  text  by  this  insertion  is  bewildering  in  the  extreme  ; 

and  yet  the  result  is  but  a  typical  specimen  of  the tangle 

which  was  produced  by  the  systematic  endeavour  of  later  and 
pious  editors  to  reduce  the  poem  to  the  proper  level  of  ortho- 
doxy "  (id.  pp.  55-57).  Again:  "  Ch.  xxiv,  5-8,  10-24,  and 
ch.  XXX,  3-7,  take  the  place  of  Job's  blasphemous  complaint 
about  the  unjust  government  of  the  world." 

It  need  hardly  be  added  here  that  not  only  the  Authorized 
but  the  Revised  Version  is  false  in  the  text  "  I  know  that  my 
redeemer  liveth,"  etc.  (xix,  25-27),  that  being  a  perversion 
dating  from  Jerome.  The  probable  meaning  is  given  in  Dr. 
Dillon's  version : — 

But  I  know  that  my  avenger  liveth  ; 
Though  it  be  at  the  end  upon  my  dust, 
My  witness  will  avenge  these  things, 
And  a  curse  alight  upon  mine  enemies. 

The  original  expressed  a  complete  disbelief  in  a  future  life 
(ch.  xiv).  Compare  Dr.  Dillon's  rhythmic  version  of  the 
restored  text. 

What  marks  off  the  book  of  Job  from  all  other  Hebrew  literature 
is  its  dramatic  and  reflective  handling  of  the  ethical  problem  of 
theism,  which  the  prophets  either  evade  or  dismiss  by  declamation 
against  Jewish  sins.  Not  that  it  is  solved  in  Job,  where  the  rdle  of 
Satan  is  an  inconclusive  resort  to  the  Persian  dualistic  solution,  and 
where  the  deity  is  finally  made  to  answer  Job's  freethinking  by  sheer 
literary  thunder,  much  less  ratiocinative  though  far  more  artistic 
than  the  theistic  speeches  of  the  friends.  But  at  least  the  writer  or 
writers  of  Job's  speeches  consciously  grasped  the  issue  ;  and  the 
writer  of  the  epilogue  evidently  felt  that  the  least  Yahweh  could  do 
was  to  compensate  a  man  whom  he  had  allowed  to  be  wantonly 
persecuted.  The  various  efforts  of  ancient  thought  to  solve  the 
same  problem  will  be  found  to  constitute  the  motive  power  in  many 
later  heterodox  systems,  theistic  and  atheistic. 

Broadly  speaking,  it  is  solved  in  practice  in  terms  of  the  fortunes 
of  priests  and  worshippers.  At  all  stages  of  religious  evolution 
extreme  ill-fortune  tends  to  detach  men  from  the  cults  that  have 
failed  to  bring  them  succour.  Be  it  in  the  case  of  African  indigenes 
slaying  their  unsuccessful  rain-doctor,  Anglo-Saxon  priests  welcoming 
Christianity  as  a  surer  source  of  income  than  their  old  worship, 
pagans  turning  Christian  at  the  fall  of  Julian,  or  Christians  going 

I 


114 


BELATIVE  FREETHOUGHT  IN  ISRAEL 


over  to  Islam  at  the  sight  of  its  triumph— the  simple  primary  motive 
of  self-interest  is  always  potent  on  this  as  on  other  sides ;  and  at  all 
stages  of  Jewish  history,  it  is  evident,  there  were  many  who  held  by 
Yahweh  because  they  thought  he  prospered  them,  or  renounced  him 
because  he  did  not.  And  the  very  vicissitude  of  things  would  breed 
a  general  skepticism.^  In  Zephaniah  (i,  12)  there  is  a  specific 
allusion  to  those  "  that  say  in  their  heart,  The  Lord  will  not  do 
good,  neither  will  he  do  evil." 

Judaism  is  thus  historically  a  series  of  socio-political  selections 
rather  than  a  sequence  of  hereditary  transmission.  The  first  definite 
and  exclusive  Yahwistic  cult  was  an  outcome  of  special  political  con- 
ditions ;  and  its  priests  would  adhere  to  it  in  adversity  insofar  as 
they  had  no  other  economic  resort.  Every  return  of  sunshine,  on 
the  other  hand,  would  minister  to  faith  ;  and  while  many  Jews  in 
the  time  of  Assyro-Babylonian  ascendancy  decided  that  Yahweh 
could  not  save,  those  Yahwists  who  in  the  actual  Captivity 
prospered  commercially  in  the  new  life  w^ould  see  in  such  prosperity 
a  fresh  proof  of  Yahweh's  support,^  and  would  magnify  his  name 
and  endow  his  priests  accordingly.  For  similar  reasons,  the  most 
intense  development  of  Judaism  occurs  after  the  Maccabean  revolt, 
when  the  military  triumph  of  the  racial  remnant  over  its  oppressors 
inspired  a  new  and  enduring  enthusiasm. 

On  the  other  hand,  foreign  influences  would  chronically  tend  to 
promote  doubt,  especially  where  the  foreigner  was  not  a  mere 
successful  votary  exalting  his  own  God,  but  a  sympathetic  thinker 
questioning  all  the  Godisms  alike.  This  consideration  is  a  reason 
the  more  for  surmising  a  partly  foreign  source  for  the  book  of  Job, 
where,  as  in  the  passage  cited  from  Zephaniah,  there  is  no  thought 
of  one  deity  being  less  potent  than  another,  but  rather  an  impeach- 
ment of  divine  rule  in  terms  of  a  conceptual  monotheism.  In  any 
case,  the  book  stands  for  more  than  Jewish  reverie  ;  and  where  it  is 
finally  turned  to  an  irrelevant  and  commonplace  reaflirmation  of  the 
goodness  of  deity,  a  certain  number  of  sincerer  thinkers  in  all  Hkeli- 
hood  fell  back  on  an  "  agnostic  "  solution  of  the  eternal  problem. 

In  certain  aspects  the  book  of  Job  speaks  for  a  further  reach  of 
early  freethinking  than  is  seen  in  Ecclesiastes  (Koheleth),  which, 
however,  at  its  lower  level  of  conviction,  tells  of  an  unbelief  that 
could  not  be  overborne  by  any  rhetoric.  It  unquestionably  derives 
from  late  foreign  influences.     It  is  true  that  even  in  the  book  of 

1  Cp.  Rowland  Williams,  Tlw.  Hebrew  Prophets,  it  (1871),  38.    This  translator's  render- 
ing of  the  phrase  cited  by  Zephaniah  runs :  "  Neither  good  does  the  eternal  nor  evil." 
^  Cp.  E.  Meyer,  Oeschichte  des  Alterthums,  iii,  216. 


RELATIVE  FREETHOUGHT  IN  ISRAEL 


115 


Malachi,  which  is  commonly  dated  about  400  B.C.,  there  is  angry 
mention  of  some  who  ask,  "Where  is  the  God  of  judgment?"  and 
say,  "It  is  vain  to  serve  God";^  even  as  others  had  said  it  in  the 
days  of  Assyrian  oppression;"^  but  in  Malachi  these  sentiments  are 
actually  associated  with  foreign  influences,  and  in  Koheleth  such 
influences  are  implicit.  By  an  increasing  number  of  students, 
though  not  yet  by  common  critical  consent,  the  book  is  dated 
about  200  B.C.,  when  Greek  influence  was  stronger  in  Jewry  than 
at  any  previous  time. 

Gratz  even  puts  it  as  late  as  the  time  of  Herod  the  Great, 
But  compare  Dillon,  p.  129 ;  Tyler,  Ecclesiastes,  1874,  p.  31  ; 
Plumptre's  Ecclesiastes,  1881,  introd.  p.  34  ;  Renan,  L'EccU- 
siaste,  1882,  pp.  54-59 ;  Kuenen,  Beligioii  of  Israel,  iii,  82  ; 
Driver,  Introductio7i,  pp.  446-47  ;  Bleek-Wellhausen,  Einleitung, 
p.  527.  Dr.  Cheyne  and  some  others  still  put  the  date  before 
332  B.C.  Here  again  we  are  dealing  with  a  confused  and 
corrupted  text.  The  German  Prof.  Bickell  has  framed  an 
ingenious  and  highly  plausible  theory  to  the  effect  that  the 
present  incoherence  of  the  text  is  mainly  due  to  a  misplacing  of 
the  leaves  of  the  copy  from  which  the  current  transcript  was 
made.  See  it  set  forth  by  Dillon,  pp.  92-97 ;  cp.  Cheyne,  Joh 
and  Solomon,  p.  273  sq.  There  has,  further,  been  some 
tampering.  The  epilogue,  in  particular,  is  clearly  the  addition 
of  a  later  hand — "  one  of  the  most  timid  and  shuffling  apologies 
ever  penned"  (Dillon,  p.  118,  note). 

But  the  thought  of  the  book  is,  as  Renan  says,  profoundly 
fatigued ;  and  the  sombre  avowals  of  the  absence  of  divine  moral 
government  are  ill-balanced  by  sayings,  probably  interpolated  by 
other  hands,  averring  an  ultimate  rectification  even  on  earth.  What 
remains  unqualified  is  the  deliberate  rejection  of  the  belief  in  a 
future  life,  couched  in  terms  that  imply  the  currency  of  the 
doctrine ;'  and  the  deliberate  caution  against  enthusiasm  in  religion. 
Belief  in  a  powerful  but  remote  deity,  with  a  minimum  of  worship 
and  vows,  is  the  outstanding  lesson.* 

"To  me,  Koheleth  is  not  a  theist  in  any  vital  sense  in  his 
philosophic  meditations  "  (Cheyne,  Joh  and  Solomon,  p.  250). 
'*  Koheleth's  pessimistic  theory,  which  has  its  roots  in 
secularism,  is  utterly  incompatible  with  the  spirit  of  Judaism. 
It  is  grounded  upon  the  rejection  of  the  Messianic  expec- 
tations, and  absolute  disbelief  in  the  solemn  promises  of  Jahveh 
himself It  would  be  idle  to  deny  that  he  had  far  more  in 


I  Mai.  ii,  17 :  iii,  13.    Cp.  ii,  8. 11. 
8  Eccles.  iii,  1&-21. 


2  Cp.  Jer.  xxxiii,  24 ;  xxxviii,  19. 

*  Ch.  V.    Kenan's  translation  lends  lucidity. 


116  EELATIVE  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ISKAEL 

common  with  the  '  impious '  than  with  the  orthodox  "  (Dillon, 
pp.  119-20). 

That  there  was  a  good  deal  of  this  species  of  tired  or  stoical 
semi-rationalism  among  the  Jews  of  the  Hellenistic  period  naay  be 
inferred  from  various  traces.  The  opening  verses  of  the  thirtieth 
chapter  of  the  book  of  Proverbs,  attributed  to  Agur,  son  of  Jakeh, 
are  admittedly  the  expression  of  a  skeptic's  conviction  that  God 
cannot  be  known/  the  countervaihng  passages  being  plainly  the 
additions  of  a  beHever.  Agur's  utterances  probably  belong  to  the 
close  of  the  third  century  B.C.  Here,  as  in  Job,  there  are  signs  of 
Arab  influence  i''  but  at  a  later  period  the  main  source  of  skepticism 
for  Israel  was  probably  the  Hellenistic  civilization.  It  is  told  in 
the  Talmud  that  in  the  Maccabean  period  there  came  into  use  the 
formula,  **  Cursed  be  the  man  that  cherisheth  swine ;  and  cursed  be 
the  man  that  teacheth  his  son  the  wisdom  of  the  Greeks";  and 
there  is  preserved  the  saying  of  Eabbi  Simeon,  son  of  Gamaliel, 
that  in  his  father's  school  five  hundred  learnt  the  law,  and  five 
hundred  the  wisdom  of  the  Greeks.^  Before  Gamaliel,  the  Greek 
influence  had  affected  Jewish  philosophic  thought ;  and  it  is  very 
probable  that  among  the  Sadducees  who  resisted  the  doctrine  of 
resurrection  there  were  some  thinkers  of  the  Epicurean  school.  To 
that  school  may  have  belonged  the  unbelievers  who  are  struck  at 
in  several  Eabbinical  passages  which  account  for  the  sin  of  Adam 
as  beginning  in  a  denial  of  the  omnipresence  of  God,  and  describe 
Cain  as  having  said  :  "  There  is  no  judgment ;  there  is  no  world  to 
come,  and  there  is  no  reward  for  the  just,  and  no  punishment  for 
the  wicked."*  But  of  Greek  or  other  atheism  there  is  no  direct 
trace  in  the  Hebrew  literature;*  and  the  rationalism  of  the 
Sadducees,  who  were  substantially  the  priestly  party,**  was  like  the 
rationalism  of  the  Brahmans  and  the  Egyptian  priests — something 
esoteric  and  withheld  from  the  multitude.  In  the  apocryphal 
Wisdom  of  Solomon,  which  belongs  to  the  first  century  A.C.,  the 

»  Driver,  Introducticm,  p.  378.  Prof.  Dillon  {SJeepHcH  of  the  Old  Testament,  p.  155)  goes 
so  far  as  to  pronounce  Agur  a  "  Hebrew  Voltaire."  which  is  somewhat  of  a  straining  of  the 
few  words  he  has  left.  Cp.  Dr.  Moncure  Conway.  Solomon  and  Solomonic  Literature, 
1899,  p.  55.  In  any  case.  Agur  belongs  to  an  age  of  "  advanced  religious  reflection  "  (Cheyne, 
Job  and  Solo^non,  p.  152). 

a  Driver.  Introduction,  p.  378. 

8  Biscoe,  Eist.  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  ed.  1829,  p.  80.  following  Selden  and  Lightfoot. 

<  S.  Schechter.  Studies  in  Judaism,  1896.  p.  18^.  citing  Sayihedriii,  386.  and  Pseudo- 
Jonathan  to  Gen.  iv,  8.    Cp.  pp.  191-92.  citing  a  mention  of  Epicurus  in  the  Mishna. 

»  The  familiar  phrase  in  the  Psalms  (xiv.  i ;  liii.  1),  "The  fool  hath  said  in  his  heart, 
there  is  no  God."  supposing  it  to  be  evidence  for  anything,  clearly  does  not  refer  to  any 
reasoned  unbelief.  Atheism  could  not  well  be  quite  so  general  as  the  phrase,  taken 
literally,  would  imply.  „  ,      ,         r,     ..,      ^, , 

«  Cp.  W.  R.  Sorley.  Jeivish  Christians  and  Judaism,  1881.  p.  9;  Robertson  Smith,  Old 
Test,  in  the  Jeivish  Ch.  ed.  1892.  pp.  48-49.  These  writers  somewhat  exaggerate  the  novelty 
Of  the  view  they  accept.    Cp.  Biscoe,  History  of  the  Acts,  ed.  1829,  p.  101. 


EELATIVE  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ISEAEL 


117 


denial  of  immortality,  so  explicit  in  Ecclesiastes,  is  treated  as  a 
proof  of  utter  immorality,  though  the  deniers  are  not  represented  as 
atheists.^  They  thus  seem  to  have  been  still  numerous,  and  the 
imputation  of  wholesale  immorality  to  them  is  of  course  not  to  be 
credited;^  but  there  is  no  trace  of  any  constructive  teaching  on 
their  part. 

So  far  as  the  literature  shows,  save  for  the  confused  Judaic- 
Platonism  of  Philo  of  Alexandria,  there  is  practically  no  rational 
progress  in  Jewish  thought  after  Koheleth  till  the  time  of  contact 
with  revived  Greek  thought  in  Saracen  Spain.  The  mass  of  the 
people,  in  the  usual  way,  are  found  gravitating  to  the  fanatical  and 
the  superstitious  levels  of  the  current  creed.  The  book  of  Kuth, 
written  to  resist  the  separatism  of  the  post-ExiHc  theocracy,^  never 
altered  the  Jewish  practice,  though  allowed  into  the  canon.  The 
remarkable  Levitical  legislation  providing  for  the  periodical  restora- 
tion of  the  land  to  the  poor  never  came  into  operation,^  any  more 
than  the  very  different  provision  giving  land  and  cities  to  the 
children  of  Aaron  and  the  Levites.  None  of  the  more  rationalistic 
writings  in  the  canon  seems  ever  to  have  counted  for  much  in  the 
national  life.  To  conceive  of  "  Israel,"  in  the  fashion  still  prevalent, 
as  being  typified  in  the  monotheistic  prophets,  whatever  their  date, 
is  as  complete  a  misconception  as  it  would  be  to  see  in  Mr.  Euskin 
the  expression  of  the  everyday  ethic  of  commercial  England.  The 
anti- sacrificial  and  universalist  teachings  in  the  prophets  and  in  the 
Psalms  never  affected,  for  the  people  at  large,  the  sacrificial  and 
locaHzed  worship  at  Jerusalem:  though  they  may  have  been 
esoterically  received  by  some  of  the  priestly  or  learned  class  there, 
and  though  they  may  have  promoted  a  continual  exodus  of  the  less 
fanatical  types,  who  turned  to  other  civiUzations.  Despite  the 
resistance  of  the  Sadducees  and  the  teaching  of  Job  and  Ecclesiastes, 
the  behef  in  a  resurrection  rapidly  gained  ground*  in  the  two  or 
three  centuries  before  the  rise  of  Jesuism,  and  furnished  a  basis  for 
the  new  creed ;  as  did  the  Messianic  hope  and  the  belief  in  a  speedy 
ending  of  the  world,  with  both  of  which  Jewish  fanaticism  sustained 
itself  under  the  long  frustration  of  nationalistic  faith  before  the 
Maccabean  interlude  and  after  the  Eoman  conquest.  It  was  in  vain 
that  the  great  teacher  Hillel  declared,   "There  is  no  Messiah  for 

2  Cp.  the  implications  in  Ecclesiasticus,  vi.  4-6;  xvi.  11-12,  as  to  the  ethics  of  many 
believers. 

3  Kuenen,  ii,  242-43. 

<  Kalisch.  Comni.  on  Leutf iciis,  XXV,  8,  pt.  ii.  p. 548.  „       .       .  .     ,      . 

6  In  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon,  iii,  13 ;  iv.  1,  the  old  desire  for  offspring  is  seen  to  be  m 
part  superseded  by  the  newer  belief  in  personal  immortality. 


I 


118 


KELATIVE  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ISEAEL 


Israel";  the  rest  of  the  race  persisted  in  cherishing  the  dream.* 
With  the  major  hallucination  thus  in  fuU  possession,  the  subordinate 
species  of  superstition  flourished  as  in  Egypt  and  India  ;  so  that  at 
the  beginning  of  our  era  the  Jews  were  among  the  most  superstitious 
peoples  in  the  world.^  When  their  monotheism  was  fully  established, 
and  placed  on  an  abstract  footing  by  the  destruction  of  the  temple, 
it  seems  to  have  had  no  bettering  influence  on  the  practical  ethics 
of  the  Gentiles,  though  it  may  have  furthered  the  theistic  tendency 
of  the  Stoic  philosophy.  Juvenal  exhibits  to  us  the  Jew  proselyte 
at  Kome  as  refusing  to  show  an  unbeliever  the  way,  or  guide  him 
to  a  spring.^  Sectarian  monotheism  was  thus  in  part  on  a  rather 
lower  ethical  and  intellectual^  plane  than  the  polytheism,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  Epicureanism  or  the  Stoicism,  of  the  society  of  the 
Roman  Empire. 

It  cannot  even  be  said  that  the  learned  Rabbinical  class  carried 
on  a  philosophic  tradition,  w^hile  the  indigent  multitude  thus  dis- 
credited their  creed.  In  the  period  after  the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  the 
narrow  nationalism  w^hich  had  always  ruled  there  seems  to  have 
been  even  intensified.  In  the  Talmud  "  the  most  general  represen- 
tation of  the  Divine  Being  is  as  the  chief  Rabbi  of  Heaven ;  the 
angelic  host  being  his  assessors.  The  heavenly  Sanhedrim  takes 
the  opinion  of  living  sages  in  cases  of  dispute.  Of  the  twelve  hours 
of  the  day  three  are  spent  by  God  in  study,  three  in  the  government 
of  the  world  (or  rather  in  the  exercise  of  mercy),  three  in  providing 
food  for  the  world,  and  three  in  playing  with  Leviathan.  But 
since  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  all  amusements  were  banished 
from  the  courts  of  heaven,  and  three  hours  were  employed  in  the 
instruction  of  those  who  had  died  in  infancy."'  So  little  can  a 
nominal  monotheism  avail,  on  the  basis  of  a  completed  Sacred 
Book,  to  keep  thought  sane  when  freethought  is  lacking. 

Finally,  Judaism  played  in  the  world's  thought  the  great 
reactionary  and  obscurantist  part  by  erecting  into  a  dogma  the 
irrational  conception  that  its  deity  made  the  universe  "out  of 
nothing."     At  the  time  of  the  redaction  of  the  book  of  Genesis  this 

1  Schechter,  Studies  in  Judaism,  1896,  p.  216.    Compare  pp.  193-94. 

2  See  Supernntarnl  Beligion,  6th  ed.  i,  97-100, 103-21 ;  Mosheim,  Comm.  on  Christ.  Affairs 
before  Cmistantine,  Vidal's  tr.  i,  70;  Schtirer,  Jewish  People  in  the  Time  of  Jesus,  Eng.  tr. 
Div.  II,  vol.  iii.  p.  152. 

3  Sat.  xiv.  96-106.  *  Cp.  Horace.  1  Sat.  v.  100. 

5  Rev.  A.  Edersheim,  History  of  the  Jetvish  Nation  after  the  Destruction  of  Jerusalem, 
1856.  p.  462.  citing  the  Avoda  Sara,  a  treatise  directed  against  idolatry  I  Other  Babbinical 
views  cited  by  Dr.  Edersheim  as  being  in  comparison  "sublime"  are  no  great  improve- 
ment on  the  above— «.cr.,  the  conception  of  deity  as  "the  prototype  of  the  high  priest,  and 
the  king  of  kings,"— "who  created  everything  for  his  own  glory."  With  all  this  in  view. 
Dr.  Edersheim  thought  it  showed  "spiritual  decadence"  in  Philo  Judeeus  to  speak  of 
Persian  magi  and  Indian  gymnosophists  in  the  same  laudatory  tone  as  be  used  of  the 
Essenes,  and  to  attend  "heathenish  theatrical  representations  "(p.  372). 


RELATIVE  FREETHOUGHT  IN  ISRAEL 


119 


J^ 


I    ■ 


dogma  had  not  been  glimpsed :  the  Hebrew  conception  was  the 
Babylonian — that  of  a  pre-existent  Chaos  put  into  shape.  But 
gradually,  in  the  interests  of  monotheism,  the  anti- scientific  doctrine 
was  evolved^  by  way  of  negative  to  that  of  the  Gentiles  ;  and  where 
the  great  line  of  Ionian  thinkers  passed  on  to  the  modern  world  the 
developed  conception  of  an  eternal  universe,^  Judaism  passed  on 
through  Christianity,  as  well  as  in  its  own  "philosophy,"  the 
contrary  dogma,  to  bar  the  way  of  later  science. 


1  SeePs.  xc.  2:  Prov.  viii,  22. 26.  .  .        „  „     ..       ^,  ., 

2  This  is  seen  persisting  in  the  lore  of  the  Neo-Platonist  writer  Sallustms  Philosophus 
4th  c),  De  Diis  et  Mundo,  c.  7,  though  quite  unscientifleally  held. 


i 


I 


>\ 


Chapter  V 

FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 

The  highest  of  all  the  ancient  civilizations,  that  of  Greece,  was 
naturally  the  product  of  the  greatest  possible  complex  of  culture- 
forces  ;^  and  its  rise  to  pre-eminence  begins  after  the  contact  of  the 
Greek  settlers  in  ^olia  and  Ionia  with  the  higher  civilizations  of 
Asia  Minor.^  The  great  Homeric  epos  itself  stands  for  the  special 
conditions  of  iEolic  and  Ionic  life  in  those  colonies  ;^  even  Greek 
religion,  spontaneous  as  were  its  earlier  growths,  was  soon  influenced 
by  those  of  the  East;^  and  Greek  philosophy  and  art  alike  draw 
their  first  inspirations  from  Eastern  contact.*  Whatever  reactions 
we  may  make  against  the  tradition  of  Oriental  origins,  it  is  clear 
that  the  higher  civilization  of  antiquity  had  Oriental  (including  in 
that  term  Egyptian)  roots.^  At  no  point  do  we  find  a  "  pure  "  Greek 
civilization.  Alike  the  "  Mycenaean  "  and  the  **  Minoan  "  civiliza- 
tions, as  recovered  for  us  by  modern  excavators,  show  a  composite 
basis,  in  which  the  East  is  impHcated.*  And  in  the  historic  period 
the  connection  remains  obvious.  It  matters  not  whether  we  hold 
the  Phrygians  and  Karians  of  history  to  have  been  originally  an 
Aryan  stock,  related  to  the  Hellenes,  and  thus  to  have  acted  as 
intermediaries  between  Aryans  and  Semites,  or  to  have  been 
originally  Semites,  with  whom  Greeks  intermingled.^  On  either 
view,  the  intermediaries  represented  Semitic  influences,  which  they 
passed  on  to  the  Greek-speaking  races,  though  they  in  turn  developed 

1  Cp.  Tiele,  Oidlinefi,  pp.  205.  207.  212. 

2  Cp.  E.  Meyer,  Oeschichte  des  Alterthums,  ii,  533. 

8  Cp.  K.  O.  Miiller.  Literature  of  Ancient  Greece,  ed,  1847,  p.  77. 

*  Dimcker,  Gesch.  des  Alterth.  2  Aufl.  iii.  20&-10.  252-54,  319  sq.;  E.  Meyer,  Geach.  des 
Alterth.  ii,  181.  365,  369,  377.  380,  535  (see  also  ii.  100.  102,  105.  106,  115  note,  etc.);  W.  Christ. 
Gesch.  der  griech.  Lit.  die  Aufl.  p.  12;  Gruppe,  Die  griech.  Culte  und  Mythen,  1887, 
p.  165  sq. 

5  E.  Curtius.  Griech.  Gesch.  i,  28.  29,  3.5.  40.  41, 101,  203,  etc.;  Meyer,  ii.  369. 

6  See  the  able  and  learned  essay  of  S.  Reinach,  Le  Mirage  Orientale,  reprinted  from 
L'Anthropologie.  1893.  I  do  not  find  that  its  arguments  affect  any  of  the  positions  here 
taken  up.    See  pp.  40-41. 

'  Meyer,  ii.  369;  Benn.  The  Philosophy  of  Greece,  1893.  p.  42. 

8  Cp.  Bury,  History  of  Greece,  ed.  1906,  pp.  vi.  10.  27.  32-34.  40.  etc.;  Burrows,  The 
Discoveries  in  Crete,  1907.  ch.  ix ;  Maisch,  Manual  of  Greek  Antiquities,  Eng.  tr.  §§  8,  9, 10, 
60;  H.  R.  Hall.  The  Oldest  Civilization  of  Greece,  1901,  pp.  31.  32. 

9  Cp.  K.  O.  MUUer.  Hist,  of  the  Doric  Race,  Eng.  tr.  1830.  i.  8-10;  Busolt.  Griech.  Gesch. 
1885,  i.  33:  Grote.  Hist,  of  Greece,  10-vol.  ed.  1888.  iii,  3-5,  35-44;  Duncker.  iii.  136,  n.; 
E.  Meyer.  Gesch.  des  Alterthums,  i,  299-310  (§§  250-58);  E.  Curtius,  i.  29;  Schomann, 
Griech.  Alterthiimer,  as  cited,  i.  2-3,  89;  Burrows,  ch.  ix. 

120 


^ 


J 


i-' 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


121 


their  deities  in  large  part  on  psychological  lines  common  to  them  and 
the  Semites.* 

As  to  the  obvious  Asiatic  influences  on  historic  Greek 
civilization,  compare  Winwood  Eeade,  The  Martyrdom  of 
Man,  1872,  p.  64 ;  Von  Ihering,  Vorgeschichte  der  Lido- 
Europder,  Eng.  tr.  ("  The  Evolution  of  the  Aryan  "),  p.  73  ; 
Schomann,  Griech.  Alterthiimer,  2te  Aufl.  1861,  i,  10  ;  E.  Meyer, 
Gesch.  des  Alterth.  ii,  155 ;  A.  Bertrand,  Etudes  de  mythol.  et 
d'archeol.  grecques,  1858,  pp.  40-41 ;  Bury,  introd.  p.  3.  It 
seems  clear  that  the  Egyptian  influence  is  greatly  overstated  by 
Herodotos  (ii.  49-52,  etc.),  who  indeed  avows  that  he  is  but 
repeating  what  the  Egyptians  afiirm.  The  Egyptian  priests 
made  their  claim  in  the  spirit  in  which  the  Jews  later  made 
theirs.  Herodotos,  besides,  would  prefer  an  Egyptian  to  an 
Asiatic  derivation,  and  so  would  his  audience.  But  it  must  not 
be  overlooked  that  there  was  an  Egyptian  influence  in  the 
"  Minoan  "  period. 

A  Hellenistic  enthusiasm  has  led  a  series  of  eminent  scholars  to 
carry  so  far  their  resistance  to  the  tradition  af  Oriental  beginnings^ 
as  to  take  up  the  position  that  Greek  thought  is  "  autochthonous."^ 
If  it  were,  it  could  not  conceivably  have  progressed  as  it  did.  Only 
the  tenacious  psychological  prejudice  as  to  race-characters  and 
racial  **  genius  "  could  thus  long  detain  so  many  students  at  a  point 
of  view  so  much  more  nearly  related  to  supernaturalism  than  to 
science.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  if  any  people  is  ever  seen  to  progress 
in  thought,  art,  and  life,  with  measurable  rapidity,  its  progress  is 
due  to  the  reactions  of  foreign  intercourse.  The  primary  civiliza- 
tions, or  what  pass  for  such,  as  those  of  Akkad  and  Egypt,  are 
immeasurably  slow  in  accumulating  culture-material ;  the  relatively 
rapid  developments  always  involve  the  stimulus  of  old  cultures  upon 
a  new  and  vigorous  civilization,  well-placed  for  social  evolution  for 
the  time  being.  There  is  no  point  in  early  Greek  evolution,  so  far 
as  we  have  documentary  trace  of  it,  at  which  foreign  impact  or 
stimulus  is  not  either  patent  or  inferrible.^  In  the  very  dawn  of 
history  the  Greeks  are  found  to  be  a  composite  stock,^  growing  still 
more  composite  ;  and  the  very  beginnings  of  its  higher  culture  are 
traced  to  the  non-Grecian  people  of  Thrace,^  who  worshipped  the 

*  Cp.  Meyer,  ii,  97;  and  his  art.  "Baal."  in  Roscher's  AusfUhrl.  Lex.  Mythol.  i,  2867. 

2  The  fallacy  of  this  tradition,  as  commonly  put,  was  well  shown  by  Eenouvier  long 
B^o— Manuel  de  philosophic  ancienne,  1844,  i,  3-13.    Cp.  Bitter,  as  cited  below., 

*  Cp.  on  one  side.  Hitter,  Hi.H.  of  Anc.  Philos.  Eng.  tr.  i,  151 ;  Eeuan,  Etudes  dliist. 
religieuse,  pp.  47-48 ;  Zeller,  Hist,  of  Greek  Philos.  Eng.  tr.  1881,  i,  43-49 ;  and  on  the  other 
Ueberweg,  Hist,  of  Philos.  Eng.  tr.  i,  31,  and  the  weighty  criticism  of  Lange,  Gesch.  des 
Materialismus,  i,  126-27  (Eng.  tr.  i,  9.  note  5). 

^  Cp.  Curtius.  i.  125;  Bury,  introd.  and  ch.  i.  *  Cp.  Bury,  as  cited. 

o  As  to  the  primary  mixture  of  "  Pelasgians  "  and  Hellenes,  cp.  Busolt.  i,  27-32 ;  Curtius, 
i,  27 :  Schomann.  i.  3-i ;  Thirlwall,  Hist,  of  Greece,  ed.  1839,  i.  51-52,  116.  K.  O.  Muller 
{Doric  Mace,  Eng.  tr.  i,  10)  and  Thirlwall.  who  foUows  him  (i,  45-47),  decide  that  the 


11 


1 


>4 


122 


FBEETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


Muses.  As  seen  by  Herodotos  and  Thucydides,  the  original 
Hellenes  were  a  particular  conquering  tribe  of  great  prestige,  which 
attracted  the  surrounding  tribes  to  follow  it,  imitate  it,  and  call 
themselves  by  its  name.  The  Spartans  were,  to  Herodotos,  Hellenic  ; 
the  Athenians,  on  the  other  hand,  were  not.  They  were  Pelasgian, 
but  by  a  certain  time  'changed  into  Hellenes  and  learnt  their 
language.*  In  historical  times  we  cannot  really  find  any  tribe  of 
pure  Hellenes  in  existence."  ^  The  later  supremacy  of  the  Greek 
culture  is  thus  to  be  explained  in  terms  not  of  an  abnormal  "  Greek 
genius,"'^  but  of  the  special  evolution  of  intelHgence  in  the  Greek- 
speaking  stock,  firstly  through  constant  crossing  with  others,  and 
secondarily  through  its  furtherance  by  the  special  social  conditions 
of  the  more  progressive  Greek  city-states,  of  which  conditions  the 
most  important  were  their  geographical  dividedness  and  their  own 
consequent  competition  and  interaction." 

The  whole  problem  of  Oriental  **  influence "  has  been 
obscured,  and  the  solution  retarded,  by  the  old  academic 
habit  of  discussing  questions  of  mental  evolution  in  vacuo. 
Even  the  reaction  against  idolatrous  Hellenism  proceeded 
without  due  regard  to  historical  sequence;  and  the  return 
reaction  against  that  is  still  somewhat  lacking  in  breadth  of 
inference.  There  has  been  too  much  on  one  side  of  assumpcion 
as  to  early  Oriental  achievement ;  and  too  much  tendency  on 
the  other  to  assume  that  the  positing  of  an  "  influence  "  on  the 
Greeks  is  a  disparagement  of  the  "  Greek  mind."  The  superiority 
of  that  in  its  later  evolution  seems  too  obvious  to  need  affirming. 
But  that  hardly  justifies  so  able  a  writer  as  Professor  Burnet  in 
concluding  {Early  Greek  Philosophy,  2nd  ed.  introd.  pp.  22-23) 
that  "  the  "  Egyptians  knew  no  more  arithmetic  than  was  learned 
by  their  children  in  the  schools  ;  or  in  saying  {id.  p.  26)  that 
"  the  "  Babylonians  "  studied  and  recorded  celestial  phenomena 
for  what  we  call  astrological  purposes,  not  from  any  scientific 
interest."  How  can  w^e  have  the  right  to  say  that  no  Baby- 
lonians had  a  scientific  interest  in  the  data?  Such  interest 
would  in  the  nature  of  the  case  miss  the  popular  reproduction 
given  to  astrological  lore.     Bub  it  might  very  w^ell  subsist. 

Professor  Burnet,  albeit  a  really  original  investigator,  has  not 
here  had  due  regard  to  the  early  usage  of  collegiate  or  corporate 
culture,  in  which  arcane  knowledge  was  reserved  for  the  few. 
Thus  he  writes  (p.  26)  concerning  the  Greeks  that  "  it  was  not 

Thracians  cannot  have  been  very  different  from  the  Hellenes  in  dialect,  else  they  could 
not  have  influenced  the  latter  as  they  did.  This  position  is  clearly  untenable,  whatever 
may  have  been  the  ethnological  facts.  It  would  entirely  negate  the  posRibility  of  reaction 
between  Greeks,  Kelts.  Egyptians,  Semites,  Romans,  Persians,  and  Hindus. 

1  Murray,  Four  Stages  of  Greek  Beligion,  1912.  p.  59. 

2  Cp.  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  ii.  583. 

3  The  question  is  discussed  at  some  length  in  the  author's  Evolution  of  States,  1912. 


I 


f 


^-^ 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


123 


till  the  time  of  Plato  that  even  the  names  of  the  planets  were 
known."  Surely  they  must  have  been  "known"  to  some 
adepts  long  before  :  how  else  came  they  to  be  accepted  ?  As 
Professor  Burnet  himself  notes  (p.  34),  *'  in  almost  every 
department  of  life  we  find  that  the  corporation  at  first  is 
everything  and  the  individual  nothing.  The  peoples  of  the 
East  hardly  got  beyond  this  stage  at  all :  their  science,  such 
as  it  is,  is  anonymous,  the  inherited  property  of  a  caste  or  guild, 
and  we  still  see  clearly  in  some  cases  that  it  was  once  the  same 
among  the  Hellenes."  Is  it  not  then  probable  that  astronomical 
knowledge  was  so  ordered  by  Easterns,  and  passed  on  to 
Hellenes  ? 

There  still  attaches  to  the  investigation  of  early  Greek 
philosophy  the  drawback  that  the  philosophical  scholars  do 
not  properly  posit  the  question  :  What  was  the  early  Ionic 
Greek  society  like  ?  How  did  the  Hellenes  relate  to  the  older 
polities  and  cultures  which  they  found  there?  Professor 
Burnet  makes  justifiable  fun  (p.  21,  note)  of  Dr.  Gomperz's 
theory  of  the  influence  of  "  native  brides ";  but  he  himself 
seems  to  argue  that  the  Greeks  could  learn  nothing  from  the 
men  they  conquered,  though  he  admits  (p.  20)  their  derivation 
of  "their  art  and  many  of  their  religious  ideas  from  the  East." 
If  religion,  why  not  religious  speculation,  leading  to  philosophy 
and  science  ?  This  would  be  a  more  fruitful  line  of  inquiry 
than  one  based  on  the  assumption  that  "  the "  Babylonians 
went  one  w^ay  and  "the"  Greeks  another.  After  all,  only 
a  few  in  each  race  carried  on  the  work  of  thought  and 
discovery.  We  do  not  say  that  "  the  English  "  wrote  Shake- 
speare. Why  affirm  always  that  "the"  Greeks  did  whatever 
great  Greeks  achieved  ? 

On  the  immediate  issue  Professor  Burnet  incidentally 
concedes  what  is  required.  After  arguing  that  the  East 
perhaps  borrowed  more  from  the  West  than  did  the  West 
from  the  East,  he  admits  (p.  21) :  "  It  would,  however,  be 
quite  another  thing  to  say  that  Greek  philosophy  originated 
quite  independently  of  Oriental  influence." 

§1 

By  the  tacit  admission  of  one  of  the  ablest  opponents  of  the 
theory  of  foreign  influence,  Hellenic  religion  as  fixed  by  Homer  for 
the  Hellenic  world  was  partly  determined  by  Asiatic  influences. 
Ottfried  Miiller  decided  not  only  that  Homer  the  man  (in  whose 
personality  he  believed)  was  probably  a  Smyrnean,  whether  of 
-^olic  or  Ionic  stock,*  but  that  Homer's  religion  must  have  repre- 

}  Lit  of  Anc.  Greece,  pp.  41-i7.    The  discussion  of  the  Homeric  problem  is,  of  course, 
alien  to  the  present  inquiry. 


ll 


J 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GKEECE 


"1 


sented  a  special  selection  from  the  manifold  Greek  mythology, 
necessarily  representing  his  local  bias.*  Now,  the  Greek  cults  at 
Smyrna,  as  in  the  other  ^olic  and  Ionic  cities  of  Asia  Minor, 
would  be  very  likely  to  reflect  in  some  degree  the  influence  of  the 
Karian  or  other  Asiatic  cults  around  them.^  The  early  Attic 
conquerors  of  Miletos  allowed  the  worship  of  the  Karian  Sun-God 
there  to  be  carried  on  by  the  old  priests ;  and  the  Attic  settlers  of 
Ephesos  in  the  same  way  adopted  the  neighbouring  worship  of  the 
Lydian  Goddess  (who  became  the  Artemis  or  "Great  Diana"  of  the 
Ephesians),  and  retained  the  ministry  of  the  attendant  priests  and 
eunuchs.^  Smyrna  was  apparently  not  like  these  a  mixed  com- 
munity, but  one  founded  by  Achaians  from  the  Peloponnesos ;  but 
the  general  Ionic  and  .Eolic  religious  atmosphere,  set  up  by  common 
sacrifices,*  must  have  been  represented  in  an  epic  brought  forth  in 
that  region.  The  Karian  civilization  had  at  one  time  spread  over 
a  great  part  of  the  ^gean,  including  Dolos  and  Cyprus.''  Such 
a  civilization  must  have  affected  that  of  the  Greek  conquerors,  who 
only  on  that  basis  became  civilized  traders.^ 

It  is  not  necessary  to  ask  how  far  exactly  the  influence  may  have 
gone  in  the  Iliad  :  the  main  point  is  that  even  at  that  stage  of 
comparatively  simple  Hellenism  the  Asiatic  environment,  Karian  or 
Phoenician,  counted  for  something,  whether  in  cosmogony  or  in 
furthering  the  process  of  God-grouping,  or  in  conveying  the  cult  of 
Cyprian  Aphrodite,^  or  haply  in  lending  some  characteristics  to  Zeus 
and  Apollo  and  Ath6ne,^  an  influence  none  the  less  real  because  the 
genius  of  the  poet  or  poets  of  the  Iliad  has  given  to  the  whole 
Olympian  group  the  artistic  stamp  of  individuality  which  thenceforth 
distinguishes  the  Gods  of  Greece  from  all  others.  Indeed,  the  very 
creation  of  a  graded  hierarchy  out  of  the  independent  local  deities  of 
Greece,  the  marrying  of  the  once  isolated  Pelasgic  H6r^  to  Zeus,  the 
subordination  to  him  of  the  once  isolated  Ath6n6  and  Apollo — all 
this  tells  of  the  influence  of  a  Semitic  world  in  which  each  Baal  had 


1  Introd.  to  Scientif.  Mythol.  Eng.  tr.  pp.  180.  181.  291.    Cp.  Curtius.  i.  126. 

2  Cp.  Curtius,  i.  107,  as  to  the  absence  in  Homer  of  any  distinction  between  Greeks  and 
barbarians  ;  and  Grote.  10-vol.  ed.  1888.  iii,  37-38.  as  to  the  same  feature  in  Archilochos. 

8  Duncker,  Oesch.  desAlt.,  as  cited,  iii.  209-10 ;  pp.  257.  319  sq.  Cp.  K.  O.  Miiller,  as  last 
cited,  pp.  181.  193;  Curtius.  i.  43-49.  53.  54.  107,  365.  373,  377.  etc.;  Grote,  iii,  39-41;  and 
Meyer,  ii.  104. 

*  Duncker.  iii,  214:  Curtius,  i.  155.  121;  Grote.  iii.  279-80. 

5  Busolt,  Griech.  Gesch.  1885,  i.  171-72.    Cp.  pp.  32-34 ;  and  Curtius.  i.  42. 

6  On  the  general  question  cp.  Gruppe.  Die  griechischen  Culte  und  MytJien,  pp.  151  ff., 
157.  158  #..656  #.,672  #. 

7  Preller.  Griech.  Mythol.  2  Aufl.  i,  260;  Tiele.  Outlines,  p.  211;  R.  Brown,  Jr.,  Semit. 
Influ.  in  Hellenic  Mythol.  1898,  p.  130;  Murray.  Hist,  of  Anc.  Greek  Lit.  p.  35;  H.  R.  Hall. 
Oldest  Civilization  of  Greece,  1901,  p.  290. 

8  See  Tiele,  Outlines,  pp.  210.  212.  Cp..  again.  Curtius,  Griech.  Gesch.  i,  95.  as  to  the 
probability  that  the  "  twelve  Gods  "  were  adjusted  to  the  confederations  of  twelve  cities  ; 
and  again  p.  126. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


125 


I 


his  wife,  and  in  which  the  monarchic  system  developed  on  earth  had 
been  set  up  in  heaven.*  But  soon  the  Asiatic  influence  becomes  still 
more  clearly  recognizable.  There  is  reason  to  hold  with  Schrader  that 
the  belief  in  a  mildly  blissful  future  state,  as  seen  even  in  the 
Odyssey^  and  in  the  Theogony  ascribed  to  Hesiod,'  is  "  a  new  belief 
which  is  only  to  be  understood  in  view  of  oriental  tales  and  teaching."  * 
In  the  Theogony,  again,  the  Semitic  element  increases,*  Kronos 
being  a  Semitic  figure  ;  ^  while  Semel6,  if  not  Dionysos,  appears  to 
be  no  less  so."^  But  we  may  further  surmise  that  in  Homer,  to 
begin  with,  the  conception  of  Okeanos,  the  earth-surrounding  Ocean- 
stream,  as  the  origin  of  all  things,®  comes  from  some  Semitic  source ; 
and  that  Hesiod's  more  complicated  scheme  of  origins  from  Chaos  is 
a  further  borrowing  of  oriental  thought — both  notions  being  found 
in  ancient  Babylonian  lore,  whence  the  Hebrews  derived  their  com- 
bination of  Chaos  and  Ocean  in  the  first  verses  of  Genesis.^  It  thus 
appears  that  the  earlier  oriental  ^°  influence  upon  Greek  thought  was 
in  the  direction  of  developing  religion,"  with  only  the  germ  of 
rationalism  conveyed  in  the  idea  of  an  existence  of  matter  before  the 
Gods,^^  which  we  shall  later  find  scientifically  developed.  But  the  case 
is  obscure.  Insofar  as  the  Theogony,  for  instance,  partly  morahzes 
the  more  primitively  savage  myths,*^  it  may  be  that  it  represents 
the  spontaneous  need  of  the  more  highly  evolved  race  to  give  an 
acceptable  meaning  to  divine  tales  which,  coming  from  another  race, 
have  not  a  quite  sacrosanct  prescription,  though  the  tendency  is  to 

1  "  Even  the  title  '  king '  {kva^)  seems  to  have  been  borrowed  by  the  Greek  from 

Phrygian It  is  expressly  recorded  that  ri'pax'j'os   is  a  Lydian  word.    BacriXei^s    ('king' 

resists  all  attempts  to  explain  it  as  a  purely  Greek  formation,  and  the  termination  assimi- 
lates it  to  certain  Phrygian  words."  (Prof.  Ramsay,  in  ^ncyc.  Brtt.  art.  Phbtgia).  In 
this  connection  note  the  number  of  names  containing  Anax  (Anaximenes,  Anaximandros, 
Anaxagoras,  etc.)  among  the  Ionian  Greeks. 

2  iv,  561  SQ. 

'  It  is  now  agreed  that  this  is  merely  a  guess.  The  document,  further,  has  been 
redacted  and  interpolated. 

<  Prehist.  Antiq.  of  the  Aryan  Peoples,  Eng.  tr.  p.  423.  Wilamowitz  holds  that  the  verses 
Od.  xi,  566-631,  are  interpolations  made  later  than  6(X)  B.C. 

5  Tiele,  Outlines,  p.  209 ;  Preller,  p.  263. 

*  Meyer  says  on  the  contrary  {Gesch.  des  Alt.  ii.  103.  Anm.)  that  "Kronos  is  certainly 
a  Greek  figure";  but  he  cannot  be  supposed  to  dispute  that  the  Greek  Kronos  cult  is 
grafted  on  a  Semitic  one. 

■^  Sayce.  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  54,  181.  Cp.  Cox,  Mythol.  of  the  Aryan  Nations,  p.  260, 
note.  It  has  not.  however,  been  noted  in  the  discussions  on  Semeld  that  Semlje  is  the 
Slavic  name  for  the  Earth  as  Goddess.    Ranke,  History  of  Servia,  Eng.  tr.  p.  43. 

8  mad,  xiv,  201.  302. 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  367  sq.;  Ancient  Empires,  p.  158.  Note  p.  387  in  the 
Lectures  as  to  the  Assyrian  influence,  and  p.  391  as  to  the  Homeric  notion  in  particular. 
Cp.  W.  Christ.  Gesch.  der  griech.  Literatur,  §  68. 

'•^  It  is  unnecessary  to  examine  here  the  view  of  Herodotos  that  many  of  the  Greek 
cults  were  borrowed  from  Egypt.  Herodotos  reasoned  from  analogies,  with  no  exact 
historical  knowledge.  But  cp.  Renouvier.  Mantiel,  i.  67,  as  to  probable  Egyptian  influence. 
"  Cp.  Meyer,  ii,  §§  453-69.  as  to  the  eastern  initiative  of  Orphic  theology. 
*^  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  traditional  doctrine  associated  with  the  name  of  Orpheus 
included  a  similar  materialistic  theory  of  the  beginning  of  things.  Athenagoras,  Apol. 
c.  19.    Cp.  Renouvier.  Mamiel  de  philos.  anc.  i,  69-72 ;  and  Meyer,  ii,  743. 

^^  Cp.  Meyer,  ii,  726.    As  to  the  oriental  elements  in  Hesiod  see  further  Gruppe,  Die 
griechischen  Culte  und  Mythen,  1887,  pp.  577.  587,  589,  593. 


1^. 


126 


PEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


EEEETHOUGST  IN  GEEECE 


127 


ii 


accept   them.     On   the   other   hand,  it  may   have   been  a  further 
foreign  influence  that  gave  the  critical  impulse. 

"  It  is  plain  enough  that  Homer  and  Hesiod  represent,  both 
theologically  and  socially,  the  close  of  a  long  epoch,  and  not 
the  youth  of  the  Greek  world,  as  some  have  supposed.  The 
real  signification  of  many  myths  is  lost  to  them,  and  so  is  the 
import  of  most  of  the  names  and  titles  of  the  elder  Gods,  which 
are  archaic  and  strange,  while  the  subordinate  personages 
generally  have  purely  Greek  names"  (Professor  Mahafty, 
History  of  Classical  Greek  Literature,  1880,  i,  17). 

§2 

Whatever  be  the  determining  conditions,  it  is  clear  that  the 
Homeric  epos  stands  for  a  new  growth  of  secular  song,  distinct  from 
the  earlier  poetry,  which  by  tradition  was  "either  lyrical  or 
oracular."  The  poems  ascribed  to  the  pre-Homeric  bards  "  were  all 
short,  and  they  were  all  strictly  religious.  In  these  features  they 
contrasted  broadly  with  the  epic  school  of  Homer.  Even  the  hexa- 
meter metre  seems  not  to  have  been  used  in  these  old  hymns,  and 
was  called  a  new  invention  of  the  Delphic  priests.'  Still  further, 
the  majority  of  these  hymns  are  connected  with  mysteries  apparently 
ignored  by  Homer,  or  with  the  worship  of  Dionysos,  which  he 
hardly  knew." '  Intermediate  between  the  earlier  religious  poetry 
and  the  Homeric  epic,  then,  was  a  hexametric  verse,  used  by  the 
Delphic  priesthood;  and  to  this  order  of  poetry  belongs  the 
Tlieogonij  which  goes  under  the  name  of  Hesiod,  and  which  is 
a  sample  of  other  and  older  works,''  probably  composed  by  priests. 
And  the  distinctive  mark  of  the  Homeric  epos  is  that,  framed  as  it 
was  to  entertain  feudal  chiefs  and  their  courts,  it  turned  completely 
away  from  the  sacerdotal  norm  and  purpose.  "  Thus  epic  poetry, 
from  having  been  purely  religious,  became  purely  secular.  After 
having  treated  men  and  heroes  in  subordination  to  the  Gods,  it 
came  to  treat  the  Gods  in  relation  to  men.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said 
of  Homer  that  in  the  image  of  man  created  he  God."  * 

As  to  the  non-rehgiousness  of  the  Homeric  epics,  there  is 
a  division  of  critical  opinion.  Meyer  insists  {Gesch.  des  Alt.  ii, 
395)  that,  as  contrasted  with  the  earlier  religious  poetry,  "  the 
epic  poetry  is  throughout  secular  (jprofan)  ;  it  aims  at  charming 
its  hearers,  not  at  propitiating  the  Gods  ";  and  he  further  sees 

I  Cp.  however.  Bury  {Hist,  of  Greece,  pp.  6.  a5),  who  assumoa  that  the  Greeks  brought 
the  hexameter  with  them  to  HeUas.    Contrast  Murray.  Four  Stages,  p.  61. 
a  Mahaffy.  History  of  Classical  Greek  Literature,  1880,  i,  15. 
8  Id.  p.  16.    Cp.  W.  Christ,  as  cited,  p.  79.  *  Mahaflfy.  pp.  16-17. 


iiJ 


I 


\ 


in  the  whole  Ionian  mood  a  certain  cynical  disillusionment 
(id.  ii,  723).  Cp.  Benn,  Philos.  of  Greece,  p.  40,  citing  Hegel. 
E.  Curtius  {G.  G.  i,  126)  goes  so  far  as  to  ascribe  a  certain 
irony  to  the  portraiture  of  the  Gods  (Ionian  Apollo  excepted)  in 
Homer,  and  to  trace  this  to  Ionian  levity.  To  the  same  cause 
he  assigns  the  lack  of  any  expression  of  a  sense  of  stigma 
attaching  to  murder.  This  sense  he  holds  the  Greek  people 
had,  though  Homer  does  not  hint  it.  (Cp.  Grote,  i,  24,  w^iose 
inference  Curtius  implicitly  impugns.)  Girard  (Le  Sentiment 
religieux  en  Grece,  1869),  on  the  contrary,  appears  to  have 
no  suspicion  of  any  problem  to  solve,  treating  Homer  as  un- 
affectedly religious.  The  same  view  is  taken  by  Prof.  Paul 
Decharme.  "  On  chercherait  vainement  dans  Vlliade  et  dans 
rOdtjssde  les  premieres  traces  du  scepticisme  grec  k  regard  des 
fables  des  dieux.     C'est  avec  une  foi  enti^re  en  la  r^alite  des 

ev6nements  mythiques  que  les  pontes  chantent  les  l^gendes ; 

c'est  en  toute  simplicity  d'^me  aussi  que  les  auditeurs  de  I'^pop^e 

^content "     {La  critique  des  traditions  religieuses  chez  les 

grecs,  1904,  p.  1.)  Thus  we  have  a  kind  of  balance  of 
contrary  opinions,  German  against  French.  Any  verdict  on  the 
problem  must  recognize  on  the  one  hand  the  possibilities  of 
naive  credulity  in  an  unlettered  age,  and  on  the  other  the  pro- 
babihty  of  critical  perception  on  the  part  of  a  great  poet.  I  have 
seen  both  among  Boers  in  South  Africa.  On  the  general  question 
of  the  mood  of  the  Homeric  poems  compare  Gilbert  Murray,  Four 
Stages  of  Greek  Religion,  1912,  p.  77,  and  Hist,  of  Anc.  Greek 
Lit.  pp.  34,  35 ;  and  A.  Benn,  The  Philosophy  of  Greece  in 
Belation  to  the  Character  of  its  People,  1898,  pp.  29-30. 

Still,  it  cannot  be  said  that  in  the  Iliad  there  is  any  clear  hint 
of  religious  skepticism,  though  the  Gods  are  so  wholly  in  the  likeness 
of  men  that  the  lower  deities  fight  with  heroes  and  are  worsted, 
while  Zeus  and  H6r6  quarrel  like  any  earthly  couple.  In  the 
Odyssey  there  is  a  bare  hint  of  possible  speculation  in  the  use  of  the 
word  atheos ;  but  it  is  applied  only  in  the  phrase  ovk  ti^cet, 
"not  without  a  God,"  ^  in  the  sense  of  similar  expressions  in  other 
passages  and  in  the  Iliad.^  The  idea  was  that  sometimes  the  Gods 
directly  meddled.  When  Odysseus  accuses  the  suitors  of  not 
dreading  the  Gods,^  he  has  no  thought  of  accusing  them  of  unbelief.^ 

1  Od.  xviii.  a52.  2  od.  vi,  240 ;  B.  v,  185.  »  od.  xxii,  39. 

*  In  Od.  xiv,  18,  avTideoi  means  not  "opposed  to  the  Gods,"  but  "God-like,"  in  the 
ordinary  Homeric  sense  of  noble-looking  or  richly  attired,  as  men  in  the  presence  of  the 
Gods.  Cp.  vi,  241.  Yet  a  Scholiast  on  a  former  passage  took  it  in  the  sense  of  God- 
opposing.  Clarke's  ed.  in  loc.  Liddell  and  Scott  give  no  use  of  ddeos,  in  the  sense  of 
denying  the  Gods,  before  Plato  (Apol.  26  C.  etc.),  or  in  the  sense  of  ungodly  before  Pindar 
(P.  iv,  288)  and  ^.schylus  {Eumen.  151).  For  Sophocles  it  has  the  force  of  "  God-forsaken  " 
—Oedip.  Tyr.  254  (245),  661  (640),  1360  (1326).  Cp.  Electra,  1181  (1162).  But  already  before 
Plato  we  find  the  terms  ATrtcrros  and  d^eoj,  "faithless"  or  "infidel"  and  "atheist,"  used 
as  terms  of  moral  aspersion,  quite  in  the  Christian  manner  (Euripides,  Helena,  1147),  where 
there  is  no  question  of  incredulity. 


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FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GBEECfi 


Homer  has  indeed  been  supposed  to  have  exercised  a  measure  of 
relative  freethought  in  excluding  from  his  song  the  more  offensive 
myths  about  the  Gods/  but  such  exclusion  may  be  sufficiently 
explained  on  the  score  that  the  epopees  were  chanted  in  aristocratic 
dwellings,  in  the  presence  of  womenkind,  without  surmising  any 
process  of  doubt  on  the  poet's  part. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  was  inevitable  that  such  a  free  treatment 
of  things  hitherto  sacred  should  not  only  affect  the  attitude  of  the 
lay  listener  towards  the  current  religion,  but  should  react  on  the 
religious  consciousness.  God-legends  so  fully  thrust  on  secular 
attention  were  bound  to  be  discussed;  and  in  the  adaptations  of 
myth  for  liturgical  purposes  by  Stesichoros  (fl.  circa  600  B.C.)  we 
appear  to  have  the  first  open  trace  of  a  critical  revolt  in  the  Greek 
world  against  immoral  or  undignified  myths.'  In  Ws  work,  it  is  fair 
to  say,  we  see  "  the  beginning  of  rationalism  "  :  **  the  decisive  step 
is  taken  :  once  the  understanding  criticizes  the  sanctified  tradition,  it 
raises  itself  to  be  the  judge  thereof ;  no  longer  the  common  tradition 
but  the  individual  conviction  is  the  ground  of  rehgious  belief."' 
Religious,  indeed,  the  process  still  substantially  is.  It  is  to  preserve 
the  credit  of  Helena  as  a  Goddess  that  Stesichoros  repudiates  the 
Homeric  account  of  her,*  somewhat  in  the  spirit  in  which  the 
framers  of  the  Hesiodic  theogony  manipulated  the  myths  without 
rejecting  them,  or  the  Hebrew  redactors  tampered  with  their  text. 
But  in  Stesichoros  there  is  a  new  tendency  to  reject  the  myth 
altogether;'  so  that  at  this  stage  freethought  is  still  part  of 
a  process  in  which  religious  feeling,  pressed  by  an  advancing 
ethical  consciousness,  instinctively  clears  its  standing  ground. 

It  is  in  Pindar,  however  (518-442  B.C.),  that  we  first  find  such 
a  mental  process  plainly  avowed  by  a  believer.  In  his  first 
Olympic  Ode  he  expressly  declares  the  need  for  bringing  after- 
thought to  bear  on  poetic  lore,  that  so  men  may  speak  nought  un- 
fitting of  the  Gods  ;  and  he  protests  that  he  will  never  tell  the  tale 
of  the  blessed  ones  banqueting  on  human  flesh.*  In  the  ninth  Ode 
he  again  protests  that  his  lips  must  not  speak  blasphemously  of 
such  a  thing  as  strife  among  the  immortals.'      Here  the  critical 

1  Cp.  Lang.  Myth.  Bitual.  and  Beligion.  2ncl  ed.  i.  14-15.  and  cit.  there  from  Professor 

^2  Cp.  Meyer.  Geseh.  des  Alterthums,  ii.  724-27 ;  Grote.  as  cited,  i.  279-81. 

*  ThTtrkditfon  i?confused.  Stesichoros  is  said  first  to  have  ^spersed  Helen,  where- 
UDon  she  as  Goddess,  struck  him  with  blindness  :  thereafter  he  published  a  retractation. 
?n  which  he  declared  that  she  had  never  been  at  Troy  an  eidolon  or  phantasm  taking  her 
name ;  and  on  this  his  sight  was  restored  We  can  but  divine  Jhiough  the  legend  tbe 
probable  reality,  the  documents  being  lost.  See  Grote.  as  cited,  for  the  details,  ^or  tne 
eXgies  of  Stesichoros  by  ancient  writers,  see  Girard,  ff '"^^/^^^^'^t"^;^'.^,^^/.^!'  ^^^' 
pp.  175-79.  »  Cp.  Meyer  (1901),  iii.  §  244.         »  01.  i.  42-57.  80-85.  ^  oi.  ix.  54-61. 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


129 


motive  is  ethical,  though,  while  repudiating  one  kind  of  scandal 
about  the  Gods,  Pindar  placidly  accepts  others  no  less  startling  to 
the  modern  sense.  His  critical  revolt,  in  fact,  is  far  from  thorough- 
going, and  suggests  rather  a  religious  man's  partial  response  to 
pressure  from  others  than  any  independent  process  of  reflection.  ^ 


"  He  [Pindar]  was  honestly  attached  to  the  national  religion 
and  to  its  varieties  in  old  local  cults.  He  lived  a  somewhat 
sacerdotal  life,  labouring  in  honour  of  tlie  Gods,  and  seeking  to 
spread  a  reverence  for  old  traditional  beliefs.  He,  moreover, 
shows  an  acquaintance  with  Orphic  rites  and  Pythagorean 
mysteries,  which  led  him  to  preach  the  doctrine  of  immortality, 
and  of  rewards  and  punishments  in  the  life  hereafter.  [Note. — 
The  most  explicit  fragment  (Op^jvot,  3)^  is,  however,  not  con- 
sidered genuine  by  recent  critics.] He  is  indeed  more  affected 

by  the  advance  of  freethinking  than  he  imagines ;  he  borrows 
"vfrom  the  neologians  the  habit  of  rationalizing  myths,  and 
explaining  away  immoral  acts  and  motives  in  the  Gods  ;  but 
these  things  are  isolated  attempts  with  him,  and  have  no  deep 
effect  upon  his  general  thinking  "  (Mahaffy,  Hist,  of  Greek  Lit. 
i,  213-14). 

For  such  a  development  we  are  not,  of  course,  forced  to  assume 
a  foreign  influence:  mere  progress  in  refinement  and  in  mental 
activity  could  bring  it  about ;  yet  none  the  less  it  is  probable  that 
foreign  influence  did  quicken  the  process.  It  is  true  that  from  the 
beginnings  of  the  literary  period  Greek  thought  played  with  a  certain 
freedom  on  myth,  partly  perhaps  because  the  traditions  visibly  came 
from  various  races,  and  there  was  no  strong  priesthood  to  ossify 
them.  After  Homer  and  Hesiod,  men  looked  back  to  those  poets 
as  shaping  theology  to  their  own  minds. "^  But  all  custom  is  conser- 
vative, and  Pindar's  mind  had  that  general  cast.  On  the  other 
hand,  external  influence  was  forthcoming.  The  period  of  Pindar 
and  ^schylus  [525-455  B.C.]  follows  on  one  in  which  Greek 
thought,  stimulated  on  all  sides,  had  taken  the  first  great  stride  in 
its  advance  beyond  all  antiquity.  Egypt  had  been  fully  thrown 
open  to  the  Greeks  in  the  reign  of  Psammetichos^  (650  B.C.) ;  and 
a  great  historian,  who  contends  that  the  "  sheer  inherent  and 
expansive  force  "  of  "  the  "  Greek  intellect,  "  aided  but  by  no  means 
either  impressed  or  provoked  from  without,"  was  the  true  cause, 
yet  concedes  that  intercourse  with  Egypt  "enlarged  the  range  of 

*  He  dedicated  statues  to  Zeus,  Apollo,  and  Hermes.    Pausanias,  ix,  16, 17. 

2  Herodot.  ii,  53. 

^  A  ruler  of  Libyan  stock,  and  so  led  by  old  Libyan  connections  to  make  friends  with 
Greeks.  He  reigned  over  fifty  years,  and  the  Greek  connection  grew  very  close.  Curtius, 
i,  344-45.    Cp.  Grote,  i,  144-55. 


1 


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FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


their  thoughts  and  observations,  while  it  also  imparted  to  them 
that  vein  of  mysticism  which  overgrew  the  primitive  simphcity  of 
the  Homeric  religion,"  and  that  from  Asia  Minor  in  turn  they  had 
derived  "  musical  instruments  and  new  laws  of  rhythm  and  melody," 
as  well  as  "violent  and  maddening  rehgious  rites." ^  And  others 
making  similar  k  priori  claims  for  the  Greek  intelligence  are  forced 
likewise  to  admit  that  the  mental  transition  between  Homer  and 
Herodotos  cannot  be  explained  save  in  terms  of  "the  influence  of 
other  creeds,  and  the  necessary  operation  of  altered  circumstances 
and  relations."'^  In  the  Persae  of  iEschylus  we  even  catch  a 
gHmpse  of  direct  contact  with  foreign  skepticism;^  and  again  in  the 
Agamevmon  there  is  a  reference  to  some  impious  one  who  denied 
that  the  Gods  deigned  to  have  care  of  mortals.*  It  seems  unwar- 
rantable to  read  as  "ridicule  of  popular  polytheism"  the  passage  in 
the  same  tragedy  :^  "  Zeus,  whosoever  he  be  ;  if  this  name  be  well- 
pleasing  to  himself  in  invocation,  by  this  do  I  name  him."  It  may 
more  fitly  be  read^  as  an  echo  of  the  saying  of  Herakleitos  that  the 
Wise  [  =  the  Logos  ?  ]  is  unwiUing  and  willing  to  be  called  by  the 
name  of  Zeus."''  But  in  the  poet's  thought,  as  revealed  in  the 
Prometheus,  and  in  the  Agamemnon  on  the  theme  of  the  sacrifice 
of  Iphigeneia,  there  has  occurred  an  ethical  judgment  of  the  older 
creeds,  an  approach  to  pantheism,  a  rejection  of  anthropomorphism, 
and  a  growth  of  pessimism  that  tells  of  their  final  insufiiciency. 

The  leaning  to  pantheism  is  established  by  the  discovery  that 
the  disputed  lines,  "  Zeus  is  sky,  earth,  and  heaven :  Zeus  is  all 
things,  yea,  greater  than  all  things"  (Frag.  443),  belonged  to 
the  lost  tragedy  of  the  Heliades  (Haigh,  Tragic  Drama  of  tJie 
Greeks,  1896,  p.  88).  For  the  pessimism  see  the  Prornetheus, 
247-51.  The  anti- anthropomorphism  is  further  to  be  made 
out  from  the  lines  ascribed  to  ^schylus  by  Justin  Martyr  (De 
MonarcJiia,  c.  2)  and  Clemens  Alexandrinus  (Stromata,  v,  14). 
They  are  expressly  pantheistic ;  but  their  genuineness  is 
doubtful.  The  story  that  iEschylus  was  nearly  killed  by  a 
theatre  audience  on  the  score  that  he  had  divulged  part  of  the 
mysteries  in  a  tragedy  (Haigh,  The  Attic  Theatre,  1889,  p.  316  ; 
Tragic  Drama,  pp.  49-50)  does  not  seem  to  have  suggested  to 

1  Grote,  10-vol.  ed.  1888,  i,  307,  326,  329,  413.    Cp.  i,  27-30 ;  ii,  52  ;  iii.  30-41,  etc. 

2  K.  O.  Miiller.  Introd.  to  Mythology,  p.  192. 

8  *'  Then  one  [of  the  Persians]  who  before  had  in  nowise  believed  in  lor,  recognized  the 
existence  of]  the  Gods,  offered  prayer  and  supplication,  doing  obeisance  to  Earth  and 
Heaven  "  (Persae,  497-99). 

*  Agamemnon,  370-72.  This  is  commonly  supposed  to  be  a  reference  to  Diagoras  the 
Melian  (below,  p.  159). 

«  Agam.  170-72  (160-62). 

^  So  Whittaker,  Priests,  Philosophers,  and  Prophets,  1911,  pp.  42-43. 

7  So  Buckley,  in  Bohn  trans,  of  JEschylus,  p.  100.  He  characterizes  as  a  "skeptical 
formula"  the  phrase  "Zeus,  whoever  he  may  be";  but  goes  on  to  show  that  such  formulas 
were  grounded  on  the  Semitic  notion  that  the  true  name  of  God  was  concealed  from  man. 


• 


: 


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FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


131 


Aristotle,  who  tells  it  {Nicoinachean  Ethics,  m,  2),  any  heterodox 
intention  on  the  tragedian's  part ;  but  it  is  hard  to  see  an 
orthodox  believer  in  the  author  either  of  the  Prometheus, 
wherein  Zeus  is  posed  as  brutal  might  crucifying  innocence 
and  beneficence,  or  of  the  Agamemnon,  where  the  father, 
perplexed  in  the  extreme,  can  but  fall  back  helplessly  on 
formulas  about  the  all-sufficiency  of  Zeus  when  called  upon  to 
sacrifice  his  daughter.  Cp.  Haigh,  Tragic  Drama,  p.  86  sg. 
''Some  critics,"  says  Mr.  Haigh  (p.  88),  "have  been  led  to 
imagine  that  there  is  in  iEschylus  a  double  Zeus — the  ordinary 
God  of  the  polytheistic  rehgion  and  the  one  omnipotent  deity 
in  whom  he  really  believed.  They  suppose  that  he  had  no 
genuine  faith  in  the  credibility  of  the  popular  legends,  but 
merely  used  them  as  a  setting  for  his  tragedies ;  and  that  his 
own  convictions  were  of  a  more  philosophical  type,"  as  seen  in 
the  pantheistic^  lines  concerning  Zeus.  To  this  Mr.  Haigh 
rephes  that  it  is  "  most  improbable  that  there  was  any  clear 
distinction  in  the  mind  of  ^schylus  "  between  the  two  concep- 
tions of  Zeus  ;  going  on,  however,  to  admit  that  "much,  no  doubt, 
he  regarded  as  uncertain,  much  as  false.  Even  the  name  *  Zeus  ' 
was  to  him  a  mere  convention."  Mr.  Haigh  in  this  discussion 
does  not  attempt  to  deal  with  the  problem  of  the  Prometheus. 

The  hesitations  of  the  critics  on  this  head  are  noteworthy. 
Karl  Ottfried  Miiller,  who  is  least  himself  in  dealing  with 
fundamental  issues  of  creed,  evades  the  problem  {Lit.  of  Anc. 
Greece,  1847,  p.  329)  with  the  bald  suggestion  that  "iEschylus, 
in  his  own  mind,  must  have  felt  how  this  severity  [of  Zeus] , 
a  necessary  accompaniment  of  the  transition  from  the  Titanic 
period  to  the  government  of  the  Gods  of  Olympus,  was  to  be 
reconciled  with  the  mild  wisdom  which  he  makes  an  attribute 
of  Zeus  in  the  subsequent  ages  of  the  world.  Consequently, 
the  deviation  from  right would  all  lie  on  the  side  of  Prome- 
theus." This  nugatory  plea — which  is  rightly  rejected  by 
Burckhardt  (Griech.  Culturgesch.  ii,  25) — is  ineffectually  backed 
by  the  argument  that  the  friendly  Oceanides  recur  to  the 
thought,  "  Those  only  are  wise  who  humbly  reverence  Adrasteia 
{Fate)  " — as  if  the  positing  of  a  supreme  Fate  were  not  a  further 
belittlement  of  Zeus. 

Other  critics  are  similarly  evasive.  Patin  {Eschyle,  ^d.  1877, 
p.  250  sq.),  noting  the  vagaries  of  past  criticism,  hostile  and 
other,  avowedly  leaves  the  play  an  unsolved  enigma,  afiirming 
only  the  commonly  asserted  "piety"  of  iEschylus.  Girard 
{Le  sejitiment  religieux  en  Grdce,  pp.  425-29)  does  no  better, 
while  dogmatically  asserting  that  the  poet  is  "  the  Greek 
faithful  to  the  faith  of  his  fathers,  which  he  interprets  with  an 
intelligent  and  emotional  {emue)  veneration."  Meyer  (iii, 
§§  257-58)  draws  an  elaborate  parallel  between  iEschylus  and 
Pindar,   affirming  in   turn  the   "tiefe    Frommigkeit "   of    the 


u 


132  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GBEECE 

former— and  in  turn  leaves  t!ie  enigma  of  the  Prometheus 
unsolved.  Professor  Decharme.  rightly  rejecting  the  fanciful 
interpretations  of  Quinet  and  others  who  allegorize  Prometheus 
into  humanity  revolting  against  superstition,  offers  a  very 
unsatisfying  explanation  of  his  own  (p.  107),  which  practically 
denies  that  there  is  any  problem  to  solve.  ^  _  .^  ,  ,  ,  , 
Prof.  Mahaffy,  with  his  more  vivacious  habit  of^  thought, 
comes  to  the  evaded  issue.  "  How,"  he  asks,  "  did  the 
Athenian  audience,  who  vehemently  attacked  the  poet  for 
divulging  the  mysteries,  tolerate  such  a  drama?  And  still 
more,  how  did  iEschylus,  a  pious  and  serious  thinker,  venture 
to  bring  such  a  subject  on  the  stage  with  a  moral  purpose?  " 
The  answers  suggested  are :  (l)  that  in  all  old  rehgions  there 
are  tolerated  anomalous  survivals ;  (2)  that  "  a  very  extreme 
distortion  of  their  Gods  will  not  offend  many  who  would  feel 
outraged  at  any  open  denial  of  them";  (3)  that  all  Greeks 
longed  for  despotic  power  for  themselves,  and  that  no 
Athenian,  however  he  sympathized  with  Prometheus,  would 

think  of  blaming   Zeus  for crushing  all  resistance  to  his 

will."     But  even  if  these  answers — of  which  the  last  is  the 
most  questionable— be  accepted,  "  the  question  of  the  poet's 
intention   is   far   more   difficult,   and   will   probably   never   be 
satisfactorily  answered."     Finally,  we  have  this  summing-up: 
"iEschylus  was,  indeed,  essentially  a  theologian. .....but,  what 

is  more  honourable  and  exceptional,  he  was  so  candid  and 
honest  a  theologian  that  he  did  not  approach  men's  difficulties 
for  the  purpose  of  refuting  them  or  showing  them  weak  and 
groundless.  On  the  contrary,  though  an  orthodox  and  pious 
man,  though  clearly  convinced  of  the  goodness  of  Providence, 
and  of  the  profound  truth  of  the  religion  of  his  fathers,  he  was 
ever  stating  boldly  the  contradictions  and  anomalies  in  morals 
and  in  myths,  and  thus  naturally  incurring  the  odium  and 
suspicion  of  the  professional  advocates  of  rehgion  and  their 
followers.  He  felt,  perhaps  instinctively,  that  a  vivid  dramatic 
statement  of  these  problems  in  his  tragedies  was  better  moral 
education  than  vapid  platitudes  about  our  ignorance,  and  about 
our  difficulties  being  only  caused  by  the  shortness  of  our  sight " 
{Hist,  of  Greek  Lit.  i,  260-61,  273-74). 

Here,  despite  the  intelligent  handling,  the  enigma  is  merely 
transferred  from  the  great  tragedian's  work  to  his  character  : 
it  is  not  solved.  No  solution  is  offered  of  the  problem  of  the 
pantheism  of  the  fragment  above  cited,  which  is  quite  irrecon- 
cilable with  any  orthodox  belief  in  Greek  religion,  though  such 
sayings  are  at  times  repeated  by  unthinking  believers,  without 
recognition  of  their  bearing.  That  the  pantheism  is  a  philo- 
sophical element  imported  into  the  Greek  world  from  the 
Babylonian  through  the  early  Ionian  thinkers  seems  to  be 
the   historical   fact    (cp.   Whittaker,   as   last   cited) :    that   the 


FBEETHOUGHT  IN  GBEECE 


133 


importation  meant  the  dissolution  of  the  national  faith  for 
many  thinking  men  seems  to  be  no  less  true.  It  seems  finally 
permissible,  then,  to  suggest  that  the  "piety"  of  ^schylus  was 
either  discontinuous  or  a  matter  of  artistic  rhetoric  and  public 
spirit,  and  that  the  Prometheus  is  a  work  of  profound  and 
terrible  irony,  unburdening  his  mind  of  reveries  that  religion 
could  not  conjure  away.  The  discussion  on  the  play  has 
unduly  ignored  the  question  of  its  date.  It  is,  in  all  probability, 
one  of  the  latest  of  the  works  of  iEschylus  (K.  O.  Miiller,  Lit. 
of  Anc,  Greece,  p.  327  ;  Haigh,  Tragic  Drama,  p.  109).  Miiller 
points  to  the  employment  of  the  third  actor — a  late  develop- 
ment— and  Haigh  to  the  overshadowing  of  the  choruses  by  the 
dialogue ;  also  to  the  mention  (11.  366-72)  of  the  eruption  of 
Etna,  which  occurred  in  475  B.C.  This  one  circumstance  goes 
far  to  solve  the  dispute.  Written  near  the  end  of  the  poet's  life 
the  play  belongs  to  the  latest  stages  of  his  thinking  ;  and  if  it 
departs  widely  in  its  tone  from  the  earlier  plays,  the  reasonable 
inference  is  that  his  ideas  had  undergone  a  change.  The 
Agamemnon,  with  its  desolating  problem,  seems  to  be  also  one 
of  his  later  works.  Bationalism,  indeed,  does  not  usually 
emerge  in  old  age,  though  Voltaire  was  deeply  shaken  in  his 
theism  by  the  earthquake  of  Lisbon  ;  but  iEschylus  is  unique 
even  among  men  of  genius  ;  and  the  highest  flight  of  Greek 
drama  may  well  stand  for  an  abnormal  intellectual  experience. 

In  this  primary  entrance  of  critical  doubt  into  drama  we  have 
one  of  the  sociological  clues  to  the  whole  evolution  of  Greek  thought. 
It  has  been  truly  said  that  the  constant  action  of  the  tragic  stage, 
the  dramatic  putting  of  arguments  and  rejoinders,  pros  and  cons — 
which  in  turn  was  a  fruit  of  the  actual  daily  pleadings  in  the 
Athenian  dikastery — was  a  manifold  stimulus  alike  to  ethical 
feeling  and  to  intellectual  effort,  such  as  no  other  ancient  civiliza- 
tion ever  knew.  "The  appropriate  subject-matter  of  tragedy  is 
pregnant  not  only  with  ethical  sympathy,  but  also  with  ethical 
debate  and  speculation,"  to  an  extent  unapproached  in  the  earHer 
lyric  and  gnomic  poetry  and  the  literature  of  aphorism  and  precept. 
"  In  place  of  unexpanded  results,  or  the  mere  communication  of 
single-minded  sentiment,  we  have  even  in  iEschylus,  the  earliest  of 
the  great  tragedians,  a  large  latitude  of  dissent  and  debate — a 
shifting  point  of  view — a  case  better  or  worse — and  a  divination 
of  the  future  advent  of  sovereign  and  instructed  reason.  It  was 
through  the  intermediate  stage  of  tragedy  that  Grecian  literature 
passed  into  the  Bhetoric,  Dialectics,  and  Ethical  speculation  which 
marked  the  fifth  century  B.C."  ^ 

1  Grote,  ed.  1888,  vii,  8-21.    See  the  whole  exposition  of  the  exceptionally  interesting 
67th  chapter. 


\ 


134 


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FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


135 


This  development  was  indeed  autochthonous,  save  insofar  as  the 
germ  of  the  tragic  drama  may  have  come  from  the  East  in  the  cult 
of  Dionysos,  with  its  vinous  dithyramb  :  the  "  Greek  intellect " 
assuredly  did  wonderful  things  at  Athens,  being  placed,  for  a  time, 
in  civic  conditions  peculiarly  fitted  for  the  economic  evocation  ol 
certain  forms  of  genius.  But  the  above-noted  developments  in 
Pindar  and  in  iEschylus  had  been  preceded  by  the  great  florescence 
of  early  Ionian  philosophy  in  the  sixth  century,  a  growth  which 
constrains  us  to  look  once  more  to  Asia  Minor  for  a  vital  fructifica- 
tion of  the  Greek  inner  life,  of  a  kind  that  Athenian  institutions 
could  not  in  themselves  evoke.  For  while  drama  flourished 
supremely  at  Athens,  science  and  philosophy  grew  up  elsewhere, 
centuries  before  Athens  had  a  philosopher  of  note  ;  and  all  the 
notable  beginnings  of  Hellenic  freethought  occurred  outside  of 
Hellas  proper. 

§3 

The  Greeks  varied  from  the  general  type  of  culture-evolution 
seen  in  India,  Persia,  Egypt,  and  Babylon,  and  approximated 
somewhat  to  that  of  ancient  China,  in  that  their  higher  thinking 
was  done  not  by  an  order  of  priests  pledged  to  cults,  but  by 
independent  laymen.  In  Greece,  as  in  China,  this  line  of  develop- 
ment is  to  be  understood  as  a  result  of  early  political  conditions — in 
China,  those  of  a  multiplicity  of  independent  feudal  States;  in 
Greece,  those  of  a  multiplicity  of  City  States,  set  up  first  by  the 
geographical  structure  of  Hellas,  and  reproduced  in  the  colonies 
of  Asia  Minor  and  Magna  Graecia  by  reason  of  the  acquired  ideal 
and  the  normal  state  of  commercial  competition.  To  the  last, 
many  Greek  cults  exhibited  their  original  character  as  the  sac7'a 
of  private  families.  Such  conditions  prevented  the  growth  of  a 
priestly  caste  or  organization.^  Neither  China  nor  Pagan  Greece 
was  imperialized  till  there  had  arisen  enough  of  rationalism  to 
prevent  the  rise  of  a  powerful  priesthood  ;  and  the  later  growth 
of  a  priestly  system  in  Greece  in  the  Christian  period  is  to  be 
explained  in  terms  first  of  a  positive  social  degeneration,  accom- 
panying a  complete  transmutation  of  political  life,  and  secondly  of 
the   imposition   of    a   new   cult,   on   the   popular   plane,   specially 

1  Cp.  Meyer,  ii,  431;  K.  O.  Mliller,  Introd.  to  Mythol.  pp.  18^92;  Duncker,  p.  340; 
Curtius,  i,  384;  ThirlwaH,  i,  200-203;  Burckhardt.  Griech.  Cult  urge sch,  1898.  ii,  19.  As  to 
the  ancient  beginnings  of  a  priestly  organization,  see  Curtius.  i,  92-94,  97.  As  to  the 
effects  of  its  absence,  see  Heeren,  Folit.  Hist,  of  Anc.  Greece,  Eng.  tr.  1829,  pp.  59-63; 
Burckhardt.  as  cited,  ii,  31-32 ;  Meyer,  as  last  cited  ;  Zeller,  Philos.  der  Griechen,  3te  Aufl. 
i,  44  sq.  Lange's  criticism  of  Zeller's  statement  {Gesch.  des  Materialismus,  3te  Aufl.  i, 
124-26,  note  2)  practically  concedes  the  proposition.  The  influence  of  a  few  powerful 
priestly  families  is  not  denied.    The  point  is  that  they  remained  isolated. 


'> 


organized  on  the  model  of  the  political  system  that  adopted  it. 
Under  imperialism,  however,  the  two  civilizations  ultimately 
presented  a  singular  parallel  of  unprogressiveness. 

In  the  great  progressive  period,  the  possible  gains  from  the 
absence  of  a  priesthood  are  seen  in  course  of  realization.  For  the 
Greek-speaking  world  in  general  there  was  no  dogmatic  body  of 
teaching,  no  written  code  of  theology  and  moral  law,  no  Sacred 
Book.^  Each  local  cult  had  its  own  ancient  ritual,  often  ministered 
by  priestesses,  with  myths,  often  of  late  invention,  to  explain  it ; 
only  Homer  and  Hesiod,  with  perhaps  some  of  the  now  lost  epics, 
serving  as  a  general  treasury  of  myth-lore.  The  two  great  epopees 
ascribed  to  Homer,  indeed,  had  a  certain  Biblical  status ;  and  the 
Homerids  or  other  bards  who  recited  them  did  what  in  them  lay  to 
make  the  old  poetry  the  standard  of  theological  opinion  ;  but  they 
too  lacked  organized  influence,  and  could  not  hinder  higher  thinking.^ 
The  special  priesthood  of  Delphi,  wielding  the  oracle,  could  maintain 
their  political  influence  only  by  holding  their  function  above  all 
apparent  self-seeking  or  effort  at  domination.^  It  only  needed,  then, 
such  civic  conditions  as  should  evolve  a  leisured  class,  with  a  bent 
towards  study,  to  make  possible  a  growth  of  lay  philosophy. 

Those  conditions  first  arose  in  the  Ionian  cities ;  because  there 
first  did  Greek  citizens  attain  commercial  wealth,^  as  a  result  of 
adopting  the  older  commercial  civilization  whose  independent  cities 
they  conquered,  and  of  the  greater  rapidity  of  development  which 
belongs  to  colonies  in  general.®  There  it  was  that,  in  matters  of 
religion  and  philosophy,  the  comparison  of  their  own  cults  with 
those  of  their  foreign  neighbours  first  provoked  their  critical  reflec- 
tion, as  the  age  of  primitive  warfare  passed  away.  And  there  it  was, 
accordingly,  that  on  a  basis  of  primitive  Babylonian  science  there 
originated  with  Thales  of  Miletos  (fl.  586  B.C.),  a  Phoenician  by 
descent,'^ the  higher  science  and  philosophy  of  the  Greek-speaking  race.^ 

1  Cp.  K.  O.  Miiller,  Introd.  to  MytJiol.  p.  195;  Curtius,  i,  387,  389,  392;  Duncker,  iii, 
519-21,  563;  ThirlwaH,  i,  204;  Barthelemy  St.  Hilaire,  pref.  totr.  of  Metanhys.  of  Aristotle, 
p.  14.  Professor  Gilbert  Murray,  noting  that  Homer  and  Hesiod  treated  the  Gods  as 
elements  of  romance,  or  as  facts  to  be  catalogued,  asks  :  "  Where  is  the  literature  of 
religion:  the  literature  which  treated  the  Gods  as  Gods?  It  must,"  he  adds,  have 
existed  ";  and  he  holds  that  we  "  can  see  that  the  religious  writings  were  both  early  and 
multitudinous"  {Hist,  of  Anc.  Greek  iif.p.  62;  cp.  Meyer  and  Mahaffy  as  cited  above, 
pp.  125-26.  "  Writings  "  is  not  here  to  be  taken  literally ;  the  early  hymns  were  unwritten). 
The  priestly  hymns  and  oracles  and  mystery-rituals  in  question  were  never  collected ;  but 
perhaps  we  may  form  some  idea  of  their  nature  from  the  "Homeridian"  and  Orphic 
hymns  to  the  Gods,  and  those  of  the  Alexandrian  antiquary  Callimachus.  It  is  further  to 
be  inferred  that  they  enter  into  the  Hesiodic  Theogony.    (Decharme,  p.  3,  citmg  Bergk.) 

2  Meyer,  ii,  426  ;  Curtius,  i,  390-91,  417 ;  ThirlwaH,  i,  204  ;  Grote,  i,  48-49. 

8  Meyer,  ii,  410-14.  ^    Cp.  Curtius.  i,  392-400,  416 ;  Duncker,  m,  529. 

«  Curtius,  i,  112;  Meyer,  ii,  366.  ,     ,      ,,..,.  „^      »    x. 

6  Curtius,  i.  201.  204.  205,  381 ;  Grote,  iii,  5;  Lange,  Geach.  des  Materialismus,  3te  Aufl. 
i.  23  (Eng.  tr.  i.  23).  '  Herodotos.  i.  170;  Diogenes  Laertius,  Thales,  ch.  i. 

«  On  the  essentially  anti-religious  rationalism  of  the  whole  Ionian  movement,  cp. 
Meyer,  ii,  753-57. 


136 


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FBEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


137 


It  is  historically  certain  that  Lydia  had  an  ancient  and  close 
historical  connection  with  Babylonian  and  Assyrian  civilization, 
whether  through  the  "  Hittites  "  or  otherwise  (Sayce,  Anc.  Emp. 
of  the  East,  1884,  pp.  217-19 ;  Curtius,  Griech.  Gesch.  i,  63, 
207  ;  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alterth.  i,  166,  277,  299,  305-10  ;  Soury, 
BHviaire  de  Vhist.  dii  niatcrialisme,  1881,  pp.  30,  37  sq.  Cp. 
as  to  Armenia,  Edwards,  The  Witness  of  Assyria,  1893,  p.  144) ; 
and  in  the  seventh  century  the  commercial  connection  between 
Lydia  and  Ionia,  long  close,  was  presumably  friendly  up  to  the 
time  of  the  first  attacks  of  the  Lydian  Kings,  and  even  after- 
wards (Herodotos  i,  20-23),  Alyattes  having  made  a  treaty  of 
peace  with  Miletos,  which  thereafter  had  peace  during  his  long 
reign.  This  brings  us  to  the  time  of  Thales  (640-548  B.C.). 
At  the  same  time,  the  Ionian  settlers  of  Miletos  had  from  the 
first  a  close  connection  with  the  Karians  (Herod,  i,  146,  and 
above  pp.  120-21),  whose  near  affinity  with  the  Semites,  at 
least  in  rehgion,  is  seen  in  their  practice  of  cutting  their  fore- 
heads at  festivals  {id.  ii,  61 ;  cp.  Grote,  ed.  1888,  i,  27,  note ; 
E.  Curtius,  i,  36,  42;  Busolt,  i,  33;  and  Spiegel,  Eranische 
Alter thumskimdc,  i,  228).  Thales  was  thus  in  the  direct  sphere 
of  Babylonian  culture  before  the  conquest  of  Cyrus;  and  his 
Milesian  pupils  or  successors,  Anaximandros  and  Anaximenes, 
stand  for  the  same  influences.  Herakleitos  in  turn  was  of 
Ephesus,  an  Ionian  city  in  the  same  culture-sphere;  Anaxa- 
goras  was  of  Klazomenai,  another  Ionian  city,  as  had  been 
Hermotimos,  of  the  same  philosophic  school ;  the  Eleatic 
school,  founded  by  Xenophanes  and  carried  on  by  Parmenides 
and  the  elder  Zeno,  come  from  the  same  matrix,  Elea  having 
been  founded  by  exiles  from  Ionian  Phokaia  on  its  conquest  by 
the  Persians ;  and  Pythagoras,  in  turn,  was  of  the  Ionian  city 
of  Samos,  in  the  same  sixth  century.  Finally,  Protagoras  and 
Demokritos  w^ere  of  Abdera,  an  Ionian  colony  in  Thrace; 
Leukippos,  the  teacher  of  Demokritos,  was  either  an  Abderite, 
a  Milesian,  or  an  Elean ;  and  Archelaos,  the  pupil  of  Anaxa- 
goras  and  a  teacher  of  Sokrates,  is  said  to  have  been  a  Milesian. 
Wellhausen  [Israel,  p.  473  of  vol.  of  Prolegoimna,  Eng.  tr.)  has 
spoken  of  the  rise  of  philosophy  on  the  "threatened  and  actual 
political  annihilation  of  Ionia"  as  corresponding  to  the  rise  of 
Hebrew  prophecy  on  the  menace  and  the  consummation  of  the 
Assyrian  conquest.  As  regards  Ionia,  this  may  hold  in  the  sense 
that  the  stoppage  of  poHtical  freedom  threw  men  back  on  philo- 
sophy, as  happened  later  at  Athens.  But  Thales  philosophized 
before  the  Persian  conquest. 

§  4 

Thales,  like  Homer,  starts  from  the  Babylonian  conception  of 
a  beginning  of  all  things  in  water ;  but  in  Thales  the  immediate 


motive  and  the  sequel  are  strictly  cosmological  and  neither  theo- 
logical nor  poetical,  though  we  cannot  tell  whether  the  worship  of 
a  God  of  the  Waters  may  not  have  been  the  origin  of  a  water-theory 
of  the  cosmos.  The  phrase  attributed  to  him,  "  that  all  things  are 
full  of  Gods,"  ^  clearly  meant  that  in  his  opinion  the  forces  of 
things  inhered  in  the  cosmos,  and  not  in  personal  powers  who 
spasmodically  interfered  with  it.^  It  is  probable  that,  as  w^as 
surmised  by  Plutarch,  a  pantheistic  conception  of  Zeus  existed  for 
the  Ionian  Greeks  before  Thales.^  To  the  later  doxographists  he 
"  seems  to  have  lost  belief  in  the  Gods."''  From  the  mere  second- 
hand and  often  unintelligent  statements  which  are  all  we  have  in 
his  case,  it  is  hard  to  make  sure  of  his  system  ;  but  that  it  was 
pantheistic^  and  physicist  seems  clear.  He  conceived  that  matter 
not  only  came  from  but  was  resolvable  into  water;  that  all 
phenomena  were  ruled  by  law  or  "  necessity  ";  and  that  the  sun  and 
planets  (commonly  regarded  as  deities)  were  bodies  analogous  to  the 
earth,  which  he  held  to  be  spherical  but  "  resting  on  water."  °  For 
the  rest,  he  speculated  in  meteorology  and  in  astronomy,  and  is 
credited  with  having  predicted  a  solar  eclipse  ^ — a  fairly  good  proof 
of  his  knowledge  of  Chaldean  science  ^ — and  with  having  introduced 
geometry  into  Greece  from  Egypt.^  To  him,  too,  is  ascribed  a  wise 
counsel  to  the  lonians  in  the  matter  of  political  federation,^"  which, 
had  it  been  followed,  might  have  saved  them  from  the  Persian 
conquest ;  and  he  is  one  of  the  many  early  moralists  who  laid  down 
the  Golden  Kule  as  the  essence  of  the  moral  law."  With  his 
maxim,  **  Know  thyself,"  he  seems  to  mark  a  broadly  new  departure 
in  ancient  thought :  the  balance  of  energy  is  shifted  from  myth  and 
theosophy,  prophecy  and  poesy,  to  analysis  of  consciousness  and  the 
cosmic  process. 

From    this    point    Greek    rationalism     is     continuous,   despite 
reactions,    till   the   Koman   conquest,   Miletos   figuring   long    as    a 


1  The  First  Philosophers  of  Greece,  by  A.  Fairbanks,  1898.  PP.  2,  3,  6.  This  compilation 
usefully  supplies  a  revised  text  of  the  ancient  philosophic  fragments,  with  a  translation 
of  these  and  of  the  passages  on  the  early  thinkers  by  the  later,  and  by  the  epitomists.  A 
good  conspectus  of  tlie  remains  of  the  early  Greek  thinkers  is  supplied  also  in  Grote's  Plato 
and  the  other  Coinpauions  of  Sokrates.  ch.  i ;  and  a  valuable  critical  analysis  of  the  sources 
in  Prof.  J.  Burnet's  Early  Greek  Philosophy.  ,   ^,  ., 

-^  Cp.  Lange,  Gesch.  des  Mat.  i,  126  (Eng.  tr.  i,  8,  n.).  Mr.  Benn  (The  Greek  Philosophers, 
i,  8)  and  Prof.  Decharme  (p.  39)  seem  to  read  this  as  a  profession  of  belief  in  deities  in  the 
ordinary  sense.  But  cp.  R.  W.  Mackay,  The  Progress  of  the  Intellect,  18.50,  i,  338.  Burnet 
(ch.  i,  §  11)  doubts  the  authenticity  of  this  saying,  but  thinks  it  "extremely  probable  that 
Thales  did  say  that  the  magnet  and  amber  had  souls." 

»  Mackay.  as  cited,  p.  331.         ^  Fairbanks,  p.  4.         «  Diogenes  Laertius,  Thales,  ch.  9. 

6  Fairbanks,  pp.  3,  7.  '  Herodotos,  i,  74. 

8  Cp.  Burnet.  Early  Greek  Philos.  2nd.  ed.  introd.  §  3.  To  Thales  is  ascribed  by  the 
Greeks  the  "  discovery  "  of  the  constellation  Ursus  Major.  Diog.  ch.  2.  As  it  was  called 
"  Phoenike"  by  the  Greeks,  his  knowledge  would  be  of  Phoenician  derivation.  Cp.  Hum- 
boldt, Kosmos,  Hohn  tr.  iii,  160.       9  Diog.  Laert.  ch.  3.    On  this  cp.  Burnet,  introd.  §  6. 

10  Herod,  i,  170.    Cp.  Diog.  Laert.  ch.  3.  "  Diog.  Laert.  ch.  9. 


138 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


general  source  of  skepticism.  Anaximandros  (610-547  B.C.),  pupil 
and  companion  of  Thales,  was  like  him  an  astronomer,  geographer, 
and  physicist,  seeking  for  a  first  principle  (for  which  he  may  or 
may  not  have  invented  the  name^) ;  rejecting  the  idea  of  a  single 
primordial  element  such  as  water;  affirming  an  infinite  material 
cause,  without  beginning  and  indestructible,'^  with  an  infinite 
number  of  worlds ;  and — still  showing  the  Chaldean  impulse — 
speculating  remarkably  on  the  descent  of  man  from  something 
aquatic,  as  well  as  on  the  form  and  motion  of  the  earth  (figured  by 
him  as  a  cylinder^),  the  nature  and  motions  of  the  solar  system, 
and  thunder  and  lightning."*  It  seems  doubtful  whether,  as  affirmed 
by  Eudemus,  he  taught  the  doctrine  of  the  earth's  motion ;  but  that 
this  doctrine  was  derived  from  the  Babylonian  schools  of  astronomy 
is  so  probable  that  it  may  have  been  accepted  in  Miletos  in  his  day. 
Only  by  inferring  a  prior  scientific  development  of  remarkable 
energy  can  we  explain  the  striking  force  of  the  sayings  of  Anaxi- 
mandros which  have  come  down  to  us.  His  doctrine  of  evolution 
stands  out  for  us  to-day  like  the  fragment  of  a  great  ruin,  hinting 
obscurely  of  a  line  of  active  thinkers.  The  thesis  that  man  must 
have  descended  from  a  different  species  because,  "  w4iile  other 
animals  quickly  found  food  for  themselves,  man  alone  requires  a 
long  period  of  suckling  :  had  he  been  originally  such  as  he  is  now, 
he  could  never  have  survived,"  is  a  quite  masterly  anticipation  of 
modern  evolutionary  science.  We  are  left  asking,  how  came  an 
early  Ionian  Greek  to  think  thus,  outgoing  the  assimilative  power 
of  the  later  age  of  Aristotle  ?  Only  a  long  scientific  evolution  can 
readily  account  for  it ;  and  only  in  the  Mesopotamian  world  could 
such  an  evolution  have  taken  place.* 

Anaximenes  (fi.  548  B.C.),  yet  another  Milesian,  pupil  or  at 
least  follower  in  turn  of  Anaximandros,  speculates  similarly,  making 
his  infinite  and  first  principle  the  air,  in  which  he  conceives  the 
earth  to  be  suspended  ;  theorizes  on  the  rainbow,  earthquakes,  the 
nature  and  the  revolution  of  the  heavenly  bodies  (which,  with  the 
earth,  he  supposed  to  be  broad  and  flat) ;  and  affirms  the  eternity  of 

1  Cp.  Burnet,  p.  57. 

2  Fairbanks,  pp.  9-10.  Mr.  Benn  {Oreelc  Philosopliers,  i,  9)  decides  that  the  early 
philosophers,  while  realizing  that  ex  iiihilo  nihil  fit,  had  not  grasped  the  complementary 
truth  that  nothing  can  be  annihilated.  But  even  if  the  teaching  ascribed  to  Anaximandros 
be  set  aside  as  contradictory  (since  he  spoke  of  generation  and  destruction  within  the 
infinite),  we  have  the  statement  of  Diogenes  Laertius  (bk.  ix,  ch.  9,  §  57)  that  Diogenes  of 
Apollonia.  pupil  of  Anaximenes,  gave  the  full  Lueretian  formula. 

8  Diogenes  La6rtius,  however  (ii,  2).  makes  him  agree  with  Thales. 

*  Fairbanks,  pp.  9-16.  Diogenes  makes  him  the  inventor  of  the  gnomon  and  of  the  first 
map  and  globe,  as  well  as  a  maker  of  clocks.    Cp.  Grote,  i.  330.  note. 

5  See  below,  p.  158.  as  to  Demokritos'  statement  concerning  the  Eastern  currency  of 
scientific  view3  which,  when  put  by  Anaxagoras,  scandalized  the  Greeks. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


139 


I 


I 

1 


'  I 


i 


motion  and  the  perish ableness  of  the  earth.*  The  Ionian  thought 
of  the  time  seems  thus  to  have  been  thoroughly  absorbed  in  problems 
of  natural  origins,  and  only  in  that  connection  to  have  been  con- 
cerned with  the  problems  of  religion.  No  dogma  of  divine  creation 
blocked  the  way  :  the  trouble  was  levity  of  hypothesis  or  assent. 
Thales,  following  a  Semitic  lead,  places  the  source  of  all  things  in 
water.  Anaximandros,  perhaps  following  another,  but  seeking  a 
more  abstract  idea,  posited  an  infinite,  the  source  of  all  things ;  and 
Anaximenes  in  turn  reduces  that  infinite  to  the  air,  as  being  the 
least  material  of  things.  He  cannot  have  anticipated  the  chemical 
conception  of  the  reduction  of  all  solids  to  gases  :  the  thesis  was 
framed  either  a  priori  or  in  adaptation  of  priestly  claims  for  the 
deities  of  the  elements  ;  and  others  were  to  follow  with  the  guesses 
of  earth  and  fire  and  heat  and  cold.  Still,  the  speculation  is  that 
of  bold  and  far-grasping  thinkers,  and  for  these  there  can  have 
been  no  validity  in  the  ordinary  God-ideas  of  polytheism. 

There  is  reason  to  think  that  these  early  "schools"  of  thought 
were  really  constituted  by  men  in  some  way  banded  together,^  thus 
supporting  each  other  against  the  conservatism  of  religious  ignorance. 
The  physicians  were  so  organized;  the  disciples  of  Pythagoras 
followed  the  same  course ;  and  in  later  Greece  we  shall  find  the 
different  philosophic  sects  formed  into  societies  or  corporations 
The  first  model  was  probably  that  of  the  priestly  corporation ;  and 
in  a  world  in  which  many  cults  were  chronically  disendowed  it  may 
well  have  been  that  the  leisured  old  priesthoods,  philosophizing  as 
we  have  seen  those  of  India  and  Egypt  and  Mesopotamia  doing, 
played  a  primary  part  in  initiating  the  work  of  rational  secular 
thought. 

The  recent  work  of  Mr.  F.  M.  Cornford,  Fro7n  Philosophy  to 
Beligion  (1912),  puts  forth  an  interesting  and  ingenious  theory 
to  the  effect  that  early  Greek  philosophy  is  a  reduction  to 
abstract  terms  of  the  practice  of  totemistic  tribes.  On  this 
view,  when  the  Gods  are  figured  in  Homer  as  subject  to  Moira 
(Destiny),  there  has  taken  place  an  impersonation  of  N07710S,  or 
Law ;  and  just  as  the  divine  cosmos  or  polity  is  a  reflection 
of  the  earthly,  so  the  established  conception  of  the  absolute 
compulsoriness  of  tribal  law  is  translated  into  one  of  a  Fate 
which  overrules  the  Gods  (p.  40  sq.).  So,  when  Anaximandros 
posits  the  doctrine  of  four  elements  [he  did  not  use  the  word, 
by  the  way ;  that  comes  later ;  see  Burnet,  ch.  i,  p.  56,  citing 

J  Fairbanks,  pp.  17-22. 

2  See  Windelband,  Hist,  of  Anc.  Philos.  Eng.  tr.  1900,  p.  25,  citing  Diels  and  Wilamowitz- 
MOllendorf .    Cp.  Burnet,  introd.  §  14. 


i 


hi 


1 


140  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GKEECE 

Diels] ,  "we  observe  that  this  type  of  cosmic  structure  corre- 
sponds to  that  of  a  totemic  tribe  containing  four  clans  "  (p.  62). 
On  the  other  hand,  the  totemistic  stage  had  long  before  been 
broken  down.  The  "notion  of  the  group-soul"  had  given  rise 
to  the  notion  of  God  (p.  90) ;  and  the  primitive  "  magical 
group"  had  dissolved  into  a  system  of  families  (p.  93),  with 
individual  souls.  On  this  prior  accumulation  of  religious 
material  early  philosophy  works  (p.  138). 

It  does  not  appear  why,  thus  recognizing  that  totemism  was 
at  least  a  long  way  behind  in  Thales's  day,  Mr.  Cornford 
should  trace  the  Ionian  four  elements  straight  back  to  the 
problematic  four  clans  of  the  totemistic  tribe.  Dr.  Frazer 
gives  him  no  data  whatever  for  Aryan  totemism  ;  and  the 
Ionian  cities,  like  those  of  Mesopotamia  and  Egypt,  belong  to 
the  age  of  commerce  and  of  monarchies.  It  would  seem  more 
plausible,  on  Mr.  Cornford's  own  premises,  to  trace  the  rival 
theories  of  the  four  elements  to  religious  philosophies  set  up  by 
the  priests  of  four  Gods  of  w^ater,  earth,  air,  and  fire.  If  the 
early  philosophers  "  had  nothing  but  theology  behind  them  " 
(p.  138),  why  not  infer  theologies  for  the  old-established  deities 
of  Mesopotamia  ?  Mr.  Cornford  adds  to  the  traditional  factors 
that  of  "  the  temperaments  of  the  individual  philosophers, 
which  made  one  or  other  of  those  schemes  the  more  congenial 
to  them."  Following  Dr.  F.  H.  Bradley,  he  pronounces  that 
"  almost  all  philosophic  arguments  are  invented  afterwards,  to 
recommend,  or  defend  from  attack,  conclusions  which  the 
philosopher  was  from  the  outset  bent  on  believing  before  he 
could  think  of  any  arguments  at  all.  That  is  wdiy  philosophical 
reasonings  are  so  bad,  so  artificial,  so  unconvincing." 

Upon  this  very  principle  it  is  much  more  likely  that  the 
philosophic  cults  of  water,  earth,  air,  and  fire  originated  in  the 
w^orships  of  Gods  of  those  elements,  whose  priests  w^ould  tend 
to  magnify  their  office.  It  is  hard  to  see  how  "  temperament  " 
could  determine  a  man's  bias  to  an  air-theory  in  preference  to 
a  water-theory.  But  if  the  priests  of  Ea  the  Water-God  and 
those  of  Bel  the  God  of  Air  had  framed  theories  of  the  kind, 
it  is  conceivable  that  family  or  tribal  ties  and  traditions  might 
set  men  upon  developing  the  theory  quasi-philosophically  when 
the  alien  Gods  came  to  be  recognized  by  thinking  men  as  mere 
names  for  the  elements.^  (Compare  Flaubert's  Salanimbd  as 
to  the  probable  rivalry  of  priests  of  the  Sun  and  Moon.)  A 
pantheistic  view,  again,  arose  as  we  saw  among  various  priest- 
hoods in  the  monarchies  where  syncretism  arose  out  of  political 
aggregations. 

What  is  clear  is  that  the  religious  or  theistic  basis  had  ceased  to 

1  It  win  be  observed  that  Mr.  Cornford's  book,  though  somewhat  loosely  speculative, 
is  very  freshly  suggestive.  It  is  well  worth  study,  alongside  of  the  work  of  Prof.  Burnet, 
by  those  interested  in  the  scientific  presentation  of  the  evolution  of  thought. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GKEECE 


141 


exist  for  many  educated  Greeks  in  that  environment.  The  old  God- 
ideas  have  disappeared,  and  a  quasi-scientific  attitude  has  been  taken 
up.  It  is  apparently  conditioned,  perhaps  fatally,  by  prior  modes  of 
thought ;  but  it  operates  in  disregard  of  so-called  religious  needs,  and 
negates  the  normal  religious  conception  of  earthly  government  or 
providence.  Nevertheless,  it  was  not  destined  to  lead  to  the  ration- 
alization of  popular  thought ;  and  only  in  a  small  number  of  cases 
did  the  scientific  thinkers  deeply  concern  themselves  with  the 
enlightenment  of  the  mass. 

In  another  Ionian  thinker  of  that  age,  indeed,  w^e  find  alongside 
of  physical  and  philosophical  speculation  on  the  universe  the  most 
direct  and  explicit  assault  upon  popular  religion  that  ancient  history 
preserves.  Xenophanes  of  Kolophon  (?  570-470),  a  contemporary 
of  Anaximandros,  w^as  forced  by  a  Persian  invasion  or  by  some 
revolution  to  leave  his  native  city  at  the  age  of  twenty-five  ;  and  by 
his  own  account  his  doctrines,  and  inferribly  his  life,  had  gone  "  up 
and  down  Greece  " — in  which  we  are  to  include  Magna  Graecia — for 
sixty-seven  years  at  the  date  of  wanting  of  one  of  his  poems.^  This 
was  presumably  composed  at  Elea  (Hyela  or  Velia),  founded  about 
536  B.C.,  on  the  western  Italian  coast,  south  of  Paestum,  by 
unsubduable  Phokaians  seeking  a  new  home  after  the  Persian 
conquest,  and  after  they  had  been  further  defeated  in  the  attempt 
to  live  as  pirates  in  Corsica.'^  Thither  came  the  aged  Xenophanes, 
perhaps  also  seeking  freedom.  He  seems  to  have  lived  hitherto  as 
a  rhapsode,  chanting  his  poems  at  the  courts  of  tyrants  as  the 
Homerids  did  the  Iliad.  It  is  hard  indeed  to  conceive  that  his 
recitations  included  the  anti-religious  passages  which  have  come 
down  to  us ;  but  his  resort  in  old  age  to  the  new  community  of  Elea 
is  itself  a  proof  of  a  craving  and  a  need  for  free  conditions  of  life. 

Setting  out  on  his  travels,  doubtless,  with  the  Ionian  predilection 
for  a  unitary  philosophy,  he  had  somewhere  and  somehow  attained 
a  pantheism  which  transcended  the  concern  for  a  "  first  principle  " 
— if,  indeed,  it  was  essentially  distinct  from  the  doctrine  of 
Anaximandros.*  "  Looking  wistfully  upon  the  whole  heavens,"  says 
Aristotle,^   "he   affirms   that  unity  is  God."     From  the  scattered 

*  Diog.  Laert.  ix.  19 ;  Fairbanks,  p.  76. 

2  Herodotos.  i,  363-67 ;  Grote,  iii,  421 ;  Meyer,  ii,  §  438. 

^  Cp.  Guillaume  Breton,  Essai  sur  la  poesie  philosophiqiie  en  Grece,  1882,  pp.  23-25.  The 
life  period  of  Xenophanes  is  still  uncertain.  Meyer  (ii,  §  466)  and  Windelband  (Hist,  of 
Anc.  Philos.  Eng.  tr.  p.  47)  still  adhere  to  the  chronology  which  puts  him  in  the  century 
570-470,  making  him  a  young  man  at  the  foundation  of  Elea. 

*  Cousin,  developed  by  G.  Breton,  work  cited,  p.  '61  sq.,  traces  Xenophanes's  doctrme 
of  the  unity  of  things  to  the  school  of  Pythagoras.  It  clearly  had  antecedents.  But 
Xenophanes  is  recorded  to  have  argued  against  Pythagoras  as  well  as  Thales  and 
Epimenides  (Diog.  Laert.  ix,  2,  §§  18,  20). 

6  Metaphysics,  i,  5  ;  cp.  Fairbanks,  pp.  79-80. 


I 


142 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


143 


l| 


I 

it 


quotations  which  are  all  that  remain  of  his  lost  poem,  On  Nature 
(or  Natural  Things),^  it  is  hard  to  deduce  any  full  conception  of  his 
philosophy  ;  but  it  is  clear  that  it  was  monistic  ;  and  though  most 
of  his  later  interpreters  have  acclaimed  him  as  the  herald  of 
monotheism,  it  is  only  in  terms  of  pantheism  that  his  various 
utterances  can  be  reconciled.  It  is  clearly  in  that  sense  that 
Aristotle  and  Plato^  commemorate  him  as  the  first  of  the  Eleatic 
monists.  Repeatedly  he  speaks  of  **  the  Gods "  as  well  as  of 
God  ";  and  he  even  inculcates  the  respectful  worship  of  them.^ 
The  solution  seems  to  be  that  he  thinks  of  the  forces  and  phenomena 
of  Nature  in  the  early  way  as  Gods  or  Powers,  but  resolves  them  in 
turn  into  a  whole  which  includes  all  forms  of  power  and  intelligence, 
but  is  not  to  be  conceived  as  either  physically  or  mentally  anthropo- 
morphic. "  His  contemporaries  would  have  been  more  likely  to  call 
Xenophanes  an  atheist  than  anything  else.*'^ 

The  common  verdict  of  the  historians  of  philosophy,  who 
find  in  Xenophanes  an  early  and  elevated  doctrine  of  "  Mono- 
theism," is  closely  tested  by  J.  Freudenthal,  Ueber  die  Theologie 
des  Xenophanes,  1886.  As  he  shows,  the  bulk  of  them  (cited 
by  him,  pp.  2-7)  do  violence  to  Xenophanes's  language  in 
making  him  out  the  proclaimer  of  a  monotheistic  doctrine  to 
a  polytheistic  world.  That  he  was  essentially  a  pantheist  is 
now  recognized  by  a  number  of  writers.  Cp.  Windelband,  as 
cited,  p.  48 ;  Decharme,  as  cited,  p.  46  sq.  Breton,  Podsie 
philos.  en  Grdce,  pp.  47,  64  sq.,  had  maintained  the  point, 
against  Cousin,  in  1882,  before  Freudenthal.  But  Freudenthal 
in  turn  gloses  part  of  the  problem  in  ascribing  to  Xenophanes 
an  acceptance  of  polytheism  (cp.  Burnet,  p.  142),  which  kept 
him  from  molestation  throughout  his  life ;  whereas  Anaxagoras, 
who  had  never  attacked  popular  belief  with  the  directness  of 
Xenophanes,  was  prosecuted  for  atheism.  Anaxagoras  was  of 
a  later  age,  dwelling  in  an  Athens  in  which  popular  prejudice 
took  readily  to  persecution,  and  political  malice  resorted  readily 
to  religious  pretences.  Xenophanes  could  hardly  have  published 
with  impunity  in  Periklean  Athens  his  stinging  impeachments  of 
current  God-ideas ;  and  it  remains  problematic  whether  he  ever 
proclaimed  them  in  face  of  the  multitude.  It  is  only  from  long 
subsequent  students  that  we  get  them  as  quotations  from  his 
poetry  ;  there  is  no  record  of  their  effect  on  his  contemporaries. 
That  his  God-idea  was  pantheistic  is  sufficiently  established  by 
his  attacks  on  anthropomorphism,  taken  in  connection  with  his 
doctrine  of  the  All. 


1  One  of  several  so  entitled  in  that  age.    Cp.  Burnet,  introd.  §  7. 

2  Metaph.,  as  cited  ;  Plato,  Soph.  242  D. 

8  Long  fragment  in  Atheneeus,  xi,  7 ;  Burnet,  p.  130.  *  Burnet,  p.  141. 


• 
I 


Whether  as  teaching  meant  for  public  currency  or  as  a  philo- 
sophic message  for  the  few,  the  pantheism  of  Xenophanes  expressed 
itself  in  an  attack  on  anthropomorphic  religion,  no  less  direct  and 
much  more  ratiocinative  than  that  of  any  Hebrew  prophet  upon 
idolatry.  "  Mortals,"  he  wrote,  in  a  famous  passage,  *'  suppose  that 
the  Gods  are  born,  and  wear  man's  clothing,^  and  have  voice  and 
body.  But  if  cattle  or  lions  had  hands,  so  as  to  paint  with  their 
hands  and  make  works  of  art  as  men  do,  they  would  paint  their 
Gods  and  give  them  bodies  like  their  own — horses  like  horses,  cattle 
like  cattle."  And  again  :  "  Ethiopians  make  their  Gods  black  and 
snub-nosed  ;  the  Thracians  say  theirs  have  reddich  hair  and  blue 
eyes  ;  so  also  they  conceive  the  spirits  of  the  Gods  to  be  like  them- 
selves." ^  On  Homer  and  Hesiod,  the  myth-singers,  his  attack  is  no 
less  stringent :  **  They  attributed  to  the  Gods  all  things  that  with 
men  are  of  ill-fame  and  blame  ;  they  told  of  them  countless  nefarious 
things — thefts,  adulteries,  and  deception  of  each  other."  ^  It  is 
recorded  of  him  further  that,  like  Epicurus,  he  absolutely  rejected 
all  divination.'*  And  when  the  Eleans,  perhaps  somewhat  shaken  by 
such  criticism,  asked  him  whether  they  should  sacrifice  and  sing 
a  dirge  to  Leukothea,  the  child-bereft  Sea-Goddess,  he  bade  them  not 
to  sing  a  dirge  if  they  thought  her  divine,  and  not  to  sacrifice  if  she 
were  human.* 

Beside  this  ringing  radicalism,  not  yet  out  of  date,  the  physics  of 
the  Eleatic  freethinker  is  less  noticeable.  His  resort  to  earth  as  a 
material  first  principle  was  but  another  guess  or  disguised  theosophy 
added  to  those  of  his  predecessors,  and  has  no  philosophic  congruity 
with  his  pantheism.  It  is  interesting  to  find  him  reasoning  from 
fossil-marks  that  what  was  now  land  had  once  been  sea-covered,  and 
been  left  mud ;  and  that  the  moon  is  probably  inhabited.^  Yet,  with 
all  this  alertness  of  speculation,  Xenophanes  sounds  the  note  of 
merely  negative  skepticism  which,  for  lack  of  fruitful  scientific 
research,  was  to  become  more  and  more  common  in  Greek  thought  :^ 
no  man,"  he  avows  in  one  verse,  "  knows  truly  anything,  and  no 
man  ever  will."®     More  fruitful  was  his  pantheism  or  pankosmism. 

^  Cp.  Burnet,  p.  131. 

2  Fairbanks,  p.  67,  Fr.  5,  6;  Clem.  Alex.  Stromaia,  bk.  v,  Wilson's  tr.  ii,  285-86. 
Cp.  bk.  vii,  c.  4. 

^  Fairbanks,  Fr.  7. 

^  Cicero,  De  divinatione,  i,  3,  5 ;  Aetius,  De  placitis  reliquicB,  in  Fairbanks,  p.  85. 
^  Aristotle.  Rhetoric,  ii,  23.  §  27.    A  similar  saying  is  attributed  to  Herakleitos,  on 
slight  authority  (Fairbanks,  p.  54). 

°  Cicero,  Academica,  ii,  39 ;  Lactantius,  Div.  Ij^st.  iii,  23.  Anaxagoras  and  Demokritos 
held  the  same  view.  Diog.  Laert,  bk.  ii,  ch.  iii,  iv  (§  8);  Pseudo-Plutarch,  De  placitis 
Philosoph.  ii,  25. 

'  Cp.  Mackay,  Progress  of  the  Intellect,  i,  340. 

»  Diog.  Laert.  in  life  of  Pyrrho,  bk.  ix,  ch.  xi,  8  (§  72).  The  passage,  however,  is 
uncertam.    See  Fairbanks,  p.  70. 


144 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GKEECE 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


145 


"The  All  (ouXos),"  he  declared,  "sees,  thinks,  and  hears."*  "It 
was  thus  from  Xenophanes  that  the  doctrine  of  Pankosmism  first 
obtained  introduction  into  Greek  philosophy,  recognizing  nothing 
real  except  the  universe  as  an  indivisible  and  unchangeable  whole."  ^ 
His  negative  skepticism  might  have  guarded  later  Hellenes  against 
baseless  cosmogony-making  if  they  had  been  capable  of  a  systematic 
intellectual  development.  His  sagacity,  too,  appears  in  his  protest  ^ 
against  that  extravagant  worship  of  the  athlete  which  from  first  to 
last  kept  popular  Greek  life-philosophy  unprogressive.  But  here 
least  of  all  was  he  listened  to. 

It  is  after  a  generation  of  such  persistent  questioning  of  Nature 
and  custom  by  pioneer  Greeks  that  we  find  in  Heeakleitos  of 
Ephesus  (fl.  500  B.C.) — still  in  the  Ionian  culture -sphere — a  positive 
and  unsparing  criticism  of  the  prevailing  behefs.  No  sage  among 
the  lonians  (who  had  already  produced  a  series  of  powerful  thinkers) 
left  a  deeper  impression  than  he  of  massive  force  and  piercing 
intensity :  above  all  of  the  gnomic  utterances  of  his  age,  his  have 
the  ring  of  character  and  the  edge  of  personality ;  and  the  gossiping 
Diogenes,  after  setting  out  by  calling  him  the  most  arrogant  of  men, 
concedes  that  the  brevity  and  weight  of  his  expression  are  not  to  be 
matched.  It  was  due  rather  to  this,  probably,  than  to  his  meta- 
physic — though  that  has  an  arresting  quality — that  there  grew  up 
a  school  of  Herakliteans  calling  themselves  by  his  name.  And 
though  doubt  attaches  to  some  of  his  sayings,  and  even  to  his  date, 
there  can  be  small  question  that  he  was  mordantly  freethinking, 
though  a  man  of  royal  descent.  He  has  stern  sayings  about 
"  bringing  forth  untrustworthy  witnesses  to  confirm  disputed  points," 
and  about  eyes  and  ears  being  "  bad  witnesses  for  men,  when  their 
souls  lack  understanding."''  "What  can  be  seen,  heard,  and 
learned,  this  I  prize,"  is  one  of  his  declarations ;  and  he  is  credited 
with  contemning  book-learning  as  having  failed  to  give  wisdom  to 
Hesiod,  Pythagoras,  Xenophanes,  and  Hekataios.*^  The  behef  in 
progress,  he  roundly  insists,  stops  progress.^  From  his  cryptic 
utterances  it  may  be  gathered  that  he  too  was  a  pantheist;''  and 
from  his  insistence  on  the  immanence  of  strife  in  all  things,^  as 
from  others  of  his  sayings,  that  he  was  of  the  Stoic  mood.     It  was 

1  Fairbanks.  Fr.  1.  Fairbanks  translates  with  Zeller  :  "The  whole  [of  God]."  Grote  : 
"  The  whole  Kosmos.  or  the  whole  God."  It  should  be  noted  that  the  original  in  Sextus 
Empiricus  {Adv.  Math,  ix,  144)  is  given  without  the  name  of  Xenophanes,  and  the 
ascription  is  modern. 

2  Grote.  as  last  cited,  p.  18.  »  Fairbanks,  Fr.  19.    In  Athenaeus,  x,  413. 

*  Polybius,  iv,  40;  Sextus  Empiricus,  Adversus  Mathematicos,  viii,  126;  Fairbanks, 
pp.  25,  27  ;  Frag.  4.  14.     Cp.  92,  111,  113. 

5  Diog.  Laert.  ix.  i.  2.  6  Fairbanks.  Fr.  134.  7  jd.  Frag.  36.  67. 

8  Id.  Frag.  43,  44.  46.  62. 


I 


doubtless  in  resentment  of  immoral  religion  that  he  said^  Homer 
and  Archilochos  deserved  flogging;  as  he  is  severe  on  the  phalHc 
worship  of  Dionysos,^  on  the  absurdity  of  prayer  to  images,  and  on 
popular  pietism  in  general.®  One  of  his  sayings,  >]^os  dvOpomo)  Sat/xwv/ 
"  character  is  a  man's  daemon,"  seems  to  be  the  definite  assertion  of 
rationalism  in  affairs  as  against  the  creed  of  special  providences. 

A  confusion  of  tradition  has  arisen  between  the  early 
Herakleitos,  "the  Obscure,"  and  the  similarly-named  writer  of 
the  first  century  of  our  era,  who  was  either  one  Herakleides 
or  one  using  the  name  of  Herakleitos.  As  the  later  writer 
certainly  allegorized  Homer — reducing  Apollo  to  the  Sun, 
Athene  to  Thought,  and  so  on — and  claimed  thus  to  free  him 
from  the  charge  of  impiety,  it  seems  highly  probable  that  it  is 
from  him  that  the  scholiast  on  the  Iliad,  xv,  18,  cites  the 
passage  scolding  the  atheists  who  attacked  the  Homeric  myths. 
The  theme  and  the  tone  do  not  belong  to  500  B.C.,  when  only 
the  boldest — as  Herakleitos — would  be  likely  to  attack  Homer, 
and  when  there  is  no  other  literary  trace  of  atheism.  Grote, 
however  (i,  374,  note)^  cites  the  passages  without  comment  as 
referring  to  the  early  philosopher,  who  is  much  more  probably 
credited,  as  above,  with  denouncing  Homer  himself.  Concern- 
ing the  later  Herakleitos  or  Herakleides,  see  Dr.  Hatch's 
Hibbert  Lectures  on  The  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and  Usages 
2ipon  the  Christian  Church,  1890,  pp.  61,  62. 

But  even  apart  from  the  confusion  with  the  late  Herakleides, 
there  is  difiiculty  in  settling  the  period  of  the  Ephesian  thinker. 
Diogenes  Laertius  states  that  he  flourished  about  the  69th 
Olympiad  (504-500  B.C.).  Another  account,  preserved  by 
Eusebius,  places  him  in  the  80th  or  81st  Olympiad,  in  the 
infancy  of  Sokrates,  and  for  this  date  there  are  other  grounds 
(Ueberweg,  i,  40) ;  but  yet  other  evidences  carry  us  back  to  the 
earlier.  As  Diogenes  notes  five  writers  of  the  name — two  being 
poets,  one  a  historian,  and  one  a  "  serio-comic  "  personage — 
and  there  is  record  of  many  other  men  named  Herakleitos  and 
several  Herakleides,  there  is  considerable  room  for  false  attri- 
butions. The  statement  of  Diogenes  that  the  Ephesian  was 
"  wont  to  call  opinion  the  sacred  disease  "  (i,  6,  §  7)  is  commonly 
relegated  to  the  spurious  sayings  of  Herakleitos,  and  it  suggests 
the  last  mentioned  of  his  namesakes.  But  see  Max  Miiller, 
Hibbert  Lectures  07i  Indian  Religion,  p.  6,  for  the  opinion  that 
it  is  genuine,  and  that  by  "opinion"  was  meant  "religion." 

*  Diog.  LaSrt.  last  cited.  This  saying  is  by  some  ascribed  to  the  later  Herakleides  (see 
Fairbanks,  Fr.  119  and  note);  but  it  does  not  seem  to  be  in  his  vein,  which  is  wholly 
pro-Homeric. 

2  Clem.  Alex.  Protrept.  ch.  2,  Wilson's  tr.  p.  41.  The  passage  is  obscure,  but  Mr.  Fair- 
banks's  translation  (Fr.  127)  is  excessively  so. 

»  Clemens,  as  cited,  p.32 ;  Fairbanks.  Fr.  124, 125. 130.    Cp.  Burnet,  p.  139. 

*  Fairbanks,  Fr.  21. 


146 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


147 


The  saying,  says  Dr.  Midler,  "  seems  to  me  to  have  the  massive, 
full,  and  noble  ring  of  Herakleitos."  It  is  hardly  for  rationalists 
to  demur. 

Much  discussion  has  been  set  up  by  the  common  attribution  to 
Herakleitos  in  antiquity  of  the  doctrine  of  the  ultimate  conflagration 
of  all  things.  But  for  this  there  is  no  ground  in  any  actual  passage 
preserved  from  his  works ;  and  it  appears  to  have  been  a  mere 
misconception  of  his  doctrine  in  regard  to  Fire.  His  monistic 
doctrine  was,  in  brief,  that  all  the  opposing  and  contrasted  things  in 
the  universe,  heat  and  cold,  day  and  night,  evil  and  good,  imply 
each  other,  and  exist  only  in  the  relation  of  contrast ;  and  he  con- 
ceived fire  as  something  in  which  opposites  were  solved/  Upon 
this  stroke  of  mysticism  was  concentrated  the  discussion  which 
might  usefully  have  been  turned  on  his  criticism  of  popular  religion  ; 
his  negative  wisdom  was  substantially  ignored,  and  his  obscure 
speculation,  treated  as  his  main  contribution  to  thought,  was  mis- 
understood and  perverted. 

A  limit  was  doubtless  soon  set  to  free  speech  even  in  Elea ;  and 
the  Eleatic  school  after  Xenophanes,  in  the  hands  of  his  pupil 
Parmenides  (fl.  500  B.C.),  Zeno  (fl.  464),  Melissos  of  Samos 
(fl.  444),  and  their  successors,  is  found  turning  first  to  deep 
metaphysic  and  then  to  verbal  dialectic,  to  discussion  on  being  and 
not  being,  the  impossibility  of  motion,  and  the  trick-problem  of 
Achilles  and  the  tortoise.  It  is  conceivable  that  thought  took  these 
lines  because  others  were  socially  closed.  Parmenides,  a  notably 
philosophic  spirit  (whom  Plato,  meeting  him  in  youth,  felt  to  have 
"  an  exceptionally  wonderful  depth  of  mind,"  but  regarded  as  a  man 
to  be  feared  as  well  as  reverenced),^  made  short  work  of  the  counter- 
sense  of  not  being,  but  does  not  seem  to  have  dealt  at  close  quarters 
with  popular  creeds.  Melissos,  a  man  of  action,  who  led  a  successful 
sally  to  capture  the  Athenian  fleet,**  was  apparently  the  most  pro- 
nounced freethinker  of  the  three  named,*  in  that  he  said  of  the  Gods 
"  there  was  no  need  to  define  them,  since  there  was  no  knowledge 
of  them."  ^  Such  utterance  could  not  be  carried  far  in  any  Greek 
community ;  and  there  lacked  the  spirit  of  patient  research  which 

1  Cp.  Burnet,  pp.  175-90. 

2  Theaetetus,  180  d.  See  good  estimates  of  Parmenides  in  Benn's  Greek  Philosophers, 
i,  17-19.  and  Philosovhy  of  Greece  in  Belation  to  the  Character  of  its  People,  pp.  83-95;  in 
J.  A.  Symonds'a  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets,  3rd  ed.  1893,  vol.  i.  ch.  6 ;  and  in  Zeller, 
i.  580  sq. 

^  Plutarch,  Perikles,  cb.  26. 

4  Mr.  Benn  finally  gives  very  high  praise  to  Melissos  (PMos.  o/  tJrcece,  pp.  91-^) ;  aa 
does  Prof.  Burnet  (Early  Gr.  Philoa.  p.  378).  He  held  strongly  by  the  Ionian  conception 
of  the  eternity  of  matter.    Fairbanks,  p.  125. 

6  Diog.  La«5rt.  bk.  ix.  ch.  iv,  3  (8  24). 


might  have  fruitfully  developed  the  notable  hypothesis  of  Parmenides 
that  the  earth  is  spherical  in  form.^  But  he  too  was  a  loose 
guesser,  adding  categories  of  fire  and  earth  and  heat  and  cold  to  the 
formative  and  material  "  principles  "  of  his  predecessors  ;  and  where 
he  divagated  weaker  minds  could  not  but  lose  themselves.  From 
MeHssos  and  Parmenides  there  is  accordingly  a  rapid  descent  in 
philosophy  to  professional  verbaHsm,  popular  life  the  while  proceed- 
ing on  the  old  levels. 

It  was  in  this  epoch  of  declining  energy  and  declining  freedom 
that  there  grew  up  the  nugatory  doctrine,  associated  with  the 
Eleatic  school,^  that  the  only  reahties  are  mental,^  a  formula  which 
eluded  at  once  the  problems  of  Nature  and  the  crudities  of  religion, 
and  so  made  its  fortune  with  the  idle  educated  class.  Meant  to 
support  the  cause  of  reason,  it  was  soon  turned,  as  every  slackly- 
held  doctrine  must  be,  to  a  difi'erent  account.  In  the  hands  of 
Plato  it  developed  into  the  doctrine  of  ideas,  which  in  the  later 
Christian  world  was  to  play  so  large  a  part,  as  "  Kealism,"  in 
checking  scientific  thought ;  and.  in  Greece  it  fatally  fostered  the 
indolent  evasion  of  research  in  physics."*  Ultimately  this  made  for 
supernaturalism,  which  had  never  been  discarded  by  the  main  body 
even  of  rationalizing  thinkers.**  Thus  the  geographer  and  historian 
Hekataios  of  Miletos  (fl.  500  B.C.),  living  at  the  great  centre  of 
rationalism,  while  rejecting  the  mass  of  Greek  fables  as  "ridiculous," 
and  proceeding  in  a  fashion  long  popular  to  translate  them  into 
historical  facts,  yet  affected,  in  the  poetic  Greek  fashion,  to  be  of 
divine  descent.®  At  the  same  time  he  held  by  such  fables  as  that 
of  the  floating  island  in  the  Nile  and  that  of  the  supernormal  Hyper- 
boreans. This  blending  of  old  and  new  habits  of  mind  is  indeed 
perhaps  the  strongest  ground  for  affirming  the  genuineness  of  his 
fragments,  which  has  been  disputed.^  But  from  his  time  forward 
there  are  many  signs  of   a  broad   movement   of   criticism,  doubt, 

• 

Inquiry,  and  reconstruction,  involving  an  extensive  discussion  of 
historical  as  well  as  rehgious  tradition.^  There  had  begun,  in  short, 
for  the  rapidly-developing  Greeks,  a  "discovery  of  man"  such  as 
is  ascribed  in  later  times  to  the  age  of  the  Italian  Eenaissance.  In 
the  next  generation  came  the  father  of  humanists,  Herodotos,  who 

J  Diog.  LaSrt.  ix.  3  {§  21). 

^  As  to  this  see  Windelband,  Hist.Anc.  Philos.  pp.  91-92. 

J  Cp.  Mackay,  Progress  of  the  Intellect,  i,  340. 

The  difference  between  the  lonians  and  Eleatae  was  this  :  the  former  endeavoured 
to  trace  an  idea  among  phenomena  by  aid  of  observation  ;  the  latter  evaded  the  difficulty 
by  dogmatically  asserting  the  objective  existence  of  an  idea"  (Mackay.  as  last  cited). 

**  Cp.  Mackay,  i,  352-53,  as  to  the  survival  of  veneration  of  the  heavenly  bodies  in  the 
various  schools. 

fi  Grote.  i.  350.  7  Meyer,  ii.  9,  759  (§§  5,  465).  «  Id.  §§  6,  466. 


m 


148 


PEEETHOtJGHT  IH  GREECE 


implicitly  carries  the  process  of  discrimination  still  further  than  did 
Hekataios  ;  while  Sophocles  [496-405  B.C.] ,  without  ever  challenging 
popular  faith,  whether  implicitly  as  did  iEschylus,  or  explicitly  as 
did  Euripides,  "  brought  down  the  drama  from  the  skies  to  the  earth  ; 
and  the  drama  still  follows  the  course  which  Sophocles  first  marked 
out  for  it.  It  was  on  the  Gods,  the  struggles  of  the  Gods,  and  on 
destiny  that  iEschylus  dwelt;  it  is  with  man  that  Sophocles  is 
concerned."  ^ 

Still,  there  was  only  to  be  a  partial  enlightenment  of  the  race, 
such  as  we  have  seen  occurring,  perhaps  about  the  same  period,  in 
India.  Sophocles,  even  while  dramatizing  the  cruel  consequences 
of  Greek  religion,  never  made  any  sign  of  being  delivered  from  the 
ordinary  Greek  conceptions  of  deity,  or  gave  any  help  to  wiser 
thought.  The  social  difference  between  Greece  and  the  monarchic 
civilizations  was  after  all  only  one  of  degree :  there,  as  elsewhere, 
the  social  problem  was  finally  unsolved ;  and  the  limits  to  Greek 
progress  were  soon  approached.  But  the  evolution  went  far  in 
many  places,  and  it  is  profoundly  interesting  to  trace  it. 

§  5 
Compared  with  the  early  Milesians  and  with  Xenophanes,  the 
elusive  Pythagoeas  (fl.  540-510  B.C.)  is  not  so  much  a  rationalistic 
as  a  theosophic  freethinker;  but  to  freethought  his  name  belongs 
insofar  as  the  system  connected  with  it  did  rationalize,  and 
discarded  mythology.  If  the  biographic  data  be  in  any  degree 
trustworthy,  it  starts  like  Milesian  speculation  from  oriental  prece- 
dents.^ Pythagoras  was  of  Samos  in  the  ^gean  ;  and  the  traditions 
have  it  that  he  was  a  pupil  of  Pherekydes  the  Syrian,  and  that 
before  settling  at  Kroton,  in  Italy,  he  travelled  in  Egypt,  and  had 
intercourse  with  the  Chaldean  Magi.  Some  parts  of  the  Pytha- 
gorean code  of  life,  at  least,  point  to  an  eastern  derivation. 

The  striking  resemblance  between  the  doctrine  and  practice 
of  the  Pythagoreans  and  those  of  the  Jewish  Essenes  has  led 
Zeller  to  argue  (Philos.  der  Griechen,  Th.  iii,  Abth.  2)  that  the 
latter  were  a  branch  of  the  former.  Bishop  Lightfoot,  on  the 
other  hand,  noting  that  the  Essenes  did  not  hold  the  specially 
prominent  Pythagorean  doctrines  of  numbers  and  of  the  trans- 
migration of  souls,  traces  Essenism  to  Zoroastrian  influence 
(Ed.  of  Colossians,  App.  on  the  Essenes,  pp.  150-51  ;  rep.  in 
Dissertations  on  the  Apostolic  Age,  1892,  pp.  369-72).     This 

1  Jevons,  Hist,  of  Greek  Lit.  1886,  p.  210. 

2  Compare  Meyer,  ii,  §  502.  as  to  the  close  resemblances  between  Pythagoreanism  and 
Orpbicism. 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


149 


raises  the  issue  whether  both  Pythagoreanism  and  Essenism 
were  not  of  Persian  derivation ;  and  Dr.  Schiirer  {Jeicish 
People  in  the  Time  of  Jesus,  Eng.  tr.  Div.  II,  vol.  ii,  p.  218) 
pronounces  in  favour  of  an  oriental  origin  for  both.  The  new 
connection  between  Persia  and  Ionia  just  at  or  before  the  time 
of  Pythagoras  (fl.  530  B.C.)  squares  with  this  view  ;  but  it  is 
further  to  be  noted  that  the  phenomenon  of  monasticism, 
common  to  Pythagoreans  and  Essenes,  arises  in  Buddhism 
about  the  Pythagorean  period  ;  and  as  it  is  hardly  likely  that 
Buddhism  in  the  sixth  century  B.C.  reached  Asia  Minor,  there 
remains  the  possibility  of  some  special  diffusion  of  the  new 
ideal  from  the  Babylonian  sphere  after  the  conquest  by  Cyrus, 
there  being  no  trace  of  a  Persian  monastic  system.  The  resem- 
blances to  Orphicism  likewise  suggest  a  Babylonian  source,  as 
does  the  doctrine  of  numbers,  which  is  not  Zoroastrian.  As 
to  Buddhism,  the  argument  for  a  Buddhist  origin  of  Essenism 
shortly  before  our  era  (cp.  A.  Lillie,  Buddhism  in  Christendom 
and  The  Influence  of  Buddhism  07i  Primitive  Christianity  ;  E. 
Bunsen,  The  A?ig el- Messiah ;  or,  Buddhists,  Essenes,  and 
Christians — all  three  to  be  read  with  much  caution)  does  not 
meet  the  case  of  the  Pythagorean  precedents  for  Essenism. 
Prof.  Burnet  {Early  Greek  Philos.  2nd  ed.  p.  102)  notes  close 
Indian  parallels  to  Pythagoreanism,  but  overlooks  the  interme- 
diate Persian  parallels,  and  falls  back  very  unnecessarily  on  the 
bald  notion  that  *'  the  two  systems  were  independently  evolved 
from  the  same  primitive  systems." 

As  regards  the  mystic  doctrine  that  numbers  are,  as  it  were,  the 
moving  principle  in  the  cosmos — another  thesis  not  unlikely  to  arise 
in  that  Babylonian  world  whence  came  the  whole  system  of  numbers 
for  the  later  ancients* — we  can  but  pronounce  it  a  development  of 
thought  in  vacuo,  and  look  further  for  the  source  of  Pythagorean 
influence  in  the  moral  and  social  code  of  the  movement,  in  its 
science,  in  its  pantheism,^  its  contradictory  dualism,'^  and  perhaps 
in  its  doctrine  of  transmigration  of  souls.  On  the  side  of  natural 
science,  its  absurdities^  point  to  the  fatal  lack  of  observation  which 
so  soon  stopped  progress  in  Greek  physics  and  biology.*  Yet  in  the 
fields  of  astronomy,  mathematics,  and  the  science  of  sound  the 
school  seems  to  have  done  good  scientific  work ;  being  indeed 
praised  by  the  critical  Aristotle  for  doing  special  service  in  that 
way.      It  is  recorded  that  Philolaos,  the  successor  of  Pythagoras, 


*  Meyer,  i,  186 :  ii,  535.  ^  Fairbanks,  pp.  145,  151, 155,  etc. 

8  Id.  p.  143.  4  Id.  p.  154. 

5  Prof.  Burnet  insists  (introd.  p.  30)  that  "  the  "  Greeks  must  be  reckoned  good  observers 
because  their  later  sculptors  were  so.    As  well  say  that  artists  make  the  best  men  of  science. 

6  Metaph.  i,  5;  Fairbanks, p.  136.    "It  is  quite  safe  to  attribute  the  substance  of  the 
First  Book  of  Euclid  to  Pythagoras."    Burnet.  Early  Greek  Philos.  2nd  ed.  p.  117. 


150 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GKEECE 


was  the  first  to  teach  openly  (about  460  B.C.)  the  doctrine  of  the 
motion  of  the  earth ^ — which,  however,  as  above  noted,  was  also 
said  to  have  been  previously  taught  by  Anaximandros^  (from  whom 
some  incline  to  derive  the  Pythagorean  theory  of  numbers  in 
general')  and  by  Hiketas  or  Iketas  (or  Niketas)  of  Syracuse.' 
Ekphantos,  of  that  city,  is  also  credited  with  asserting  the  revolu- 
tion of  the  earth  on  its  axis  ;  and  he  too  is  grouped  with  the 
Pythagoreans,  though  he  seems  to  have  had  a  pantheism  of  his 
own.*  Philolaos  in  particular  is  said  to  have  been  prosecuted  for 
his  teaching,^  which  for  many  was  a  blasphemy  ;  and  it  may  be 
that  this  was  the  reason  of  its  being  specially  ascribed  to  him, 
though  current  in  the  East  long  before  his  day.  In  the  fragments 
ascribed  to  him  is  affirmed,  in  divergence  from  other  Pythagoreans, 
the  eternity  of  the  earth  ;  and  in  other  ways  he  seems  to  have  been 
an  innovator.'  In  any  case,  the  Pythagorean  conception  of  the 
earth's  motion  was  a  speculative  one,  wide  of  the  facts,  and  not 
identical  with  the  modern  doctrine,  save  insofar  as  Pythagoras — 
or  Philolaos— had  rightly  conceived  the  earth  as  a  sphere.^ 

It  is  noteworthy,  however,  that  jn  conjecturing  that  the 
whole  solar  system  moves  round  a  "central  fire,"  Pythagoras 
carried  his  thought  nearly  as  far  as  the  moderns.  The  fanciful 
side  of  his  system  is  seen  in  his  hypothesis  of  a  counter-earth 
(Anti-chthoii)  invented  to  bring  up  the  number  of  celestial 
bodies  in  our  system  to  ten,  the  "  complete  "  number.  (Berry, 
as  cited.)  Narrien  (p.  163)  misses  this  simple  explanation  of 
the  idea. 

As  to  pontics,  finally,  it  seems  hard  to  solve  the  anomaly  that 
Pythagoras  is  pronounced  the  first  teacher  of  the  principle  of 
community  of  goods,®  and  that  his  adherents  at  Kroton  formed 
an  aristocratic  league,  so  detested  by  the  people  for  its  anti- 
democratism  that  its  members  were  finally  massacred  in  their 
meeting-place,  their  leader,  according  to  one  tradition,  being  slain 
with  them,  while  according  to  a  better  grounded  account  he  had 
withdrawn  and  died  at  Metapontion.     The  solution  seems  to  be 

*  Diog.  Laert.  Philolaos  (bk.  viii,  ch.  7). 

2  h.  U.  K.  Hist,  of  Astron  p.  20;  A,  Berry's  Short  Hist,  of  Astron.  1898,  p.  25;  Narrien's 
Histor.  Ace.  of  the  Orig.  and  Prog,  of  Astron.  1850,  p.  163. 
^  HeeBenn,  Greek  Philosophers,!,  11. 

*  Diog.  Laert.  in  life  of  Philolaos;  Cicero,  Academica,  u,  39.    Cicero,  following  Theo- 
phrastus,  is  explicit  as  to  tbe  teaching  of  Hiketas. 

5  Hippolytos,  Bef.  of  all  Heresies,  i,  13.    Cp.  Renouvier,  Manuel  de  la  phtlos.  anc.  i,  201, 
205,  23&-39. 

6  Pseudo-Plutarch.  De  Placitis  Philosoph.  lii,  13, 14. 

7  Ueberweg.  i,  49.    Cp.  Tertullian  {Apol.  ch.  11).  who  says  Pythagoras  taught  that  the 
world  was  uncreated;  and  the  contrary  statement  of  Aetius  (in  B'airbauks,  pp.  146-47). 

8  Berry,  Short  Hist,  of  Astron.  pp.  22.  25.    The  question  is  ably  handled  by  Renouvier, 
Manuel,  i,  199-205. 

9  Diog.  Laert.,  viii,  i,  8. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


151 


that  the  early  movement  was  in  no  way  monastic  or  communistic  ; 
that  it  was,  however,  a  secret  society ;  that  it  set  up  a  kind  of 
Puritanism  or  "  methodism  "  which  repelled  conservative  people ; 
and  that,  whatever  its  doctrines,  its  members  were  mostly  of  the 
upper  class.^  If  they  held  by  the  general  rejection  of  popular 
reHgion  attributed  to  Pythagoras,  they  would  so  much  the  more 
exasperate  the  demos  ;  for  though  at  Kroton,  as  in  the  other  Grecian 
colonial  cities,  there  was  considerable  freedom  of  thought  and 
speech,  the  populace  can  nowhere  have  been  freethinking.''^  In 
any  case,  it  was  after  its  political  overthrow,  and  still  more  in  the 
Italian  revival  of  the  second  century  B.C.,  that  the  mystic  and 
superstitious  features  of  Pythagoreanism  were  most  multiplied ; 
and  doubtless  the  master's  teachings  were  often  much  perverted 
by  his  devotees.  It  was  only  too  easy.  He  had  laid  down,  as  so 
many  another  moralist,  that  justice  consisted  in  reciprocity ;  but  he 
taught  of  virtue  in  terms  of  his  theory  of  numbers^ — a  sure  way  of 
putting  conduct  out  of  touch  with  reality.  Thus  we  find  some  of 
the  later  Pythagoreans  laying  it  down  as  a  canon  that  no  story  once 
fully  current  concerning  the  Gods  was  to  be  disbelieved^ — the 
complete  negation  of  philosophical  freethought  and  a  sharp  contra- 
diction of  the  other  view  which  represented  the  shade  of  Pythagoras 
as  saying  that  he  had  seen  in  Tartaros  the  shade  of  Homer  hanged 
to  a  tree,  and  that  of  Hesiod  chained  to  a  pillar  of  brass,  for  the 
monstrous  things  they  had  ascribed  to  the  Gods.^  It  must  have 
taken  a  good  deal  of  decadence  to  bring  an  innovating  sect  to  that 
pass  ;  and  even  about  200  B.C.  we  find  the  freethinking  Ennius  at 
Eome  calling  himself  a  Pythagorean;^  but  the  course  of  things  in 
Magna  Graecia  was  mostly  downward  after  the  sixth  century  ;  the 
ferocious  destruction  of  Sybaris  by  the  Krotoniates  helping  to 
promote  the  decline.^  Intellectual  life,  in  Magna  Graecia  as  in 
Ionia,  obeyed  the  general  tendency. 

An  opposite  view  of  the  Pythagorean  evolution  is  taken  by 
Professor  Burnet.  He  is  satisfied  that  the  long  list  of  the 
Pythagorean  taboos,  which  he  rightly  pronounces  to  be  "of 


^  The  whole  question  is  carefully  sifted  by  Grote,  iv,  76-94.  Prof.  Burnet  (Early  Greek 
Philos.  2nd  ed.  pp.  96-98)  sums  up  that  the  Pythagorean  Order  was  an  attempt  to  overrule 
or  supersede  the  State. 

2  Cp.  Burnet,  p.  97,  note  3.  Prof.  Burnet  speaks  of  the  Pythagorean  Order  as  a  "new 
religion"  appealing  to  the  people  rather  than  the  aristocrats,  who  were  apt  to  be 
"  freethinking."  But  on  the  next  page  he  pictures  the  "  plain  man  "  as  resenting  precisely 
the  religious  neology  of  the  movement.  The  evidence  for  the  adhesion  of  aristocrats 
seems  pretty  strong. 

**  Fairbanks,  p.  143. 

*  Grote,  Plato  and  the  Other  Companions  of  Socrates,  ed.  1885,  iv,  163. 

8  Diog.  Laert.  bk.  viii,  ch.  i.  19  (§  21). 

6  Bnnius,  Frag menta,  ed.  Hesselius,  1707,  pp.  1,  4-7;  Horace,  Epist.  ii,  i,  52;  Persius, 
Sat.  vi.  7  Grote,  Histoi-y,  iv,  97. 


•^^ 


f 


152 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEBECE 


a  thoroughly  primitive  type  "  (p.  105),  and  not  at  all  the  subtle 
"symbols"  which  they  were  latterly  represented  to  be,  were 
really  the  lore  of  Pythagoras.  It  is  not  easy  thus  to  conceive 
a  thinker  of  the  great  Ionian  age  as  holding  by  thoroughly 
primitive  superstitions.  Perhaps  the  solution  lies  in  Aristotle's 
statement  that  Pythagoras  was  first  a  mathematician,  and  only 
in  later  life  a  Pherekydean  miracle-monger  (Burnet,  p.  107, 
note  3).  He  may  actually  have  started  the  symbolic  view  of 
the  taboos  which  he  imposed. 

Before  the  decadence  comes,  however,  the  phenomenon  of 
rationalism  occurs  on  all  sides  in  the  colonial  cities,  older  and 
younger  alike;  and  direct  criticism  of  creed  kept  pace  with  the 
indirect.  About  520  B.C.  Theagenes  of  Khegion,  in  Southern 
Italy,  had  begun  for  the  Greeks  the  process  of  reducing  the 
unacceptable  God-stories  in  Homer  and  Hesiod — notably  the  battle 
of  the  Gods  in  the  Iliad — to  mere  allegories  of  the  cosmic  elements^ 
— a  device  natural  to  and  practised  by  liberal  conservatives  in  all 
religious  systems  under  stress  of  skeptical  attack,  and  afterwards 
much  employed  in  the  Hellenic  world.'*  Soon  the  attack  became 
more  stringent.  At  Syracuse  we  find  the  great  comic  dramatist 
Epichaemos,  about  470  B.C.,  treating  the  deities  on  the  stage  in 
a  spirit  of  such  audacious  burlesque'  as  must  be  held  to  imply 
unbelief.  Aristophanes,  at  Athens,  indeed,  shows  a  measure  of  the 
same  spirit  while  posing  as  a  conservative  in  religion ;  but 
Epicharmos  was  professedly  something  of  a  Pythagorean  and 
philosopher,*  and  was  doubtless  protected  by  Hiero,  at  whose 
court  he  lived,  against  any  religious  resentment  he  may  have 
aroused.  The  story  of  SiMONlDES'S  answer  to  Hiero's  question 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  Gods — first  asking  a  day  to  think,  then 
two  days,  then  four,  then  avowing  that  meditation  only  made  the 
problem  harder*^ — points  to  the  prevalent  tone  among  the  cultured. 

§6 

At  last  the  critical  spirit  finds  utterance,  in  the  great  Periklean 
period,  at  Athens,  but  first  by  way  of  importation  from  Ionia,  where 
Ill^iletos  had  fallen  in  the  year  494.  Anaxagoras  of  Klazomenai 
(fl.  480-450  B.C.;  d.  428)  is  the  first  freethinker  historically  known 
to  have  been  legally  prosecuted  and  condemned®  for  his  freethought ; 

1  Scholiast  on  Iliad,  xx.  67 ;  Tatian.  Adv.  QnECon,  c.  48  (31) :  W.  Cbrist.  Qesch.  der 
griech.  Literatur,  3te  Aufl.  p.  63:  Grote.  ch.  xvi  {i.  374).  ^  gee  above,  p.  145. 

3  K.  O.  Miiller,   Dorians,   Eng.  kr.  ii.  36&-68;    Mommsen,  Hist,  o/  Borne,   Eng.   tr. 

ed  1894  iii,  113. 

4  Grote,  i.  338,  note.  '^  Cicoro,  De  vatura  Deorum,  i.  22. 

6  Philolaos,  as  we  saw,  is  said  to  have  been  prosecuted,  but  is  not  said  to  have  been 
condemned. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


153 


and  it  was  in  the  Athens  of  Perikles,  despite  Perikles's  protection, 
that  the  attack  was  made.  Coming  of  the  Ionian  line  of  thinkers, 
and  himself  a  pupil  of  Anaximenes  of  Miletos,  he  held  firmly  by  the 
scientific  view  of  the  cosmos,  and  taught  that  the  sun,  instead  of 
being  animated  and  a  deity  as  the  Athenians  believed,  was  *'  a  red- 
hot  mass  many  times  larger  than  the  Peloponnesos  "  ^ — and  the 
moon  a  fiery  (or  earthy)  solid  body  having  in  it  plains  and 
mountains  and  valleys — this  while  asserting  that  infinite  mind 
was  the  source  and  introducer  of  all  the  motion  in  the  infinite 
universe;^  infinite  in  extent  and  infinitely  divisible.  This  "mate- 
rialistic" doctrine  as  to  the  heavenly  bodies  was  propounded,  as 
Sokrates  tells  in  his  defence,  in  books  that  in  his  day  anyone  could 
buy  for  a  drachma  ;  and  Anaxagoras  further  taught,  like  Theagenes, 
that  the  mythical  personages  of  the  poets  were  mere  abstractions 
invested  with  name  and  gender.^  Withal  he  was  no  brawler;  and 
even  in  pious  Athens,  where  he  taught  in  peace  for  many  years,  he 
might  have  died  in  peace  but  for  his  intimacy  with  the  most 
renowned  of  his  pupils,  Perikles. 

The  question  of  the  deity  of  the  sun  raised  an  interesting 
sociological  question.  Athenians  saw  no  blasphemy  in  saying 
that  Ge  (Gaia)  or  D^m^ter  was  the  earth  :  they  had  always 
understood  as  much  ;  and  the  earth  was  simply  for  them 
a  Goddess ;  a  vast  living  thing  containing  the  principle  of  life. 
They  might  similarly  have  tolerated  the  description  of  the  sun 
as  a  kind  of  red-hot  earth,  provided  that  its  divinity  were  not 
challenged.  The  trouble  lay  rather  in  the  negative  than  in  the 
positive  assertion,  though  the  latter  must  for  many  have  been 
shocking,  inasmuch  as  they  had  never  been  wont  to  think 
about  the  sun  as  they  did  about  the  earth. 

It  is  told  of  Perikles  (499-429  B.C.)  by  the  pious  Plutarch, 
himself  something  of  a  believer  in  portents,  that  he  greatly  admired 
Anaxagoras,  from  whom  he  "  seems  to  have  learned  to  despise  those 
superstitious  fears  which  the  common  phenomena  of  the  heavens 
produce  in  those  who,  ignorant  of  their  cause,  and  knowing  nothing 
about  them,  refer  them  all  to  the  immediate  action  of  the  Gods." 
And  even  the  stately  eloquence  and  imperturbable  bearing  of  the 
great  statesman  are  said  to  have  been  learned  from  the  Ionian 
master,  whom  he  followed  in  "  adorning  his  oratory  with  apt 
illustrations  from  physical  science."  '^     The  old  philosopher,  however, 

1  Fairbanks,  pp.  245.  255,  261 ;  Diog.  Laert.  bk.  ii,  ch.  iii,  4  (§  8). 

2  Fairbanks,  pp.  239-45.    Cp.  Grote,  Flato,  i,  54,  and  Ueberweg,  i,  66,  as  to  nature  of  the 
Nous  of  Anaxagoras. 

«  Grote.  i,  374;  Hesychius,  s.v.  Agamemnona;  cp.  Diog.  Laert.  bk.  ii,  ch.  iii,  7  (S  11); 
Tatian,  Adv.  Grcecos,  c.  37  (21). 

*  Plutarch,  Perikles,  ch.  6.  ^  Id.  chs.  5. 8. 


154 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


whom  men  called  "Nous  "  or  Intelligence  because  of  the  part  the 
name  played  in  his  teaching,  left  his  property  to  go  to  ruin  in  his 
devotion  to  ideas  ;  and  it  is  told,  with  small  probability,  that  at  one 
time,  old  and  indigent,  he  covered  his  head  with  his  robe  and  decided 
to  starve  to  death ;  till  Perikles,  hearing  of  it,  hastened  to  beseech 
him  to  live  to  give  his  pupil  counsel/ 

At  length  it  occurred  to  the  statesman's  enemies  to  strike  at  him 
through  his  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend.  They  had  already 
procured  the  banishment  of  another  of  his  teachers,  Damon,  as  "an 
intriguer  and  a  friend  of  despotism";'  and  one  of  their  fanatics, 
Diopeithes,  a  priest  and  a  violent  demagogue,^  laid  the  way  for  an 
attack  on  Anaxagoras  by  obtaining  the  enactment  of  a  law  that 
"  prosecutions  should  be  laid  against  all  who  disbelieved  in  religion 
and  held  theories  of  their  own  about  things  on  high." '  Anaxagoras 
was  thus  open  to  indictment  on  the  score  aUke  of  his  physics  and 
of  his  mythology  ;  though,  seeing  that  his  contemporary  Diogenes 
of  ApoUonia  (who  before  Demokritos  taught  "nothing  out  of 
nothing  :  nothing  into  nothing,"  and  affirmed  the  sphericity  of  the 
earth)  was  also  in  some  danger  of  his  life  at  Athens,'  it  is  probable 
that  the  prosecution  was  grounded  on  his  physicist  teaching.  Saved 
by  Perikles  from  the  death  punishment,  but  by  one  account  fined 
five  talents,^  he  either  was  exiled  or  chose  to  leave  the  intolerant 
city ;  and  he  made  his  home  at  Lampsakos,  where,  as  the  story  runs, 
he  won  from  the  municipality  the  favour  that  every  year  the 
children  should  have  a  hoUday  in  the  month  in  which  he  died.^  It 
is  significant  of  his  general  originaUty  that  he  was  reputed  the  first 
Greek  who  wrote  a  book  in  prose. 

Philosophically,  however,  he  counted  for  less  than  he  did  as  an 
innovating  rationalist.  His  doctrine  of  Notts  amounted  in  effect  to 
a  reaffirmation  of  deity  ;  and  he  has  been  not  unjustly  described^ 
as  the  philosophic  father  of  the  dualistic  deism  or  theism  which, 
whether  from  within  or  from  without  the  Christian  system,  has  been 
the  prevaiHng  form  of  religious  philosophy  in  the  modern  world. 
It  was,  in  fact,  the  only  form  of  theistic  philosophy  capable  of 
winning  any  wide  assent  among  religiously  biassed  minds ;  and  it  is 
the  more  remarkable  that  such  a  theist  should  have  been  prosecuted 

1  Id.  c.  16.  The  old  man  is  said  to  have  uttered  the  reproach  :  "  Perikles,  those  who 
want  to  use  a  lamp  supply  it  with  oil."  ^  .  i    A.a  jn  irr  ott 

2  phitarch,  Perikles,  ch.  4.  «  Cp.  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  iv,  277. 

5  DVig^La6r^^bk^ft.*ch."i?(§  57),  citing  the  Defence  of  SoJcrqtes  by  Demetrius Phalereus. 

6  Id  bk  ii  ch.  iii,  9  (§  12),  citing  Sotion.  Another  writer  of  philosophers  lives. 
Hermippus'lsame  cit.).  said  he  had  been  thrown  into  prison  ;  and  yet  a  third,  Hieronymus, 
said  he  was  released  out  of  pity  because  of  his  emaciated  appearance  when  produced  in 
court  by  Perikles.  "^  Diog.  Laert.  last  cit.  10  (5  14).  "  Id.  b  IS  li;. 

9  Drews,  Gesch.  des  Mojiismus  im  Altertum,  p.  205. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GKEECE 


155 


because  his  notion  of  deity  was  mental,  and  excluded  the  divinization 
of  the  heavenly  bodies. 

In  the  memorable  episode  of  his  expulsion  from  Athens  we  have 
a  finger-post  to  the  road  travelled  later  by  Greek  civilization.  At 
Athens  itself  the  bulk  of  the  free  population  was  ignorant  and 
bigoted  enough  to  allow  of  the  law  being  used  by  any  fanatic  or 
malignant  partisan  against  any  professed  rationalist ;  and  there 
is  no  sign  that  Perikles  dreamt  of  applying  the  one  cure  for  the  evil 
— the  systematic  bestowal  of  rationalistic  instruction  on  all.  The 
fatal  maxim  of  ancient  skepticism,  that  religion  is  a  necessary 
restraint  upon  the  multitude,  brought  it  about  that  everywhere, 
in  the  last  resort,  the  unenlightened  multitude  became  a  restraint 
upon  reason  and  freethought.^  In  the  more  aristocratically  ruled 
colonial  cities,  as  we  have  seen,  philosophic  speech  was  compara- 
tively free :  it  was  the  ignorant  Athenian  democracy  that  brought 
religious  intolerance  into  Greek  life,  playing  towards  science,  in  form 
of  law,  the  part  that  the  fanatics  of  Egypt  and  Palestine  had  played 
towards  the  v^orshippers  of  other  Gods  than  their  own. 

With  a  baseness  of  which  the  motive  may  be  divided  between 
the  instincts  of  faction  and  of  faith,  the  anti-Periklean  party  carried 
their  attack  yet  further ;  and  on  their  behalf  a  comic  playwright, 
Hermippos,  brought  a  charge  of  impiety  against  the  statesman's 
unwedded  wife,  ASPASIA.^  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  that  famous 
woman  cordially  shared  the  opinions  and  ideals  of  her  husband, 
joining  as  she  habitually  did  in  the  philosophic  talk  of  his  home 
circle.  As  a  Milesian  she  was  likely  enough  to  be  a  freethinker; 
and  all  that  was  most  rational  in  Athens  acknowledged  her  culture 
and  her  charm.^  Perikles,  who  had  not  taken  the  risk  of  letting 
Anaxagoras  come  to  trial,  himself  defended  Aspasia  before  the 
dikastery,  his  indignation  breaking  through  his  habitual  restraint 
in  a  passion  of  tears,  which,  according  to  the  jealous  J^schines,^ 
won  an  acquittal. 

Placed  as  he  was,  Perikles  could  but  guard  his  own  head  and 
heart,  leaving  the  evil  instrument  of  a  religious  inquisition  to  subsist. 
How  far  he  held  with  Anaxagoras  we  can  but  divine.^  There  is 
probably  no  truth  in  Plutarch's  tale  that  "  whenever  he  ascended 


*  Even  in  the  early  progressive  period  "the  same  time  which  set  up  rationalism 
developed  a  deep  religious  influence  in  the  masses."  (Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  ii,  728.  Cp. 
iii,  425;  also  Grote,  vii,  30 ;  and  Benn,  Philosophy  of  Greece,  1898,  pp.  69-70.) 

2  Plutarch,  Perikles,  ch.  32.  »  cp.  Grote,  v,  24 ;  Curtius,  ii,  208-209. 

*  Plutarch,  as  cited.  Plutarch  also  states,  however,  that  the  only  occasion  on  which 
Perikles  gave  way  to  emotion  in  public  was  that  of  the  death  of  his  favourite  son. 

5  Holm  (Griechische  Geschichte,  ii,  335)  decides  that  Perikles  sought  to  Ionise  his  fellow 
Athenians ;  and  Dr.  Burnet,  coinciding  (Early  Greek  Philosophy,  1892,  p.  277),  suggests 
that  ho  and  Aspasia  brought  Anaxagoras  to  Athens  with  that  aim. 


156 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


the  tribune  to  speak  he  used  first  to  pray  to  the  Gods  that  nothing 
unfitted  for  the  occasion  might  fall  from  his  lips."  ^  But  as  a  party 
leader  he,  as  a  matter  of  course,  observed  the  conventions ;  and  he 
may  have  reasoned  that  the  prosecutions  of  Anaxagoras  and  Aspasia, 
like  that  directed  against  Pheidias,  stood  merely  for  contemporary 
political  malice,  and  not  for  any  lasting  danger  to  mental  freedom. 
However  that  might  be,  Athens  continued  to  remain  the  most 
aggressively  intolerant  and  tradition-mongering  of  Hellenic  cities. 
So  marked  is  this  tendency  among  the  Athenians  that  for  modern 
students  Herodotos,  whose  history  was  published  in  445  B.C.,  is 
relatively  a  rationalist  in  his  treatment  of  fable,'^  bringing  as  he  did 
the  spirit  of  Ionia  into  things  traditional  and  religious.  But  even 
Herodotos  remains  wedded  to  the  belief  in  oracles  or  prophecies, 
claiming  fulfilment  for  those  said  to  have  been  uttered  by  Bakis ;  ^ 
and  his  small  measure  of  spontaneous  skepticism  could  avail  little 
for  critical  thought.  To  no  man,  apparently,  did  it  occur  to  resist 
the  religious  spirit  by  systematic  propaganda:  that,  like  the 
principle  of  representative  government,  was  to  be  hit  upon  only  in 
a  later  age.*  Not  by  a  purely  literary  culture,  relating  life  merely 
to  poetry  and  myth,  tradition  and  superstition,  were  men  to  be  made 
fit  to  conduct  a  stable  society.  And  the  spirit  of  pious  persecution, 
once  generated,  went  from  bad  to  worse,  crowning  itself  with  crime, 
till  at  length  the  overthrow  of  Athenian  self-government  wrought 
a  forlorn  liberty  of  scientific  speech  at  the  cost  of  the  liberty  of 
political  action  which  is  the  basis  of  all  sound  life. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  private  vogue  of  freethinking  at 
Athens  in  the  Periklean  period,  it  was  always  a  popular  thing  to 
attack  it.  Some  years  before  or  after  the  death  of  Perikles  there 
came  to  Athens  the  alien  HiPPO,  the  first  specifically  named  atheist  ^ 
of  Greek  antiquity.  The  dubious  tradition  runs  that  his  tomb  bore 
the  epitaph:  "This  is  the  grave  of  Hippo,  whom  destiny,  in 
destroying  him,  has  made  the  equal  of  the  immortal  Gods."  ®  If,  as 
seems  likely,  he  was  the  Hippo  of  Rhegion  mentioned  by  Hippolytos,^ 
he  speculated  as  to  physical  origins  in  the  manner  of  Thales,  making 
water  generate  fire,  and  that  in  turn  produce  the  world.^     But  this 


2  "Der  Kleinasiatische  Rationalist  Herodot"  is  the  exaggerated  estimate  of  A.  Bauer, 
in  Ilberg's  Neue  Jahrbuch  fUr  das  klassische  Altertiim,  ix  (lOa?),  235,  following  Eduard 
Meyer  (iv,  §  448).  who.  however  (§  447),  points  to  the  lack  of  scientific  thought  or  training 
in  Herodotos  as  in  Thukydides.    Ignorance  of  Nature  remained  a  Greek  characteristic. 

8  Bk.  viii.  ch.  77.    Cp.  viii,  20. 96 ;  ix,  43.  ,,.^      ,  ,.  ,  ,,  ^        . 

*  Cp.  Meyer,  iv.  §  446,  as  to  the  inadequacy  of  Athenian  culture,  and  the  unchanging 
ignorance  of  the  populace  on  matters  of  physical  science. 

5  Plutarch,  Against  the  Stoics,  ch.  31;  Simplicius.  Physica,  i.  6. 

6  Clem.  Alex.  Protrept.  c.  4.  ^  Befutation  of  all  Heresies,  i,  14. 
8  Cp.  Aristotle,  Metaphysics,  i,  3;  De  anima,  i,  2. 


FBEETHOTJGHT  IN  GBEECE 


157 


is  uncertain.  Upon  him  the  comic  muse  of  Athens  turned  its 
attacks  very  much  as  it  did  upon  Socrates.  The  old  comic  poet 
Kratinos,  a  notorious  wine-bibber,  produced  a  comedy  called  The 
Panoptai  (the  "  all-seers  "  or  "all  eyes  ")i  in  which  it  would  appear 
that  the  chorus  were  made  to  represent  the  disciples  of  Hippo,  and 
to  wear  a  mask  covered  with  eyes.^  Drunkenness  was  a  venial 
vault  in  comparison  with  the  presumption  to  speculate  on  physics 
and  to  doubt  the  sacred  lore  of  the  populace.  The  end  of  the  rule  of 
ignorance  was  that  a  theistic  philosopher  who  himself  discouraged 
scientific  inquiry  was  to  pay  a  heavier  penalty  than  did  the  atheist 
Hippo. 

§7 

While  Athens  was  gaining  power  and  glory  and  beauty  without 
popular  wisdom,  the  colonial  city  of  Abdera,  in  Thrace,  founded  by 
lonians,  had  like  others  carried  on  the  great  impulse  of  Ionian 
philosophy,  and  had  produced  in  the  fifth  century  some  of  the  great 
thinkers  of  the  race.  Concerning  the  greatest  of  these,  Demokritos, 
and  the  next  in  importance,  PROTAGORAS,  we  have  no  sure  dates  ;^ 
but  it  is  probable  that  the  second,  whether  older  or  younger,  was 
influenced  by  the  first,  who  indeed  has  influenced  all  scientific 
philosophy  down  to  our  own  day.  How  much  he  learned  from 
his  master  Leukippos  cannot  now  be  ascertained.^  The  writings 
which  went  under  his  name  appear  to  have  been  the  productions  of 
the  whole  Abderite  school;^  and  Epicurus  declared  that  Leukippos 
was  an  imaginary  person.*  What  passes  for  his  teaching  was 
constructive  science  of  cardinal  importance ;  for  it  is  the  first  clear 
statement  of  the  atomic  theory  ;  the  substitution  of  a  real  for  an 
abstract  foundation  of  things.  Whoever  were  the  originator  of  the 
theory,  there  is  no  doubt  as  to  the  assimilation  of  the  principle  by 
Demokritos,  who  thus  logically  continued  the  non-theistic  line  of 
thought,  and  developed  one  of  the  most  fruitful  of  all  scientific 
principles.  That  this  idea  again  is  a  direct  development  from 
Babylonian  science  is  not  impossible;  at  least  there  seems  to  be 
no  doubt  that  Demokritos  had  travelled  far  and  wide,®  whether  or 
not  he  had  been  brought  up,  as  the  tradition  goes,  by  Persian 
magi;'   and  that   he   told   how  the   cosmic  views  of   Anaxagoras, 

*  Decharme,  Critique  des  trad,  relig.  p.  137,  citing  scholiast  on  Aristoph..  Clouds,  96. 

2  See  the  point  discussed  by  Lange,  Geschichte  des  Materialismus,  3te  Aufl.  i,  128-29, 
131-32.  notes  10  and  31  (Eng.  tr.  i,  15,  39).  Bitter  and  Preller  say  "Protagoras  floret  circa  a. 
450-430  " ;  "  Democritus  natus  circa  a.  460  floret  a.  430-410,  obit,  circa  a.  357." 

*  Cp.  Ueberweg,  i,  68-69;  Eeuouvier,  Manuel  de  la  philos.  ana.  i,  238. 

*  Burnet,  p.  381.  ^  Diog.  LaSrt.  x,  13. 

5  Lange,  i,  10-11  (tr.  p.  17) :  Clem.  Alex.  Stromata,  i,  15 ;  Diog.  LaSrt.  bk.  ix,  §  35. 
^  On  this  also  see  Lange.  i,  128  (tr.  p.  15.  note). 


158 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


which  scandalized  the  Athenians,  were  current  in  the  East/  But 
he  stands  out  as  one  of  the  most  original  minds  in  the  whole  history 
of  thought.  No  Greek  thinker,  not  Aristotle  himself,  has  struck  so 
deep  as  he  into  fundamental  prohlems ;  though  the  absurd  label  of 
**  the  laughing  philosopher,"  bestowed  on  him  by  some  peculiarly 
unphilosophic  mind,  has  delayed  the  later  recognition  of  his  great- 
ness, clear  as  it  was  to  Bacon.'*  The  vital  maxim,  "  Nothing  from 
nothing:  nothing  into  nothing,"  derives  substantially  from  him.^ 

His  atomic  theory,  held  in  conjunction  with  a  conception  of 
"mind-stuff"  similar  to  that  of  Anaxagoras,  may  be  termed  the 
high-water  mark  of  ancient  scientific  thought ;  and  it  is  noteworthy 
that  somewhat  earlier  in  the  same  age  Empedokles  of  Agrigentum, 
another  product  of  the  freer  colonial  life,  threw  out  a  certain 
glimmer  of  the  Darwinian  conception — perhaps  more  clearly  attained 
by  Anaximandros — that  adaptations  prevail  in  nature  just  because 
the  adaptations  fit  organisms  to  survive,  and  the  non-adapted  perish.'* 
In  his  teaching,  too,  the  doctrine  of  the  indestructibility  of  matter  is 
clear  and  firm  ;*  and  the  denial  of  anthropomorphic  deity  is  expUcit.® 
But  Empedokles  wrought  out  no  solid  system  :  "  half-mystic  and 
half-rationaUst,  he  made  no  attempt  to  reconcile  the  two  inconsistent 
sides  of  his  intellectual  character";'  and  his  explicit  teaching  of 
metempsychosis®  and  other  Pythagoreanisms  gave  foothold  for  more 
delusion  than  he  ever  dispelled.®  On  the  whole,  he  is  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  personalities  of  antiquity,  moving  among  men  with 
a  pomp  and  gravity  which  made  them  think  of  him  as  a  God, 
denouncing  their  sacrifices,  and  no  less  their  eating  of  flesh;  and 
checking  his  notable  self-exaltation  by  recalUng  the  general  littleness 
of  men.  But  he  did  little  to  enlighten  them ;  and  Aristotle  passed 
on  to  the  world  a  fatal  misconception  of  his  thought  by  ascribing  to 
him  the  notion  of  automatism  where  he  was  asserting  a  '*  necessity  " 
in  terms  of  laws  which  he  avowedly  could  not  explain.^"  Against 
such  misconception  he  should  have  provided.  Demokritos,  however, 
shunned  dialectic  and  discussion,  and  founded  no  school;"  and 
although  his  atomism  was  later  adopted  by  Epicurus,  it  was  no 

1  Diog.  Laert.  bk.  ix,  ch.  vii,  2  (5  34).    Cp.  Eenouvier.  i,  239-41,  .,  ^     ,    ,      ,     ^ 

2  See  in  particular  the  De  principiis  atque  originibus  {Works,  Routledge  s  1-vol.  ed. 

8  Meyer,  who  dwells  on  his  scientific  shortcomings  {Gesch.  des  Alt.  v.  §  910),  makes  no 
account  of  this,  his  vital  doctrine.  _         .^,  ,    ,  «    ,^ 

*  Fairbanks,  pp.  189-91.  The  idea  is  not  put  by  Empedokles  with  any  such  deflniteness 
as  is  suggested  by  Lange,  i.  23-25  (tr.  pp.  33-35),  and  Ueberweg.  Hist,  of  Philos.  Eng.  tr.  i, 
62,  n.    But  Ueberweg'8  exposition  is  illuminating. 

«  Fairbanks,  pp.  136. 169.  ^  Tft-  P-  201. 

7  Benn,  i.  28.  "  Fairbanks,  p.  205. 

9  See  a'good  study  of  Empedokles  in  J.  A.  Symonds'  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets,  3rd  ed. 
1893,  vol.  i,  ch.  7 ;  and  another  in  Renouvier,  Manuel,  i,  163-82. 

10  Cp.  Grote,  Plato,  i,  73,  and  note. 

"  Cp.  Renouvier,  i,  239-62 ;  Lange,  p.  11  (tr.  p.  If). 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


159 


more  developed  on  a  basis  of  investigation  and  experiment  than  was 
the  biology  of  Empedokles.  His  ethic,  though  wholly  rationalistic, 
leant  rather  to  quietism  and  resignation  than  to  reconstruction,^  and 
found  its  application  only  in  the  later  static  message  of  Epicurus. 
Greek  society  failed  to  set  up  the  conditions  needed  for  progress 
beyond  the  point  gained  by  its  unguided  forces. 

Thus  when  Protagoras  ventured  to  read,  at  the  house  of  the 
freethinking  Euripides,  a  treatise  of  his  own,  beginning  with  the 
avowal  that  he  offered  no  opinion  as  to  the  existence  of  the  Gods, 
life  being  too  short  for  the  inquiry,^  the  remark  got  wind,  and  he 
had  to  fly  for  his  life,  though  Euripides  and  perhaps  most  of  the 
guests  were  very  much  of  the  same  way  of  thinking.^  In  the  course 
of  his  flight,  the  tradition  goes,  the  philosopher  was  drowned;*  and 
his  book  was  publicly  burned,  all  who  possessed  copies  being  ordered 
by  public  proclamation  to  give  them  up — the  earliest  known  instance 
of  "  censorship  of  the  press." ^  Partisan  malice  was  doubtless  at 
work  in  his  case  as  in  that  of  Anaxagoras  ;  for  the  philosophic 
doctrine  of  Protagoras  became  common  enough.  It  is  not  impos- 
sible, though  the  date  is  doubtful,  that  the  attack  on  him  was  one  of 
the  results  of  the  great  excitement  in  Athens  in  the  year  415  B.C. 
over  the  sacrilegious  mutilation  of  the  figures  of  Hermes,  the  familial 
or  boundary- God,  in  the  streets  by  night.  It  was  about  that  time 
that  the  poet  Diagoras  of  Melos  was  proscribed  for  atheism,  he 
having  declared  that  the  non-punishment  of  a  certain  act  of  iniquity 
proved  that  there  were  no  Gods.^  It  has  been  surmised,  with  some 
reason,  that  the  iniquity  in  question  was  the  slaughter  of  the 
Melians  by  the  Athenians  in  416  B.C.,'  and  the  Athenian  resentment 
in  that  case  was  personal  and  political  rather  than  religious.^  For 
some  time  after  415  the  Athenian  courts  made  strenuous  efforts  to 
punish  every  discoverable  case  of  impiety ;  and  parodies  of  the 
Eleusinian  mysteries  (resembling  the  mock  Masses  of  Catholic 
Europe)  were  alleged  against  Alkibiades  and  others.^  Diagoras, 
who  was  further  charged  with  divulging  the  Eleusinian  and  other 
mysteries,  and  with  making  firewood  of  an  image  of  Herakles, 
telling  the  God  thus  to  perform  his  thirteenth  labour  by  cooking 

J  Cp.  Meyer,  §  911. 

•  Diogenes  Laertius,  bk.  ix,  ch.  viii,  §  3  (51);  cp.  Grote,  vii,  49,  note. 
°  For  a  defence  of  Protagoras  against  Plato,  see  Grote,  vii,  43-54. 

*  Sextus  Empiricus,  Adversus  Mathematicos,  ix,  56. 

»  Beckmanu,  History  of  Inventions,  Eng.  tr.  1846,  ii,  513. 

°  Diod.  Sic.  xiii,  6  ;  Hesychius,  cit.  in  Cudworth.  ed.  Harrison,  i.  131. 
•  7  .^®^®^^®S,  i,  80;  Thukydides,  v,  116.  The  bias  of  Sextus  Empiricus  is  further  shown 
in  his  account  of  Diagoras  as  moved  in  his  denunciation  by  an  iniury  to  himself. 
,  •'  It  is  told  by  Sextus  Empiricus  {Adv.  Math,  ix,  53)  that  Diagoras  is  said  to  have 
J.^^ented  the  dithyramb  (in  praise  of  lacchos),  and  to  have  begun  a  poem  with  the  words, 
All  things  come  by  the  daimon  and  fortune."  But  Sextus  writes  with  a  fixed  skeptical 
o^as.  9  Grote,  vi,  13,  32,  33,  42-45. 


160 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


turnips/  became  thenceforth  one  of  the  proverbial  atheists  of  the 
ancient  world/  and  a  reward  of  a  silver  talent  was  offered  for  killing 
him,  and  of  two  talents  for  his  capture  alive  ;^  despite  which  he 
seems  to  have  escaped.  But  no  antidote  to  the  bane  of  fanaticism 
was  found  or  sought ;  and  the  most  famous  publicist  in  Athens  was 
the  next  victim. 

The  fatality  of  the  Athenian  development  is  seen  not  only  in  the 
direct  hostility  of  the  people  to  rational  thought,  but  in  their  loss 
of  their  hold  even  on  their  pubHc  polity.  For  lack  of  political 
judgment,  moved  always  by  the  passions  which  their  literary 
culture  cherished,  they  so  mishandled  their  affairs  in  the  long  and 
demoralizing  Peloponnesian  war  that  they  were  at  one  time  cowed 
by  their  own  aristocracy,  on  essentially  absurd  pretexts,  into 
abandoning  the  democratic  constitution.  Its  restoration  was 
followed  at  the  final  crisis  by  another  tyranny,  also  short-lived, 
but  abnormally  bloody  and  iniquitous;  and  though  the  people  at 
its  overthrow  showed  a  moderation  in  remarkable  contrast  to  the 
cruelty  and  rapacity  of  the  aristocrats,  the  effect  of  such  extreme 
vicissitude  was  to  increase  the  total  disposition  towards  civic 
violence  and  coercion.  And  while  the  people  menaced  freethinking 
in  religion,  the  aristocracies  opposed  freethinking  in  politics.  Thus 
under  the  Thirty  Tyrants  all  intellectual  teaching  was  forbidden  ; 
and  Kritias,  himself  accused  of  having  helped  Alkibiades  to  parody 
the  mysteries,  sharply  interdicted  the  political  rationalism  of 
Sokrates,'  who  according  to  tradition  had  been  one  of  his  own 
instructors. 

It  was  a  result  of  the  general  movement  of  mind  throughout 
the  rest  of  the  Hellenic  world  that  freethinkers  of  culture  were  still 
numerous.  Archelaos  of  Miletos.  the  most  important  disciple 
of  Anaxagoras  ;  according  to  a  late  tradition,  the  master  of  Sokrates  ; 
and  the  first  systematic  teacher  of  Ionic  physical  science  in  Athens, 
taught  the  infinity  of  the  universe,  grasped  the  explanation  of  the 
nature  of  sound,  and  set  forth  on  purely  rationalistic  lines  the  social 
origin  and  basis  of  morals,  thus  giving  Sokrates  his  practical  lead.' 

1  Athenafioras.  ApoL,  ch.  4  ;  Clem.  Alex..  Protrept.  eh.  2.    See  the  documentary  details 

^"  ¥c\Zro^Dfnatura  Deorum,  i.  1.  23.  42;  iii.  37  (the  last  reference  g/ves  proof  of  his 
general  rationalism);   Lactantius.  De  ird  Dei,  c.  9.    In  calUng  Sokrates     the  Melian. 
Aristophanes  {Clouds,  830)  was  held  to  have  virtually  called  h mi     the  atheist 

3  Diod.  xiii.  6 :  Suidas.  s.v.  Diagoras  ;  Aristophanes.  Birds,  1073.  It  is  "O^f  worthj  tl  at 
in  their  fury  against  Diagoras  the  Athenians  put  him  on  a  level  of  common  odium  witn 
the  "  tyrants"  of  past  history.    Cp.  Burckhardt,  Griechtsche  Cult  urge  sclnchte,  ^j^-       , 

4  Grote.  vi,  476-77.  As  to  the  freethinking  of  Kritias.  see  Sextus.Empiricus.  ^^f-J^^y'' 
ix.  54.  According  to  Xenophon  (MemoraUlia,  i.  2)..Kritias  made  his  '^e^J^f^Jf  ,^|/|Jf fj^^^ 
Sokrates's  condemnation  of  one  of  his  iUicit  passions.    Prof.  Decharme  (pp.  122-24)  gives 

a  good  account  of  him.  _  ,  ,   ..        ,     „  tt      „-%.„    ?    q-  i^onrknvipr 

6  Diog.  La^rt.  bk.  ii.  ch.  iv ;  Hippolytos.  Befuiation  of  all  Heresies,  i,  8  .  Renouvier. 

Manuel,  i,  233-37. 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


161 


Another  disciple  of  Anaxagoras,  Metrodobos  of  Lampsakos  (not 
to  be  confounded  with  Metrodoros  of  Chios,  and  the  other  Metro- 
doros  of    Lampsakos  who  was  the   friend   of   Epicurus,  both  also 
freethinkers),  carried  out  zealously  his  master's  teaching  as  to  the 
deities  and  heroes  of  Homer,  resolving  them  into  mere  elemental 
combinations  and  physical  agencies,  and  making   Zeus   stand  for 
mind,  and  Athene  for  art.^     And  in  the  helles  lettres  of  Athens  itself, 
in  the  dramas  of  EUBIPIDES  [480-406  B.C.] ,  who  is  said  to  have 
been  the  ardent  disciple  of  Anaxagoras,^  to  have  studied  Herakleitos, 
and  to   have   been  the  friend   of  Sokrates   and   Protagoras,  there 
emerge  traces  enough  of  a  rationalism  not  to  be  reconciled  with  the 
old  beUef  in  the  Gods.     If  Euripides  has  nowhere  ventured  on  such 
a  terrific  paradox  as  the  Prometheus,  he  has  in  a  score  of  passages 
revealed  a  stress  of  skepticism  which,  inasmuch  as  he  too  uses  all 
the  forms  of  Hellenic  faith, ^  deepens  our  doubt  as  to  the  beliefs  of 
.a^schylus.     Euripides  even  gave  overt  proof  of  his  unbelief,  begin- 
ning his  Melanippe  with  the  line :  "  Zeus,  whoever    Zeus  be,  for 
I  know  not,  save  by  report,"  an  audacity  which  evoked  a  great 
uproar.     In  a  later  production  the  passage  was  prudently  altered  ;^ 
but  he  never  put  much  check  on  his  native  tendency  to  analyse  and 
criticize  on  all  issues — a  tendency  fostered,  as  we  have  seen,^  by  the 
constant  example  of  real  and  poignant  dialectic  in  the  Athenian 
dikastery,  and  the  whole  drift  of  the  Athenian  stage.     In  his  case 
the  tendency  even  overbalances  the  artistic  process  ; '  but  it  has  the 
advantage  of  involving  a  very  bold  handling  of  vital  problems.     Not 
satisfied   with   a   merely   dramatic   presentment   of    lawless   Gods, 
Euripides  makes  his  characters  impeach   them  as  such,^  or,  again, 
declare  that  there  can  be  no  truth  in  the  "  miserable  tales  of  poets  " 
which  so  represent  them.^     Not  content  with  putting  aside  as  idle 
such  a  fable  as  that  of  the  sun's  swerving  from  his  course  in  horror 
at  the  crime  of  Atreus,"'  and  that  of  the  Judgment  of  Paris,''  he 

»  Cp.  Cudworth.  Intellectual  Systejn,  ed.  Harrison,  i,  32;  Renouvier.  jlfa7n/eZ.i.  233. 
289;  ii,  268.  292;  Tatian.  Adv.  GrcBCos,  c.  48  (31);  Diog.  Laert.  bk.  u.  ch.  m,  7  (§  ID;  Grote, 
i,  374,  395.  note;  Hatch.  Infl.  of  Greek  Ideas,  p.  60. 

2  Haigh.  Tragic  Drama  of  the  Greeks,  p.  206.    Cp.  Burnett,  p.  278. 

8  Diog.  Laert.  bk.  ii  (§  22).  .  ^  ^     «    ^  n-  ■     ««o.,-kio 
*  "He  never  so  utterly  abandoned  the  religion  of  his  country  as  to  find  it  impossiDie 

to  acquiesce  in  at  least  some  part  of  traditional  religion."    Jevous,  Hist,  of  GreeK  IjIZ. 
1886.  p.  222.  .   ^^  ,„_ 

5  Haigh,  The  Attic  Theatre,  1889.  p. 316.  ,  ^      °  Above,  p.  133- ...^  ^„  , 

7  "  He  had  also  acquired  in  no  small  degree  that  love  of  dexterous  argumentation  and 

verbal  sophistry  which  was  becoming  fashionable  in  the  Athens  of  the  fii,!-"  century,    woo 

unfrequently  he  exhibits  this  dexterity  when  it  is  clearly  out  of  Place.      "^/f,^.'/,^3if 

Drama  of  the  Greeks,  p.  235.    Cp.  Jevons.  Hist,  of  Greek  Lit.  p.  233.    Schlegel  is  much 

"^^s"  2o7!!^436-5l! W922 ;  Ayidromache,  11&1~^\  Electra,  1245-46;  Hercules  Furens,  339-47; 
Iphigenia  in  Tauris,  35.  711-15.  . 

9  Hercules  Furetis,  314. 1341-46;  Iphigciiia  in  Tauris,  380-91.  ,      ^.„  ^ 
10  Electra,  737-45.                                                                         "  Troades,  969-90. 

M 


162 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GKEECE 


attacks  with  a  stringent  scorn  the  whole  apparatus  of  oracles, 
divination,  and  soothsaying.'  And  if  the  Athenian  populace  cried 
out  at  the  hardy  opening  of  the  Melanippe,  he  nonetheless  gave 
them  again  and  again  his  opinion  that  no  man  knew  anything  of 
the  Gods.'  Of  orthodox  protests  against  freethinking  inquiry  he 
gives  a  plainly  ironical  handling.'  As  regards  his  constructive 
opinions,  we  have  from  him  many  expressions  of  the  pantheism 
which  had  by  his  time  permeated  the  thought  of  perhaps  most  of 
the  educated  Greeks.* 

Here  again,  as  in  the  case  of  iEschylus,  there  arises  the  problem 
of  contradiction  ;  for  Euripides,  too,  puts  often  in  the  mouths  of  his 
characters  emphatic  expressions  of  customary  piety.  The  conclu- 
sion in  the  two  cases  must  be  broadly  the  same — that  whereas  an 
unbelieving  dramatist  may  well  make  his  characters  talk  in  the 
ordinary  way  of  deity  and  of  religion,  it  is  unintelligible  that  a 
behoving  one  should  either  go  beyond  the  artistic  bounds  of  his 
task  to  make  them  utter  an  unbelief  which  must  have  struck  the 
average  listener  as  strange  and  noxious,  or  construct  a  drama  of 
which  the  whole  effect  is  to  insist  on  the  odiousness  of  the  action 
of  the  Supreme  God.  And  the  real  drift  of  Euripides  is  so  plain 
that  one  modern  and  Christian  scholar  has  denounced  him  as  an 
obnoxious  and  unbelieving  sophist  who  abused  his  opportunity  as 
a  producer  of  dramas  under  religious  auspices  to  "  shake  the  ground- 
works of  religion"^  and  at  the  same  time  of  morals  ;^  while  another 
and  a  greater  scholar,  less  vehement  in  his  orthodoxy,  more 
restrainedly  condemns  the  dramatist  for  employing  myths  in  which 
he  did  not  believe,  instead  of  inventing  fresh  plots.^  Christian 
scholars  are  thus  duly  unready  to  give  him  credit  for  his  many- 
sided  humanity,  nobly  illustrated  in  his  pleas  for  the  slave  and  his 
sympathy  with  suffering  barbarians.®  Latterly  the  recognition  of 
Euripides's  freethinking  has  led  to  the  description  of  him  as 
"  Euripides  the  Rationahst,"  in  a  treatise  which  represents  him  as 
a  systematic  assailant  of  the  religion  of  his  day.  Abating  some- 
what of  that  thesis,  which  imputes  more  of  system  to  the  Euripidean 

1  Jon.  374-78,  6a5 ;  nele7ia,'IU-57 ;  Tphigeuia  in  Tanrifi,  510-15',  Electra,  400;  Phoeyiissie, 
773  ;  Fragm.  793  ;  Baccho',  2.55-57;  Hippolytus,  1059.  It  is  noteworthy  that  even  Sophocles 
{(Ed.  Tyr,  387)  makes  a  character  taunt  Tiresias  the  soothsayer  with  venality. 

2  Philoctetei^Jr.ldd;  Helena,  1131-43;  Belle roph mi,  {r.2S8. 

8  Bacchce,  200-2a3.  <  Helena,  1013;  Fragm.  890.  905.  935 ;  Troades,  848-88. 

5  A.  Schlegel,  Lectures  on  Dramatic  Literature,  Bohn  tr.  p.  117. 

6  This  charge  is  on  a  par  with  that  of  Hygiainon,  who  accused  Euripides  of  impiety  on 
the  score  that  one  of  his  characters  makes  light  of  oaths.    Aristotle.  Rhetoric,  iii,  15. 

7  K.  O.  Mtiller.  Hist,  of  the  Lit.  of  Anc.  Greece.  1847.  p.  359.  The  complaint  is  some- 
what surprising  from  such  a  source.  The  only  play  with  an  entirely  invented  plot 
mentioned  by  Aristotle  is  Agathon's  Fiower  (Aristotle.  Poetic,  ix);  and  such  plays  would 
not  have  been  eligible  for  representation  at  the  great  festivals. 

8  Cp.  Jevons,  Hist,  of  Greek  Lit.  pp.  223-24. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


163 


drama  than  it  possesses,  we  may  sum  up  that  the  last  of  the  great 
tragedians  of  Athens,  and  the  most  human  and  lovable  of  the  three, 
was  assuredly  a  rationalist  in  matters  of  religion.  It  is  noteworthy 
that  he  used  more  frequently  than  any  other  ancient  dramatist  the 
device  of  a  dens  ex  machina  to  end  a  play.^  It  was  probably  because 
for  him  the  conception  had  no  serious  significance.^  In  the  Alkestis 
its  [non-mechanical]  use  is  one  of  the  most  striking  instances  of 
dramatic  irony  in  all  hterature.  The  dead  Alkestis,  who  has  died 
to  save  the  life  of  her  husband,  is  brought  back  from  the  Shades  by 
Herakles,  who  figures  as  a  brawling  bully.  Only  the  thinkers  of 
the  time  could  realize  the  thought  that  underlay  such  a  tragi- 
comedy. 

Dr.  Verrall's  Euripides  the  Bationalist,  1897,  is  fairly  summed 
up  by  Mr.  Haigh  {Tragic  Drama  of  the  Greeks,  pp.  262,  265, 
notes)  :  "He  considers  that  Euripides  was  a  skeptic  of  the 
aggressive  type,  whose  principal  object  in  writing  tragedy  was 
to  attack  the  State  religion,  but  who,  perceiving  that  it  would 
be  dangerous  to  pose  as  an  open  enemy,  endeavoured  to  accom- 
plish his   ends  by  covert  ridicule His  plays contain  in 

reahty  two  separate  plots — the  ostensible  and  superficial  plot, 
which  was  intended  to  satisfy  the  orthodox,  and  the  rationaHzed 
modification  which  lay  half  concealed  beneath  it,  and  which  the 
inteUigent  skeptic  would  easily  detect."  For  objections  to  this 
thesis  see  Haigh,  as  cited  ;  Jevons,  Hist,  of  Greek  Lit.  p.  222, 
yiote;  and  Dr.  Mozley's  article  in  the  Classical  Bevieiv,  Nov. 
1895,  pp.  407-13.  As  to  the  rationalism  of  Euripides  in 
general  see  many  of  the  passages  cited  by  Bishop  Westcott  in 
his  Essays  in  the  Hist,  of  Relig.  Thought  in  the  West,  1891, 
pp.  102-27.  And  cp.  Dickinson,  The  Greek  View  of  Life, 
pp.  46-49;  Grote,  Hist,  i,  346-48;  Zeller,  Socrates  and  the 
Socratic  Schools,  Eng.  tr.  3rd  ed.  p.  231 ;  Murray,  Anc.  Greek 
Lit.  pp.  256,  264-66. 

Over  the  latest  play  of  Euripides,  the  Bacchce,  as  over  one  of 
the  last  plays  of  ^schylus,  the  Prometheus,  there  has  been 
special  debate.  It  was  probably  written  in  Macedonia  (cp.  11, 
408,  565),  whither  the  poet  had  gone  on  the  invitation  of  King 
Archelaos,  when,  according  to  the  ancient  sketch  of   his  life, 

he  had  to  leave  Athens  because  of  the  malicious  exultation 
over  him  of  nearly  all  the  city."     The  trouble,  it  is  conjectured, 

may  have  been  something  connected  with  his  prosecution  for 
impiety,  the  charge  on  which  Socrates  was  put  to  death  a  few 
years  after"  (Murray,  Euripides  translated  into  English 
Bhyming  Verse,  1902,  introd.  essay,  p.  hi).  Inasmuch  as  the 
play  glorifies  Dionysos,  and  the  "atheist"   Pentheus  (1.  995) 

2  R  ^^^i?'  ^^^  ^''*^  T'heatre,  p.  191.    Cp.  MUller,  pp.  362-64. 
bee,  however,  the  aesthetic  theorem  at  Prof.  Murray,  Euripides  and  his  Age,  pp.  221-27. 


164 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GKEECB 


who  resists  him  is  slain  by  the  maddened  Bacchantes,  led  by 
his  own  mother,  it  is  seriously  argued  that  the  drama  **  may  be 
regarded  as  in  some  sort  an  apologia  and  an  eirenicon,  or  as 
a  confession  on  the  part  of  the  poet  that  he  was  fully  conscious 
that  in  some  of  the  simple  legends  of  the  popular  faith  there 
was  an  element  of  sound  sense  (!)  which  thoughtful  men  must 
treat  with  forbearance,  resolved  on  using  it,  if  possible,  as  an 
instrument  for  inculcating  a  truer  morality,  instead  of  assailing 
it  with  a  presumptuous  denial  "  (J.  E.  Sandys,  The  BacchcB  of 
Euripides,  1880,  introd.  pp.  Ixxv-vi).  Here  we  have  the 
conformist  ethic  of  the  average  English  academic  brought 
to  bear  on,  and  ascribed  to,  the  personality  of  the  Greek 
dramatist. 

An  academic  of  the  same  order.  Prof.  Mahaffy,  similarly 
suggests  that  "  among  the  half-educated  Macedonian  youth, 
with  whom  literature  was  coming  into  fashion,  the  poet  may 
have  met  with  a  good  deal  of  that  insolent  second-hand 
skepticism  which  is  so  offensive  to  a  deep  and  serious  thinker, 
and  he  may  have  wished  to  show  them  that  he  was  not,  as  they 
doubtless  hailed  him,  the  apostle  of  this  random  speculative 
arrogance "  {Euripides  in  Class.  Writ.  Ser.  1879,  p.  85).  As 
against  the  eminently  "random  "  and  "speculative  arrogance" 
of  this  particular  passage — a  characteristic  product  of  the 
obscurantist  functions  of  some  British  university  professors  in 
matters  of  religion,  and  one  which  may  fitly  be  pronounced 
offensive  to  honest  men — it  may  be  suggested  on  the  other 
hand  that,  if  Euripides  got  into  trouble  in  Athens  by  his 
skepticism,  he  would  be  likely  in  Macedonia  to  encounter 
rather  a  greater  stress  of  bigotry  than  a  freethinking  welcome, 
and  that  a  non-critical  presentment  of  the  savage  religious 
legend  was  forced  on  him  by  his  environment. 

Much  of  the  academic  discussion  on  the  subject  betrays  a 
singular  slowness  to  accept  the  dramatic  standpoint.  Even 
Prof.  Murray,  the  finest  interpreter  of  Euripides,  dogmatically 
pronounces  (introd.  cited  p.  Ivii)  that  "  there  is  in  the  BacckcB 
real  and  heartfelt  glorification  of  Dionysus,"  simply  because  of 
the  lyrical  exaltation  of  the  Bacchic  choruses.  But  lyrical 
exaltation  was  in  character  here  above  all  other  cases ;  and  it 
was  the  dramatist's  business  to  present  it.  To  say  that  "  again 
and  again  in  the  lyrics  you  feel  that  the  Maenads  are  no  longer 
merely  observed  and  analysed :  the  poet  has  entered  into  them 
and  they  into  him,"  is  nothing  to  the  purpose.  That  the  words 
which  fall  from  the  Chorus  or  its  Leader  are  at  times  "  not  the 
words  of  a  raving  Bacchante,  but  of  a  gentle  and  deeply  musing 
philosopher,"  is  still  nothing  to  the  purpose.  The  same  could 
be  said  of  Shakespeare's  handling  of  Macbeth.  What,  in  sooth, 
would  the  real  words  of  a  raving  Bacchante  be  like  ?  If  Milton 
lent  dignity  to  Satan  in  Puritan  England,  was  Euripides  to  do 


FBEETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


165 


less  for  Dionysos  in  Macedonia?  That  he  should  make 
Pentheus  unsympathetic  belongs  to  the  plot.  If  he  had  made 
a  noble  martyr  of  the  victim  as  well  as  an  impassive  destroyer 
of  the  God,  he  might  have  had  to  leave  Macedonia  more 
precipitately  than  he  left  Athens. 

Prof.  Murray  recognizes  all  the  while  that  "  Euripides  never 
palliates  things.  He  leaves  this  savage  story  as  savage  as  he 
found  it ";  that  he  presents  a  "  triumphant  and  hateful 
Dionysus,"  who  gives  "  a  helpless  fatalistic  answer,  abandoning 
the  moral  standpoint,"  when  challenged  by  the  stricken  Agav^, 
whom  the  God  has  moved  to  dismember  her  own  son  ;  and 
that,  in  short,  "  Euripides  is,  as  usual,  critical  or  even  hostile 
to  the  myth  that  he  celebrates  "  (as  cited,  pp.  liv-lvi).  To  set 
against  these  solid  facts,  as  does  Mr.  Sandys  (as  cited, 
pp.  Ixxiii-iv),  some  passages  in  the  choruses  (11.  395,  388,  427, 
1002),  and  in  a  speech  of  Dionysos  (1002),  enouncing  normal 
platitudes  about  the  wisdom  of  thinking  like  other  people  and 
living  a  quiet  life,  is  to  strain  very  uncritically  the  elastic 
dramatic  material.  So  far  from  being  "  not  entirely  in  keeping  " 
with  the  likely  sentiments  of  a  chorus  of  Asiatic  women,  the 
first-cited  passages — telling  that  cleverness  is  not  wisdom,  and 
that  true  wisdom  acquiesces  in  the  opinions  of  ordinary  people 
— are  just  the  kind  of  mock-modest  ineptitudes  always  current 
among  the  complacent  ignorant ;  and  the  sage  language  ascribed 
to  the  heartless  God  is  simply  a  presentment  of  deity  in  the 
fashion  in  which  all  Greeks  expected  to  have  it  presented. 

The  fact  remains  that  the  story  of  the  Bacchce,  in  which  the 
frenzied  mother  helps  to  tear  to  pieces  her  own  son,  and  the 
God  can  but  say  it  is  all  fated,  is  as  revolting  to  the  rational 
moral  sense  as  the  story  of  the  Prometheus.  If  this  be  an 
eirenicon,  it  is  surely  the  most  ironical  in  literary  history.  To 
see  in  the  impassive  delineation  of  such  a  myth  an  acceptance 
by  the  poet  of  popular  "  sound  sense,"  and  "  a  desire  to  put 
himself  right  with  the  public  in  matters  on  which  he  had  been 
misunderstood,"  seems  possible  only  to  academics  trained  to 
a  particular  handling  of  the  popular  creed  of  their  own  day. 
This  view,  first  put  forward  by  Tyrwhitt  {Conjecturce  in  Mschy- 
lum,  etc.  1822),  was  adopted  by  Schoone  (p.  20  of  his  ed.  cited 
by  Sandys).  Lobeck,  greatly  daring  wherever  rationalism  was 
concerned,  suggested  that  Euripides  actually  wrote  against  the 
rationalists  of  his  time,  in  commendation  of  the  Bacchic  cult, 
and  to  justify  the  popular  view  in  religious  matters  as  against 
that  of  the  cultured  {Aglaophamus — passages  quoted  by  Sandys, 
p.  Ixxvi).  Musgrave,  following  Tyrwhitt,  makes  the  play  out 
to  be  an  attack  on  Kritias,  Alkibiades,  and  other  freethinkers, 
including  even  Sokrates  I  K.  O.  Miiller,  always  ineptly  conven- 
tional in  such  matters,  finds  Euripides  in  this  play  "  converted 
into  a  positive  believer,  or,  in  other  words,   convinced  that 


166 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


167 


religion  should  not  be  exposed  to  the  subtilties  of  reasoning ; 
that  the  understanding  of  man  cannot  subvert  ancestral  tradi- 
tions which  are  as  old  as  time,"  and  so  on;  and  in  the 
Polonius-platitudes  of  Tiresias  and  the  worldly-wise  counsels  of 
Cadmus  he  finds  "  great  impressiveness  "  {Hist.  Lit,  Anc.  Greece 
p.  379). 

The  bulk  of  the  literature  of  the  subject,  in  sliort,  suggests 
sombre   reflections   on   the   moral    value    of    mucli    academic 
thinking.     There  are,  however,  academic  suffrages  on  the  side 
of  common  sense.     Mr.  Haigh  {Tragic  Drama  of  the  Greeks, 
pp.    313-14)    gently    dismisses     the    "recantation"    theory 
Hartung  points  out  {Euripides  restitutus,  1844,  ii,  542,  cited 
by  Sandys)  that  Euripides  really  treats  the  legend  of  Pentheus 
very  much  as  he  treats  the  myth  of  Hippolytos  thirty  years 
earlier    showing   no   change    of    moral   attitude.     E.    Pfander 
(cited  by  Sandys)  took  a  similar  view ;  as  did  Mr.  Tyrrell  in 
his  edition  of  the  play  (1871),  though  the  latter  persisted  in 
taking   the  commonplaces  of   the   chorus    about   true  wisdom 
(395)   for  the  judgments   of   the   dramatist.     Euripides   could 
hardly   have   been   called    "the    philosopher    of    the    stage" 
(Athenaeus,  iv,  48)   on  the  strength  of   sentiments  which   are 
common   to   the   village   wiseacres   of   all   ages.     The   critical 
method    which    ascribes    to    Euripides    a    final    hostility    to 
rationalism    would    impute    to    Sliakespeare    the    religion    of 
Isabella  in  Measure  for  Measure,  when  the  talk  of  the  Duke 
as  a  friar  counselling  a  condemned  man  is  wholly  "pagan  "  or 
unbelieving. 

In  his  admirable  little  book,  Euripides  and  his  Age  (1913), 
Prof.  Murray  repeats  his  account  of  the  BacchcB  with  some 
additions  and  modifications.  He  adheres  to  the  "heartfelt 
glorification  of    Dionysus,"    but    adds   (p.   188):    "No  doubt 

it  is  Dionysus  in  some  private  sense  of  the  poet's  own 

some    spirit    of inspiration    and    untrammelled    life.     The 

presentation  is  not  consistent,  however  magical  the  poetry." 

As  to  the  theory  that  "the  veteran  free-lance  of  thought 

now  saw  the  error  of  his  ways  and  was  returning  to  orthodoxy," 
he  pronounces  that  "  Such  a  view  strikes  us  now  as  almost 
childish  in  its  incompetence  "  (p.  190).  He  also  reminds  us 
that     the  whole  scheme  of  the  play  is  given  by  the  ancient 

^^^^^^ All   knicls  of   small   details  which    seemed   like.  ..  . 

rather  fantastic  invention  on  the  part  of  Euripides  are  taken 

straight  from  ^schylus  or  the  ritual,  or  both The  BacchcB 

IS  not  free  invention;  it  is  tradition"  (pp.  182-84).  And  in 
sum  :  It  is  well  to  remember  that,  for  all  his  lucidity  of 
language,  Euripides  is  not  lucid  about  religion  "  (p.  190). 

In  conclusion  we  may  ask,  How  could  he  be  ?  He  wrote 
plays  for  the  Greek  stage,  which  had  its  very  roots  in  religious 
tradition,  and  was  run  for  the  edification  of  a  crudely  believing 


populace.  It  is  much  that  in  so  doing  Euripides  could  a 
hundred  times  challenge  the  evil  religious  ethic  given  him  for 
his  subject-matter ;  and  his  lasting  vogue  in  antiquity  showed 
that  he  had  a  hold  on  the  higher  Greek  conscience  which  no 
other  dramatist  ever  possessed. 

But  while  Euripides  must  thus  have  made  a  special  appeal  to 
the  reflecting  minority  even  in  his  own  day,  it  is  clear  that  he  was 
not  at  first  popular  with  the  many ;  and  his  efforts,  whatever  he 
may  have  hoped  to  achieve,  could  not  suflice  to  enlighten  the 
democracy.  The  ribald  blasphemies  of  his  enemy,  the  believing 
Aristophanes,^  could  avail  more  to  keep  vulgar  religion  in  credit  than 
the  tragedian's  serious  indictment  could  effect  against  it ;  and  they 
served  at  the  same  time  to  beHttle  Euripides  for  the  multitude  in 
his  own  day.  Aristophanes  is  the  typical  Tory  in  religion  ;  non- 
religious  himself,  like  Swift,  he  hates  the  honestly  anti-religious 
man ;  and  he  has  the  crowd  with  him.  The  Athenian  faith,  as  a 
Catholic  scholar  remarks,^  "  was  more  disposed  to  suffer  the 
buffooneries  of  a  comedian  than  the  serious  negation  of  a  philo- 
sopher." The  average  Greek  seemed  to  think  that  the  grossest 
comic  impiety  did  no  harm,  where  serious  negation  might  cause 
divine  wrath.^  And  so  there  came  no  intellectual  salvation  for 
Athens  from  the  drama  which  was  her  unique  achievement.  The 
balance  of  ignorance  and  culture  was  not  changed.  Evidently  there 
was  much  rationalism  among  the  studious  few.  Plato  in  the  Laivs  ^ 
speaks  both  of  the  man-about-town  type  of  freethinker  and  of  those 
who,  while  they  believe  in  no  Gods,  live  w^ell  and  wisely  and  are  in 
good  repute.  But  with  Plato  playing  the  superior  mind  and 
encouraging  his  fellow-townsmen  to  believe  in  the  personality  of  the 
sun,  moon,  and  planets,  credulity  could  easily  keep  the  upper  hand.^ 
The  people  remained  politically  unwise  and  religiously  superstitious, 
the  social  struggle  perpetuating  the  division  between  leisure  and 
toil,  even  apart  from  the  life  of  the  mass  of  slaves ;  while  the 
eternal  pre-occupation  of  militarism  left  even  the  majority  of  the 
upper  class  at  the  intellectual  level  natural  to  military  life  in  all 
ages.     There   came,   however,    a   generation    of    great    intellectual 

\  It  seems  arguable  that  the  aversion  of  Aristophanes  to  Euripides  was  primarily 
artistic,  arising  in  dislike  of  some  of  the  features  of  his  style.  On  this  head  his  must  be 
reckoned  an  expert  judgment.  The  old  criticism  found  in  Euripides  literary  vices ;  the 
new  seems  to  ignore  the  issue.  But  a  clerical  scholar  pronounces  that  "  Aristophanes  was 
the  most  unreasoning  laudator  teniporis  acti.  Genius  and  poet  as  he  was,  he  was  the 
sworn  foe  to  intellectual  progress."  Hence  his  hatred  of  Euripides  and  his  championship 
of  ^schylus.    (Rev.  Dr.  W.  W.  Merry,  introd.  to  Clar.  Press  ed.  of  The  Frogs,  189t2.) 

^  Girard,  Essai  sur  ThucyduU,  1884,  pp.  258-59. 

"  Cp.  Haigh,  The  Attic  Theatre,  p.  315.  In  the  same  way  Ktesilochos,  the  pupil  of 
Apelles,  could  with  impunity  make  Zeus  ridiculous  by  exhibiting  him  pictorially  in  child- 
bed, bringing  forth  Dionysos  (Pliny.  Hist.  Nat.  xxxv.  40.  §  15). 

*  Bk.  X,  ad  init.  5  Cp.  Benn,  Fhilos.  of  Greece,  p.  171. 


168 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


splendour  following  on  that  of  the  supreme  development  of  drama 
just  before  the  fall  of  Greek  freedom.  Athens  had  at  last  come  into 
the  heritage  of  Greek  philosophic  thought ;  and  to  the  utterance  of 
that  crowning  generation  the  human  retrospect  has  turned  ever 
since.  This  much  of  renown  remains  inalienable  from  the  most 
renowned  democracy  of  the  ancient  w^orld. 

§8 

The  wide  subject  of  the  teaching  of  SOKKATES,  Plato,  and 
Aristotle  must  here  be  noticed  briefly,  with  a  view  only  to  our 
special  inquiry.  All  three  must  be  inscribed  in  any  list  of  ancient 
freethinkers ;  and  yet  all  three  furthered  freethought  only  indirectly, 
the  two  former  being  in  different  degrees  supernaturalists,  while  the 
last  touched  on  religious  questions  only  as  a  philosopher,  avoiding 
all  question  of  practical  innovation. 

The  same  account  holds  good  of  the  best  of  the  so-called 
Sophists,  as  GORGIAS  the  Sicilian  (?  485-380),  who  was  a 
nihilistic  skeptic  ;  HiPPiAS  of  Elis,  who,  setting  up  an  emphatic 
distinction  between  Nature  and  Convention,  impugned  the 
political  law^s  and  prejudices  which  estranged  men  of  thought 
and  culture;  and  Prodikos  of  Kos  (fi.  435),  author  of  the 
fable  of  Herakles  at  the  Parting  of  the  Ways,  who  seems  to 
have  privately  criticized  the  current  Gods  as  mere  deifications 
of  useful  things  and  forces,  and  was  later  misconceived  as 
teaching  that  the  things  and  forces  were  Gods.  Cp.  Cicero, 
De  fiat.  Deorum,  i,  42 ;  Sextus  Empiricus,  Adv.  Matlicmaticos, 
ix,  52  ;  Ueberweg,  vol.  i,  p.  78 ;  Eenouvier,  i,  291-93.  Cicero 
saw  very  well  that  if  men  came  to  see  in  Demetdr  merely 
a  deification  of  corn  or  bread,  in  Dionysos  wine,  in  Hephaistos 
fire,  and  in  Poseidon  only  water,  there  was  not  much  left  in 
religion.  On  the  score  of  their  systematic  skepticism,  that  is, 
their  insistence  on  the  subjectivity  of  all  opinion,  Prof.  Drews 
pronounces  the  Sophists  at  once  the  "  Aufkliirer "  and  the 
Pragmatists  of  ancient  Greece  {Gesch.  des  Mo7iis7nus,  p.  209). 
But  their  thought  was  scarcely  homogeneous. 

1.  SOKRATES  [468-399]  was  fundamentally  and  practically  a 
freethinker,  insofar  as  in  most  things  he  thought  for  himself, 
definitely  turning  away  from  the  old  ideal  of  mere  transmitted 
authority  in  morals.'  Starting  in  all  inquiries  from  a  position  of 
professed  ignorance,  he  at  least  repudiated  all  dogmatics.'  Being, 
however,  preoccupied  with  public  life  and  conduct,  he  did  not  carry 

„  V teller.  Socrates  and  the  Socratic  Schools.  Eng.  tr.  3rd  ed.  p.  227  :  Hegel  as  there  cited 
Grote.  Plato,  ed.  1885.  i.  423. 

2  Cp.  Owen,  Evenings  with  the  Skeptics,  i.  181  sa..  291.  293.  299.  etc 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


169 


his  critical  thinking  far  beyond  that  sphere.  In  regard  to  the 
extension  of  solid  science,  one  of  the  prime  necessities  of  Greek 
intellectual  life,  he  was  quite  reactionary,  drawing  a  line  between 
the  phenomena  which  he  thought  intelHgible  and  traceable  and 
those  which  he  thought  past  finding  out.  "  Physics  and  astronomy, 
in  his  opinion,  belonged  to  the  divine  class  of  phenomena  in  which 
human  research  was  insane,  fruitless,  and  impious."  ^  Yet  at  the 
same  time  he  formulated,  apparently  of  his  own  motion,  the  ordinary 
design  argument.'^  The  sound  scientific  view  led  up  to  by  so  many 
previous  thinkers  was  set  forth,  even  in  religious  phraseology,  by 
his  great  contemporary  Hippokrates,^  and  he  opposed  it.  While 
partially  separating  himself  in  practice  from  the  popular  worships, 
he  held  by  the  belief  in  omens,  though  not  in  all  the  ordinary  ones  ; 
and  in  one  of  the  Platonic  dialogues  he  is  made  to  say  he  holds  by 
the  ordinary  versions  of  all  the  myths,  on  the  ground  that  it  is  a 
hopeless  task  to  find  rational  explanations  for  them."*  He  hoped,  in 
short,  to  rationalize  conduct  without  seeking  to  rationalize  creed — 
the  dream  of  Plato  and  of  a  thousand  religionists  since. 

He  had  indeed  the  excuse  that  the  myth-rationalizers  of  the 
time  after  Hekataios,  following  the  line  of  least  psychic  resistance, 
like  those  of  England  and  Germany  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
explained  away  myths  by  reducing  them  to  hypothetical  history, 
thus  asking  credence  for  something  no  better  verified  than  the  myth 
itself.  But  the  rationalizers  were  on  a  path  by  which  men  might 
conceivably  have  journeyed  to  a  truer  science ;  and  Sokrates,  by 
refusing  to  undertake  any  such  exploration,^  left  his  countrymen  to 
that  darkening  belief  in  tradition  which  made  possible  his  own 
execution.  There  was  in  his  cast  of  mind,  indeed — if  we  can  at  all 
accept  Plato's  presentment  of  him — something  unfavourable  to 
steady  conviction.  He  cannot  have  had  any  real  faith  in  the 
current  religion  ;  yet  he  never  explicitly  dissented.  In  the  Republic 
he  accepts  the  new  festival  to  the  Thracian  Goddess  Bendis ;  and 
there  he  is  made  by  Plato  to  inculcate  a  quite  orthodox  acceptance 
of  the  Delphic  oracle  as  the  source  of  all  religious  practice.  But  it 
is  impossible  to  say  how  much  of  the  teaching  of  the  Platonic 
Sokrates  is  Sokratic.  And  as  to  Plato  there  remains  the  problem 
of  how  far  his  conformities  were  prudential,  after  the  execution  of 
Sokrates  for  blasphemy. 


1  Grote,  History,  i.  334 ;  Xenophon.  Memorabilia,  i,  1,  §§  6-9. 

2  Cp.  Benn.  The  Philosophy  of  the  Greeks,  1898,  p.  160. 

8  Grote,  i.  334-35;  Hippocrates,  De  Aeribus,  Aquis,Locis,  c.  22  (49). 
*  Plato.  Phcedrus,  Jowett's  tr.  3rd  ed.  i.  434  ;  Grote.  History,  i.  393. 

5  Compare,  however,  the  claim  made  for  him,  as  promoting  "objectivity,"  by  Prof. 
Drews,  Gesch.  des  Monismus  im  Altertum,  1913,  p.  213. 


170 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


171 


The  long-debated  issue  as  to  the  real  personality  of  Sokrates 
is  still  open.  It  is  energetically  and  systematically  handled  by 
Prof.  August  Doring  in  Die  Lehre  des  Sokrates  als  sociales 
Befonnsysteyn  (1895),  and  by  Dr.  Hubert  Eock  in  Der  unver- 
falschte  Sokrates  (1903).  See,  in  particular,  Doring.  pp.  51-79, 
and  Eock,  pp.  357-96.  From  all  attempts  to  arrive  at  a  con- 
ception of  a  consistent  Sokrates  there  emerges  the  impression 
that  the  real  Sokrates,  despite  a  strong  critical  bent  of  mind, 
had  no  clearly  established  body  of  opinions,  but  was  swayed  in 
different  directions  by  the  itch  for  contradiction  which  was  the 
driving  power  of  his  dialectic.  For  the  so-called  Sokratic 
method  "  is  much  less  a  method  for  attaining  truth  than  one 
for  disturbing  prejudice.  And  if  in  Plato's  hands  Sokrates 
seldom  reaches  a  conclusion  that  his  own  method  might  not 
overthrow,  we  are  not  entitled  to  refuse  to  believe  that  this  was 
characteristic  of  the  man. 

Concerning  Sokrates  we  have  Xenophon's  circumstantial  account* 
of  how  he  reasoned  with  Aristodemos,  "  surnamed  the  Little,"  who 
neither   prayed   nor   sacrificed   to   the   Gods,  nor   consulted   any 
oracle,  and  ridiculed  those  who  did."     Aristodemos  was  a  theist, 
believing  in  a  "  Great  Architect  "  or  "  Artist,"  or  a  number  of  such 
powers— on  this  he  is  as  vague  as  the  ancient  theists  in  general— 
but    does    not    think    the   heavenly   powers    need    his   devotions. 
Sokrates,  equally  vague  as  to  the  unity  or  plurality  of  the  divine, 
puts  the  design  argument  in  the  manner  familiar  throughout  the 
ages,'  and  follows  it  up  with  the  plea,  among  others,  that  the  States 
most   renowned  for  wisdom  and  antiquity  have  always  been  the 
most  given  to  pious  practices,  and  that  probably  the  Gods  will  be 
kind  to  those  who  show  them  respect.     The  whole  philosopheme  is 
pure   empiricism,  on   the   ordinary   plane  of    polytheistic  thought, 
and  may  almost  be  said  to  exhibit  incapacity  for  the  handhng  of 
philosophic   questions,    evading   as   it   does    even    the    elementary 
challenge  of  Aristodemos,    against   whom  Sokrates   parades   pious 
platitudes  without  a  hint  of  "  Sokratic  "  analysis.     Unless  such  a 
performance  were  regarded  as  make-believe,  it  is  difficult  to  conceive 
how  Athenian  pietists  could  honestly  arraign  Sokrates  for  irreligion 
while    Aristodemos    and    others    of    his  way    of    thinking    went 
unmolested. 

Taken  as  illustrating  the  state  of  thought  in  the  Athenian 
community,  the  trial  and  execution  of  Sokrates  for  "blasphemy" 
and  "  corrupting  the  minds  of  the  young  "  go  far  to  prove  that  there 

1  Memorabilia,  i,  4. 

on  V  hv^So^/rt*J2^!°^J'°^^^.*^®^^"i'  character  of  philosophy  ever  since  has  been  stamped 
on  It  by  bocrates.  as  it  was  stamped  on  Socrates  by  Athens  "  (Benn,  Philos.  of  Greece,  p.  168). 


I 


prevailed  among  the  upper  class  in  Athens  nearly  as  much  hypocrisy 
in  religious  matters  as  exists  in  the  England  of  to-day.  Doubtless 
he  was  liable  to  death  from  the  traditionally  orthodox  Greek  point 
of  view,*  having  practically  turned  aside  from  the  old  civic  creed 
and  ideals ;  but  then  most  educated  Athenians  had  in  some  degree 
done  the  same.'^  Euripides,  as  we  have  seen,  is  so  frequently 
critical  of  the  old  theology  and  mythology  in  his  plays  that  he  too 
could  easily  have  been  indicted ;  and  Aristophanes,  who  attacked 
Euripides  in  his  comedies  as  scurrilously  as  he  did  Sokrates,  would 
no  doubt  have  been  glad  to  see  him  prosecuted.^  The  psychology 
of  Aristophanes,  who  freely  ridiculed  and  blasphemed  the  Gods  in 
his  own  comedies  while  reviling  all  men  who  did  not  believe  in 
them,  is  hardly  intelligible  save  in  the  light  of  parts  of  the  English 
history  of  our  own  time,  when  unbelieving  indifferentists  on  the 
Conservative  side  have  been  seen  ready  to  join  in  turning  the  law 
against  a  freethinking  publicist  for  purely  party  ends.  In  the  case 
of  Sokrates  the  hostility  was  ostensibly  democratic,  for,  according 
to  ^schines,  Sokrates  was  condemned  because  he  had  once  given 
lessons  to  Kritias,"*  one  of  the  most  savage  and  unscrupulous  of  the 
Thirty  Tyrants.  Inasmuch  as  Kritias  had  become  entirely  alienated 
from  Sokrates,  and  had  even  put  him  to  silence,  such  a  ground  of 
hostility  would  only  be  a  fresh  illustration  of  that  collective  predilec- 
tion of  men  to  a  gregarious  iniquity  which  is  no  less  noteworthy  in 
the  psychology  of  groups  than  their  profession  of  high  moral 
standards.  And  such  proclivities  are  always  to  be  reckoned  with 
in  such  episodes.  Anytos,  the  leading  prosecutor,  seems  to  have 
been  a  typical  bigot,  brainless,  spiteful,  and  thoroughly  self-satisfied. 
Not  only  party  malice,  however,  but  the  individual  dislikes  which 
Sokrates  so  industriously  set  up,^  must  have  counted  for  much  in 
securing  the  small  majority  of  the  dikastery  that  pronounced  him 
guilty — 281  to  276 ;  and  his  own  clear  preference  for  death  over 
any  sort  of  compromise   did   the  rest.^     He   was   old,   and   little 

1  Zeller.  Socrates  and  the  Socratic  Sclwols,  as  cited,  p.  231.  The  case  against  Sokrates 
is  bitterly  urged  by  Forchhammer,  Die  Athenen  und  Sokrates,  1837;  see  in  particular 
pp.  8-11.    Cp.  Grote,  Hist.  vii.  81. 

'^  "  Had  not  all  the  cultivated  men  of  the  time  passed  through  a  school  of  rationalism 
which  had  entirely  pulled  to  pieces  the  beliefs  and  the  morals  of  their  ancestors?" 
Zeller,  as  last  cited,  pp.  231-33.    Cp.  Haigh,  Tragic  Drama,  p.  261. 

8  See  Aristophanes's  Frogs,  888-94. 

*  .^schines,  Timarchos,  cited  by  Thirlwall,  iv,  277.    Cp.  Xenophon,  Mem.  i,  2. 

^  "Nothing  could  well  bo  more  unpopular  and  obnoxious  than  the  task  which  he  under- 
took of  cross-examining  and  convicting  of  ignorance  every  distinguished  man  whom  he 
could  approach."  Grote,  vii.  95.  Cp.  pp.  141-44.  Cp.  also  Trevelyan's  Life  of  Macaulay, 
ed.  1881,  p.  316  :  and  Renouvier,  Manuel  de  la  philos.  anc.  1.  iv,  §  iii.  See  also,  however, 
Benn,  Phil,  of  Greece,  pp.  162-63.  For  a  view  of  Sokrates's  relations  to  his  chief  accuser, 
which  partially  vindicates  or  whitewashes  the  latter,  see  Prof.  G.  Murray's  Anc.  Greek  Lit. 
pp.  176-77.  There  is  a  good  monograph  by  H.  Bleeckly,  Socrates  and  the  Athenians :  An 
Apology,  1884,  which  holds  the  balances  fairly. 

o  On  the  desire  of  Sokrates  to  die  see  Grote,  vii,  152-64. 


172 


FBEETHOUGHT  IN  GBEECE 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


173 


hopeful  of  social  betterment ;  and  the  temperamental  obstinacy 
which  underlay  his  perpetual  and  pertinacious  debating  helped  him 
to  choose  a  death  that  he  could  easily  have  avoided.  But  the  fact 
remains  that  he  was  not  popular ;  that  the  mass  of  the  voters  as 
well  as  of  the  upper  class  disliked  his  constant  cross-examination 
of  popular  opinion/  which  must  often  have  led  logical  listeners  to 
carry  on  criticism  where  he  left  off;  and  that  after  all  his 
ratiocination  he  left  Athens  substantially  irrational,  as  well  as 
incapable  of  justice,  on  some  essential  issues.  His  dialectic  method 
has  done  more  to  educate  the  later  world  than  it  did  for  Greece. 

Upon  the  debate  as  to  the  legal  punishabiHty  of  Sokrates 
turns  another  as  to  the  moral  character  of  the  Athenians  who 
forced  him  to  drink  the  hemlock.  Professor  Mahaffy,  bent  on 
proving  the  superiority  of  Athenian  culture  and  civilization  to 
those  of  Christendom,  effectively  contrasts  the  calm  scene  in 
the  prison-chamber  of  Sokrates  with  the  hideous  atrocities  of 
the  death  penalty  for  treason  in  the  modern  world  and  the 
**  gauntness  and  horror  of  our  modern  executions  "  (Social  Life 
in  Greece,  3rd.  ed.  pp.  262-69) ;  and  Mr.  Bleeckly  (Socrates  and 
the  Athenians,  1884,  pp.  55-63)  similarly  sets  against  the 
pagan  case  that  of  the  burning  of  heretics  by  the  Christian 
Church,  and  in  particular  the  auto  da  f6  at  Valladolid  in  1559, 
when  fifteen  men  and  women — the  former  including  the  con- 
scientious priests  who  had  proposed  to  meet  the  hostility  of 
Protestant  dissent  in  the  Netherlands  by  reforms  in  the 
Church  :  the  latter  including  delicately-nurtured  ladies  of  high 
family — were  burned  to  death  before  the  eyes  of  the  Princess 
Begent  of  Spain  and  the  aristocracy  of  Castile.  It  is  certainly 
true  that  this  transaction  has  no  parallel  in  the  criminal  pro- 
ceedings of  pagan  Athens.  Christian  cruelty  has  been  as  much 
viler  than  pagan,  culture  for  culture,  as  the  modern  Christian 
environment  is  uglier  than  the  Athenian.  Before  such  a  test 
the  special  pleaders  for  the  civilizing  power  of  Christianity  can 
but  fall  back  upon  alternative  theses  which  are  the  negation  of 
their  main  case.  First  we  are  told  that  "  Christianity  humanizes 
men  ";  next  that  where  it  does  not  do  so  it  is  because  they  are 
too  inhuman  to  be  made  Christians. 

But  while  the  orthodoxy  of  pagan  Athens  thus  comes  very 
well  off  as  against  the  frightful  crime-roll  of  organized  Chris- 
tianity, the  dispassionate  historian  must  nonetheless  note  the 
dehumanizing  power  of  religion  in  Athens  as  in  Christendom. 
The  pietists  of  Athens,  in  their  less  brutish  way,  were  as  hope- 

1  The  assertion  of  Plutarch  that  after  hia  death  the  prosecutors  of  Sokrates  were 
BociaUy  excommuuicated,  and  so  driven  to  hang  themselves  {Moralia  :  Of  Envy  and 
Hatred),  is  an  interesting  instance  of  moral  myth-making.  It  has  no  historic  basis; 
though  Diogenes  (ii.  23  §  43)  and  Diodorus  Siculus  (xiv,  37).  late  authorities  both,  allege  an 
Athenian  reaction  in  Sokrates*  favour.  Probably  the  story  of  the  suicide  of  Judas  was 
framed  m  imitation  of  Plutarch's. 


lessly  denaturalized  as  those  of  Christian  Europe  by  the  dominion 
of  a  traditional  creed,  held  as  above  reason.  It  matters  not 
whether  or  not  we  say  with  Bishop  Thirlwall  (Hist,  of  Greece, 
2nd  ed.  iv,  556)  that  **  there  never  was  a  case  in  which  murder 
was  more  clearly  committed  under  the  forms  of  legal  procedure 
than  in  the  trial  of  Socrates,"  or  press  on  the  other  side  the 
same  writer's  admission  that  in  religious  matters  in  Athens 
**  there  was  no  canon,  no  book  by  which  a  doctrine  could  be 
tried ;  no  living  authority  to  which  appeal  could  be  made  for 
the  decision  of  religious  controversies."  The  fact  that  Chris- 
tendom had  "  authorities  "  who  ruled  which  of  two  sets  of 
insane  dogmas  brought  death  upon  its  propounder,  does  not 
make  less  abominable  the  slaying  of  Bruno  and  Servetus,  or 
the  immeasurable  massacre  of  less  eminent  heretics.  But  the 
less  formalized  homicides  sanctioned  by  the  piety  of  Periklean 
Athens  remain  part  of  the  proof  that  unreasoning  faith 
worsens  men  past  calculation.  If  we  slur  over  such  deeds  by 
generalities  about  human  frailty,  we  are  but  asserting  the  im- 
possibility of  rationally  respecting  human  nature.  If,  putting 
aside  all  moral  censure,  we  are  simply  concerned  to  trace  and 
comprehend  causation  in  human  affairs,  we  have  no  choice  but 
to  note  how  upon  occasion  rehgion  on  one  hand,  like  strong 
drink  on  another,  can  turn  commonplace  men  into  murderers. 

In  view  of  the  limitations  of  Sokrates,  and  the  mental  measure 
of  those  who  voted  for  putting  him  to  death,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  through  all  Greek  history  educated  men  (including  Aristotle) 
continued  to  believe  firmly  in  the  deluge  of  DeukaHon^  and  the 
invasion  of  the  Amazons^  as  solid  historical  facts.  Such  behefs,  of 
course,  are  on  all  fours  with  those  current  in  the  modern  religious 
world  down  till  the  present  century  :  we  shall,  in  fact,  best  appraise 
the  rationality  of  Greece  by  making  such  comparisons.  The  residual 
lesson  is  that  where  Greek  reason  ended,  modern  social  science  had 
better  be  regarded  as  only  beginning.  Thukydides,  the  greatest  of 
all  the  ancient  historians,  and  one  of  the  great  of  all  time,  treated 
human  affairs  in  a  spirit  so  strictly  rationalistic  that  he  might 
reasonably  be  termed  an  atheist  on  that  score  even  if  he  had  not 
earned  the  name  as  a  pupil  of  Anaxagoras.^  But  his  task  was  to 
chronicle  a  war  which  proved  that  the  Greeks  were  to  the  last 
children  of  instinct  for  the  main  purposes  of  life,  and  that  the  rule 
of  reason  which  they  are  credited  with  establishing*  was  only  an 

*  Grote,  Htsfory,  i,  94.  „^     ,  .     , 

*  Id.  i,  194.  Not  till  Strabo  do  we  find  this  myth  disbelieved ;  and  Strabo  was  surprised 
to  find  most  men  holding  by  the  old  story  while  admitting  that  the  race  of  Amazons  had 
died  out.    Id.  p.  197. 

'  Life  of  Thukydides,  bv  Marcollinus,  ch.  22,  citing  Antyllas.  Cp.  Girard,  Essat  sur 
Thucydide,  p.  239;  and  the  prefaces  of  Hobbes  and  Smith  to  their  translations. 

*  Girard,  p.  3. 


174 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECB 


intermittent  pastime.  In  the  days  of  Demosthenes  we  still  find 
them  politically  consulting  the  Pythian  oracle,  despite  the  conscious- 
ness among  educated  men  that  the  oracle  is  a  piece  of  political 
machinery.  We  can  best  realize  the  stage  of  their  evolution  by  first 
comparing  their  public  religious  practice  with  that  of  contemporary 
England.  No  one  now  regards  the  daily  prayers  of  the  House  of 
Commons  as  more  than  a  reverent  formality.  But  Nikias  at 
Syracuse  staked  the  fortunes  of  war  on  the  creed  of  omens.  We 
can  perhaps  finally  conceive  with  fair  accuracy  the  subordination  of 
Greek  culture  and  politics  to  superstition  by  likening  the  thought- 
levels  of  pre-Alexandrian  Athens  to  those  of  England  under 
Cromwell. 

2.  The  decisive  measure  of  Greek  accomplishment  is  found  in 
the  career  of  Plato  [429-347] .     One  of  the  great  prose  writers  of 
the  world,  he  has  won  by  his  literary  genius— that  is,  by  his  power 
of  continuous  presentation  as  well  as  by  his  style — no  less  than  by 
his  service  to  supernaturalist  philosophy  in  general,  a  repute  above 
his  deserts  as  a  thinker.     In  Christian  history  he  is  the  typical 
philosopher  of  DuaHsm,^  his  prevailing  conception  of  the  universe 
being  that  of  an  inert  Matter  acted  on  or  even  created  by  a  craftsman- 
God,  the  "Divine  Artificer,"  sometimes   conceived  as   a  Logos  or 
divine  Eeason,  separately  personalized.     Thus  he  came  to  be  par 
excellence  the  philosopher  of  theism,  as  against  Aristotle  and  those 
of  the  Pythagoreans  who  affirmed  the  eternity  of  the  universe.''     In 
the  history  of  freethought  he  figures  as  a  man  of  genius  formed  by 
Sokrates  and   reflecting    his    limitations,    developing   the  Sokratic 
dialectic   on    the   one   hand   and  finally  emphasizing  the  Sokratic 
dogmatism  to  the  point  of  utter  bigotry.     If  the  Athenians  are  to  be 
condemned  for  putting  Sokrates  to  death,  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  the  spirit,  if  not  the  letter,  of  the  Laivs  drawn  up  by  Plato  in 
his  old  age  fully  justified  them.'     That  code,  could  it  ever  have  been 
put  in  force,  would  have  wrought  the  death  of  every  honest  free- 
thinker as  well  as  most  of  the  ignorant  believers  within  its  sphere. 
Alone  among  the  great  serious  writers  of  Greece  does  he  implicate 
Greek  thought  in  the  gospel  of   intolerance  passed  on  to   modern 
Europe  from  antiquity.     It  is  recorded  of  him'  that  he  wished  to 

ereV'uJfon'rhffiHrnT^^^^  nearly  all  that  afterwards 

C^^rcTiasgO  p  182)  ^I>^^^nce  of  Greek  Ideas  and  Usages  upon  the  Christian 

8  r  n  "^V^/f  %fr°"?''*?cJ'oy  •  Fairbanks,  pp.  146-47;  Grote.  Plato,  ch.  38. 
raises  «n^n5«;fcHf.'i  ^J'  ^?'  ^^l  Pfpfessor  Bain,  however  {Practical  Essays,  1884.  p.  273), 
Btrson  to  f?«i  f hf c?/  V'^^^'°^,  py  his  remark,  as  to  the  death  of  Sokrates:  "The  first 
Fne  hfs  ?i«wJ  nn  th^'^l'^f  ^^**°'  .-^^^^  ^^  ^*«  affected  by  it  to  the  extent  of  suppress- 
illcfifi  ^  °°  ^J^*^  higher  questions  we  can  infer  with  the  greatest  probability. 
Aristotle  was  equally  cowed."  i  Diog.  La6r.  bk.  ix,  ch.  vii!  §  8  (40). 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


175 


burn  all  the  writings  of  Demokritos  that  he  could  collect,  and  was 
dissuaded  only  on  the  score  of  the  number  of  copies. 

What  was  best  in  Plato,  considered  as  a  freethinker,  was  his 
early  love  of  ratiocination,  of  **  the  rendering  and  receiving  of 
reasons."  Even  in  his  earlier  dialogues,  however,  there  are  signs 
enough  of  an  arbitrary  temper,  as  well  as  of  an  inability  to  put  science 
in  place  of  religious  prejudice.  The  obscurantist  doctrine  which  he 
put  in  the  mouth  of  Sokrates  in  the  Phcedrus  was  also  his  own,  as 
we  gather  from  the  exposition  in  the  Bepuhlic,  In  that  brilliant 
performance  he  objects,  as  so  many  believers  and  freethinkers  had 
done  before  him,  to  the  scandalous  tales  in  the  poets  concerning  the 
Gods  and  the  sons  of  Gods ;  but  he  does  not  object  to  them  as  being 
untrue.  His  position  is  that  they  are  unedifying.^  For  his  own 
part  he  proposes  that  his  ideal  rulers  frame  new  myths  which  shall 
edify  the  young:  in  his  Utopia  it  is  part  of  the  business  of  the 
legislator  to  choose  the  right  fictions  \'^  and  the  systematic  imposition 
of  an  edifying  body  of  pious  fable  on  the  general  intelligence  is  part 
of  his  scheme  for  the  regeneration  of  society;^  Honesty  is  to  be 
built  up  by  fraud,  and  reason  by  delusion.  What  the  Hebrew 
Bible-makers  actually  did,  Plato  proposed  to  do.  The  one  thing  to 
be  said  in  his  favour  is  that  by  thus  telling  how^  the  net  is  to  be 
spread  in  the  sight  of  the  bird  he  put  the  decisive  obstacle — if  any 
were  needed — in  the  way  of  his  plan.  It  is,  indeed,  inconceivable 
that  the  author  of  the  Bepublic  and  the  Laws  dreamt  that  either 
polity  as  a  whole  would  ever  come  into  existence.  His  plans  of 
suppressing  all  undesirable  poetry,  arranging  community  of  women, 
and  enabling  children  to  see  battles,  are  the  fancy-sketches  of  a 
dilettant.  He  had  failed  completely  as  a  statesman  in  practice  ;  as 
a  schemer  he  does  not  even  posit  the  first  conditions  of  success. 

As  to  his  practical  failure  see  the  story  of  his  and  his  pupils' 
attempts  at  Syracuse  (Grote,  History,  ix,  37-123).  The  younger 
Dionysios,  whom  they  had  vainly  attempted  to  make  a  model 
ruler,  seems  to  have  been  an  audacious  unbeliever  to  the  extent 
of  plundering  the  temple  of  Persephone  at  Lokris,  one  of  Jupiter 
in  the  Peloponnesos,  and  one  of  ^sculapius  at  Epidaurus. 
Clement  of  Alexandria  {Protrept.  c.  4)  states  that  he  plundered 
the  statue  of  Jupiter  in  Sicily."  Cicero  {De  nat.  Deorum, 
iii,  33,  34)  and  Valerius  Maximus  (i,  1)  tell  the  story  of  the 
elder  Dionysios  ;  but  of  him  it  cannot  be  true.     In  his  day  the 

^Republic,  bk.  ii,  377,  to  iii,  392 ;  Jowett's  tr.  3rd  ed.  iii,  60  sq.,  68  sq.  In  bk.  x,  it  is  true, 
he  does  speak  of  the  poets  as  unqualified  by  knowledge  and  training  to  teach  truth 
(Jowett's  tr.  iii.  311  sq.);  but  Plato's  "truth"  is  not  objective,  but  idealistic,  or  rather 
fictitious-didactic. 

»  Id.  Jowett,  pp.  59,  69.  etc.  ^  ja,  bk.  iii ;  Jowett,  pp,  103-105. 


w 


176  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GBEECE 

plunder  of  the  temples  of  D6m6t6r  and  Persephone  in  Sicily  by 
the  Carthaginians  was  counted  a  deadly  sin.  See  Freeman, 
History  of  Sicily,  iv,  125-47,  and  Story  of  Sicily,  pp.^  176-80. 
In  Cicero's  dialogue  it  is  noted  that  after  all  his  impieties 
Dionysios  [the  elder,  of  whom  the  stories  are  mistakenly  told] 
died  in  his  bed.  AthenaBus,  however,  citing  the  biographer 
Klearchos,  tells  that  the  younger  Dionysios,  after  being  reduced 
to  the  rdle  of  a  begging  priest  of  Kybel6,  ended  his  hfe  very 
miserably  (xii,  60). 

Nonetheless,  the  prescription  of  intolerance  in  the  Laws^  classes 
Plato  finally  on  the  side  of  fanaticism,  and,  indeed,  ranks  him  with 
the  most  sinister  figures  on  that  side,  since  his  earlier  writing  shows 
that  he  would  be  willing  to  punish  men  alike  for  repeating  stories 
which  they  believed,  and  for  rejecting  what  he  knew  to  be  untruths. 
By  his  own  late  doctrine  he  vindicated  the  slayers  of  his  own  friend. 
His  psychology  is  as  strange  as  that  of  Aristophanes,  but  strange 
with  a  difference.     He  seems  to  have  practised  "  the  will  to  believe  " 
till  he  grew  to  be  a  fanatic  on  the  plane  of  the  most  ignorant  of 
orthodox  Athenians  ;  and  after  all  that  science  had  done  to  enlighten 
men  on  that  natural  order  the  misconceiving  of  which  had  been  the 
foundation   of   their   creeds,  he   inveighs  furiously  in  his  old  age 
against  the  impiety  of  those  who  dared  to  doubt  that  the  sun  and 
moon  and  stars  were  deities,  as  every  nurse  taught  her  charges.^ 
And  when  all  is  said,  his  Gods  satisfy  no  need  of  the  intelligence  ; 
for  he  insists  that  they  only  partially  rule  the  world,  sending  the 
few  good  things,  but  not  the  many  evil  * — save  insofar  as  evil  may 
be  a  beneficent  penalty  and  discipline.     At  the  same  time,  while 
advising  the  imprisonment  or  execution  of   heretics  who  did  not 
believe  in  the  Gods,  Plato  regarded  with  even  greater  detestation 
the  man  who  taught  that  they  could  be  persuaded  or  propitiated  by 
individual  prayer  and  sacrifice.*     Thus  he  would  have  struck  alike 
at   the   freethinking   few  and   at  the  multitude  who  held  by  the 
general  religious  beliefs  of  Greece,  dealing  damnation  on  all  save  his 
own  clique,  in  a  way  that  would  have  made  Torquemada  blench. 
In  the  face  of  such  teaching  as  this,  it  may  well  be  said  that  *  Greek 
philosophy   made    incomparably   greater   advances    in    the   earlier 
polemic  period   [of  the  lonians]    than  after  its  friendly  return  to 

1  iaws,  x;  Jowett.  V,  295-98.  ,       .^    ,  ^     +1,0 

2  Received  myths  are  forbidden ;  and  the  preferred  fictions  are  to  be  city  law.    Lp.  ine 
I/a»i;s,  ii,  iii;  Jowett.  V,  4-2,  79. 

3  Laws,  Jowett's  tr.  3rd  ed.  v.  271-72.    Cp.  the  comment  of  Benn,  1,  271-72. 
*  Republic,  bk.  ii,  379;  Jowett,  iii.  62. 

5  Laws,  X,  90d-907,  910;  Jowett.  v,  293-94,  297-98. 

fi  On  the  inconsistency  of  the  whole  doctrine  see  Grote's  Plato,  iv,  379-97. 


PREETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


177 


the  poetry  of  Homer  and  Hesiod"^ — that  is,  to  their  polytheistic 
basis.  It  is  to  be  said  for  Plato,  finally,  that  his  embitterment  at 
the  downward  course  of  things  in  Athens  is  a  quite  inteUigible 
source  for  his  own  intellectual  decadence :  a  very  similar  spectacle 
being  seen  in  the  case  of  our  own  great  modern  Utopist,  Sir  Thomas 
More.  But  Plato's  own  writing  bears  witness  that  among  the 
unbelievers  against  whom  he  declaimed  there  were  wise  and 
blameless  citizens ;  ^  while  in  the  act  of  seeking  to  lay  a  religious 
basis  for  a  good  society  he  admitted  the  fundamental  immorality  of 
the  religious  basis  of  the  whole  of  past  Greek  life. 

3.  Aristotle  [384-322] ,  like  Sokrates,  albeit  in  a  very  different 
way,  rendered  rather  an  indirect  than  a  direct  service  to  Freethought. 
Where  Sokrates  gave  the  critical  or  dialectic  method  or  habit,  "  a 
process  of  eternal  value  and  of  universal  appHcation,"^  Aristotle 
supplied  the  great  inspiration  of  system,  partly  correcting  the 
Sokratic  dogmatism  on  the  possibilities  of  science  by  endless 
observation  and  speculation,  though  himself  falling  into  scientific 
dogmatism  only  too  often.  That  he  was  an  unbeliever  in  the 
popular  and  Platonic  religion  is  clear.  Apart  from  the  general 
rationalistic  tenor  of  his  works,*  there  was  a  current  understanding 
that  the  Peripatetic  school  denied  the  utility  of  prayer  and  sacrifice  ;^ 
and  though  the  essentially  partisan  attempt  of  the  anti-Macedonian 
party  to  impeach  him  for  impiety  may  have  turned  largely  on  his 
hyperbolic  hymn  to  his  dead  friend  Hermeias  (who  was  a  eunuch, 
and  as  such  held  peculiarly  unworthy  of  being  addressed  as  on  a 
level  with  semi-divine  heroes),^  it  could  hardly  have  been  undertaken 
at  all  unless  he  had  given  solider  pretexts.  The  threatened  prosecu- 
tion he  avoided  by  leaving  the  city,  dying  shortly  afterwards.  Siding 
as  he  did  with  the  Macedonian  faction,  he  had  put  himself  out  of 
touch  with  the  democratic  instincts  of  the  Athenians,  and  so  doubly 
failed  to  affect  their  thinking.  But  nonetheless  the  attack  upon 
him  by  the  democrats  was  a  political  stratagem.  The  prosecution 
for  blasphemy  had  now  become  a  recognized  weapon  in  politics  for 
all  who  had  more  piety  than  principle,  and  perhaps  for  some  who 
had  neither.     And   Aristotle,   well   aware   of    the   temper   of    the 

•  OQ^®^^^^.®^'  ■^***-  ^^  Philos,  Eng.  tr.  i,  25.  Cp.  Lange,  Geschichte  des  Materialismus, 
*'r  "^^  '^^-  i-  52-54),  and  the  remarkable  verdict  of  Bacon  (De  Augmentis,  bk.  iii,  ch.  4; 
Viorks,  1-vol.  ed.  1905,  p.  471;  cp.  Advancement  of  Learning,  bk.  ii.  p.  96)  as  to  the 
superiority  of  the  natural  philosophy  of  Demokritos  over  those  of  Plato  and  Aristotle. 
Bacon  immediately  qualifies  his  verdict ;  but  he  repeats  it,  as  regards  both  Aristotle  and 
Plato,  in  the  Novmin  Organum,  bk.  i,  aph.  96.  See.  however,  Mr.  Benn's  final  eulogy  of 
Plato  as  a  thinker,  i,  273.  and  Murray's  Anc.  Greek  Lit.  pp.  311-13. 

j  Laws,  X.  908 ;  Jowett,  v,  295.  8  Qrote.  History,  vii,  168. 

*  Cp.  Qrote,  Aristotle,  2nd  ed.  p.  10. 

°  Origen,  Against  Celsus,  ii,  13:  cp.  i,  65 ;  iii,  75;  vii,  3. 

"  Grote,  Aristotle,  p.  13. 

N 


178 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


population  around  him,  had  on  the  whole  been  so  guarded  in  his  utter- 
ance that  a  fantastic  pretext  had  to  be  fastened  on  for  his  undoing. 
Prof.  Bain  (Practical  Essays,  p.  273),  citing  Grote's  remark 
on  the  "  cautious  prose  compositions  of  Aristotle,"  comments 
thus  •  "  That  is  to  say,  the  execution  of  Sokrates  was  always 
before  his  eyes ;  he  had  to  pare  his  expressions  so  as  not  to 
give  offence  to  Athenian  orthodoxy.  We  can  never  know  the 
full  bearings  of  such  a  disturbing  force.  The  editors  of  Aristotle 
complain  of  the  corruption  of  his  text :  a  far  worse  corruption 
lies  behind.  In  Greece  Sokrates  alone  had  the  courage  of  his 
opinions.  While  his  views  as  to  a  future  life,  for  example,  are 
plain  and  frank,  the  real  opinion  of  Aristotle  on  the  question 
is  an  insoluble  problem."  (See,  however,  the;  passage  in  the 
Metaphysics  cited  below.)  *•       • 

The  opinion  of  Grote  and  Bain  as  to  Aristotle  s  caution  is 
fully  coincided  in  by  Lange,  who  writes  (Gesch.  des  Mater,  i,  63) : 
*•  More  conservative  than  Plato  and  Sokrates,  Aristotle  every- 
where seeks  to  attach  himself  as  closely  as  possible  to  tradition, 
to  popular  notions,  to  the  ideas  embodied  in  common  speech, 
and  his  ethical  postulates  diverge  as  little  as  may  be  from  the 
customary  morals  and  laws  of  Greek  States.     He  has  therefore 
been   at   all   times   the   favourite   philosopher  of   conservative 
schools  and  movements." 
It  is  clear,  nevertheless,  if  we  can  be  sure  of  his  writings,  that 
he  was  a  monotheist,  but  a  monotheist  with  no  practical  religion. 
"  Excluding  such  a  thing  as  divine  interference  with  Nature,  his 
theology,  of  course,  excludes  the  possibility  of  revelation,  inspiration, 
miracles,    and   grace."'     In   a   passage   in   the   Metaphysics,^  after 
elaborating  his  monistic  conception  of  Nature,  he  dismisses  in  one 
or  two  terse  sentences  the  whole  current  religion  as  a  mass  of  myth 
framed  to  persuade  the  multitude,  in  the  interest  of  law  and  order." 
His  influence  must  thus  have  been  to  some  extent,  at  least,  favourable 
to  rational  science,  though  unhappily  his  own  science  is  too  often  a 
blundering  reaction  against  the  surmises  of  earher  thinkers  with  a 
greater  gift  of  intuition  than  he,  who  was  rather  a  methodizer  than 
a  discoverer.'     What  was  worst  in  his  thinking  was  its  tendency  to 

1  Benn,  Greek  Fhilosophers,  i.  352.  Mr.  Bean  refutes  Sir  A.  Grant's  view  that  Aristotle'^3 
creed  was  a  "vague  pantheism";  but  that  phrase  loosely  conveys  the  i-^ea  of  its  non- 
religiousness.    It  might  be  called  a  Lucretian  monotheism.    Cp.  Benn.  i.  294.  and  Urews. 

Gesch.  des  Monismus,  p.257.  ,  v     ,«,  ^     •     „-.  of^;«rt^r,f  oa  fr.  miafi  the 

2  Metaphysics,  xi  (xii).  8,  13  (p.  1074.  5).    The  passage  i?  so  f  ringent  as  to  ra^^^^^ 
Question  how  he  came  to  run  the  risk  in  this  one  case.    It  was  Pro^^bly  a  late  writint,. 
2nd  he  may  have  taken  it  for  granted  that  the  Metaphysics  would  never  be  read  by  the 

°''8^?;p°*\he  severe  criticisms  of  Benn,  vol.  i.  ch.  vi;  Berry  S7ioH  If  j.«.Q/4«<m^^^^ 
and  Lange,  Ges.  des  Mater,  i.  61-68.  and  notes,  citing  Eucken  and  ^^^^ler.    Ar  stotle  s 
science  is  v'ery  much  on  a  par  with  that  of  Bacon,  who  saw  ^^'\'»^^^J.\^^^^\°^^^^ 
into  the  same  kinds  of  error.    Both  insisted  on  an  inductive  ^e^hod.  and  both  tr^^^^^^ 
gressed  from  it.    See.  however.  Langes  summary.  P- 69.  also  p.  7,  as  **«  \^®  "fj^^-^,^^^^^^^ 
WheweU ;  and  ch.  v  of  Soury's  Breviaire  de  I'histoire  du  Materiahsim,  IbSl,  especially  end. 


PBEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


179 


apriorism,  which  made  it  in  a  later  age  so  adaptable  to  the  purposes 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  Thus  his  doctrines  of  the  absolute 
levity  of  fire  and  of  nature's  abhorrence  of  a  vacuum  set  up  a 
hypnotizing  verbalism,  and  his  dictum  that  the  earth  is  the  centre 
of  the  universe  was  fatally  helpful  to  Christian  obscurantism.  For 
the  rest,  while  guiltless  of  Plato's  fanaticism,  he  had  no  scheme  of 
reform  whatever,  and  was  as  far  as  any  other  Greek  from  the  thought 
of  raising  the  mass  by  instruction.  His  own  science,  indeed,  was 
not  progressive,  save  as  regards  his  collation  of  facts  in  biology ; 
and  his  political  ideals  were  rather  reactionary ;  his  clear  perception 
of  the  nature  of  the  population  problem  leaving  him  in  the  earlier 
attitude  of  Malthus,  and  his  lack  of  sympathetic  energy  making  him 
a  defender  of  slavery  w^hen  other  men  had  condemned  it.^  He  w^as 
in  some  aspects  the  greatest  brain  of  the  ancient  world ;  and  he  left 
it,  at  the  close  of  the  great  Grecian  period,  without  much  faith  in 
man,  while  positing  for  the  modern  world  its  vaguest  conception  of 
Deity.  Plato  and  Aristotle  between  them  had  reduced  the  ancient 
God-idea  to  a  thin  abstraction.  Plato  would  not  have  it  that  God 
was  the  author  of  evil,  thus  leaving  evil  unaccounted  for  save  by 
sorcery.  Aristotle's  God  does  nothing  at  all,  existing  merely  as  a 
potentiality  of  thought.  And  yet  upon  those  positions  were  to  be 
founded  the  theisms  of  the  later  world.  Plato  had  not  striven,  and 
Aristotle  had  failed,  to  create  an  adequate  basis  for  thought  in  real 
science  ;  and  the  w^orld  gravitated  back  to  religion. 

[In  previous  editions  I  remarked  that  "the  lack  of  fresh  science, 
which  was  the  proximate  cause  of  the  stagnation  of  Greek 
thought,  has  been  explained  like  other  things  as  a  result  of 
race  qualities:  *the  Athenians,'  says  Mr.  Benn  (The  Greek 
Philosophers,  i,  42),  'had  no  genius  for  natural  science:  none 

of   them   were   ever  distinguished   as   savans It  was,  they 

thought,  a  miserable  trifling  [and]  waste  of  time Pericles, 

indeed,   thought  differently '      On  the  other  hand,  Lange 

decides   (i,  6)   **  that  with   the   freedom    and   boldness    of   the 

Hellenic    spirit    w^as    combined the    talent    for    scientific 

deduction.*  These  contrary  views,"  I  observed,  "  seem 
alike  arbitrary.  If  Mr.  Benn  means  that  other  Hellenes  had 
what  the  Athenians  lacked,  the  answer  is  that  only  special 
social  conditions  could  have  set  up  such  a  difference,  and  that 
it  could  not  be  innate,  but  must  be  a  mere  matter  of  usage." 
Mr.  Benn  has  explained  to  me  that  he  does  not  dissent  from 
this  view,  and  that  I  had  not  rightly  gathered  his  from  the 
passage  I  quoted.     In  his  later  work,  The  Philosophy  of  Greece 

1  Polities,  i,  2. 


180  tEEETHOXJGHT  IN  GREECE 

considered  in  relation  to  the  character  and  history  of  its  people 
(1898),  he  has  pointed  out  how,  in  the  period  of  Hippias  and 
Prodikos,  "  at  Athens  in  particular  young  men  threw  themselves 
with  ardour  into  the  investigation  of  "  problems  of  cosmography, 
astronomy,  meteorology,  and  comparative  anatomy  (p.  138). 
The  hindering  forces  were  Athenian  bigotry  (pp.  113-14,  171) 
and  the  mischievous  influence  of  Sokrates  (pp.  165,  173). 

Speaking  broadly,  we  may  say  that  the  Chaldeans  were 
forward  in  astronomy  because  their  climate  favoured  it  to 
begin  with,  and  religion  and  their  superstitions  did  so  later. 
Hippokrates  of  Kos  became  a  great  physician  because,  with 
natural  capacity,  he  had  the  opportunity  to  compare  many 
practices.  The  Athenians  failed  to  carry  on  the  sciences,  not 
because  the  faculty  or  the  taste  was  lacking  among  them,  but 
because  their  political  and  artistic  interests,  for  one  thing, 
preoccupied  them— e.g.,  Sokrates  and  Plato  ;  and  because,  for 
another,  their  popular  religion,  popularly  supported,  menaced 
the  students  of  physics.  But  the  lonians,  who  had  savans, 
failed  equally  to  progress  after  the  Alexandrian  period  ;  the 
explanation  being  again  not  stoppage  of  faculty,  but  the  advent 
of  conditions  unfavourable  to  the  old  intellectual  life,  which  in 
any  case,  as  we  saw,  had  been  first  set  up  by  Babylonian 
contacts.  (Compare,  on  the  ethnological  theorem  of  Cousin, 
G.  Breton,  Essai  sur  la  podsie  philos.  en  Grdce,  p.  10.)  On  the 
other  hand,  Lange's  theory  of  gifts  "  innate  "  in  the  Hellenic 
mind  in  general  is  the  old  racial  fallacy.  Potentialities  are 
"innate"  in  all  populations,  according  to  their  culture  stage, 
and  it  was  their  total  environment  that  specialized  the  Greeks 
as  a  community.] 

§9 

The  overthrow  of  the  "  free  "  political  life  of  Athens  was  followed  by 
a  certain  increase  in  intellectual  activity,  the  result  of  throwing  back 
the  remaining  store  of  energy  on  the  life  of  the  mind.  By  this  time 
an  almost  open  unbelief  as  to  the  current  tales  concerning  the  Gods 
would  seem  to  have  become  general  among  educated  people,  the 
withdrawal  of  the  old  risk  of  impeachment  by  political  factions 
being  so  far  favourable  to  outspokenness.  It  is  on  record  that  the 
historian  EPHOROS  (of  Cumae  in  Molm :  fl.  350  B.C.),  who  was  a 
pupil  of  Isocrates,  openly  hinted  in  his  work  at  his  disbelief  in  the 
oracle  of  Apollo,  and  in  fabulous  traditions  generally.*  In  other 
directions  there  were  similar  signs  of  freethought.  The  new  schools 
of  philosophy  founded  by  Zeno  the  Stoic  (fl.  280 :  d.  263  or  259) 

1  Sfcrabo.  bk.  ix.  ch.  iii.  §  11.    Strabo  reproaches  Epboros  with  repeating  t^«  current 
legends  all  the  same ;  but  it  seems  clear  that  he  anticipated  the  critical  tactic  of  CJiODon. 


EEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


181 


and  Epicurus  (341-270),  whatever  their  defects,  compare  not  ill 
with  those  of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  exhibiting  greater  ethical  sanity 
and  sincerity  if  less  metaphysical  subtlety.  Of  metaphysics  there 
had  been  enough  for  the  age  :  what  it  needed  was  a  rational  philo- 
sophy of  life.  But  the  loss  of  political  freedom,  although  thus  for 
a  time  turned  to  account,  was  fatal  to  continuous  progress.  The 
first  great  thinkers  had  all  been  free  men  in  a  politically  free 
environment :  the  atmosphere  of  cowed  subjection,  especially  after 
the  advent  of  the  Eomans,  could  not  breed  their  like ;  and  originative 
energy  of  the  higher  order  soon  disappeared.  Sane  as  was  the  moral 
philosophy  of  Epicurus,  and  austere  as  was  that  of  Zeno,  they  are 
alike  static  or  quietist,^  the  codes  of  a  society  seeking  a  regulating 
and  sustaining  principle  rather  than  hopeful  of  new  achievement  or 
new  truth.  And  the  universal  skepticism  of  Pyrrho  has  the  same 
effect  of  suggesting  that  what  is  wanted  is  not  progress,  but  balance. 
It  is  significant  that  he,  who  carried  the  Sokratic  profession  of 
Nescience  to  the  typical  extreme  of  doctrinal  Nihilism,  was  made 
high-priest  of  his  native  town  of  Elis,  and  had  statues  erected  in  his 
honour.^ 

Considered  as  freethinkers,  all  three  men  tell  at  once  of  the 
critical  and  of  the  reactionary  work  done  by  the  previous  age. 
Pyrrho,  the  universal  doubter,  appears  to  have  taken  for  granted, 
with  the  whole  of  his  followers,  such  propositions  as  that  some 
animals  (not  insects)  are  produced  by  parthenogenesis,  that  some 
live  in  the  fire,  and  that  the  legend  of  the  Phoenix  is  true.^  Such 
credences  stood  for  the  arrest  of  biological  science  in  the  Sokratic 
age,  with  Aristotle,  so  often  mistakenly,  at  work  ;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  Sokratic  skepticism  visibly  motives  the  play  of 
systematic  doubt  on  the  dogmas  men  had  learned  to  question. 
Zeno,  again,  was  substantially  a  monotheist ;  Epicurus,  adopting 
but  not  greatly  developing  the  science  of  Demokritos,^  turned  the 
Gods  into  a  far-off  band  of  glorious  spectres,  untroubled  by  human 
needs,  dwelling  for  ever  in  immortal  calm,  neither  ruling  nor  caring 

^  As  to  the  Stoics,  cp.  Zeller,  S  34,  4 ;  Benn,  The  Philosophy  of  Greece,  pp.  255-56.  As  to 
Epicurus,  cp.  Benn,  p.  261. 

'^  Diog.  Laert.  bk.  ix,  ch.  xi,  5,  §  64.  The  lengthy  notice  given  by  Diogenes  shows  the 
impression  Pyrrho's  teaching  made.  See  a  full  account  of  it,  so  far  as  known,  in  the 
Rev.  J.  Owen's  Evenings  with  the  Skeptics,  1881,  i,  287  sq.,  and  the  monograph  of 
Zimmerman,  there  cited. 

8  These  propositions  occur  in  the  first  of  the  ten  Pyrrhonian  tropoi  or  modes  (Diog. 
Laert.  bk.  ix.  ch.  xi,  9),  of  which  the  authorship  is  commonly  assigned  to  ^nesidemos 
(fl.  80-50).  Cp.  Owen,  Evenings  with  the  Skeptics,  i,  290,  322-23.  But  as  given  by  Diogenes 
they  seem  to  derive  from  the  early  Pyrrhonian  school. 

*  Thus,  where  Democritos  pronounced  the  sun  to  be  of  vast  size,  Epicurus  held  it  to 
be  no  larger  than  it  seemed  (Cicero,  De  Finibus,  i,  6)— a  view  also  loosely  ascribed  to 
Herakleitos  (Diog.  Laert.  bk.  ix,  ch.  i,  6,  §  7).  See,  however,  Wallace's  Epicureanism 
(  Ancient  Philosophies"  series),  1889,  pp.  176  sq.,  186  sq.,  266,  as  to  the  scientific  merits  of 
the  system. 


182 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECB 


to  rule  the  world  of  men.*  In  coming  to  this  surprising  compromise, 
Epicurus,  indeed,  probably  did  not  carry  with  him  the  w^hole 
intelligence  even  of  his  own  school.  His  friend,  the  second 
Metrodoros  of  Lampsakos,  seems  to  have  been  the  most  stringent 
of  all  the  censors  of  Homer,  wholly  ignoring  his  namesake's 
attempts  to  clear  the  bard  of  impiety.  "  He  even  advised  men 
not  to  be  ashamed  to  confess  their  utter  ignorance  of  Homer,  to 
the  extent  of  not  knowing  w^hether  Hector  was  a  Greek  or  a 
Trojan."  ^  Such  austerity  towards  myths  can  hardly  have  been 
compatible  with  the  acceptance  of  the  residuum  of  Epicurus.  That, 
however,  became  the  standing  creed  of  the  sect,  and  a  fruitful 
theme  of  derision  to  its  opponents.  Doubtless  the  comfort  of 
avoiding  direct  conflict  with  the  popular  beliefs  had  a  good  deal 
to  do  with  the  acceptance  of  the  doctrine. 

This  strange  retention  of  the  theorem  of  the  existence  of 
anthropomorphic  Gods,  with  a  flat  denial  that  they  did  anything 
in  the  universe,  might  be  termed  the  great  peculiarity  of  average 
ancient  rationalism,  w^ere  it  not  that  what  makes  it  at  all  intelligible 
for  us  is  just  the  similar  practice  of  modern  non-Christian  theists. 
The  Gods  of  antiquity  were  non-creative,  but  strivers  and  meddlers 
and  answerers  of  prayer ;  and  ancient  rationalism  relieved  them  of 
their  striving  and  meddling,  leaving  them  no  active  or  governing 
function  whatever,  but  for  the  most  part  cherishing  their  phantasms. 
The  God  of  modern  Christendom  had  been  at  once  a  creator  and  a 
governor,  ruling,  meddling,  punishing,  rewarding,  and  hearing  prayer ; 
and  modern  theism,  unable  to  take  the  atheistic  or  agnostic  plunge, 
relieves  him  of  all  interference  in  things  human  or  cosmic,  but 
retains  him  as  a  creative  abstraction  who  somehow  set  up  "  law," 
whether  or  not  he  made  all  things  out  of  nothing.  The  psychological 
process  in  the  two  cases  seems  to  be  the  same — an  erection  of  a3sthetic 
habit  into  a  philosophic  dogma,  and  an  accommodation  of  phrase  to 
popular  prejudice. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  logical  and  psychological  crudities 
of  Epicureanism,  how^ever,  it  counted  for  much  as  a  deliverance  of 
men  from  superstitious  fears ;  and  nothing  is  more  remarkable  in 
the  history  of  ancient  philosophy  than  the  affectionate  reverence 
paid  to  the  founder's  memory*  on  this  score  through  whole  centuries. 
The  powerful  Lucretius  sounds  his  highest  note  of  praise  in  telling 

1  The  Epicurean  doctrine  on  this  and  other  heads  is  chiefly  to  be  gathered  from  the 
great  poem  of  Lucretius.  I'rof.  Wallace's  excellent  treatise  gives  all  the  clues.  See 
p.  202  as  to  the  Epicurean  God-idea. 

2  Grote.  History,  i.  395,  note;  Plutarch.  Non  posse  suamter  vivi  sec.  Epicur. 

8  Compare  Wallace.  Epicureanism,  pp.  64-71.  and  ch.  xi;  and  Mackintosh,  On  the 
Progress  of  Ethical  Philosoi}hv,  4th  ed.  p.  29. 


EEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


183 


how  this  Greek  had  first  of   all  men  freed  human  life  from  the 

crushing  load  of  religion,  daring  to  pass  the  flaming  ramparts  of  the 

world,  and  by  his  victory  putting  men  on  an  equality  with  heaven.^ 

The  laughter-loving  Lucian  two  hundred  years  later  grows  gravely 

eloquent  on  the  same  theme.^     And  for  generations  the  effect  of  the 

Epicurean  check  on  orthodoxy  is  seen  in  the  whole  intellectual  life 

of  the  Greek  world,  already  predisposed  in  that  direction.^    The  new 

schools   of   the  Cynics  and   the   Cyrenaics   had   alike   shown   the 

influence  in  their  perfect  freedom  from  all  religious  preoccupation, 

when   they  were  not   flatly   dissenting   from   the   popular  beliefs. 

Antisthenes,    the   founder   of   the   former   school   (fl.  400  B.C.), 

though  a  pupil  of  Sokrates,  had  been  explicitly  anti-polytheistic, 

and  an  opponent  of  anthropomorphism.^     Aristippos  of   Cyrene, 

also  a  pupil  of  Socrates,  who  a  little  later  founded  the  Hedonic 

or  Cyrenaic  sect,  seems  to  have  put  theology  entirely  aside.     One 

of  the  later  adherents  of  the  school,  Theodoros,  was  like  Diagoras 

labelled  "  the  Atheist "  ^  by  reason  of  the  directness  of  his  opposition 

to  religion ;   and  in  the  Eome  of  Cicero  he  and  Diagoras  are  the 

notorious   atheists   of   history.^     To  Theodoros,  who  had   a   large 

following,  is  attributed  an  influence  over  the  thought  of  Epicurus,*^ 

who,  however,  took  the  safer  position  of   a  verbal   theism.     The 

atheist  is  said  to  have  been  menaced  by  Athenian  law  in  the  time 

of  Demetrius  Phalereus,  who  protected  him  ;  and  there  is  even  a 

story  that  he  was  condemned  to  drink  hemlock ;®  but  he  was  not  of 

the  type  that  meets  martyrdom,  though  he  might  go  far  to  provoke 

it.®     Eoaming  from  court  to  court,  he  seems  never  to  have  stooped 

to  flatter  any  of  his  entertainers.     "  You  seem  to  me,"  said  the 

steward  of  Lysimachos  of  Thrace  to  him  on  one  occasion,  "to  be 

the  only  man  who  ignores  both  Gods  and  kings."  ^ 

In  the  same  age  the  same  freethinking  temper  is  seen  in  Stilpo 
of  Megara  (fl.  307),  of  the  school  of  Euclides,  who  is  said  to  have 


1  De  rernm  vatura,  i.  62-79. 

2  Alexander  sen  Pseudomantis,  cc.  25,  38,  47,  61.  cited  by  Wallace,  pp.  24&-50. 

8  The  repute  of  the  Epicureans  for  irreligion  appears  in  the  fact  that  when  Romanized 
Athens  had  consented  to  admit  foreigners  to  the  once  strictly  Athenian  mysteries  of 
Eleusis.  the  Epicureans  were  excluded. 

*  Cicero,  De  natura  Deoriim,  i,  13;  Clemens  Alexandrinus.  Stromata,  v,  14;  Sextus 
Empiricus,  Adv.  Mathematicos,  ix,  51,  55. 

5  Diog.  Laert.  bk  ii,  ch.  viii,  §§  7, 11-14  (86.  97-100).  He  was  also  nicknamed  the  God." 
Id.  and  ch.  xii,  5  (§  116).  ^  Cicero,  De  natura  Deorum,  1, 1,  23,  42. 

7  Diogenes,  as  last  cited,  §  12  (97).  »  Id.  §§  15, 16  (101-102). 

9  Professor  Wallace's  account  of  the  court  of  Lysimachos  of  Thrace  as  a  favourite 
resort  of  emancipated  freethinkers"  {Epicureanism,  p.  42)  is  hardly  borne  out  by  his 
authority,  Diogenes  Daertius,  who  represents  Lysimachos  as  unfriendly  towards 
Theodoros.    Hipparchia  the  Cynic,  too,  opposed  rather  than  agreed  with  the  atheist. 

10  Diog..  last  cit.  Cp.  Cicero.  Tusculans,  ii,  43.  Philo  Judaeus  {Quod  Omnis  Probus 
Liber,  c.  18;  cp.  Plutarch,  De  Exilio,  c.  16)  has  a  story  of  his  repelling  taunts  about  his 
banishment  by  comparing  himself  to  Hercules,  who  was  put  ashore  by  the  alarmed 
Argonauts  because  of  his  weight.  But  he  is  further  made  to  boast  extravagantly,  and  in 
doing  so  to  speak  as  a  believer  in  myths  and  deities.   The  testimony  has  thus  little  value. 


184 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


been  brought  before  the  Areopagus  for  the  ofifence  of  saying  that  the 
Pheidian  statue  of  Athen6  was  "  not  a  God,"  and  to  have  met  the 
charge  with  the  jest  that  she  was  in  reality  not  a  God  but 
a  Goddess;  whereupon  he  was  exiled/  The  stories  told  of  him 
make  it  clear  that  he  was  an  unbeliever,  usually  careful  not  to  betray 
himself.  EucHdes,  too,  with  his  optimistic  pantheism,  was  clearly 
a  heretic  ;  though  his  doctrine  that  evil  is  non-ens^  later  became  the 
creed  of  some  Christians.  Yet  another  professed  atheist  was  the 
witty  BlON  of  Borysthenes,  pupil  of  Theodoros,  of  whom  it  is  told, 
in  a  fashion  famihar  to  our  own  time,  that  in  sickness  he  grew  pious 
through  fear.^  Among  his  positions  was  a  protest  or  rather  satire 
against  the  doctrine  that  the  Gods  punished  children  for  the  crimes 
of  their  fathers.*  In  the  other  schools,  SPEUSIPPOS  (11.  343),  the 
nephew  of  Plato,  leant  to  monotheism  f  Strato  of  Lampsakos,  the 
Peripatetic  (fl.  290),  called  '*  the  Naturalist,"  taught  sheer  pantheism, 
anticipating  Laplace  in  declaring  that  he  had  no  need  of  the  action 
of  the  Gods  to  account  for  the  making  of  the  world  ;®  DiKAlAECHOS 
(fl.  326-287),  another  disciple  of  Aristotle,  denied  the  existence  of 
separate  souls,  and  the  possibility  of  foretelling  the  future;^  and 
Aristo  and  Cleanthes,  disciples  of  Zeno,  varied  likewise  in  the 
direction  of  pantheism ;  the  latter's  monotheism,  as  expressed  in  his 
famous  hymn,  being  one  of  several  doctrines  ascribed  to  him.® 

Contemporary  with  Epicurus  and  Zeno  and  Pyrrho,  too,  was 
EVEMEROS  (Euhemerus),  whose  peculiar  propaganda  against 
Godism  seems  to  imply  theoretic  atheism.  As  an  atheist  he  was 
vihfied  in  a  manner  familiar  to  modern  ears,  the  Alexandrian  poet 
Callimachus  labelling  him  an  "  arrogant  old  man  vomiting  impious 
books." ^  His  lost  work,  of  which  only  a  few  extracts  remain, 
undertook  to  prove  that  all  the  Gods  had  been  simply  famous  men, 
deified  after  death ;  the  proof,  however,  being  by  way  of  a  fiction 
about  old  inscriptions  found  in  an  imaginary  island.^°  As  above 
noted,"  the  idea  may  have  been  borrowed  from  skeptical  Phoenicians, 
the  principle  having  already  been  monotheistically  applied  by  the 
Bible-making    Jews,*^   though,    on   the    other    hand,    it  had   been 


1  Diog.  bk.  ii,  ch.  xii,  §  5  (116).  a  Id.  ch.  x,  §  2  (106). 

8  Iff.  ch.  xii,  §  5  (117)  and  bk.  iv,  ch.  vii.  5§  4,  9. 10  (52,  54,  55). 

*  Plutarch.  Be  defectu  orac.  ch.  19.  Bion  seems  to  have  made  an  impression  on 
Plutarch,  who  often  quotes  him.  though  it  be  but  to  contradict  him. 

5  Cicero.  De  natura  Deorum,  i,  13. 

6  Id.  ib.;  Academics,  iv.  38. 

7  Cicero.  Tusciilans,  i.  10.  31 ;  Academics,  ii.  39;  and  refs.  in  ed.  Davis. 

e  Sir  A.  Grant's  tr.  of  the  hymn  is  given  in  Capes's  Stoicism  ("Chief  Ancient  Philo- 
sophies" series).  1880,  p.  41;  and  the  Greek  text  by  Mabaffy,  Greek  Life  and  Thought, 
p.  262.    Cp.  Cicero,  De  nat.  Deor.  i,  14.  »    Pseudo-Plutarch,  De  placitisphilosoph.  i.  7. 

JO  Eusebius.  Pr(^p.  Evang.  bk.  ii,  ch.  2;  Plutarch,  Isis  and  Osiris,  ch.  23.  "  P.  80. 

12  It  may  be  noted  that  Diogenes  of  Babylon,  a  foUower  of  Chrysippos,  applied  the 
prmciple  to  Greek  mythology.    Cicero,  De  nat.  Deor.  i.  15. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GKEECE 


185 


artistically   and   to   all   appearance    uncritically   acted   on   in   the 
Homeric  epopees.     It  may  or  may  not  then  have  been  by  way  of 
deliberate  or  reasoning    Ev^merism  that  certain   early  Greek  and 
Eoman  deities  were  transformed,  as  we  have  seen,  into  heroes  or 
Jietairai}     In  any  case,  the  principle  seems  to  have  had  considerable 
vogue  in  the  later  Hellenistic  world  ;  but  with  the  effect  rather  of 
paving  the  way  for  new  cults  than  of  setting  up  scientific  rationalism 
in  place  of  the  old  ones.     Quite  a  number  of  writers  like  Palaiphatos, 
without  going  so  far  as  Ev6meros,  sought  to  reduce  myths  to  natural 
possibihties  and  events,  by  way  of  mediating  between  the  credulous 
and  the  incredulous.'^     Their  method  is  mostly  the  naif  one  revived 
by  the  Abb6  Banier  in  the  eighteenth  century  of  reducing  marvels 
to  verbal  misconceptions.     Thus   for    Palaiphatos    the    myth    of 
Kerberos    came   from    the   facts    that    the    city   Trikarenos    was 
commonly  spoken  of  as  a  beautiful  and  great  dog  ;  and  that  Geryon, 
who  Hved   there,    had   great   dogs   called    Kerberoi ;    Actgeon   was 
"  devoured  by  his  dogs  "  in  the  sense  that  he  neglected  his  affairs 
and  wasted  his  time  in  hunting;  the  Amazons  were  shaved  men, 
clad  as  were  the  women  in  Thrace,  and  so  on.^     Palaiphatos  and 
the    Herakleitos  who    also   wrote    De    Incredihilihus    agree   that 
Pasiphae's  bull  was  a  man  named  Tauros  ;  and  the  latter  writer 
similarly  explains  that  Scylla  was  a  beautiful  hetaira  with,  avaricious 
hangers-on,  and  that  the  harpies  were  ladies  of  the  same  profession. 
If  the  method  seems  childish,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  as  regards 
the  explanation  of  supernatural  events  it  was  adhered  to  by  German 
theologians  of  a  century  ago  ;  and  that  its  creduHty  in  incredulity  is 
still  to  be  seen  in  the  current  view  that  every  narrative  in  the  sacred 
books  is  to  be  taken  as  necessarily  standing  for  a  fact  of  some 
kind. 

One  of  the  inferrible  effects  of  the  Evemerist  method  was  to 
facilitate  for  the  time  the  adoption  of  the  Egyptian  and  eastern 
usage  of  deifying  kings.  It  has  been  plausibly  argued  that  this 
practice  stands  not  so  much  for  superstition  as  for  skepticism,  its 
opponents  being  precisely  the  orthodox  believers,  and  its  promoters 
those  who  had  learned  to  doubt  the  actuality  of  the  traditional  Gods. 
Ev^merism  would  clinch  such  a  tendency  ;  and  it  is  noteworthy 
that  Ev^meros  lived  at  the  court  of  Kassander  (319-296  B.C.)  in 
a  period  in  which  every  remaining  member  of  the  family  of  the 
deified  Alexander  had  perished,  mostly  by  violence ;  while  the  con- 


'  Above,  p.  so.  note  4.  2  gee  Grote.  i.  371-74  and  notes. 

^  Palaiphatos,  De  Incredihilihus :  De  Actceone,  De  Geryone,  De  Cerbero,  DeAmazonibus, 
etc. 


186 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GKEECE 


temporary  Ptolemy  I  of  Egypt  received  the  title  of  Soter,  Saviour," 
from  the  people  of  Khodes/  It  is  to  be  observed,  however,  that 
while  in  the  next  generation  Antiochus  I  of  Syria  received  the  same 
title,  and  his  successor  Antiochus  II  that  of  Theos,  "  God,"  the  usage 
passes  away ;  Ptolemy  III  being  named  merely  EvergeUs,  '*  the 
Benefactor"  (of  the  priests),  and  even  Antiochus  III  only  "the 
Great."  Superstition  was  not  to  be  ousted  by  a  political  exploitation 
of  its  machinery.'* 

In  Athens  the  democracy,  restored  in  a  subordinate  form  by 
Kassander's  opponent,  Demetrius  Poliork6tes  (307  B.C.)i  actually 
tried  to  put  down  the  philosophic  schools,  all  of  which,  but  the 
Aristotelian  in  particular,  w^ere  anti-democratic,  and  doubtless  also 
comparatively  irreligious.  Epicurus  and  some  of  his  antagonists 
were  exiled  within  a  year  of  his  opening  his  school  (306  B.C.)  ;  but 
the  law  was  repealed  in  the  following  year.^  Theophrastos,  the 
head  of  the  Aristotehan  school,  was  indicted  in  the  old  fashion  for 
impiety,  which  seems  to  have  consisted  in  denouncing  animal 
sacrifice."*  These  repressive  attempts,  however,  failed ;  and  no 
others  followed  at  Athens  in  that  era  ;  though  in  the  next  century 
the  Epicureans  seem  to  have  been  expelled  from  Lythos  in  Crete 
and  from  Messen6  in  the  Peloponnesos,  nominally  for  their  atheism, 
in  reality  probably  on  political  grounds."  Thus  Zeno  was  free  to 
publish  a  treatise  in  which,  besides  far  out-going  Plato  in  schemes 
for  dragooning  the  citizens  into  an  ideal  life,  he  proposed  a  State 
without  temples  or  statues  of  the  Gods  or  law  courts  or  gymnasia.*^ 
In  the  same  age  there  is  trace  of  "an  interesting  case  of  rationalism 
even  in  the  Delphic  oracle," '  The  people  of  the  island  of  Astypalaia, 
plagued  by  hares  or  rabbits,  solemnly  consulted  the  oracle,  which 
briefly  advised  them  to  keep  dogs  and  take  to  hunting.  About  the 
same  time  we  find  Lachares,  temporarily  despot  at  Athens,  plunder- 
ing the  shrine  of  Pallas  of  its  gold.®  Even  in  the  general  public 
there  must  have  been  a  strain  of  surviving  rationalism  ;  for  among 
the  fragments  of  Menander  (fl.  300),  who,  in  general,  seems  to  have 


1  E.  R.  Bevan  (art.  "The  Deification  of  Kings  in  the  Greek  Cities"  in  Eiig.  Histnr. 
Bev.  Oct.  1901,  p.  631)  argues  that  the  practice  was  not  primarily  eastern,  but  Greek.  Sec, 
however.  Herodotos.  vii,  136;  Arr idn,  Anabas.  Alexand.  iv,il;  Q.  Curtius,  viii,  5-8;  and 
Plutarch.  Artaxerxes.  ch.  22.  as  to  the  normal  attitude  of  the  Greeks,  even  as  lato  as 
Alexander. 

2  See  Plutarch,  Isis  and  Osiris,  chs.  22, 23,  for  the  later  Hellenistic  tone  on  the  subject 
of  apotheosis  apart  from  tlie  official  practice  of  the  empire. 

3  Gibbon,  ch.  xl.    Bohn  ed.  iv,  353,  and  note. 

^  Mahaffy,  Greek  Life,  pp.  133-35  ;  Diog.  Laert.  bk.  ii.  ch.  v,  5  (§  38). 

5  W'allace,  Epicureanism  (pp.  245-46).  citing  Suidas.  s.v.  Epicurus. 

6  Diogenes  Lagrtius.  bk.  vii,  ch.  i.  28  (§  33) ;  cp.  Origen,  Against  Celsus,  bk.  i,  ch.  5 ; 
Clemens  Alex.  Stromata,  bk.  v,  ch.  ii. 

'  Mahaffy.  as  cited,  p.  135.  n.;  Athenteua.  ix,  63  (p.  400). 

8  (297  B.C.)    Burckhardt,  Griechische  Culturgeschichte,  i,  213 ;  Pausanias,  i,  29. 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


187 


leant  to  a  well-bred  orthodoxy,^  there  are  some  speeches  savouring 
of  skepticism  and  pantheism.^ 

It  was  in  keeping  with  this  general  but  mostly  placid  and  non- 
polemic  latitudinarianism  that  the  New  Academy,  the  second  birth, 
or  rather  transformation,  of  the  Platonic  school,  in  the  hands  of 
Arkesilaos  and  the  great  Carneades  (213-129),  and  later  of  the 
Carthaginian  Clitomachos,  should  be  marked  by  that  species  of 
skepticism  thence  called  Academic — a  skepticism  which  exposed  the 
doubtfulness  of  current  religious  beliefs  without  going  the  Pyrrhonian 
length  of  denying  that  any  beliefs  could  be  proved,  or  even  denying 
the  existence  of  the  Gods. 

For  the  arguments  of  Carneades  against  the  Stoic  doctrine 
of  immortality  see  Cicero,  De  natura  Deorum,  iii,  12,  17  ;  and 
for  his  argument  against  theism  see  Sextus  Empiricus,  Adv. 
Math,  ix,  172,  183.  Mr.  Benn  pronounces  this  criticism  of 
theology  "the  most  destructive  that  has  ever  appeared,  the 
armoury  whence  religious  skepticism  ever  since  has  been 
supplied  "  (The  Philosophij  of  Greece,  etc.,  p.  258).  This  seems 
an  over-statement.  But  it  is  just  to  say,  as  does  Mr.  Whit- 
taker  {Priests,  Philosophers,  and  Prophets,  1911,  p.  60  ;  cp.  p.  86), 
that  "  there  has  never  been  a  more  drastic  attack  than  that  of 
Carneades,  which  furnished  Cicero  with  the  materials  for  his 
second  book.  On  Diviiiation ";  and,  as  does  Prof.  Martha 
(Etudes  Morales  sur  V antiquity,  1889,  p.  77),  that  no  philosophic 
or  religious  school  has  been  able  to  ignore  the  problems  which 
Carneades  raised. 

As  against  the  essentially  uncritical  Stoics,  the  criticism  of 
Carneades  is  sane  and  sound ;  and  he  has  been  termed  by  judicious 
moderns  "  the  greatest  skeptical  mind  of  antiquity  "  ^  and  "  the  Bayle 
of  Antiquity";*  though  he  seems  to  have  written  nothing.^  There  is 
such  a  concurrence  of  testimony  as  to  the  victorious  power  of  his 
oratory  and  the  invincible  skill  of  his  dialectic^  that  he  must  be 
reckoned  one  of  the  great  intellectual  and  rationalizing  forces  of  his 
day,  triumphing  as  he  did  in  the  two  diverse  arenas  of  Greece  and 
Rome.  His  disciple  and  successor  Clitomachos  said  of  him,  with 
Cicero's  assent,  that  he  had  achieved  a  labour  of  Hercules  '*  in 
liberating  our  souls  as  it  were  of  a  fierce  monster,  credulity,  con- 
jecture, rash  belief." '  He  was,  in  short,  a  mighty  antagonist  of 
thoughtless  beliefs,  clearing  the  ground  for  a  rational  life  ;  and  the 

\  Cp.  G.  Guizot,  Mhiandre,  1855,  pp.  324-27,  and  App. 

*  Cp.  Guizot,  pp.  327-31,  and  the  fragments  cited  by  Justin  Martyr,  Be  Moiiarchia,  ch.  5. 
^  Whittaker,  as  cited,  p.  85.  *  Martha,  as  cited,  p.  78. 

I  Diog.  La6rt.  bk.  iv,  ch.  ix,  8  (§  65). 
.  ^  Diog.  La6rt.  bk.  iv.  ch.  ix,  4,  5  (§  63);  Noumenios  in  Euseb.  Frcep.  Evang.   xiv,  8* 
Cicero.  De  Oratore,  ii.  38 ;  Lucilius,  cited  by  Lactantius,  Div.  Inst. 
7  Cicero,  Academics,  ii,  34. 


188 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


fact  that  he  was  chosen  with  Diogenes  the  Peripatetic  and  Critolaos 
the  Stoic  to  go  to  Kome  to  plead  the  cause  of  ruined  Athens, 
mulcted  in  an  enormous  fine,  proved  that  he  was  held  in  high 
honour  at  home.  Athens,  in  short,  was  not  at  this  stage  too 
superstitious."  Unreasoning  faith  was  largely  discredited  by 
philosophy. 

On  this  basis,  in  a  healthy  environment,  science  and  energy 
might  have  reared  a  constructive  rationalism;  and  for  a  time 
astronomy,  in  the  hands  of  Aristarchos  of  Samos  (third 
century  B.C.),  ERATOSTHENES  of  Gyrene,  the  second  keeper  of  the 
great  Alexandrian  library  (2nd  cent.  B.C.),  and  above  all  of  HlPPAR- 
CHOS  of  Nikaia,  who  did  most  of  his  work  in  the  island  of  Rhodes, 
was  carried  to  a  height  of  mastery  which  could  not  be  maintained, 
and  was  re-attained  only  in  modern  times.^  Thus  much  could  be 
accomplished  by  "endowment  of  research"  as  practised  by  the 
Ptolemies  at  Alexandria  ;  and  after  science  had  declined  with  the 
decline  of  their  polity,  and  still  further  under  Roman  rule,  the  new 
cosmopolitanism  of  the  second  century  of  the  empire  reverted  to 
the  principle  of  inteUigent  evocation,  producing  under  the  Antonines 
the  "  Second  "  School  of  Alexandria. 

But  the  social  conditions  remained  fundamentally  bad  ;  and  the 
earlier  greatness  was  never  recovered.  "  History  records  not  one 
astronomer  of  note  in  the  three  centuries  between  Hipparchos  and 
Ptolemy";  and  Ptolemy  (fl.  140  C.E.)  not  only  retrograded  into 
astronomical  error,  but  elaborated  on  oriental  lines  a  baseless  fabric 
of  astrology.'*  Other  science  mostly  decayed  Hkewise.  The  Greek 
world,  already  led  to  lower  intellectual  levels  by  the  sudden  ease 
and  wealth  opened  up  to  it  through  the  conquests  of  Alexander  and 
the  rule  of  his  successors,  was  cast  still  lower  by  the  Roman 
conquest.  Pliny,  extolling  Hipparchos  with  little  comprehension 
of  his  work,  must  needs  pronounce  him  to  have  "  dared  a  thing 
displeasing  to  God  "  in  numbering  the  stars  for  posterity.^  In  the 
air  of  imperialism,  stirred  by  no  other,  original  thought  could  not 
arise ;  and  the  mass  of  the  Greek-speaking  populations,  rich  and 
poor,  gravitated  to  the  level  of  the  intellectual*  and  emotional  life 
of   more   or   less   well-fed   slaves.      In   this   society   there   rapidly 

1  Berry,  Short  Hist,  of  Astron.  pp.  34-62;  Narrien.  Histor.  Account,  as  cited,  ch.  xi ; 
L.  U.  K.  Hist,  of  Astron.  ch.  vi.  It  is  noteworthy  that  Hipparchos.  like  so  many  of  his 
predecessors,  had  some  of  his  ideas  from  Babylonia.    Strabo,  p roam.  §  9. 

2  Ptolemy  normally  lumps  unbelief  in  religion  with  all  the  vices  of  character.  Cp.  the 
TetrabibloH,  iii.  18  (paraphrase  of  Troclus). 

^  Hist.  Nat.  ii,  26. 

4  Lucian's  dialogue  Philopseudes  gives  a  view  of  the  superstitions  of  average  Greeks 
in  the  second  century  of  our  era.  Cp.  Mr.  Williams's  note  to  the  first  Dialogue  oj  the 
Dead,  in  his  tr.  p.  87. 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


189 


multiplied  private  religious  associations — thiasoi,  eranoi,  orgeones — 
in  which  men  and  women,  denied  political  life,  found  new  bonds 
of  union  and  grounds  of  division  in  cultivating  worships,  mostly 
oriental,  which  stimulated  the  religious  sense  and  sentiment.* 

Such  was  the  soil  in  which  Christianity  took  root  and  flourished ; 
while  philosophy,  after  the  freethinking  epoch  following  on  the  fall 
of  Athenian  power,  gradually  reverted  to  one  or  other  form  of 
mystical  theism  or  theosophy,  of  which  the  most  successful  was  the 
Neo-Platonism  of  Alexandria.'^  When  the  theosophic  Julian  rejoiced 
that  Epicureanism  had  disappeared,^  he  was  exulting  in  a  symptom 
of  the  intellectual  decline  that  made  possible  the  triumph  of  the 
faith  he  most  opposed.  Christianity  furthered  a  decadence  thus 
begun  under  the  auspices  of  pagan  imperiahsm ;  and  'the  fifth 
century  of  the  Christian  era  witnessed  an  almost  total  extinction  of 
the  sciences  in  Alexandria"* — an  admission  which  disposes  of  the 
dispute  as  to  the  guilt  of  the  Arabs  in  destroying  the  great  library. 

Here  and  there,  through  the  centuries,  the  old  intellectual  flame 
burns  whitely  enough  :  the  noble  figure  of  Epigtetus  in  the  first 
century  of  the  new  era,  and  that  of  the  brilliant  LuciAN  in  the 
second,  in  their  widely  different  ways  remind  us  that  the  evolved 
faculty  was  still  there  if  the  circumstances  had  been  such  as  to 
evoke  it.  Menippos  in  the  first  century  B.C.  had  played  a  similar 
part  to  that  of  Lucian,  in  whose  freethinking  dialogues  he  so  often 
figures  ;  but  with  less  of  subtlety  and  intellectuality.  Lucian's  was 
indeed  a  mind  of  the  rarest  lucidity ;  and  the  argumentation  of  his 
dialogue  Zeus  Tragcedos  covers  every  one  of  the  main  aspects  of  the 
theistic  problem.  There  is  no  dubiety  as  to  his  atheistic  conclusion, 
which  is  smilingly  implicit  in  the  reminder  he  puts  in  the  mouth  of 
Hermes,  that,  though  a  few  men  may  adopt  the  atheistic  view, 
"  there  will  always  be  plenty  of  others  who  think  the  contrary— the 
majority  of  the  Greeks,  the  ignorant  many,  the  populace,  and  all 
the  barbarians."  But  the  moral  doctrine  of  Epictetus  is  one  of 
endurance  and  resignation  ;  and  the  almost  unvarying  raillery  of 
Lucian,  making  mere  perpetual  sport  of  the  now  moribund  Olympian 
Gods,  was  hardly  better  fitted  than  the  all-round  skepticism  of  the 
school  of  Sextus  Empikicus  to  inspire  positive  and  progressive 
thinking. 

This  latter  school,  described  by  Cicero  as  dispersed  and  extinct 


I  See  M.  Foucart'8  treatise.  Des  assoc.  relig.  chez  les  Grecs,  1873.  2e  Ptie.        . .  ^„„  ,^.  „ 
^  On  the  early  tendency  to  orthodox  conformity  among  the  unbelieving  Alexandrian 
scholars,  see  Mahaffy,  Greek  Life  and  Thoitght,  pp.  260-61. 
8  Frag,  cited  by  Wallace,  p.  258.  _^ 

*  Rev.  Baden  Powell,  Hist,  of  Nat.  Fhiloa.  1834,  p.  79. 


190 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GKEECB 


in  his  day/  appears  to  have  been  revived  in  the  first  century  by 
^nesidemos,  who  taught  at  Alexandria.'^  It  seems  to  have  been 
through  him  in  particular  that  the  Pyrrhonic  system  took  the 
clear-cut  form  in  which  it  is  presented  at  the  close  of  the  second 
century  by  the  accompHshed  Sextus  **  Empiricus " — that  is,  the 
empirical  {i.e.,  experiential)  physician,^  who  lived  at  Alexandria 
and  Athens  (fl.  175-205  C.E.).  As  a  whole,  the  school  continued 
to  discredit  dogmatism  without  promoting  knowledge.  Sextus,  it  is 
true,  strikes  acutely  and  systematically  at  ill-founded  beliefs,  and  so 
makes  for  reason;^  but,  like  the  whole  Pyrrhonian  school,  ho  has 
no  idea  of  a  method  which  shall  reach  sounder  conclusions.  As  the 
Stoics  had  inculcated  the  control  of  the  passions  as  such,  so  the 
skeptics  undertook  to  make  men  rise  above  the  prejudices  and 
presuppositions  which  swayed  them  no  less  blindly  than  ever  did 
their  passions.  But  Sextus  follows  a  purely  skeptical  method,  never 
rising  from  the  destruction  of  false  beliefs  to  the  establishment  of 
true.  His  aim  is  ataraxia,  a  philosophic  calm  of  non-belief  in  any 
dogmatic  affirmation  beyond  the  positing  of  phenomena  as  such  ; 
and  while  such  an  attitude  is  beneficently  exclusive  of  all  fanaticism, 
it  unfortunately  never  makes  any  impression  on  the  more  intolerant 
fanatic,  who  is  shaken  only  by  giving  him  a  measure  of  critical  truth 
in  place  of  his  error.  And  as  Sextus  addressed  himself  to  the 
students  of  philosophy,  not  to  the  simple  believers  in  the  Gods,  he 
had  no  wide  influence."  Avowedly  accepting  the  normal  view  of 
moral  obhgations  while  rejecting  dogmatic  theories  of  their  basis, 
the  doctrine  of  the  strict  skeptics  had  the  elTect,  from  Pyrrho 
onwards,  of  giving  the  same  acceptance  to  the  common  religion, 
merely  rejecting  the  philosophic  pretence  of  justifying  it.  Taken  by 
themselves,  the  arguments  against  current  theism  in  the  third  book 
of  the  Hypotijposes^  are  unanswerable;  but,  when  bracketed  with 
other  arguments  against  the  ordinary  belief  in  causation,  they  had 
the  effect  of  leaving  theism  on  a  par  with  that  belief.  Against 
religious  beliefs  in  particular,  therefore,  they  had  no  wide  destructive 
effect. 

Lucian,  again,  thought  soundly  and  sincerely  on  life ;  his  praise 
of  the  men  whose  memories  he  respected,  as  Epicurus  and  Demonax 
(if  the  Life  of  Demonax  attributed  to  him  be  really  his),  is  grave  and 
heartfelt ;  and  his  ridicule  of  the  discredited  Gods  was  perfectly  right 

1  De  Oratore,  iii,  17;  De  Finibus,  ii,  12.  13. 

2  See  Saisset,  Le  Scepticisme,  1865,  pp.  22-'27,  for  a  careful  discussion  of  dates. 
8  His  own  claim  was  to  be  of  the  "methodical  "  school.    Hypotyp.  i,  34. 

*  See  his  doctrine  expounded  by  Owen.  Evenings  with  the  Skeptics,  i,  332  SQ. 

^  Cp.  Owen.  p.  349. 

fi  These  seem  to  be  derived  from  Carneades.    Cp.  Ueberweg,  i,  217. 


i^EEETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


191 


so  far  as  it  went.  It  is  certain  that  the  unbelievers  and  the  skeptics 
ahke  held  their  own  with  the  believers  in  the  matter  of  right  living.^ 
In  the  period  of  declining  pagan  belief,  the  maxim  that  superstition 
was  a  good  thing  for  the  people  must  have  wrought  a  quantity  and 
a  kind  of  corruption  that  no  amount  of  ridicule  of  religion  could  ever 
approach.  Polybius  (fl.  150  B.C.)  agrees  with  his  complacent  Roman 
masters  that  their  greatness  is  largely  due  to  the  carefully  cultivated 
superstition  of  their  populace,  and  charges  with  rashness  and  folly 
those  who  would  uproot  the  growth;^  and  Strabo,  writing  under 
Tiberius — unless  it  be  a  later  interpolator  of  his  work — confidently 
lays  down  the  same  principle  of  governmental  deceit,^  though  in 
an  apparently  quite  genuine  passage  he  vehemently  protests  the 
incredibility  of  the  traditional  tales  about  Apollo."*  So  far  had  the 
doctrine  evolved  since  Plato  preached  it.  But  to  countervail  it 
there  needed  more  than  a  ridicule  which  after  all  reached  only  the 
class  who  had  already  cast  off  the  beliefs  derided,  leaving  the 
multitude  unenlightened.  The  lack  of  the  needed  machinery  of 
enlightenment  was,  of  course,  part  of  the  general  failure  of  the 
Graeco-Roman  civilization ;  and  no  one  man's  efforts  could  have 
availed,  even  if  any  man  of  the  age  could  have  grasped  the  whole 
situation.  Rather  the  principle  of  esoteric  enlightenment,  the  ideal 
of  secret  knowledge,  took  stronger  hold  as  the  mass  grew  more  and 
more  comprehensively  superstitious.  Even  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Christian  era  the  view  that  Homer's  deities  were  allegorical  beings 
was  freshly  propounded  in  the  writings  of  Herakleides  and  Cornutus 
(Phornutus) ;  but  it  served  only  as  a  kind  of  mystical  Gliosis,  on  all 
fours  with  Christian  Gnosticism,  and  was  finally  taken  up  by 
Neo-Platonists,  who  were  no  nearer  rationalism  for  adopting  it. 

So  with  the  rationalism  to  which  we  have  so  many  uneasy  or 
hostile  allusions  in  Plutarch.  We  find  him  resenting  the  scoffs  of 
Epicureans  at  the  doctrine  of  Providence,  and  recoiling  from  the 
"  abyss  of  impiety  "^  opened  up  by  those  who  say  that  "  Aphrodite 
is  simply  desire,  and  Hermes  eloquence,  and  the  Muses  the  arts  and 


1  "The  general  character  of  the  Greek  Skeptics  from  Sokrates  to  Sextos  is  quite 
unexceptionable"  (Owen,  £ue?ii«as,  i,  352).  ,     .         ..     .,       .  ^t 

2  Polybius,  bk.  vi,  ch.  Ivi.  Cp.  bk.  xvi.  Frag.  5  (12),  where  he  speaks  impatiently  of  the 
miracle-stories  told  of  certain  cults,  and,  repeating  his  opinion  that  some  such  stories 
are  useful  for  pi-eserving  piety  among  the  people,  protests  that  they  should  be  kept 
within  bounds.  ,         ^      •      •   ,    ..i,  4. 

^  Bk.  i,  ch.  ii,  §  8.  Plutarch  (Isis  and  Osiris,  ch.  8)  puts  the  more  decent  principle  that 
all  the  apparent  absurdities  have  good  occult  reasons.  ,  ^       ,  4^, 

*  Bk.  ix,  ch.  iii,  §  12.  Cp.  bk.  x,  ch.  iii.  §  23.  The  hand  of  an  interpolator  frequently 
appears  in  Strabo  (e.g.,  bk.  ix.  ch.  ii,  §  40;  ch.  iii,  §  5);  and  the  passage  cited  in  bk.  1  is 
more  in  the  style  of  the  former  than  of  the  latter.  ,     ...        ^^        ,    ,o™^  ^n  c^ 

^  See  Dr.  Hatch,  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  upon  the  Christian  Church,  1890,  pp.  bO-bA, 
notes;  also  above,  pp.  143  and  161,  note. 

^  De  defect,  orac.  c.  19;  Isis  and  Osiris,  ch.  67. 


l-ijA 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GREECE 


sciences,  and  Ath6n6  wisdom,  and  Dionysos  merely  wine,  Hephaistos 
fire,  and  D6m6fc6r  corn 'V  and  in  his  essay  On  Superstition  he 
regretfully  recognizes  the  existence  of  many  rational  atheists, 
confessing  that  their  state  of  mind  is  better  than  that  of  the 
superstitious  who  abound  around  him,  with  their  "impure  purifica- 
tions and  unclean  cleansings,"  their  barbaric  rites,  and  their  evil 
Gods.  But  the  unbelievers,  with  their  keen  contempt  for  popular 
folly,  availed  as  little  against  it  as  Plutarch  himself,  with  his 
doctrine  of  a  just  mean.  The  one  effectual  cure  w^ould  have  been 
widened  knowledge  ;  and  of  such  an  evolution  the  social  conditions 
did  not  permit. 

To  return  to  a  state  of  admiration  for  the  total  outcome  of  Greek 
thought,  then,  it  is  necessary  to  pass  from  the  standpoint  of  simple 
analysis  to  that  of  comparison.  It  is  in  contrast  with  the  relatively 
slight  achievement  of  the  other  ancient  civilizations  that  the  Greek, 
at  its  height,  still  stands  out  for  posterity  as  a  wonderful  growth. 
That  which,  tried  by  the  test  of  ideals,  is  as  a  whole  only  one  more 
tragic  chapter  in  the  record  of  human  frustration,  yet  contains 
within  it  light  and  leading  as  well  as  warning  ;  and  for  long  ages 
it  was  as  a  lost  Paradise  to  a  darkened  world.  It  has  been  not 
untruly  said  that  "  the  Greek  spirit  is  immortal,  because  it  was 
free":^  free  not  as  science  can  now  conceive  freedom,  but  in 
contrast  with  the  spiritual  bondage  of  Jewry  and  Egypt,  the  half- 
barbaric  tradition  of  imperial  Babylon,  and  the  short  flight  of  mental 
life  in  Kome.  Above  all,  it  was  ever  in  virtue  of  the  freedom  that 
the  high  things  were  accomplished  ;  and  it  was  ever  the  falling  away 
from  freedom,  the  tyranny  either  of  common  ignorance  or  of  mindless 
power,  that  wrought  decadence.  There  is  a  danger,  too,  of  injustice 
in  comparing  Athens  with  later  States.  When  a  high  authority 
pronounces  that  "the  religious  views  of  the  Demos  were  of  the 
narrowest  kind,"^  he  is  not  to  be  gainsaid;  but  the  further  verdict 
that  "  hardly  any  people  has  sinned  more  heavily  against  the  liberty 
of  science  "  is  unduly  lenient  to  Christian  civilization.  The  heaviest 
sins  of  that  against  science,  indeed,  lie  at  the  door  of  the  Catholic 
Church  ;  but  to  make  that  an  exoneration  of  the  modern  "  peoples  " 
as  against  the  ancient  would  be  to  load  the  scales.  And  even  apart 
from  the  Catholic  Church,  which  practically  suppressed  all  science 
for  a  thousand  years,  the  attitude  of  Protestant  leaders  and 
Protestant  peoples,  from  Luther  down  to  the  second  half  of  the 


1  De  Amove,  c.  13 ;  Ins  aiid  Osiris,  chs.  66.  67 ;  and  De  defect,  orac.  c.  13. 

2  Schmidt.  Oesch.  der  Denk-  und  Qlaubens^reiheit  imerst.  Jahr.  1847,  p.  22. 
8  Burnet.  Early  Greek  Philos.  1892.  p.  276.    Cp.  2nd  ed.  p.  294. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  GEEECE 


193 


nineteenth  century,  has  been  one  of  hatred  and  persecution  towards 
all  science  that  clashed  with  the  sacred  books.^  In  the  Greek  world 
there  was  more  scientific  discussion  in  the  three  hundred  years 
down  to  Epicurus  than  took  place  in  the  whole  of  Christian  Europe 
in  thirteen  hundred  ;  and  the  amount  of  actual  violence  used  towards 
innovators  in  the  pagan  period,  though  lamentable  enough,  was 
trifling  in  comparison  with  that  recorded  in  Christian  history,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  frightful  annals  of  witch-burning,  to  which  there  is  no 
parallel  in  civilized  heathen  history.  The  critic,  too,  goes  on  to 
admit  that,  while  "  Sokrates,  Anaxagoras,  and  Aristotle  fell  victims 
in  different  degrees  to  the  bigotry  of  the  populace,"  "of  course  their 
offence  was  political  rather  than  religious.  They  were  condemned 
not  as  heretics,  but  as  innovators  in  the  state  religion."  And,  as  we 
have  seen,  all  three  of  the  men  named  taught  in  freedom  for  many 
years  till  political  faction  turned  popular  bigotry  against  them.  The 
true  measure  of  Athenian  narrowness  is  not  to  be  reached,  therefore, 
without  keeping  in  view  the  long  series  of  modern  outrages  and 
maledictions  against  the  makers  and  introducers  of  new  machinery, 
and  the  multitude  of  such  episodes  as  the  treatment  of  Priestley  in 
Christian  Birmingham,  little  more  than  a  century  ago.  On  a  full 
comparison  the  Greeks  come  out  not  ill. 

It  was,  in  fact,  impossible  that  the  Greeks  should  either  stifle  or 
persecute  science  or  freethought  as  it  was  either  stifled  or  persecuted 
by  ancient  Jews  (who  had  almost  no  science  by  reason  of  their 
theology)  or  by  modern  Christians,  simply  because  the  Greeks  had 
no  anti-scientific  hieratic  literature.  It  remains  profoundly  signi- 
ficant for  science  that  the  ancient  civilization  which  on  the  smallest 
area  evolved  the  most  admirable  life,  which  most  completely  tran- 
scended all  the  sources  from  which  it  originally  drew,  and  left  a 
record  by  which  men  are  still  charmed  and  taught,  was  a  civilization 
as  nearly  as  might  be  without  Sacred  Books,  without  an  organized 
priesthood,  and  with  the  largest  measure  of  democratic  freedom  that 
the  ancient  world  ever  saw. 


Ruf^-Jl  *^  '°  ^®  Pi'esumed  that  Dr.  Burnet,  when  penning  his  estimate,  had  not  in  memory 
bucn  a  record  as  Dr.  A.  D.  White 's  History  of  the  Warfare  between  Science  and  Theology. 


0 


Chaptee  VI 
FKEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  EOME 


§  1 

The  Eomans,  so  much  later  than  the  Greeks  in  their  intellectual 
development,  were  in  some  respects  peculiarly  apt— in  the  case 
of  their  upper  class — to  accept  freethinking  ideas  when  Greek 
rationalism  at  length  reached  them.  After  receiving  from  their 
Greek  neighbours  in  Southern  Italy,  in  the  pre-historic  period, 
the  germs  of  higher  culture,  in  particular  the  alphabet,  they  rather 
retrograded  than  progressed  for  centuries,  the  very  alphabet 
degenerating  for  lack  of  literary  activity^  in  the  absence  of  any 
culture  class,  and  under  the  one-idea'd  rule  of  the  landowning 
aristocracy,  whose  bent  to  military  aggression  was  correlative  to 
the  smallness  of  the  Koman  facilities  for  commerce.  In  the  earlier 
ages  nearly  everything  in  the  nature  of  written  lore  was  a  specialty 
of  a  few  priests,  and  was  limited  to  their  purposes,  which  included 
some  keeping  of  annals.'^  The  use  of  writing  for  purposes  of  family 
records  seems  to  have  been  the  first  literary  development  among  the 
patrician  laity .^  In  the  early  republican  period,  however,  the  same 
conditions  of  relative  poverty,  militarism,  and  aristocratic  emulation 
prevented  any  development  even  of  the  priesthood  beyond  the 
rudimentary  stage  of  a  primitive  civic  function;  and  the  whole 
of  these  conditions  in  combination  kept  the  Koman  Pantheon 
peculiarly  shadowy,  and  the  Eoman  mythology  abnormally 
undeveloped. 

The  character  of  the  religion  of  the  Eomans  has  been  usually 
explained  in  the  old  manner,  in  terms  of  their  particular 
"  genius "  and  lack  of  genius.  On  this  view  the  Eomans 
primordially  tended  to  do  whatever  they  did — to  be  sHghtly 
religious  in   one  period,  and   highly   so   in   another.     Teuffel 

1  Mommsen.  History  of  Rome,  bk.  i,  ch.  14  (Eng.  tr.  1894.  vol.  i.  pp.  282-83).  Mommsen's 
view  of  the  antiquity  of  writing  among  the  Latins  (p.  280)  is  highly  speculative.  He  places 
its  introduction  about  or  before  1000  B.C. ;  yet  he  admits  that  they  got  their  alphabet  from 
the  Greeks,  and  he  can  show  no  Greek  contacts  for  that  period.  Cp.  pp.  167-68  (ch.  x>. 
Schwegler  (Rdmische  Oeschichte,  1853.  i.  36)  more  reasonably  places  the  period  after  ttiac 
of  the  Etruscan  domination,  while  recognizing  the  Greek  origin  of  the  script.  Cp.  Ettore 
Pais,  Ancient  Legends  of  Boman  History.  Eng.  tr.  1906.  pp.  26-28;  Pelham,  Outlines  Of 
Boman  History,  1893.  p.  32.  ,       „         ^     ,_^ 

=2  Schwegler.  i,  ch.  i,  §  12 ;  Teuffel,  Hist,  of  Roman  Lit.  ed.  Schwabe.  Eng.  tr.  1900. 
i,  100-101. 104-10.  »  Teuffel.  i,  UO-U. 

194 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  BOME 


195 


quite  unconsciously  reduces  the  theorem  to  absurdity  in  two 
phrases :    "As   long   as  the  peculiar  character  of  the  Roman 

nation    remained   unaltered  *' {Hist,    of    Boman    Lit.    ed. 

Schwabe,  Eng.  tr.  1900,  i,  2) :  "  the  pecidiar  Roman  char- 
acter had  now  come  to  an  end,  and  for  ever "  (id.  p.  123). 
By  no  writer  has  the  subject  been  more  unphilosophically 
treated  than  by  Mommsen,  whose  chapter  on  Eoman  religion 
(vol.  i,  ch.  xii)  is  an  insoluble  series  of  contradictions.  (See 
the  present  writer's  Christianity  and  Mythology,  pp.  115-17.) 
M.  Boissier  contradicts  himself  hardly  less  strangely,  alternately 
pronouncing  the  Latin  religion  timid  and  confident,  prostrate 
and  dignified  [La  religion  romaine  d'Auguste  aux  Antonins^ 
4e  6dit.  i,  7,  8,  26,  28).  Both  writers  ascribe  every  charac- 
teristic of  Eoman  religion  to  the  character  of  **  the  Eomans  " 
in  the  lump — a  method  which  excludes  any  orderly  conception. 
It  must  be  abandoned  if  there  is  to  be  any  true  comprehension 
of  the  subject. 

Other  verdicts  of  this  kind  by  Ihne,  Jevons,  and  others,  will 
no  better  bear  examination.  (See  Christianity  and  Mythology, 
pt.  i,  ch.  iii,  §  3.)  Dr.  Warde  Fowler,  the  latest  English 
specialist  to  handle  the  question,  confidently  supports  the 
strange  thesis  (dating  from  Schwartz)  that  the  multitude  of 
deities  and  daimons  of  the  early  Latins  were  never  thought 
of  as  personal,  or  as  possessing  sex,  until  Greek  mythology 
and  sculpture  set  the  fashion  of  such  conceptions,  whereupon 
"  this  later  and  foreign  notion  of  divinity  so  completely  took 
possession  of  the  minds  of  the  Eomans  of  the  cosmopolitan  city 
that  Varro  is  the  only  writer  who  has  preserved  the  tradition 
of  the  older  way  of  thinking  "  {The  Religious  Experience  of  the 
Roman  People,  1911,  p.  147).  That  is  to  say,  the  conception 
of  the  Gods  in  the  imageless  period  was  an  "older  way  of 
thinking,''  in  which  deities  called  by  male  and  female  names, 
and  often  addressed  as  Pater  and  Mater,  were  not  really 
thought  of  as  anthropomorphic  at  all !  How  the  early  Eomans 
conceived  their  non-imaged  deities  Dr.  Fowler  naturally  does 
not  attempt  to  suggest.  We  get  merely  the  unreasoned  and 
unexplained  negative  formula  that  "  we  may  take  it  as  certain 
that  even  the  greater  deities  of  the  calendar,  Janus,  Jupiter, 
Mars,  Quirinus,  and  Vesta,  were  not  thought  of  as  existing  in 
any  sense  in  human  form,  nor  as  personal  beings  having  any 
human  characteristics.  The  early  Eomans  were  destitute  of 
mythological  fancy " 

Either,  then,  the  early  Eomans  were  psychologically  alien 
to  every  other  primitive  or  barbaric  people,  as  known  to  modern 
anthropology,  or,  by  parity  of  reasoning,  all  anthropomorphism 
is  the  spontaneous  creation  of  sculptors,  who  had  no  ground 
whatever  in  previous  psychosis  for  making  images  of  Gods.  The 
Greeks,  on  this  view,  had  no  anthropomorphic  notion  of  their 


196  FBEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  ROME 

deities  until  suddenly  sculptors  began  to  make  images  of  them, 
whereupon  everybody  promptly  and  obediently  anthropo- 
morphized ! 

The  way  out  of  this  hopeless  theorem  is  indicated  for 
Dr.  Fowler  by  his  own  repeated  observation  that  the  Eoman 
jus  divinum,  in  which  he  finds  so  little  sign  of  normal 
*'  mythological  fancy,"  represented  the  deliberately  restrictive 
action  of  an  official  priesthood  for  whom  all  religio  was  a  kind 
of  State  magic  or  '*  medicine."  He  expressly  insists  (p.  24)  on 
"the  wonderful  work  done  by  the  early  authorities  from  the 
State  in  eliminating  from  their  rule  of  worship  {jus  divinum) 
almost  all  that  was  magical,  barbarous,  or,  as  later  Komans 
would  have  called  it,  superstitious  "  (Lect.  ii,  p.  24  ;  cp.  Lect.  in.). 
He  even  inclines  to  the  view  that  the  patrician  rehgion  was 
really  the  religion  of  an  invading  race,  like  that  of  the  Ach^eans 
in  Greece,  engrafted  on  the  religion  of  a  primitive  and  less 
civiUzed  population  "  (pp.  viii,  23).  This  thesis  is  not  necessary 
to  the  rebuttal  of  his  previous  negation ;  but  it  obviously  resists 
it,  unless  we  are  to  make  the  word  "  Koman  "  apply  only  to 
patricians.  An  invading  tribe  might,  in  the  case  of  Rome  as  in 
that  of  the  Homeric  Greeks,  abandon  ordinary  and  localized 
primitive  beliefs  which  it  had  held  in  its  previous  home,  and 
thereafter  be  officially  reluctant  to  recognize  the  local  super- 
stitions of  its  conquered  plehs. 

But  the  Roman  case  can  be  understood  without  assuming 
any  continuity  of  racial  divergence.  Livy  shows  us  that  the 
Latin  peasantry  were,  if  possible,  more  given  to  superstitious 
fears  and  panics  than  any  other,  constantly  reporting  portents 
and  prodigia  which  called  for  State  ritual,  and  embarrassing 
military  policy  by  their  apprehensions.  A  patrician  priesthood, 
concerned  above  all  things  for  public  polity,  would  in  such 
circumstances  naturally  seek  to  minimize  the  personal  side  of 
the  popular  mythology,  treating  all  orders  of  divinity  as  mere 
classes  of  powers  to  be  appeased.  The  fact  {id.  p.  29)  that 
among  the  early  Romans,  as  among  other  primitives,  women 
were  rigidly  excluded  from  certain  sacra  points  to  a  further 
ground  for  keeping  out  of  official  sight  the  sex  life  of  the  Gods. 
But  the  very  ritual  formula  of  the  Fratres  Arvales,  Sive  deus 
sive  dea  (p.  149),  proves  that  the  deities  were  habitually  thought 
of  as  personal,  and  male  or  female. 

Dr.  Fowler  alternately  and  inconsistently  argues  that  the 
"  vulgar  mind  was  ready  to  think  of  God-couples  "  (p.  152),  and 
that  the  conjunctions  of  masculine  and  feminine  names  in  the 
Roman  Pantheon  "  do  not  represent  popular  ideas  of  the  deities, 
but  ritualistic  forms  of  invocation"  (p.  153).  The  answer  is 
that  the  popular  mind  is  the  matrix  of  mythology,  and  that  if 
a  State  ritual  given  to  minimizing  mythology  recognized  a  given 
habit  of  myth-making  it  was  presumably  abundant  outside.    In 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  ROME 


197 


short,  the  whole  academic  process  of  reducing  early  Roman 
rehgion  to  something  unparalleled  in  anthropology  is  as  ill- 
founded  in  the  data  as  it  is  repugnant  to  scientific  thought. 

The  differentiation  of  Greek  and  Roman  religion  is  to  be 
explained  by  the  culture-history  of  the  two  peoples ;  and  that, 
in  turn,  was  determined  by  their  geographical  situation  and 
their  special  contacts.  Roman  life  was  made  systematically 
agricultural  and  militarist  by  its  initial  circumstances,  where 
Greek  life  in  civilized  Asia  Minor  became  industrial,  artistic, 
and  Hterary.  The  special  "genius"  of  Homer,  or  of  various 
members  of  an  order  of  bards  developed  by  early  colonial-feudal 
Grecian  conditions,  would  indeed  count  for  much  by  giving 
permanent  artistic  definiteness  of  form  to  the  Greek  Gods, 
where  the  early  Romans,  leaving  all  the  vocal  arts  mainly  to 
the  conservative  care  of  their  women  and  children  as  something 
beneath  adult  male  notice,  missed  the  utilization  of  poetic  genius 
among  them  till  they  were  long  past  the  period  of  romantic 
simphcity  (cp.  Mommsen,  bk.  i,  ch.  15 ;  Eng.  tr.  1894,  vol.  i, 
pp.  285-300).  Hence  the  comparative  abstractness  of  their 
unsung  Gods  (cp.  Schwegler,  Bomische  Geschichte,  i,  225-28, 
and  refs.;  Boissier,  La  religion  romaine,  as  cited,  i,  8),  and  the 
absence  of  such  a  literary  mythology  as  was  evolved  and 
preserved  in  Greece  by  local  patriotisms  under  the  stimulus 
of  the  great  epopees  and  tragedies.  The  doctrine  that  ''the 
Itahan  is  deficient  in  the  passion  of  the  heart,"  and  that  there- 
fore "  Itahan  "  literature  has  "  never  produced  a  true  epos  or 
a  genuine  drama  "  (Mommsen,  ch.  15,  vol.  i,  p.  284),  is  one  of 
a  thousand  samples  of  the  fallacy  of  explaining  a  phenomenon 
in  terms  of  itself.  Teuffel  with  equal  futihty  affirms  the 
contrary :  "  Of  the  various  kinds  of  poetry,  dramatic  poetnj 
seems  after  all  to  be  most  in  conformity  with  the  character  of 
the  Roman  people"  (as  cited,  p.  3;  cp.  p.  28  as  to  the  epos). 
On  the  same  verbalist  method,  Mommsen  decides  as  to  the 
Etruscan  religion  that  "  the  mysticism  and  barbarism  of  their 
worship  had  their  foundation  in  the  essential  character  of  the 
Etruscan  people"  (ch.  12,  p.  232).  Schwegler  gives  a  more 
objective  view  of  the  facts,  but,  like  other  German  writers  whom 
he  cites,  errs  in  speaking  of  early  deities  like  Picus  as  only 
aspects  of  Mars,"  not  realizing  that  Mars  is  merely  the  surviving 
or  developed  deity  of  that  type.  He  also  commits  the  conven- 
tional error  of  supposing  that  the  early  Roman  religion  is 
fundamentally  monotheistic  or  pantheistic,  because  the  multi- 
tudinous "abstract"  deities  are  "  only"  aspects  of  the  general 
force  of  Nature.  The  notion  that  the  Romans  did  not  anthro- 
pomorphize their  deities  hke  all  other  peoples  is  a  surprising 
fallacy. 

Thus  when  Rome,  advancing  in  the   career  of    conquest,  had 


198 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  BOME 


developed  a  large  aristocratic  class,  living  a  city  life,  with  leisure 
for  intellectual  interests,  and  had  come  in  continuous  contact  with 
the  conquered  Grecian  cities  of  Southern  Italy,  its  educated  men 
underwent  a  literary  and  a  rationalistic  influence  at  the  same  time, 
and  were  the  more  ready  to  give  up  all  practical  belief  in  their  own 
slightly-defined  Gods  when  they  found  Greeks  explaining  away 
theirs.  Here  we  see  once  more  the  primary  historic  process  by 
which  men  are  led  to  realize  the  ill-founded  character  of  their 
hereditary  creeds :  the  perception  is  indirectly  set  up  by  the 
reflective  recognition  of  the  creeds  of  others,  and  all  the  more  readily 
when  the  others  give  a  critical  lead.  Indeed,  Greek  rationalism  was 
already  old  when  the  Komans  began  to  develop  a  written  and  artistic 
literature :  it  had  even  taken  on  the  popular  form  given  to  it  by 
Ev6meros  a  century  before  the  Romans  took  it  up.  Doubtless 
there  was  skepticism  among  the  latter  before  Ennius :  such  a 
piece  of  rehgious  procedure  as  the  invention  of  a  God  of  Silver 
{Argentinus),  son  of  the  God  of  Copper  (^sculamis),  on  the 
introduction  of  a  silver  currency,  269  B.C.,  must  have  been  smiled 
at  by  the  more  inteUigent.^ 

Mommsen  states  (ii,  70)  that  at  this  epoch  the  Romans  kept 
**  equally  aloof  from  superstition  and  unbelief,"  but  this  is 
inaccurate  on  both  sides.  The  narrative  of  Livy  exhibits 
among  the  people  a  boundless  and  habitual  superstition.  The 
records  of  absurd  prodigies  of  every  sort  so  throng  his  pages  that 
he  himself  repeatedly  ventures  to  make  light  of  them.  Talking 
oxen,  skies  on  fire,  showers  of  flesh,  crows  and  mice  eating  gold, 
rivers  flowing  blood,  showers  of  milk — such  were  the  reports 
chronically  made  to  the  Roman  government  by  its  pious  subjects, 
and  followed  by  anxious  religious  ceremonies  at  Rome  (cp. 
Livy,  iii,  5,  10;  x,  27;  xi,  28-35;  xxiv,  44;  xxvii,  4,  11,  23, 
etc.,  etc.  In  the  index  to  Drakenborch's  Livy  there  are  over  five 
columns  of  references  to  prodigia).  On  the  other  hand,  though 
superstition  was  certainly  the  rule,  there  are  traces  of 
rationalism.  On  the  next  page  after  that  cited,  Mommsen 
himself  admits  that  the  faith  of  the  people  had  already  been 
shaken  by  the  interference  allowed  to  the  priestly  colleges  in 

1  Mommsen.  bk.  ii.  ch.  8,  Eng.  tr.  ii.  70.  Such  creation  of  deities  by  mere  abstraction 
of  things  and  functions  had  been  the  rule  in  the  popular  as  distinguished  from  the  civic 
religion.  Cp.  Augustine.  De  civitate  Dei,  iv.  16.  23;  vi.  9,  etc.  It  was  the  concomitant  of 
the  tendency  noted  by  Livy:  adeo  minimis  etiam  rebus  prava  religio  i7iserit  deos  ixwii. 
23).  But  the  practice  was  not  peculiar  to  the  Romans,  for  among  the  Greeks  were  Gods 
or  Goddesses  of  Wealth.  Peace,  Mercy,  Shame.  Fortune.  Rumour,  Energy.  Action,  Per- 
suasion, Consolation.  Desire.  Yearning.  Necessity.  Force,  etc.  See  Pausanias  passim. 
The  inference  is  that  the  more  specific  deities  in  all  religions,  with  personal  names,  are 
the  product  of  sacerdotal  institutions  or  of  poetic  or  other  art.  M.  Boissier  (i,  5).  like 
Ihne.  takes  it  for  granted  that  the  multitude  of  deified  abstractions  had  no  legends  :  but 
this  is  unwarranted.  They  may  have  had  many ;  but  there  were  no  poets  to  sing,  or 
priests  to  preserve  and  ritualize  them. 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  ROME 


199 


political  matters  ;  and  in  another  chapter  (bk.  ii,  ch.  13 ;  vol.  ii, 
112)  he  recalls  that  a  consul  of  the  Claudian  gens  had  jested 
openly  at  the  auspices  in  the  first  Punic  war,  249  B.C.  The 
story  is  told  by  Cicero,  De  natura  Deorum,  ii,  3,  and  Suetonius, 
Tiberius,  c.  2.  The  sacred  poultry,  on  being  let  out  of  their 
coop  on  board  ship,  would  not  feed,  so  that  the  auspices  could 
not  be  taken  ;  whereupon  the  consul  caused  them  to  be  thrown 
into  the  water,  etiavi  per  jocum  Deos  inridens,  saying  they 
might  drink  if  they  would  not  eat.  His  colleague  Junius  in  the 
same  war  also  disregarded  the  auspices  ;  and  in  both  cases, 
according  to  Balbus  the  Stoic  in  Cicero's  treatise,  the  Roman 
fleets  were  duly  defeated  ;  whereupon  Claudius  was  condemned 
by  the  people,  and  Junius  committed  suicide.  Cp.  Valerius 
Maximus,  1.  i,  c.  iv,  §  3. 

Such  stories  would  fortify  the  age-long  superstition  as  to 
auspices  and  omens,  which  was  in  full  force  among  Greek 
commanders  as  late  as  Xenophon,  when  many  cultured  Greeks 
were  rationalists.  But  it  was  mainly  a  matter  of  routine,  in 
a  sphere  where  freethought  is  slow  to  penetrate.  There  was 
probably  no  thought  of  jesting  when,  in  the  year  193  B.C.,  after 
men  had  grown  weary  alike  of  earthquakes  and  of  the  religious 
services  prescribed  on  account  of  them ;  and  after  the  consuls 
had  been  worn  out  by  sacrifices  and  expiations,  it  was  decreed 
that  "  if  on  any  day.  a  service  had  been  arranged  for  a  reported 
earthquake,  no  one  should  report  another  on  that  day  "  (Livy, 
xxxiv,  55).  Cato,  who  would  never  have  dreamt  of  departing 
from  a  Roman  custom,  was  the  author  of  the  saying  (Cicero, 
De  Div.  ii,  24)  that  haruspices  might  well  laugh  in  each  other's 
faces.  He  had  in  view  the  Etruscan  practice,  being  able  to  see 
the  folly  of  that,  though  not  of  his  own.  Cp.  Mommsen,  iii, 
116.  As  to  the  Etruscan  origin  of  the  haruspices,  in  distinction 
from  the  augurs,  see  Schwegler,  i,  276,  277  ;  Ihne,  Eng.  ed.  i, 
82-83,  note ;  and  O.  Miiller  as  there  cited. 

But  it  is  with  the  translation  of  the  Sacred  History  of  Ev6meros 
by  Ennius,  about  200  B.C.,  that  the  literary  history  of  Roman 
freethought  begins.  In  view  of  the  position  of  Ennius  as  a  teacher 
of  Greek  and  belles  lettres  (he  being  of  Greek  descent,  and  born  in 
Calabria),  it  cannot  be  supposed  that  he  would  openly  translate  an 
anti-religious  treatise  without  the  general  acquiescence  of  his 
aristocratic  patrons.  Cicero  says  of  him  that  he  "  followed  "  as  well 
as  translated  Ev^meros  ;  ^  and  his  favourite  Greek  dramatists  were 
the  freethinking  Euripides  and  Epicharmos,  from  both  of  whom  he 
translated.'*     The  popular  superstitions,  in  particular  those  of  sooth- 

^  De  natura  Deorum,  i,  42.  ^    .  ^         ■,  ^   ■,  .    ,  . 

2  Mr.  Schuckburgh  (History  of  Borne,  1894.  p.  401,  note)  cites  a  translated  passage  m  hia 
fragments  (Cicero,  De  Div.  ii,  50 ;  De  nat.  Deorum,  iii,  32),  putting  the  Epicurean  view 
that  the  Gods  clearly  did  not  govern  human  affairs,  "  which  he  probably  would  have 
softened  if  he  had  not  agreed  with  it."    Cp.  Mommsen,  iii,  113  (bk,  ii,  ch.  13). 


200 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  EOME 


saying  and  divination,  he  sharply  attacked.^  If  his  patrons  all  the 
while  stood  obstinately  to  the  traditional  usages  of  ofiQcial  augury 
and  ritual,  it  was  in  the  spirit  of  poHtical  conservatism  that  belonged 
to  their  class  and  their  civic  ideal,  and  on  the  principle  that  religion 
was  necessary  for  the  control  of  the  multitude.  In  Etruria,  where 
the  old  culture  had  run  largely  to  mysticism  and  soothsaying  on 
quasi-oriental  lines,  the  Koman  government  took  care  to  encourage 
it,  by  securing  the  theological  monopoly  of  the  upper-class  families,'* 
and  thus  set  up  a  standing  hot-bed  of  superstition.  In  the  same 
spirit  they  adopted  from  time  to  time  popular  cults  from  Greece, 
that  of  the  Phrygian  Mother  of  the  Gods  being  introduced  in  the 
year  204  B.C.  The  attempt  (186  B.C.)  to  suppress  the  Bacchic 
mysteries,  of  which  a  distorted  and  extravagant  account^  is  given  by 
Livy,  was  made  on  grounds  of  policy  and  not  of  religion  ;  and  even 
if  the  majority  of  the  senate  had  not  been  disposed  to  encourage  the 
popular  appetite  for  emotional  foreign  worships,  the  multitude  of 
their  own  accord  would  have  introduced  the  latter,  in  resentment  of 
the  exclusiveness  of  the  patricians  in  keeping  the  old  domestic  and 
national  cults  in  their  own  hands.*  As  new  eastern  conquests 
multiplied  the  number  of  foreign  slaves  and  residents  in  Eome,  the 
foreign  worships  multiplied  with  them  ;  and  with  the  worships  came 
such  forms  of  freethought  as  then  existed  in  Greece,  Asia  Minor,  and 
Egypt.  In  resistance  to  these,  as  to  the  orgiastic  worships,  political 
and  religious  conservatism  for  a  time  combined.  In  173  B.C.  the 
Greek  Epicurean  philosophers  Alkaios  and  Philiskos  were  banished 
from  the  city,**  a  step  which  was  sure  to  increase  the  interest  in 
Epicureanism.  Twelve  years  later  the  Catonic  party  carried  a  curt 
decree  in  the  Senate  against  the  Greek  rhetors,®  titi  Bomae  ne  essent ; 
and  in  155  the  interest  aroused  by  Carneades  and  the  other 
Athenian  ambassadors  led  to  their  being  suddenly  sent  home,  on 

1  Fragyneiita,  ed.  Hesselius.  p.  226 ;  Cicero,  De  Dimnatione,  i,  58. 

2  Mommsen.  i.  301 ;  ii,  71;  iii.  117  (bk.  i,  ch.  15 :  bk.  ii,  ch.  8;  bk.  iii,  ch.  13).  Cicero,  De 
Div.  i.  41. 

8  Livy,  xxix.  18.  Dr.  Warde  Fowler  (BeligiouH  Experience  of  the  Bonian  People,  p.  346). 
censures  Mr.  Heitland  for  calling  Livy's  story  "  an  interesting  romance  "  {Hist,  of  Rom. 
Bep.  ii.  229  nofe);  remarking  that  "it  is  tbe  fashion  now  to  reject  as  false  whatever  is 
surprising,"  and  adding  (p.  347) :  "  It  is  certain,  from  the  steps  taken  by  the  government 

that  it  is  in  the  main  a  true  account."     It  may  suffice  to  ask  whether  Dr.  Fowler 

believes  in  all  or  any  of  the  prodigia  mentioned  by  Livy  because  the  government  "took 
steps"  about  them. 

<  Cp.  Boissier.  La  religion  romaine,  i,  39,  346.  *  Teuffel.  i.  122. 

8  Aulus  Gellius  (xv.  11)  says  the  edict  was  de  pMlosophis  et  de  rhetoribus  Latinis,  but 
the  senatus-consultum.  as  given  by  him,  does  not  contain  the  adjective;  and  he  goes  on 
to  tell  that  aliquot  deinde  aiviis  post— really  sixty-nine  years  later — the  censors  fulminated 

against  hominen  qui  novum  genus  disciplince  instituerunt eos  sibi  noyyien  imposuisse 

Latinas  rhetoras.  The  former  victims,  then,  were  presumably  Greek.  Cp.  Shuckburgh, 
p.  520;  and  Long.  Decline  of  the  Boman  Bepublic,  1866.  ii,  146.  Professor  Pelham  {Outlines 
of  Boman  History,  1893.  p.  179,  note)  mistakenly  cites  the  senatus-consultum  as  containing 
the  word  "  Latini."  The  reading  Latinis  in  Gellius's  own  phrase  has  long  been  suspected. 
See  ed.  Frederic  and  Gronov,  1706. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  KOME 


201 


If 


Cato's  urging.^  It  seems  certain  that  Carneades  made  converts  to 
skepticism,  among  them  being  the  illustrious  Scipio  ^milianus.'^ 
In  the  sequel  the  Greeks  multiplied,  especially  after  the  fall  of 
Macedonia,^  and  in  the  year  92  we  find  the  censors  vetoing  the 
practices  of  the  Latin  rhetors  as  an  unpleasing  novelty,^  thus  leaving 
the  Greeks  in  possession  of  the  field.*^  But,  the  general  social 
tendency  being  downwards,  it  was  only  a  question  of  time  when  the 
rationalism  should  be  overgrown  by  the  superstition.  In  137  there 
had  been  another  vain  edict  against  the  foreign  soothsayers  and  the 
worshippers  of  Sabazius  ;®  but  it  was  such  cults  that  were  to  persist, 
while  the  old  Roman  religion  passed  away,'  save  insofar  as  it  had 
a  non-literary  survival  among  the  peasantry. 

§2 

While  self-government  lasted,  rationalism  among  the  cultured 
classes  was  fairly  common.  The  great  poem  of  LUCEETIUS,  Oji  the 
Nature  of  Thmgs,  with  its  enthusiastic  exposition  of  the  doctrine  of 
Epicurus,  remains  to  show  to  what  a  height  of  sincerity  and  ardour 
a  Roman  freethinker  could  rise.  No  Greek  utterance  that  has  come 
down  to  us  makes  so  direct  and  forceful  an  attack  as  his  on  religion 
as  a  social  institution.  He  is  practically  the  first  systematic  free- 
thinking  propagandist ;  so  full  is  he  of  his  purpose  that  after  his 
stately  prologue  to  alma  Ve7ius,  who  is  for  him  but  a  personification 
of  the  genetic  forces  of  Nature,  he  plunges  straight  into  his  impeach- 
ment of  religion  as  a  foul  tyranny  from  which  thinking  men  were 
first  freed  by  Epicurus.  The  sonorous  verse  vibrates  with  an 
indignation  such  as  Shelley's  in  Queen  Mah  :  religion  is  figured 
as  horribili  super  aspectu  Ttiortalihus  instans ;  a  little  further  on 
its  deeds  are  denounced  as  scelerosa  atque  impia,  wicked  and 
impious,"  the  religious  term  being  thus  turned  against  itself ;  and 
a  moving  picture  of  the  sacrifice  of  Iphigeneia  justifies  the  whole. 
*  To  so  much  of  evil  could  religion  persuade."  It  is  with  a  bitter 
consciousness  of  the  fatal  hold  of  the  hated  thing  on  most  men's 
ignorant  imagination  that  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  the  fears®  so 
assiduously  wrought  upon  by  the  vates,  and  to  set  up  with  strenuous 
speed  the  vividly-imagined  system  of  Epicurean  science  by  which  he 

*  Plutarch.  Cato,  c.  22.  ^  Cicero.  De.  Eepub.  pas.iim,  ed.  Halm. 

8  Polybius.  xxxii,  10.  *  Suetonius,  De  Claris  rhetoribus. 

^  See  in  Cicero,  De  Oratore,  iii,  24,  the  account  by  the  censor  Crassus  of  his  reasons  for 
preferring  the  Greek  rhetors.  ^  Valerius  Maximus,  i,  3, 1. 

'  The  culture  history  of  the  republican  period,  as  partially  recoveredby  recent  archaeo- 
logy, shows  a  process  of  dissolution  and  replacement  from  a  remote  period.  Cp.  Ettore 
Pais,  Ancient  Legends  of  Boman  History,  Eng.  tr.  1906,  ch.  ii,  notably  p.  18, 

^  De  rerum  natura,  i,  50-135;  cp.  v,  1166. 


202 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  KOME 


seeks  to  fortify  his  friend  against  them.  That  no  thing  comes  from 
nothing,  or  lapses  into  nothing ;  that  matter  is  eternal ;  that  all 
things  proceed  "without  the  Gods"  by  unchanging  law,  are  his 
insistent  themes  ;  and  for  nigh  two  thousand  years  a  religious  world 
has  listened  with  a  reluctant  respect.  His  influence  is  admitted  to 
have  been  higher  and  nobler  than  that  of  the  religion  he  assailed. 

"Lucretius  was  the  first  not  only  to  reveal  a  new  power, 
beauty,  and  mystery  in  the  world,  but  also  to  communicate  to 
poetry  a  speculative  impulse,  opening  up,  with  a  more  impas- 
sioned appeal  than  philosophy  can  do,  the  great  questions 
underlying  human  life — such  as  the  truth  of  all  reUgious 
tradition,  the  position  of  man  in  the  universe,  and  the  attitude 
of  mind  and  course  of  conduct  demanded  by  that  position." 
(Sellar,  Roman  Poets  of  the  Republic  :   Virgil,  1877,  p.  199.) 

"  In  the  eyes  of  Lucretius  all  worship  seemed  prompted  by 
fear  and  based  on  ignorance  of  natural  law...... But  it  is  never- 
theless true  that  Lucretius  was  a  great  religious  poet.  He  was 
a  prophet,  in  deadly  earnest,  calling  men   to  renounce  their 

errors  both  of  thought  and  conduct We  may  be  certain  that 

he  was  absolutely  convinced  of  the  truth  of  all  that  he  wrote." 
(W.  Warde  Fowler,  Social  Life  at  Rome  in  the  Age  of  Cicero, 
1909,  pp.  327-28.) 

And  yet  throughout  the  whole  powerful  poem  we  have  testimony 
to  the  pupillary  character  of  Koman  thought  in  relation  to  Grecian. 
However  much  the  earnest  student  may  outgo  his  masters  in 
emphasis  and  zeal  of  utterance,  he  never  transcends  the  original 
irrationality  of  asserting  that  "the  Gods"  exist;  albeit  it  is  their 
glory  to  do  nothing.  It  is  in  picturing  their  inefifable  peace  that  he 
reaches  some  of  his  finest  strains  of  song,^  though  in  the  next  breath 
he  repudiates  every  idea  of  their  control  of  things  cosmic  or  human. 
He  swears  by  their  sacred  breasts,  proh  sancta  deum  pectora,  and 
their  life  of  tranquil  joy,  when  he  would  express  most  vehemently 
his  scorn  of  the  thought  that  it  can  be  they  who  hurl  the  hghtnings 
which  haply  destroy  their  own  temples  and  strike  down  alike  the 
just  and  the  unjust.  It  is  a  survival  of  a  quite  primitive  conception 
of  deity ,^  alongside  of  an  advanced  anti-religious  criticism. 

The  explanation  of  the  anomaly  seems  to  be  twofold.  In  the 
first  place,  Eoman  thought  had  not  lived  long  enough — it  never  did 
live  long  enough — to  stand  confidently  on  its  own  feet  and  criticize 
its  Greek  teachers.  In  Cicero's  treatise  On  the  Nature  of  the  Gods, 
the  Epicurean  and  the  Stoic  in  turn  retail  their  doctrine  as  they  had 

1  ii.  646-50  (the  passage  cited  by  Mr.  Gladstone  in  the  House  of  Commons  in  one  of  the 
Bradlaugh  debates,  with  a  confession  of  its  noble  beauty);  and  again  ii.  109Q-1105,  and 
Hi,  18-22.  ^  See  Christianity  ajid  Mythology,  pp.  52-57. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  KOME 


203 


it  from  their  school,  the  Epicurean  affirming  the  existence  and  the 
inaction  of  the  Gods  with  equal  confidence,  and  repeating  without 
a  misgiving  the  formula  about  the  Gods  having  not  bodies  but 
quasi -bodies,  with  not  blood  but  quasi-blood  ;  the  Stoic,  who  stands 
by  most  of  the  old  superstitions,  professing  to  have  his  philosophical 
reasons  for  them.  Each  sectarian  derides  the  beliefs  of  the  other ; 
neither  can  criticize  his  own  creed.  It  would  seem  as  if  in  the 
habitually  militarist  society,  even  when  it  turns  to  philosophy,  there 
must  prevail  a  militarist  ethic  and  psychosis  in  the  intellectual  Hfe, 
each  man  choosing  a  flag  or  a  leader  and  fighting  through  thick  and 
thin  on  that  side  henceforth.  On  the  other  hand,  the  argumentation 
of  the  high-priest  Cotta  in  the  dialogue  turns  to  similar  purpose  the 
kindred  principle  of  civic  tradition.  He  argues  in  turn  against  the 
Epicurean's  science  and  the  Stoic's  superstition,  contesting  alike  the 
claim  that  the  Gods  are  indifferent  and  the  claim  that  they  govern ; 
and  in  the  end  he  brazenly  affirms  that,  while  he  sees  no  sound 
philosophic  argument  for  religious  beliefs  and  practices,  he  thinks  it 
is  justifiable  to  maintain  them  on  the  score  of  prescription  or 
ancestral  example.  Here  we  have  the  senatorial  or  conservative 
principle,*  avaihng  itself  of  the  skeptical  dialectic  of  Cameades.  In 
terms  of  that  ideal,  which  prevailed  alike  with  believers  and 
indifferentists,^  and  mediated  between  such  rival  schools  as  the 
Epicurean  and  Stoic,  we  may  partly  explain  the  Epicurean  theorem 
itself.  For  the  rest,  it  is  to  be  understood  as  an  outcome  partly  of 
surviving  sentiment  and  partly  of  forced  compromise  in  the  case  of 
its  Greek  framers,  and  of  the  habit  of  partizan  loyalty  in  the  case 
of  its  Eoman  adherents. 

In  the  arguments  of  Cotta,  the  unbelieving  high-priest,  we 
presumably  have  the  doctrine  of  CiCERO  himself,^  who  in  the 
Academica  avows  his  admiration  of  Carneades's  reasoning,  and  in 
the  De  Divinatione  follows  it,  but  was  anchored  by  officialism  to 
State  usage.  With  his  vacillating  character,  his  forensic  habit,  and 
his  genius  for  mere  speech,  he  could  not  but  betray  his  own  lack  of 
intellectual  conviction ;  and  such  weakness  as  his  found  its  natural 
support  in  the  principle  of  use  and  wont,  the  practice  and  tradition 
of  the  commonwealth.     On  that  footing  he  had  it  in  him  to  boast 

^  See  the  account  of  the  doctrine  of  the  high-priest  Scaevola.  preserved  by  Augustine, 
De  civ.  Dei,  iv,  27.  He  and  Varro  (id.  iv,  31 ;  vi.&-7)  agreed  in  rejecting  the  current  myths, 
but  insisted  on  the  continued  civic  acceptance  of  them.  On  the  whole  question  compare 
Boissier,  ia  reitfftOH  romat/ie,  i,  47-63.  ,.  ,  ^,      .     ,. 

'^  Thus  the  satirist  Lucilitjs,  who  ridiculed  the  popular  beliefs,  was  capable,  m  his 
capacity  of  patriot,  of  crying  out  against  the  lack  of  respect  shown  to  religion  and  the 
Gods  (Boissier,  pp.  51-52).  The  purposive  insincerity  set  up  in  their  thinking  by  such  men 
must,  of  course,  have  been  injurious  to  character. 

**  Cp.  the  De  Divinatiotie,  i,  2. 


204 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  HOME 


like  any  pedigreed  patrician  of  the  historic  religiousness  of  Eome, 
he  himself  the  while  being  devoid  of  all  confident  religious  belief. 
His  rhetoric  on  the  subject  can  hardly  be  otherwise  estimated  than 
as  sheer  hustings  hypocrisy.     Doubtless  he  gave  philosophic  colour 
to  his  practice  by  noting  the  hopeless  conflict  of  the  creeds  of  the 
positive  sects,  very  much  as  in  our  own  day  conservative  dialectic 
finds  a  ground  for  religious  conformity  in  the  miscarriages  of  the 
men  of  science.^     But  Cicero  does  not  seem  even  to  have  had  a 
religious  sentiment  to  cover  the  nakedness  of  his  political  opportunism. 
Not  only  does  he  in  the  Tusculan  Disputations  put  aside  in  the 
Platonic  fashion  all  the  Homeric  tales  which  anthropomorphize  and 
discredit  the  Gods  ;^  but  in  his  treatise  On  Divination  he  shows  an 
absolute   disbelief   in   all   the   recognized   practices,    including    the 
augury  which  he  himself  officially  practised  ;  and  his  sole  excuse 
is  that  they  are  to  be  retained  "  on  account  of  popular  opinion  and 
of  their  great  public  utility."  ^     As  to  prodigies,  he  puts  in  germ 
the  argument  later  made  famous  by  Hume :  either  the  thing  could 
happen  (in  the  course  of  nature)  or  it  could  not ;  if  it  could  not,  the 
story  is  false  ;  if  it  could,  non  esse  mirandum — there  is  no  miracle.* 
In   his   countless   private  letters,  again,  he  shows  not  a  trace  of 
rehgious  feeling,*  or  even  of  interest  in  the  questions  which  in  his 
treatises   he   declares   to   be  of   the   first   importance.®     Even   the 
doctrine  of  immortality,  to  which  he  repeatedly  returns,  seems  to 
have  been  for  him,  as  for  so  many  Christians  since,  only  a  forensic 
theme,  never  a  source  of  the  private  consolation  he  ascribed  to  it.' 
In  Cicero's  case,  in  fine,  we  reach  the  conclusion  that  either  the 
noted  inconstancy  of  his  character  pervaded  all  his  thinking,  or  that 
his   gift   for   mere   utterance,  and   his    demoralizing   career   as   an 
advocate,  overbore  in  him  all  sincere  reflection.     But,  indeed,  the 
practical  subversion  of  all  rational  ethic  in  the  public  life  of  late 
republican  Eome,  wherein  men  claimed  to  be  free  and  self-governing, 
yet  lived  by  oppressing  the  rest  of  the  world,  was  on  all  hands  fatal 
to  the  moral  rectitude  which  inspires  a  critical  philosophy. 

Modern  scholarship  still  clings  to  the  long-established  view 
that  Cicero  was  practically  right,  and  that  Lucretius  was 
practically  wrong.  Augustus,  says  Dr.  Warde  Fowler,  was 
fortunate  in  finding  in  Virgil  **  one  who  was  in  some  sense  a 

1  E.g.,  Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour's  Foundations  of  Belief.  ^  Tunc.  Disp.  i,  26. 

3  De  IHvinatimte,  ii.  33,  34,  cp.  ii,  12 ;  and  De  nat.  Deorum,  i,  22.  It  is  not  surprising 
that  in  a  later  age,  when  the  remaining  pagans  had  no  dialectic  faculty  left,  the  Christian 
Fathers,  by  using  Cicero  as  a  weapon  against  the  cults,  could  provoke  them  into  calling 
him  impious  (Arnobius,  Adv.  Gentes,  iii,  6,  7). 

*  De  Divinatione,  ii,  22.  8  Boissier,  i,  58. 

6  J)e  nat.  Veorum,  ii,  1.  '  Boissier,  p.  59, 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  EOME 


205 


prophet  as  well  as  a  poet,  who  could  urge  the  Eoman  by  an 
imaginative  example  to  return  to  a  living  pietas — not  merely  to 
the  old  religious  forms,  but  to  the  intelligent  sense  of  duty  to 
God  and  man  which  had  built  up  his  character  and  his  empire. 
In  Cicero's  day  there  was  also  a  great  poet,  he  too  in  some 
sense  a  prophet ;  but  Lucretius  could  only  appeal  to  the  Eoman 
to  shake  off  the  slough  of  his  old  religion,  and  such  an  appeal 
was  at  the  time  both  futile  and  dangerous.  Looking  at  the 
matter  historically,  and  not  theologically,  we  ought  to  sympathize 
with  the  attitude  of  Cicero  and  Scaevola  towards  the  religion 
of  the  State.  It  was  based  on  a  statesmanlike  instinct ;  and 
had  it  been  possible  for  that  instinct  to  express  itself  practically 
in  a  positive  policy  like  that  of  Augustus,  it  is  quite  possible 
that  much  mischief  might  have  been  averted  "  {Social  Life  at 
Borne,  pp.  325-26). 

It  is  necessary  to  point  out  (l)  that  the  early  Eoman's 
"sense  of  duty  to  God  and  man"  was  never  of  a  kind  that 
could  fitly  be  termed  "intelligent";  and  (2)  that  it  was  his 
character  that  made  his  creed,  and  not  his  creed  his  character, 
though  creed  once  formed  reacts  on  conduct.  Further,  it  may 
be  permitted  to  suggest  that  we  might  consider  historical 
problems  morally,  and  to  deprecate  the  academic  view  that 
"statesmanship"  is  something  necessarily  divorced  from 
veracity.  The  imperfect  appeal  of  Lucretius  to  the  spirit  of 
truth  in  an  ignorant  and  piratical  community,  living  an 
increasingly  parasitic  life,  was  certainly  "futile";  but  it  is  a 
strange  sociology  that  sees  in  it  something  "  dangerous,"  while 
regarding  the  life  of  perpetual  conquest  and  plunder  as  a  matter 
of  course,  and  the  practice  of  systematic  deceit  as  wholesome. 

The  summary  of  the  situation  is  that  Cicero's  pohcy  of 
religious  make-believe  could  no  more  have  "  saved  "  Eome  than 
Plato's  could  have  saved  Athens,  or  than  that  of  Augustus  did 
save  the  empire.  It  went  downhill  about  as  steadily  after  as 
before  him;  and  it  continued  to  do  so  under  Christianity  as 
under  paganism.  The  decline  was  absolutely  involved  in  the 
policy  of  universal  conquest ;  and  neither  creeds  nor  criticism 
of  creeds  could  have  "  averted "  the  result  while  the  cause 
subsisted.  But  there  is  something  gratuitously  anti-rational 
in  the  thesis  that  such  a  decay  might  have  been  prevented  by 
a  politic  manipulation  of  beliefs  known  to  be  false,  and  that 
some  regeneration  was  really  worked  in  Eome  by  the  tale  of 
pious  ^neas.  In  his  Eeligious  Experience  of  the  Boman 
People  (1911)  Dr.  Fowler  is  more  circumspect. 

In  the  upper-class  Eome  of  Cicero's  day  his  type  seems  to  have 
been  predominant,^  the  women  alone  being  in  the  mass  orthodox,^ 

*  "It  seems  to  me  tliat,  on  the  whole,  among  the  educated  and  the  rich,  the  indifferent 
must  have  been  in  the  majority"  (Boissier.  p.  61).  ^  Id.  p.  59. 


206 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  EOMB 


and  in  their  case  the  tendency  was  to  add  new  superstitions  to  the 
old.  Among  public  men  there  subsisted  a  clear  understanding  that 
public  religion  should  continue  for  reasons  of  State.  When  we  find 
an  eminent  poHtician  like  the  elder  M.  ^Emilius  Scaurus  prosecuted 
in  the  year  103  B.C.  on  a  charge  of  neglecting  certain  religious 
ceremonies  connected  with  his  ofl&ces,  we  know  that  there  had  been 
neither  conscientious  abstention  on  his  part  nor  sincere  religious 
resentment  on  the  other  side,  but  merely  a  resort  by  political 
enemies,  after  Greek  precedent,  to  a  popular  means  of  blackening 
an  antagonist ;  for  the  same  Scaurus,  who  was  a  member  of  the 
college  of  augurs,  had  actually  rebuilt  or  restored  the  temple  of 
Fides,  said  to  have  been  founded  by  Numa,  and  that  of  Mens 
(Prudence),  which  had  been  set  up  after  the  great  defeat  of  the 
Eomans  at  the  Trasimene  lake ;  ^  the  early  and  the  late  procedure 
alike  illustrating  the  political  and  pragmatic  character  of  the  State 
religion.'*  In  the  supreme  figure  of  JULIUS  CiESAR  we  see  the 
Eoman  brain  at  its  strongest ;  and  neither  his  avowed  unbelief  in 
the  already  popular  doctrine  of  immortality,^  nor  his  repeatedly 
expressed  contempt  for  the  auspices,*  withheld  him  from  holding 
and  fulfilling  the  function  of  high  pontifif.  The  process  of  skepticism 
had  been  rapid  among  the  men  of  action.  The  illiterate  Marius 
carried  about  with  him  a  Syrian  prophetess ;  of  Sulla,  who 
unhesitatingly  plundered  the  temple  of  Delphi,  it  was  said  that 
he  carried  a  small  figure  of  Apollo  as  an  amulet  ;*  of  Caesar,  unless 
insofar  as  it  may  be  true  that  in  his  last  years,  like  Napoleon,  he 
grew  to  believe  in  omens  as  his  powers  failed,  under  the  stress  of 
perpetual  conflict,^  it  cannot  be  pretended  that  he  was  aught  but 
a  convinced  freethinker."^  The  greatest  and  most  intellectual  man 
of  action  in  the  ancient  world  had  no  part  in  the  faith  which  was 
supposed  to  have  determined  the  success  of  the  most  powerful  of 
all  the  ancient  nations. 

1  Cp.  Long.  Decline  of  JBowian  JBepw&Ztc.i.  438;  ii,  38-40.  Long  remarks  that  Domitius. 
the  accuser  of  Scaurus  (who  had  prevented  his  election  to  the  college  of  augurs),  "  used  the 
name  of  religion  for  the  purpose  of  damaging  a  political  enemy  ;  and  the  trick  has  been 
repeated,  and  is  repeated,  up  to  the  present  day.    The  Romans  must  have  kept  records  of 

many  of  these  trials.    They  were  the  great  events  of  the  times ;  and  so  we  learn  that 

three  tribes  voted  against  Scaurus.  and  thirty-two  voted  for  him ;  but  in  each  of  these 
thirty-two  tribes  there  was  only  a  small  majority  of  votes  {pauca  puncta)  in  favour  of 
Scaurus." 

2  See  Long,  i,  56.  for  a  cynical  estimate  of  the  mode  of  manipulation  of  the  Sibylline 
and  other  sacred  books.  »  Sallust,  Bellum  Catilin.  c.  51. 

*  Suetonius,  Julius,  cc.  59.  77 ;  Cicero.  De  Divinatione,  ii,  24.  Cp.  Merivale.  History  of 
the  Romans  under  the  Empire,  ed.  1865.  ii.  424. 

5  Plutarch.  SwWa.  c.  29  ;  Marius,  c.  16.  Long  {Decline  of  Boman  Republic,  ii,  369)  says 
of  Sulla  that,  "though  he  could  rob  a  temple  when  he  wanted  money,  he  believed  in  the 
religion  of  his  time.  We  should  call  him  superstitious;  and  a  man  who  is  superstitious 
IS  capable  of  any  crime,  for  he  believes  that  the  Gods  can  be  conciliated  by  prayers  and 
presents."  6  Compare  the  fears  which  grew  upon  Cromwell  in  his  last  days. 

'  Pompeius,  on  the  other  hand,  had  many  seers  in  his  camp  ;  but  after  his  overthrow 
expressed  natural  doubts  about  Providence.  Cicero,  De  Div.  ii.  24,  47;  Plutarch, 
Fompeiua,  c.  75. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  EOME 


207 


Dean  Merivale,  noting  that  Caesar  professed  without  reserve 
the  principles  of  the  unbelievers,"  observes  that,  **  freethinker  as 
he  was,  he  could  not  escape  from  the  universal  thraldom  of 
superstition  in  which  his  contemporaries  were  held  "  {Hist,  of 
the  Romans  under  the  Empire,  ed.  1865,  ii,  424).  The  reproach, 
from  a  priest,  is  piquant,  but  misleading.  All  the  stories  on 
which  it  is  founded  apply  to  the  last  two  or  three  years  of 
Caesar's  life  ;  and  supposing  them  to  be  all  true,  which  is  very 
doubtful,  they  would  but  prove  what  has  been  suggested  above 
— that  the  overstrained  soldier,  rising  to  the  dizzy  height  of 
a  tremendous  career,  partly  lost  his  mental  balance,  like  so 
many  another.  (Cp.  Mackail,  Latin  Literature,  1895,  p.  80.) 
Such  is  the  bearing  of  the  doubtful  story  (Pliny,  Hist.  Nat. 
xxviii,  2)  that  after  the  breaking  down  of  a  chariot  (presumably 
the  casualty  which  took  place  in  his  fourfold  triumph ;  see 
Dio  Cassius,  xlviii,  21)  he  never  mounted  another  without 
muttering  a  charm.  M.  Boissier  (i,  70)  makes  the  statement 
of  Pliny  apply  to  Caesar's  whole  life ;  but  although  Pliny  gives 
no  particulars,  even  Dean  Merivale  (p.  372)  connects  it  with 
the  accident  in  the  triumph.  To  the  same  time  belongs  the  less 
challengeable  record  (Dio  Cassius,  Ix,  23)  of  his  climbing  on  his 
knees  up  the  steps  of  the  Capitol  to  propitiate  Nemesis.  The 
very  questionable  legend,  applied  so  often  to  other  captains,  of 
his  saying,  I  have  thee,  Africa,  when  he  stumbled  on  landing 
(Sueton.  Jul,  59),  is  a  proof  not  of  superstition  but  of  presence 
of  mind  in  checking  the  superstitious  fears  of  the  troops,  and 
was  so  understood  by  Suetonius  ;  as  was  the  rather  flimsy  story 
of  his  taking  with  him  in  Africa  a  man  nicknamed  Salutio 
(Sueton.  ibid.)  to  neutrahze  the  luck  of  the  opposing  Cornelii. 
The  whole  turn  given  to  the  details  by  the  clerical  historian  is 
arbitrary  and  unjudicial.  Nor  is  he  accurate  in  saying  that 
Caesar  " denied  the  Gods"  in  the  Senate.  He  actually  swore 
by  them,  per  Deos  immortales,  in  the  next  sentence  to  that  in 
which  he  denied  a  future  state.  The  assertion  of  the  historian 
(p.  423),  that  in  denying  the  immortality  of  the  soul  CaBsar 
denied  "  the  recognized  foundation  of  all  religion,"  is  a  no  less 
surprising  error.  The  doctrine  never  had  been  so  recognized 
in  ancient  Eome.  A  Christian  ecclesiastic  might  have  been 
expected  to  remember  that  the  Jewish  religion,  believed  by  him 
to  be  divine,  was  devoid  of  the  "recognized  foundation"  in 
question,  and  that  the  canonical  book  of  Ecclesiastes  expressly 
discards  it.  Of  course  Caesar  offered  sacrifices  to  Gods  in 
whom  he  did  not  believe.  That  was  the  habitual  procedure 
of  his  age. 

§3 

It  IS  significant  that  the  decay  of  rationalism  in  Eome  begins 
and  proceeds  with  the  Empire.     Augustus,  whose  chosen  name  was 


I  I 


208 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  KOME 


sacerdotal  in  its  character/  made  it  part  of  his  policy  to  restore  as 
far  as  possible  the  ancient  cults,  many  of  which  had  fallen  into 
extreme  neglect,  between  the  indifference  of  the  aristocratic  class 
and  the  devotion  of  the  populace,  itself  so  largely  alien,  to  the  more 
attractive  worships  introduced  from  Egypt  and  the  East.  That  he 
was  himself  a  habitually  superstitious  man  seems  certain  ;^  but  even 
had  he  not  been,  his  poUcy  would  have  been  natural  from  the 
Eoman  point  of  view.  A  historian  of  two  centuries  later  puts  in 
the  mouth  of  Maecenas  an  imagined  counsel  to  the  young  emperor 
to  venerate  and  enforce  the  national  religion,  to  exclude  and 
persecute  foreign  cults,  to  put  down  alike  atheism  and  magic,  to 
control  divination  officially,  and  to  keep  an  eye  on  the  philosophers.* 
What  the  empire  sought  above  all  things  was  stabihty ;  and  a 
regimen  of  rehgion,  under  imperial  control,  seemed  one  of  the 
likeliest  ways  to  keep  the  people  docile.  Julius  himself  had  seemed 
to  plan  such  a  poHcy,*  though  he  also  planned  to  estabhsh  public 
libraries,^  which  would  hardly  have  promoted  faith  among  the 
educated. 

Augustus,  however,  aimed  at  encouraging  public  religion  of  every 
description,  repairing  or  rebuilding  eighty-two  temples  at  Eome 
alone,  giving  them  rich  gifts,  restoring  old  festivals  and  ceremonies, 
reinstituting  priestly  colleges,  encouraging  special  foreign  w'orships, 
and  setting  up  new  civic  cults;  himself  playing  high  pontiff  and 
joining  each  new  priesthood,  to  the  end  of  making  his  power  and 
prestige  so  far  identical  with  theirs  ; '  in  brief,  anticipating  the  later 
ruling  principle  of  the  Church  of  Kome.  The  natural  upshot  of  the 
whole  process  was  the  imperial  apotheosis,  or  raising  of  each 
emperor  to  Godhead  at  death.  The  usage  of  deifying  living  rulers 
was  long  before  common  in  Egypt  and  the  east,*^  and  had  been 
adopted  by  the  conquering  Spartan  Lysander  in  Asia  Minor  as 
readily  as  by  the  conquering  Alexander.  Julius  Caesar  seems  to 
have  put  it  aside  as  a  nauseous  flattery  ;^  but  Augustus  wrought  it 

*  Boissier,  i.  73. 

2  See  Augustine's  citation  from  Varro,  De  civ.  Dei,  vi,  2.    Cp.  Sueton.  Attg.  29. 

8  The  only  record  to  the  contrary  is  the  worthless  scandal  as  to  his  "suppers  of  the 
Twelve  Gods"  (Sueton.  Aug.  70).  The  statement  of  W.  A.  Schmidt  that  *  none  of  the 
Julians  was  orthodox"  (Oeschichte der  Denk- inid  Qlauhensfreiheit  im  ersten  Jahrhundert , 
1847.  p.  175)  is  somewhat  overstrained.  *  Dio  Cassius.  lii,  36. 

5  E.g.,  his  encouragement  of  a  new  college  of  priests  founded  in  his  honour.     Dio,  xliv,  6. 

6  Sueton.  Julius,  44.  56.  The  first  public  library  actually  opened  in  Rome  was  founded 
by  Asinius  Pollio  under  Augustus,  and  was  placed  in  the  forecourt  of  the  temple  of  Liberty : 
Augustus  founded  two  others;  Tiberius  a  fourth,  in  his  palace;  Vespasian  a  fifth,  in  the 
temple  of  Peace ;  Domitian  a  sixth,  on  the  Capitol.  W.  A.  Schmidt.  Gesch.  der  Denk-  und 
Glaube^i^reiheit,  pp.  151-52. and  refs.  '  Boissier.  pp.  67-108 ;  Suetonius,  Aug.  xxix-xxxi. 

8  L'Abb6  Beurlier.  Le  Culte  Imperial,  1891.  introd.  and  ch.  1;  Boissier.  ch.  2.  Cp. 
p.  185.  note,  above, 

»  It  would  seem  that  the  occasion  on  which  he  enraged  the  Senate  by  not  rismg  to 
receive  them  (Sueton. /ui.  78)  was  that  on  which  they  came  to  announce  that  they  had 
made  him  a  God.  Jupiter  Julius,  with  a  special  temple  and  a  special  priest.    See  Long, 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  KOME 


209 


into  his  policy.      It  was  the  consummation  at  once    of   the   old 
political  conception  of  religion  and  of  the  new  autocracy. 

In  a  society  so  managed,  all  hope  of  return  to  self-government 
having  ceased,  the  level  of  thought  sank  accordingly.  There  was 
practically  no  more  active  freethought.  Livy,  indeed,  speaks  so 
often  of  the  contempt  shown  in  his  own  day  for  tales  of  prodigies, 
and  of  what  he  calls  contempt  for  the  Gods,^  that  there  can  be  no 
question  of  the  lack  of  religion  among  the  upper  classes  at  the 
beginning  of  the  empire.  But  even  in  Livy's  day  unbelief  had 
ceased  to  go  beyond  a  shrugging  of  the  shoulders.  HORACE,  with 
his  credat  Jtcdmis  Apella,  and  his  frank  rejection  of  the  fear  of  the 
Dcos  tristes,^  was  no  believer,  but  he  was  not  one  to  cross  the 
emperor,^  and  he  was  ready  to  lend  himself  to  the  official  policy  of 
religion.*  OviD  could  satirize^  the  dishonest  merchant  who  prayed 
to  the  Gods  to  absolve  his  frauds ;  but  he  hailed  Augustus  as  the 
sacred  founder  and  restorer  of  temples,^  prayed  for  him  as  such, 
busied  himself  with  the  archaeology  of  the  cults,  and  made  it,  not 
quite  without  irony,  a  maxim  to  "  spare  an  accepted  belief." 
Virgil,  at  heart  a  pantheist  with  rationalistic  leanings,®  but  sadly 
divided  between  Lucretius  and  Augustus,  his  poetical  and  his 
political  masters,^  tells  all  the  transition  from  the  would-be 
scientific  to  the  newly-credulous  age  in  the  two  wistful  lines  : — 

Felix  qui  potuit  rerum  cognoscere  caiisas 

Fortunatus  et  ille,  Deos  qui  novit  agrestes  ^° 

— "  happy  he  who  has  been  able  to  learn  the  causes  of  things ; 
fortunate  also  he  who  has  known  the  rural  Gods."  The  Gods, 
rural  and  other,  entered  on  their  due  heritage  in  a  world  of  deca- 
dence ;  Virgil's  epic  is  a  reHgious  celebration  of  antiquity ;  and 
Livy's  history  is  written  in  the  credulous  spirit,  or  at  least  in  the 
tone,  of  an  older  time,  with  a  few  concessions  to  recent  common 
sense."  In  the  next  generation  SENECA'S  monotheistic  aversion  to 
the  popular  superstitions  is  the  high-water  mark  of  the  period,  and 
represents  the  elevating  power  of  the  higher  Greek  Stoicism.  On 
this   score  he  belongs  to  the  freethinking   age,  while    his    theistic 

Decline  of  the  Roman  Republic,  v,  418.  He  might  very  well  have  intended  to  rebuke  their 
baseness.    But  cp.  Boissier,  i,  122,  citing  Dio,  xlvi,  6. 

I  iii.46;  x.40;  xliii,13.  ^  i  Sat.  v,  98-103. 

^  As  to  the  conflict  between  Horace's  bias  and  his  policy,  cp.  Boissier.  i,  193-201. 

*  E.g.,Carm.iii,6.  5  Fasti,  \,  673-92.  6  Fasti,  ii,  61-66.   ^   .   ,    ^ 

"^  Fasti,  iv.  204.  The  preceding  phrase,  pro  magno  teste  vetustas  credittir,  certainly  has 
an  ironic  ring.  8  ^neid,  vi.  724  -27.  »  Cp.  Boissier,  i.  228-29. 

^0  Georgics,  ii,  490,  493.  Diderot  originated  the  idea  that  the  first  of  these  lines  and  the 
two  which  follow  it  in  Virgil  had  reference  to  Lucretius.  Grimm.  Correspondance 
Litt^raire,  ed.  1829-30,  vi,  21-25.  It  is  acquiesced  in  by  W.  Warde  Fowler,  Social  Life  at 
Royne  in  the  Age  of  Cicero,  1909,  p.  327.  Sellar  (Roman  Foets  of  the  Augustan  Age :  Virgil, 
1877,  p.  201)  is  doubtful  on  the  point.  "  Cp.  Boissier,  i.  193. 


210 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  KOME 


apriorism  belongs  to  the  next/  All  the  while  his  principle  of 
conformity  to  all  legal  observances  ^  leaves  him  powerless  to  modify 
the  environment. 

As  the  empire  proceeds,  the  echoes  of  the  old  freethought  become 
fewer  and  fewer.  It  is  an  entire  misconception  to  suppose  that 
Christianity  came  into  the  Koman  world  as  a  saving  counter-force 
to  licentious  unbelief.  Unbelief  had  in  large  part  disappeared  before 
Christianity  made  any  headway  ;  and  that  creed  came  as  one  of 
many  popular  cults,  succeeding  in  terms  of  its  various  adaptations 
to  the  special  conditions,  moral  and  economic.  It  was  easy  for  the 
populace  of  the  empire  to  deify  a  ruler :  as  easy  as  for  those  of  the 
East  to  deify  Jesus  ;  or  for  the  early  Komans  to  deify  Komulus  ;  at 
Eome  it  was  the  people,  now  so  largely  of  alien  stock,  who  had 
most  insisted  on  deifying  Caesar.^  But  the  upper  class  soon  kept 
pace  with  them  in  the  zest  for  religion.  In  the  first  century,  the 
elder  Pliny  recalls  the  spirit  of  Lucretius  by  the  indignant  eloquence 
with  which  he  protests  against  the  burdensome  belief  in  immortality  ;* 
and  the  emphasis  with  which  he  scouts  ahke  the  polytheism  of  the 
multitude,  the  universal  worship  of  Fortune,  and  the  idea  that  man 
can  know  the  infinite  divinity  which  is  the  universe  ;^  but,  though 
Seneca  and  others  reject  the  fear  of  future  torment,  Pliny  is  the 
last  writer  to  repudiate  with  energy  the  idea  of  a  future  state.^  A 
number  of  epitaphs  still  chime  with  his  view ;  but  already  the 
majority  are  on  the  other  side  ;^  and  the  fear  of  hell  was  normally 
as  active  as  the  hope  of  heaven ;  while  the  belief  in  an  approaching 
end  of  the  world  was  proportionally  as  common  as  it  was  later 
under  Christianity.®  And  though  Pliny,  discussing  the  bases  of 
magic,  of  which  he  recognized  the  fraudulence,  ranks  among  them 
the  influences  of  religion,  as  to  which  he  declared  mankind  to  be 
still  in  extreme  darkness,^  we  have  seen  how  he  in  turn,  on  theistic 
grounds,  frowned  upon  Hipparchos  for  daring  to  number  the  stars.^** 
Thus,  whatever  may  be  the  truth  as  to  the  persecutions  of  the 
Christians  in  the  first  two  centuries  of  the  empire,  the  motive  was 
in  all  cases  certainly  political  or  moral,  as  in  the  earlier  case  of  the 
Bacchic  mysteries,  not  rationalistic  hostility  to  its  doctrines  as 
apart  from  Christian  attacks  on  the  established  worships. 

1  Boissier,  ii,  84-92.  2  ^p.  xcv.  •  Suetonius,  Jul.  88. 

*  The  same  note  occurs  in  Virgil.  Mneid.  vi,  719-21. 

*  Hist.  Nat.  ii,  1.  5  (7).  Pliny  identifies  nature  and  deity  :  "Per  qucb  declaratur  hand 
duhie  naturtB  potentia,  idqiie  esse  quod  Deum  vocamus  "  (last  cit.,  end). 

6  Hist.  nat.  vii.  55  (56).    Cp.  Boissier.  i.  300.  '  Id.  pp.  301-303. 

8  See  the  praiseworthy  treatise  of  Mr.  J.  A.  Farrer.  Paganism  and  Christianity,  1891, 
chs.  5.  6,  and  7. 

8  " vires  religionist  ad  quas  maxitne  etiam7ium  caligat  humanum  genus."    Hist.  fiat. 

XXX,  1.  10  Above,  p.  188. 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  ROME 


211 


Some  unbelievers  there  doubtless  were  after  Petronius,  whose 
perdurable  maxim  that  "Fear  first  made  Gods  in  the  world,"* 
adopted  in  the  next  generation  by  Statius,^  was  too  pregnant  with 
truth  to  miss  all  acceptance  among  thinking  men.  The  fact  that 
Statins  in  his  verse  ranked  Domitian  with  the  Gods  made  its  truth 
none  the  less  pointed.  The  Alexandrian  rationalist  Chaeremon, 
who  had  been  appointed  one  of  the  tutors  of  Nero,  had  explained 
the  Egyptian  religion  as  a  mere  allegorizing  of  the  physical  order  of 
the  universe.^  It  has  been  remarked  too  that  in  the  next  century 
the  appointment  of  the  freethinking  Greek  Lucian  by  Marcus 
Aurelius  to  a  post  of  high  authority  in  Egypt  showed  that  his 
writings  gave  no  great  offence  at  court,^  where,  indeed,  save  under 
the  two  great  Antonines,  religious  seriousness  was  rare.  These, 
however,  were  the  exceptions  :  the  whole  cast  of  mind  developed 
under  the  autocracy,  whether  in  the  good  or  in  the  bad,  made  for 
belief  and  acquiescence  or  superstition  rather  than  for  searching 
doubt  and  sustained  reasoning. 

The  statement  of  Mosheim  or  of  his  commentators  {Eccles. 
Hist.  1  Cent.  Pt.  I,  ch.  i,  §  21,  note  ;  Murdock's  trans.  Reid's 
ed.)  that  JuvENAL  (Sat.  xiii,  86)  "  complains  of  the  many 
atheists  at  Rome  "is  a  perversion  of  the  passage  cited. 
Juvenal's  allusion  to  those  who  put  all  things  down  to  fortune 
and  deny  a  moral  government  of  the  world  begins  with  the 
phrase  "sunt  qui,''  "there  are  (those)  who";  he  makes  far 
more  account  of  the  many  superstitious,  and  never  suggests 
that  the  atheists  are  numerous  in  his  day.  Neither  does  he 
"complain";  on  the  contrary,  his  allusion  to  the  atheists  as 
such  is  non-condemnatory  as  compared  with  his  attacks  on 
pious  rogues,  and  is  thus  part  of  the  ground  for  holding  that 
he  was  himself  something  of  a  freethinker — one  of  the  last 
among  the  literary  men.  In  the  tenth  Satire  (346  sqq.)  he  puts 
the  shghtly  theistic  doctrine,  sometimes  highly  praised  (ed. 
Ruperti,  1817,  in  loc),  that  men  should  not  pray  for  anything, 
but  leave  the  decision  to  the  Gods,  to  whom  man  is  dearer  than 
to  himself.  There  too  occurs  the  famous  doctrine  (356)  that  if 
anything  is  to  be  prayed  for  it  should  be  the  7nens  sana  in 
corpore  sano,  and  the  strong  soul  void  of  the  fear  of  death. 
The  accompanying  phrase  about  offering  "  the  intestines  and 
the  sacred  sausages  of  a  whitish  pig  "  is  flatly  contemptuous  of 
religious  ceremonial ;  and  the  closing  lines,  placing  the  source 


1  Primus  in  orbe  decs  fecit  timor.     Frag.  22.  ed.  Burmanni.     The  whole  passage  is 
noteworthy.    See  also  his  Satyricon,  c.  137.  as  to  his  estimate  of  sacerdotal  sincerity. 

2  Thebaid,  iii.  661. 

*  Porphyry,  Epistle  to  Aneho  (with  Jamblichus).    Chaeremon,  however,  is  said  to  have 
regarded  comets  as  divine  portents.    Origen,  Ag.  Celsus,  bk.  i.  ch.  59. 

*  Prof.  C.  Martha,  Les  moralistes  sous  I'empire  romain,  ed.  1881,  p.  341. 


212  FREETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  ROME 

of  virtue  and  happiness  within,  are  strictly  naturalistic.     In  the 
two  last: —  ,    ^.  p        ,.  , 

Nullum  numen  habes,  si  sit  prudentia  ;  nos  lor  sedj  te 
Nos  facimus,  Fort  una,  Deam,  ccEloque  locamus, 

the  frequent  reading  abest  for  habes  seems  to  make  the  better 
sense  :  "  No  divinity  is  wanting,  if  there  be  prudence  ;  but  it  is 
we,  0  fortune,  who  make  thee  a  Goddess,  and  throne  thee  in 
heaven."  In  any  case,  the  insistence  is  on  man's  lordship  of 
himself.  (The  phrase  occurs  again  in  Sat,  xiv,  315.)  But  the 
worship  of  Fortune— which  PUny  declares  to  be  the  prevaihng 
faith  of  his  day  {Hist.  Nat.  II,  v  (vii),  7— was  itself  a  cult  like 
another,  with  temples  and  ritual;  and  the  astrology  which,  he 
adds,  is  beginning  to  supersede  Fortune-worship  among  the 
learned  and  the  ignorant  alike,  was  but  a  reversion  to  an  older 
Eastern  rehgion.  His  own  preference  is  for  sun-worship,  if 
any ;  but  he  falls  back  on  the  conviction  that  the  power  of  God 
is  limited,  and  that  God  is  thus  seen  to  be  simply  Nature  (id.  8). 
The  erroneous  notion  that  the  Roman  aristocracy  ran  mainly 
to  atheism  was  widely  propagated  by  Voltaire,  who  made  it  part 
of  his  argument  against  the  atheism  of  his  own  day  (Jeniii  ; 
art.  Athiisme,  in  the  Diet.  Philos..  etc.).  It  will  not  bear 
examination.  As  regards  the  general  tone  of  Roman  literature 
from  the  first  century  onwards,  the  summing-up  of  Renan  is 

substantially   just:    *' The   freethinkers diminish   little   by 

little,    and   disappear Juvenal   alone    continues   in   Roman 

society,  down   to   the   time   of   Hadrian,  the  expression  of   a 

frank  incredulity Science  dies  out  from  day  to  day.     From 

the  death  of  Seneca,  it  may  be  said  that  there  is  no  longer 
a  thoroughly  rationaUstic  scholar.     Pliny  the  Elder  is  inquisi- 
tive, but   uncritical.     Tacitus,  Pliny  the  Younger,   Suetonius, 
avoid    commenting    on    the    inanity   of    the    most   ridiculous 
inventions.     PUny    the    Younger    (Ep.    vii,    27)    believes    m 
puerile  stories  of  ghosts;   Epictetus  (xxxi,  5)  would  have  ail 
practise  the  established  worship.     Even  a  writer   so  frivolous 
as  Apuleius  feels  himself  bound  to  take  the  tone  of  a  rigid 
conservative  about  the  Gods  (Florida,  i,  1 ;  De  Magia,  41,  55, 
56,  63).     A  single  man,  about  the  middle  of  this  century,  seems 
entirely  exempt  from  supernatural  beliefs  ;  that  is  Lucian.    The 
scientific  spirit,  which  is  the  negation  of  the  supernatural,  exists 
only  in  a  few  ;  superstition  invades  all,  enfeebHng  all  reason  " 
(Les  Evangiles,  ed.  1877.  pp.  406-407). 
That  the  mental  paralysis  connects  causally  with  the  political 
conditions  will  perhaps  not  now  be  denied.     A  censorship  of  the 
written   word    belongs   congenitally   to   autocracy ;    and   only   the 
personal   magnanimity   of   Caesar   and   the   prudence   of   Augustus 
delayed  its  development  in  Rome.     Soon  it  became  an  irresistible 
terrorism.     Even  Caesar,  indeed,  so  far  forgot  one  of  the  great  rules 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  ROME 


213 


of  his  life  as  to  impeach  before  the  Senate  the  tribunes  who  had 
quite  justifiably  prosecuted  some  of  the  people  who  had  hailed  him 
as  king  ;*  and  the  fact  that  the  Senate  was  already  slavish  enough  to 
eject  them  gives  the  forecast  of  the  future.  Augustus  long  showed 
a  notable  forbearance  to  all  manner  of  verbal  opposition,  and  even 
disparagement ;  but  at  length  he  also  began  to  prosecute  for  private 
aspersions,^  and  even  to  suppress  histories  of  a  too  critical  stamp. 
Tiberius  began  his  reign  with  the  high-pitched  sentiment  that  **  in 
a  free  State  tongue  and  mind  should  be  free  ";^  and  for  a  time  he 
bore  himself  with  an  exemplary  restraint ;  but  he  too,  in  turn,  took 
the  colour  of  his  place,  and  became  murderously  resentful  of  any 
semblance  of  aspersion  on  himself.*  The  famous  sentiment  ascribed 
to  him  in  the  Annals  of  Tacitus,  Deorum  injiiriae  diis  curae^ —  the 
Gods'  wrongs  are  the  Gods'  business  " — is  not  noted  by  Suetonius, 
and  has  an  un-Roman  sound.  What  Suetonius  tells  is^  that  he  was 
**  very  negligent  concerning  the  Gods  and  religions,"  yet  addicted  to 
the  astrologers,  and  a  behever  in  fate.  The  fact  remains  that  while, 
as  aforesaid,  there  must  have  been  still  a  number  of  unbeHevers, 
there  is  no  sign  after  Lucretius  of  any  Roman  propaganda  against 
rehgion ;  and  the  presumption  is  that  the  Augustan  policy  of  pro- 
moting the  old  cults  was  extended  to  the  maintenance  of  the 
ordinary  Roman  view  that  disrespect  to  the  Gods  was  a  danger 
to  the  State.  In  the  reign  of  Nero  we  find  trace  of  a  treatise 
De  religionis  erroribus  by  Fabricius  Vejento,'  wherein  was  ridiculed 
the  zeal  of  the  priests  to  proclaim  mysteries  which  they  did  not 
understand  ;  but,  whether  or  not  its  author  was  exiled  and  the  book 
burnt  on  their  protest,  such  literature  was  not  further  produced. 

There  was,  in  fact,  no  spirit  left  for  a  Lucretian  polemic  against 
false  beliefs.  Everything  in  the  nature  of  a  searching  criticism  of 
life  was  menaced  by  the  autocracy;  Nero  decreeing  that  no  man 
should  philosophize  at  Rome,^  after  slaying  or  banishing  a  series  of 

t  W.  A.  Schmidt,  who  cites  this  act  {Qeschichte  der  Denk-  mid  Olauhensfreiheit 
pp.  31-33)  as  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  free  speech  in  Rome,  does  not  mention  the  detail 
given  by  Dio  (xliv,  10),  that  Ceesar  suspected  the  tribunes  of  having  set  on  some  of  the 
people  to  hail  him  as  king.  But  the  unproved  suspicion  does  not  justify  his  course, 
which  was  a  bad  lapse  of  judgment,  even  if  the  suspicion  were  just.  From  this  pomt 
a  conspiracy  against  his  life  was  natural.  Cp.  Long,  Decline  of  the  Roman  Bepubhc, 
V,  432-33.  as  to  the  facts.  ,   ^ .  .     ^    ^.t     i      i 

2  See  W.  A.  Schmidt,  pp.  34-108,  for  a  careful  analysis  of  the  evolution.  As  to  the  book- 
censure,  see  pp.  101-104. 

3  Suetonius.  Tiberius,  c.  28.  *  Id.  c.  61. 

5  Annals,  i,  73.  That  such  a  phrase  should  have  been  written  by  an  emperor  in  an 
official  letter,  and  yet  pass  unnoticed  through  antiquity  save  in  one  historical  work, 
recovered  only  in  the  Renaissance,  is  one  of  the  minor  improbabilities  that  give  colour  to 
the  denial  of  the  genuineness  of  the  Annals.  .  ,  .    ., 

6  Tiberius,  c.  69.  ^  Petronius,  Saiyrtcon,  ad  tntt. 

8  In  the  Annals  (xiv.  50)  it  is  stated  that  the  book  attacked  senators  and  pontiffs ;  that 
it  was  condemned  to  be  burned,  and  Vejento  to  be  exiled ;  and  that  the  book  was  much 
sought  and  read  while  forbidden ;  but  that  it  fell  into  oblivion  when  all  were  free  to  read 
it.  Here,  again,  there  is  no  other  ancient  testimony.  Vejento  is  heard  of,  however,  in 
Juvenal,  iv,  113, 123-29.  »  Philostratus,  Life  of  ApoUonius,  iv,  47. 


214 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  EOME 


philosophers;'  Domitian  crucifying  the  very  scribes  who  copied  the 
work  of  Hermogenes  of  Tarsus,  in  which  he  was  obliquely  criticized. 
When  men  in  the  mass  crouched  before  such  tyranny,  helplessly 
beholding  emperor  after  emperor  overtaken  by  the  madness  that 
accrues  to  absolute  power,  they  were  disabled  for  any  disinterested 
warfare  on  behalf  of  truth.  All  serious  impeachment  of  religion 
proceeds  upon  an  ethical  motive ;  and  in  imperial  Kome  there  was 
no  room  for  any  nobility  of  ethic  save  such  as  upbore  the  Stoics  in 
their  austere  pursuit  of  self-control,  in  a  world  too  full  of  evil  to  be 
delighted  in. 

Thus  it  came  about  that  the  Caesars,  who  would  doubtless  have 
protected  their  co-operating  priesthoods  from  any  serious  attack  on 
the  official  rehgion,**  had  practically  no  occasion  to  do  so.  Lucian's 
jests  were  cast  at  the  Gods  of  Greece,  not  at  those  of  the  Roman 
official  cults  ;  hence  his  immunity.  What  the  Caesars  were  con- 
cerned to  do  was  rather  to  menace  any  alien  religion  that  seemed 
to  undermine  the  solidarity  of  the  State ;  and  of  such  religions,  first 
the  Jewish,  and  later  the  Christian,  were  obvious  examples.  Thus 
we  have  it  that  Tiberius  **  put  down  foreign  religions  "  {externas 
ceremonias),  in  particular  the  Egyptian  and  Judaic  rites;  pulling 
down  the  temple  of  Isis,  crucifying  her  priests,  expelling  from 
Eome  all  Jews  and  proselytes,  and  forcing  the  Jewish  youth  to 
undergo  military  service  in  unhealthy  climates.*  Even  the  astro- 
logers, in  whose  lore  he  believed,  he  expelled  until  they  promised  to 
renounce  their  art— a  precedent  partly  set  up  by  Augustus,**  and 
followed  with  varying  severity  by  ail  the  emperors,  pagan  and 
Christian  alike. 

And  still  the  old  Italian  religion  waned,  as  it  must.  On  the  one 
hand,  the  Italic  population  was  almost  wholly  replaced  or  diluted  by 
alien  stocks,  slave  or  free,  with  alien  cults  and  customs  ;  on  the 
other,  the  utter  insincerity  of  the  official  cults,  punctiliously  con- 
served by  well-paid,  unbelieving  priests,  invited  indifference.  In  the 
nature  of  things,  an  unchanging  creed  is  moribund  ;  life  means 
adaptation  to  change ;  and  it  was  only  the  aHen  cults  that  in  Rome 
adapted  themselves  to  the  psychic  mutation.  Among  the  educated, 
who  had  read  their  Lucretius,  the  spectacle  of  the  innumerable  cults 
of  the  empire  conduced  either  to  entire  but  tacit  unbelief,  or  to 
a  species  of  vaguely  rationaUstic*^  yet  sentimental  monotheism,  in 

1  Cp.  Schmidt,  pp.  34&-47.  *  Suetonius,  Domitian,  c.  10. 

8  Cp.  Schmidt,  p.  157.  „  ^         ^ 

*  Suetonius,  Tiberius,  c.  36;  Josephus,  Antiquities,  xviii,  3.  §9  4.  5.    Josephus  specifies 
isolated  pretexts,  which  Suetonius  does  not  mention.    They  are  not  very  probable. 
5  Who  destroyed  2.000  copies  of  prophetical  books.    Suetonius.  Aug.  c.  31. 
«  See.  in  the  next  chapter,  as  to  the  rationalistic  mythology  of  Macrobius. 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  ROME 


215 


which  Reason  sometimes  figured  as  universal  Deity .^  Among  the 
uneducated  the  progression  was  constant  towards  one  or  other  of 
the  emotional  and  ritualistic  oriental  faiths,  so  much  better  adapted 
to  their  down-trodden  life. 

§4 

One  element  of  betterment  there  was  in  the  life  of  declining 
Rome,  until  the  Roman  ideals  were  superseded  by  oriental.  Even 
the  Augustan  poets,  Horace  and  Ovid,  had  protested  like  the 
Hebrew  prophets,  and  like  Plato  and  like  Cicero,  against  the  idea 
that  rich  sacrifices  availed  with  the  Gods  above  a  pure  heart ;  and 
such  doctrine,  while  paganism  lasted,  prevailed  more  and  more. 
At  the  same  time,  Horace  rejects  the  Judaeo-Stoic  doctrine,  adopted 
in  the  gospels,  that  all  sins  are  equal,  and  lays  down  the  rational 
moral  test  of  utility — Utilitas  justi  prop^  mater  et  aequi.^  The 
better  and  more  thoughtful  men  who  grew  up  under  the  autocracy, 
though  inevitably  feebler  and  more  credulous  in  their  thinking  than 
those  of  the  later  commonwealth,  developed  at  length  a  concern  for 
conduct,  pubHc  and  private,  which  lends  dignity  to  the  later 
philosophic  literature,  and  lustre  to  the  imperial  rule  of  the 
Antonines.  This  concern  it  was  that,  linking  Greek  theory  to 
Roman  practice,  produced  a  code  of  rational  law  which  could  serve 
Europe  for  a  thousand  years.  This  concern  too  it  was,  joined 
with  the  relatively  high  moral  quality  of  their  theism,  that  ennobled 
the  writing  of  Seneca^  and  Epictetus  and  Maximus  of  Tyre;  and 
irradiates  the  words  as  well  as  the  rule  of  Marcus  Aurelius.  In 
them  was  anticipated  all  that  was  good^  in  the  later  Christian  ethic, 
even  as  the  popular  faiths  anticipated  the  Christian  dogmas ;  and 
they  cherished  a  temper  of  serenity  that  the  Fathers  fell  far  short 
of.  To  compare  their  pages  with  those  of  the  subsequent  Christian 
Fathers— Seneca  with  Lactantius,  "  the  Christian  Cicero  ";  Maximus 
with  Arnobius ;  Epictetus  with  TertuUian ;  the  admirable  Marcus, 
and  his  ideal  of  the  "  dear  city  of  Zeus,"  with  the  shrill  polemic  of 
Augustine's  City  of  God  and  the  hysteria  of  the  Confessions — is  to 

1  Cp.  Propertius,  ii.  14,  27  saaA  iii.  23. 19-20 ;  iv.  3,  38 ;  Tibullus,  iv.  1, 18-23 ;  Juvenal,  as 
before  cited,  and  XV,  133. 142-46.  _  ^  ...  ^^  ,_    ^^  -^   tt      -j 

2  Plato,  2  Alcib.;  Cicero,  Pro  Cluentio,  c.  68  ;  Horace.  Carm.  m,  23, 17 ;  Ovid.  Ueroides, 
Acont.  Cydim.  191-92;  Persius,  Sat.  ii,  69;  Seneca,  De  BeneficHs,  i,  6.  Cp.  Diod.  Sic.  xu, 
20  ;  Varro,  in  Arnobius,  .4dv.  Ge?ites.  vii.  1.  .. 

^  1  Sat.  iii.  96-98.  Cp.  Cicero,  De  Finibus,  iv,  19,  27,  28;  Matt,  v,  19-28;  James,  ii,  10. 
Lactantius,  again  (Div.  Inst,  iii,  23),  denounces  the  doctrine  of  the  equality  of  offences  as 
laid  down  by  Zeno,  giving  no  sign  of  knowing  that  it  is  also  set  forth  in  his  own  sacred  books. 

4  On  Seneca's  moral  teaching,  cp.  Martha,  Les  MoraUstes  sous  Veyyipire  romatn, 
pp.  57-66 ;  Boissier,  La  religion  romaine,  ii,  80-82.  M.  Boissier  further  examines  fully  the 
exploded  theory  that  Seneca  received  Christian  teaching.  On  this  compare  Bishop 
Lightfoot.  Dissertations  on  the  Apostolic  Age,  pp.  237-92.  . ,        „  t       ,     -^.i, 

5  Seneca  was  so  advanced  in  his  theoretic  ethic  as  to  consider  all  war  on  a  level  with 
homicide.    Epist.  xcv,  30. 


216 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  EOME 


prove  a  rapid  descent  in  magnanimity,  sanity,  self-command,  sweet- 
ness of  spirit,  and  tolerance.  What  figures  as  religious  intolerance 
in  the  Caesars  was,  as  we  have  seen,  always  a  political,  never  a 
religious,  animosity.  Any  prosecution  of  Christians  under  the 
Antonines  was  certainly  on  the  score  of  breach  of  law,  turbulence, 
or  real  or  supposed  malpractices,  not  on  that  of  heresy — a  crime 
created  only  by  the  Christians  themselves,  in  their  own  conflicts. 

The  scientific  account  of  the  repellent  characteristics  of  the 
Fathers,  of  course,  is  not  that  their  faith  made  them  what  they 
were,  but  that  the  ever- worsening  social  and  intellectual  conditions 
assorted  such  types  into  their  ecclesiastical  places,  and  secured  for 
them  their  influence  over  the  types  now  prevailing  among  the 
people.  They  too  stand  for  the  intellectual  dissolution  wrought 
by  imperialism.  When  all  the  higher  forms  of  intellectual  efiiciency 
W'Cre  at  an  end,  it  was  impossible  that  on  any  religious  impulse 
whatever  there  should  be  generated  either  a  higher  code  of  life  or 
a  saner  body  of  thought  than  those  of  the  higher  paganism  of  the 
past.  Their  very  arguments  against  paganism  are  largely  drawn 
from  old  "  pagan "  sources.  Those  who  still  speak  of  the  rise  of 
Christianity  in  the  ancient  world  as  a  process  of  "regeneration"  are 
merely  turning  historical  science  out  of  doors.  The  Christian  Fathers 
had  all  the  opportunity  that  a  life  of  quasi-intellectual  specialism 
could  supply  ;  and  their  liberty  of  criticism  as  regarded  the  moribund 
pagan  creeds  was  a  further  gymnastic ;  but  nothing  could  countervail 
the  insanity  of  their  intellectual  presuppositions,  which  they  could 
not  transcend. 

Inheriting  the  Judaic  hypnotism  of  the  Sacred  Book,  they  could 
reason  only  as  do  railers  ;  and  the  moral  readjustment  which  put 
them  in  revolt  against  the  erotic  element  in  pagan  mythology  was 
a  mere  substitution  of  an  ascetic  neurosis  for  the  old  disease  of 
imagination.  Strictly  speaking,  their  asceticism,  being  never 
rationalized,  never  rose  to  the  level  of  ethic  as  distinguished  from 
mere  taboo  or  sacrosanct  custom.  As  we  shall  see,  they  could  not 
wholly  escape  the  insurgence  of  the  spirit  of  reason ;  but  they 
collectively  scouted  it  with  a  success  attained  by  no  other  ostensibly 
educated  priesthood  of  antiquity.  They  intellectually  represent,  in 
fact,  the  consummation  of  the  general  Mediterranean  decadence. 

For  the  rest,  the  "  triumph  "  of  the  new  faith  was  simply  the 
survival  of  the  forms  of  thought,  and,  above  all,  of  the  form  of 
religious  community,  best  fitted  to  the  political  and  intellectual 
environment.  The  new  Church  organization  was  above  all  things 
a  great  economic  endowment  for  a  class  of  preachers,  polemists,  and 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ANCIENT  EOME 


217 


I 


propagandists  ;  and  between  the  closing  of  the  old  spheres  of  public 
life  and  the  opening  of  the  new,^  the  new  faith  was  established  as 
much  by  political  and  economic  conditions  as  by  its  intellectual 
adaptation  to  an  age  of  mental  twilight. 

Of  the  religion  of  the  educated  pagans  in  its  last  forms,  then, 
it  is  finally  to  be  said  that  it  was  markedly  rationalistic  as  compared 
with  the  Christianity  which  followed,  and  has  been  on  that  ground 
stigmatized  by  Christian  orthodoxy  down  till  our  own  day.  The 
religion  of  Marcus  Aurelius  is  self-reverence,  self-study,  self-rule, 
plus  faith  in  Deity ;  and  it  is  not  to  be  gainsaid  that,  next  to  his 
adoptive  father  Antoninus  Pius,  he  remains  the  noblest  monarch  in 
ancient  history ;  the  nearest  parallel  being  the  more  superstitious 
but  still  noble  Julian,  the  last  of  the  great  pagan  rulers.  In  such 
rulers  the  antique  philosophy  w^as  in  a  measure  justified  of  its 
children;  and  if  it  never  taught  them  to  grapple  with  the  vast 
sociological  problem  set  up  by  the  Empire,  and  so  failed  to  preserve 
the  antique  civilization,  it  at  least  did  as  much  for  them  in  that 
regard  as  the  new  faith  did  for  its  followers. 


1  t  is  to  be  noted  that  preaching  had  begun  among  the  morahsts  of  Rome  m.the  first 
century,  and  was  carried  on  by  the  priests  of  Isis  in  the  second;  and  that  in  L^gypti 
monasticism  had  long  been  established.  Martha,  as  cited,  p.  67 ;  Boissier,  i,  356-59.  CP. 
Mosheim,  2  Cent.  pt.  ii,  c.  iii,  §§  13. 14,  as  to  monasticism. 


Chaptee  VII 
ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

§1 

The  Christian  gospels,  broadl3'  considered,  stand  for  a  certain 
measure  of  freethinking  reaction  against  the  Jewish  religion,  and 
are  accordingly  to  be  reckoned  with  in  the  present  inquiry  ;  albeit 
their  practical  outcome  was  only  an  addition  to  the  world's  super- 
naturalism  and  traditional  dogma.  To  estimate  aright  their  share 
of  freethought,  we  have  but  to  consider  the  kind  and  degree  of 
demand  they  made  on  the  reason  of  the  ancient  listener,  as  apart, 
that  is,  from  the  demand  made  on  their  basis  for  the  recognition  of 
a  new  Deity.  When  this  is  done  it  will  be  found  that  they  express 
in  parts  a  process  of  reflection  w^hich  outwent  even  critical  common 
sense  in  a  kind  of  ecstatic  Stoicism,  an  oriental  repudiation  of  the 
tyranny  of  passions  and  appetites ;  in  other  parts  a  mysticism  that 
proceeds  as  far  beyond  the  credulity  of  ordinary  faith.  Socially 
considered,  they  embody  a  similar  opposition  between  an  anarchistic 
and  a  partly  orthodox  or  regulative  ideal.  The  plain  inference  is 
that  they  stand  for  many  independent  movements  of  thought  in  the 
Graeco-Koman  world.  It  is  actually  on  record  that  the  reduction  of 
the  whole  law  to  love  of  one's  neighbour  ^  was  taught  before  the 
Christian  era  by  the  famous  Rabbi  Hillel ;  ^  and  the  gospel  itself  * 
shows  that  this  view  was  current.  In  another  passage^  the 
reduction  of  the  ten  commandments  to  five  again  indicates  a  not 
uncommon  disregard  for  the  ecclesiastical  side  of  the  law.  But  the 
difference  between  the  two  passages  points  of  itself  to  various  forces 
of  relative  freethought. 

Any  attentive  study  of  the  gospels  discloses  not  merely  much 
glossing  and  piecing  and  interpolating  of  documents,  but  a  plain 
medley  of  doctrines,  of  ideals,  of  principles ;  and  to  accept  the  mass 
of  disconnected  utterances  ascribed  to  "  the  Lord,"  many  of  them 
associated  with  miracles,  as  the  oral  teaching  of  any  one  man,  is  a 
proceeding  so  uncritical  that  in  no  other  study  could  it  now  be 


1  Mt.  xxii,  39 ;  Mk.  xii.  31. 
8  Mk.  xii,  32. 


2  Talmud,  tract.  Sahhath,  306. 
*  Lk.  xviii,  20. 


ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS      219 

followed.  The  simple  fact  that  the  Pauline  Epistles  (by  whomso- 
ever written)  show  no  knowledge  of  any  Jesuine  miracles  or  teachings 
whatever,  except  as  regards  the  Last  Supper  (1  Cor.  xi,  24-25 — a 
passage  obviously  interpolated),  admits  of  only  three  possible 
interpretations:  (l)  the  Jesus  then  believed  in  had  not  figured  as 
a  teacher  at  all;  or  (2)  the  writer  or  writers  gave  no  credit  or 
attached  no  importance  to  reports  of  his  teachings.  Either  of  these 
views  (of  which  the  first  is  plainly  the  more  plausible)  admits  of  (3) 
the  further  conclusion  that  the  Pauline  Jesus  was  not  the  Gospel 
Jesus,  but  an  earlier  one — a  fair  enough  hypothesis  ;  but  on  that 
view  the  mass  of  Dominical  utterances  in  the  gospels  is  only  so 
much  the  less  certificated.  When,  then,  it  is  admitted  by  all  open- 
minded  students  that  the  events  in  the  narrative  are  in  many  cases 
fictitious,  even  when  they  are  not  miraculous,  it  is  wholly  inadmis- 
sible that  the  sayings  should  be  trustworthy,  as  one  man's  teachings. 
Analysing  them  in  collation,  we  find  even  in  the  Synoptics,  and 
without  taking  into  account  the  Fourth  Gospel,  such  wide  dis- 
crepancies as  the  following : — 

1.  The  doctrine:  "the  Kingdom  of  God  is  among  you" 
(Lk.  xvii,  21),  side  by  side  with  promises  of  the  speedy  arrival 
of  the  Son  of  Man,  whose  coming  =  the  Kingdom  of  God  (cp. 
Mt.  iii,  2,  3 ;  iv,  17 ;  Mk.  i,  15). 

2.  The  frequent  profession  to  supersede  the  Law  (Mt.  v,  21, 
33,  38,  43,  etc.) ;  and  the  express  declaration  that  not  one  jot  or 
tittle  thereof  is  to  be  superseded  (Mt.  v,  17-20). 

3.  Proclamation  of  a  gospel  for  the  poor  and  the  enslaved 
(Lk.  iv,  18) ;  with  the  tacit  acceptance  of  slavery  (Lk.  xvii,  7,  9, 
10 ;  where  the  word  translated  *'  servant  "  in  the  A.V.,  and  let 
pass  by  McClellan,  Blackader,  and  other  reforming  English 
critics,  certainly  means  **  slave  "). 

4.  Stipulation  for  the  simple  fulfilment  of  the  Law  as  a  pass- 
port to  eternal  life,  with  or  without  further  self-denial  (Mt.  xix, 
16-21 ;  Lk.  x,  28 ;  xviii,  22) ;  on  the  other  hand  a  stipulation 
for  simple  benevolence,  as  in  the  Egyptian  ritual  (Mt.  xxv  ;  cp. 
Lk.  ix,  48) ;  and  yet  again  stipulations  for  blind  faith  (Mt.  x, 
15)  and  for  blood  redemption  (Mt.  xxvi,  28). 

5.  Alternate  promise  (Mt.  vi,  33 ;  xix,  29)  and  denial  (Mt.  x, 
34-39)  of  temporal  blessings. 

6.  Alternate  commands  to  secrecy  (Mt.  xii,  16 ;  viii,  4 ;  ix, 
30 ;  Mk.  iii,  12 ;  v,  43 ;  vii,  36)  and  to  publicity  (Mt.  vii,  7-8  ; 
Mk.  V,  19)  concerning  miracles,  with  a  frequent  record  of  their 
public  performance. 

7.  Specific  restriction  of  salvation  to  Israelites  (Mt.  x,  5,  6 ; 
XV,  24  :  xix,  28) ;  equally  specific  declaration  that  the  Kingdom 
of  God  shall  be  to  another  nation  (Mt.  xxii,  43) ;  no  less  specific 


220     ANCIENT  CHKISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

assurance  that  the  Son  of  Man  (not  the  Twelve  as  in  Mt.  xix, 
28)  shall  judge  all  nations,  not  merely  Israel  (Mt.  xxv,  32 ;  cp. 

viii,  11). 

8.  Profession  to  teach  all,  especially  the  simple  and  the 
childhke  (Mt.  xviii,  3  ;  xi,  25,  28-30 ;  Mk.  x,  15) ;  on  the  con- 
trary,  a  flat  declaration  (Mt.  xiii.  10-16  ;  Mk.  iv,  11 ;  Lk.  vni,  10  ; 
cp.  Mk.  iv,  34)  that  the  saving  teaching  is  only  for  the  special 
disciples ;  yet  again  (Mt.  xv,  16 ;  Mk,  vi,  52 ;  viii.  17,  18) 
imputations  of  lack  of  understanding  to  them. 

9.  Companionship  of  the  Teacher  with  "publicans  and 
sinners"  (Mt.  ix,  10);  and,  on  the  other  hand,  a  reference  to 
the  publicans  as  falling  far  short  of  the  needed  measure  of 
loving-kindness  (Mt.  v,  46). 

10.  Explicit  contrarieties  of  phrase,  not  m  context  (Mt.  xii, 
30  ;  Lk.  xi,  50). 

11.  Flat  contradictions  of  narrative  as  to  the  Teacher's  local 

success  (Mt.  xiii,  54-58;  Lk.  iv,  23). 

12.  Insistence  that  the  Messiah  is  of  the  Davidic  line  (Mt.  i ; 
xxi,  15 ;  Lk.  i,  27 ;  ii,  4),  and  that  he  is  not  (Mt.  xxii,  43-45  ; 
Mk.  xii,  35-37  ;  Lk.  xx). 

13.  Contradictory  precepts  as  to  limitation  and  non-limitation 
of  forgiveness  (Mt.  xviii,  17,  22). 

Such  variously  serious  discrepancies  count  for  more  than  even 
the  chronological  and  other  divergences  of  the  records  concerning 
the  Birth,  the  Supper,  the  Crucifixion,  and  the  Kesurrection,  as 
proofs  of  diversity  of  source  ;  and  they  may  be  multiplied  indefinitely. 
The  only  course  for  criticism  is  to  admit  that  they  stand  for  the  ideas 
of  a  variety  of  sects  or  movements,  or  else  for  an  unlimited  mani- 
pulation of  the  documents  by  individual  hands.  Many  of  them 
may  very  well  have  come  from  various  so-called  "  Lords "  and 
"  Messiahs  ";  but  they  cannot  be  from  a  single  teacher. 

There  remains  open  the  fascinating  problem  as  to  whether  some 
if  not  all  of  the  more  notable  teachings  may  not  be  the  utterances  of 
one  teacher  of  commanding  originality,  whose  sectaries  were  either 
unable  to  appreciate  or  unable  to  keep  separate  his  doctrine.*  Un- 
doubtedly some  of  the  better  teachings  came  first  from  men  of 
superior  capacity  and  relatively  deep  ethical  experience.  The  veto 
on  revenge,  and  the  inculcation  of  love  to  enemies,  could  not  come 
from  commonplace  minds ;  and  the  saying  preserved  from  the 
Gospel  According  to  the  Hebrews,  "  Unless  ye  cease  from  sacrificing 
the  wrath  shall  not  cease  from  you,"  has  a  remarkable  ring.'^    But 

1  See  the  impressive  argument  of  Dr.  Moncure  Conway  in  his  Solomon  arid  Solomonic 
Literature,  1809,  ch.  xviii.  ,  «         -     «     « 

2  See  Dr.  Nicholson's  Ths  Gospel  According  to  the  Hebrews,  1879,  p.  77.  Cp.  Conway, 
p.  222.  Dr.  Nicholson  insists  that  at  least  the  word  "sacrificing"  must  be  spurious, 
because  "  it  ia  surely  impossible  that  Jesus  ever  uttered  this  threat "  I 


ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS      221 

when  we  compare  the  precept  of  forgiveness  with  similar  teachings 
in  the  Hebrew  books  and  the  Talmud,*  we  realize  that  the  capacity 
for  such  thought  had  been  shown  by  a  number  of  Jewish  teachers, 
and  that  it  was  a  specific  result  of  the  long  sequence  of  wrong  and 
oppression  undergone  by  the  Jewish  people  at  the  hands  of  their 
conquerors.     The  unbearable,  consuming  pain  of  an  impotent  hate, 
and  the  spectacle  of  it  in  others— this  experience  among  thoughtful 
men,  and  not  an  unconditioned  genius  for  ethic  in  one,  is  the  source 
of  a  teaching  which,  categorically  put  as  it  is  in  the  gospels,  misses 
its  meaning  with  most  who  profess  to  admire  it ;  the  proof  being 
the  entire  failure  of  most  Christians  in  all  ages  to  act  on  it.     To  say 
nothing  of   similar  teaching  in  Old   Testament  books  and  in  the 
Talmud,  we  have  it  in  the  most  emphatic  form  in  the  pre-Christian 
"  Slavonic  Enoch."  ^ 

A  superior  ethic,  then,  stands  not  for  one  man's  supernormal 
insight,  but  for  the  acquired  wisdom  of  a  number  of  wise  men.    And 
it  is  now  utterly  impossible  to  name  the  individual  framers  of  the 
gospel  teachings,  good  or  bad.     The  central  biography  dissolves  at 
every  point  before  critical  tests  ;  it  is  a  mythical  construction.'     Of 
the  ideas  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  many  are  ancient ;  of  the 
parabolic  and  other  teachings,  some  of  the  most  striking  occur  only 
in  the  third  gospel,  and  are  unquestionably  late.     And  when  we  are 
asked  to  recognize  a  unique  personality  behind  any  one  doctrine, 
such  as  the  condemnation  of  sacrifice  in  the  uncanonical  Hebrew 
Gospel,  we  can  but  answer  (1)  that  on  the  face  of  the  case  this 
doctrine   appears   to   come  from   a   separate   circle;    (2)    that   the 
renunciation  of    sacrifice  was   made  by  many  Greek  and   Eoman 
writers,'  and  by  earlier  teachers  among  the  Hebrews ; '  and  (3)  that 
in   the   Talmud,    and   in   such    a   pre-Christian   document    as   the 
"  Slavonic  Enoch,"  there  are  teachings  which,  had  they  occurred  in 
the  gospels,  would  have  been  confidently  cited  as  unparalleled  in 
ancient  literature.     The  Talmudic  teachings,  so  vitally  necessary  in 
Jewry,  that  "it  is  better  to  be  persecuted  than  persecutor,"  and 
that,  "'were  the  persecutor  a  just  man  and  the  persecuted  an  impious, 
God' would  stiU  be  on  the  side  of  the  persecuted," '  are  not  equalled 
for  practical  purposes  by  any  in  the  Christian  sacred  books  ;  and  the 
Enochic  beatitude,  "  Blessed  is  he  who  looks  to  raise  his  own  hand 
for  labour,"'  is  no  less  remarkable.     But  it  is  impossible  to  associate 

1  Cp.  the  author's  ChHstianity  andMytmogy,  Pji-^i"' ^j,'^*  ^j;  j.^-y,  »  ch  xliv.  1  (Eng.  tr. 

2  The  Book  of  the  Secrets  of  Enoch,  known  as  the    Slavonic  Enoch     en.  xiiv.  lu^ng. 
1896  pp  S.  67).  3  See  the  author's  Pagan  Christs,  pt.  n.  *  Above,  p.  ^iD. 

5'Ho«?pa'vi  6'  Psalm,  xl,  6,  7;  Ecclesiastes,  v,  1.  ..   ,- „^,  ,(, 

6  "Sd  FamaSerec?^  £refz;  Midrash.  Vayikra-Bahha,  xxvii,  11  and  12. 

7  Ch.  lii  (p.  69). 


222      ANCIENT  CHKISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

these  teachings  with  any  outstanding  personality,  or  any  specific 
movements;  and  to  posit  a  movement-making  personality  in  the 
sole  case  of   certain  scattered  sayings  in  the  gospels  is  critically 

inadmissible. 

There  is  positively  no  ground  for  supposing  that  any  selected  set 
of  teachings  constituted  the  basis  or  the  original  propaganda  of  any 
single  Christian  sect,  primary  or  secondary  ;  and  the  whole  known 
history  of  the  cult  tells  against  the  hypothesis  that  it  ever  centred 
round  those  teachings  which  to-day  specially  appeal  to  the  ethical 
rationalist.  Such  teachings  are  more  likely  to  be  adventitious  than 
fundamental,  in  a  cult  of  sacrificial  salvation.  When  an  essentially 
rationalistic  note  is  struck  in  the  gospels,  as  in  the  insistence^  that 
a  notable  public  catastrophe  is  not  to  be  regarded  in  the  old  Jewish 
manner  as  a  punishment  for  sin,  it  is  cancelled  in  the  next  sentence 
by  an  interpolation  which  unintelligently  reaffirms  the  very  doctrine 
denied.^  So  with  the  teaching"*  that  the  coming  worship  is  to  be 
neither  Judaic  nor  Samaritan :  the  next  sentence  reaffirms  Jewish 
particularism  in  the  crudest  way.  The  main  movement,  then,  was 
clearly  superstitious. 

It  remains  to  note  the  so-far  rationalistic  character  of  such 
teachings  as  the  protests  against  ceremonialism  and  Sabbatarianism, 
the  favouring  of  the  poor  and  the  outcast,  the  extension  of  the  future 
life  to  non-Israelites,  and  the  express  limitation  of  prayer  (Mt.  vi,  9 ; 
Lk.  xi,  2)  to  a  simple  expression  of  religious  feeling— a  prescription 
which  has  been  absolutely  ignored  through  the  whole  history  of  the 
Church,  despite  the  constant  use  of  the  one  prayer  prescribed — itself 
a  compilation  of  current  Jewish  phrases. 

The  expression  in  the  Dominical  prayer  translated  ''Give 
us  this  day  [or  day  by  day]  our  daily  bread"  (Mt.  vi,  11; 
Lk.  xi,  3)  is  pointless  and  tautological  as  it  stands  in  the 
English  and  other  Protestant  versions.  In  verse  8  is  the 
assurance  that  the  Father  knows  beforehand  what  is  needed ; 
the  prayer  is,  therefore,  to  be  a  simple  process  of  communion 
or  advocation,  free  of  all  verbiage;  then,  to  make  it  specially 
ask  for  the  necessary  subsistence,  without  which  life  would 
cease,  and  further  to  make  the  demand  each  day,  when  in  the 
majority  of  cases  there  would  be  no  need  to  offer  such  a 
request,  is  to  stultify  the  whole.  If  the  most  obvious  necessity 
is  to  be  urged,  why  not  all  the  less  obvious?  The  Vulgate 
translation,  "Give  us  to-day  our  super-substantial  bread," 
though  it  has  the  air  of  providing  for  the  Mass,  is  presump- 
tively  the    original    sense;    and    is    virtually    supported    by 


1  Luke  xiii*  4. 

2  Cp.  Conway,  Solomon  and  Solomonic  Literature,  1899,  pp.  57.  201.  219. 


8  John  iv,  31. 


ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS      223 


McClellan  (N,  T.  1875,  ji,  645-47),  who  notes  that  the  repeated 
use  of  the  article,  t^^  aprov  rjfioyv  tov  kiriova-iov,  implies  a  special 
meaning,  and  remarks  that  of  all  the  suggested  translations 
''daily''  is  "the  very  one  w^hich  is  mostly  manifestly  and 
utterly  condemned."  Compare  the  bearing  of  the  verses 
Mt.  vi,  25-26,  31-34,  which  expressly  exclude  the  idea  of 
prayer  for  bread,  and  Lk.  xi,  13.  The  idea  of  a  super- 
substantial  bread  seems  already  established  in  Philo,  De  Legum 
Allegor.  iii,  55-57,  59-61.  Naturally  the  average  theologian 
(e.g.,  Bishop  Lightfoot,  cited  by  McClellan)  clings  to  the 
conception  of  a  daily  appeal  to  the  God  for  physical  sus- 
tenance ;  but  in  so  doing  he  is  utterly  obscuring  the  original 
doctrine. 

Properly  interpreted,  the  prayer  forms  a  curious  parallel  to 
the  close  of  the  tenth  satire  of  Juvenal,  above  cited,  where  all 
praying  for  concrete  boons  is  condemned,  on  the  ground  that 
the  Gods  know  best,  and  that  man  is  dearer  to  them  than  to 
himself ;  but  where  there  is  permitted  (of  course,  illogically)  an 
appeal  for  soundness  of  mind  and  spiritual  serenity.  The 
documents  would  be  nearly  contemporary,  and,  though  inde- 
pendent, would  represent  kindred  processes  of  ethical  and 
rational  improvement  on  current  religious  practice.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  prayer,  "  lead  us  not  into  temptation,  but 
deliver  us  from  evil"— which  again  rings  alien  to  the  context — 
would  have  been  scouted  by  Juvenal  as  representing  a  bad 
survival  of  the  religion  of  fear.  Several  early  citations  and 
early  MSS.,  it  should  be  noted,  give  a  briefer  version  of  the 
prayer,  beginning,  '*  Father,  hallowed  be  thy  name,"  and 
dropping  the  "  Thy  will  be  done "  clause,  as  well  as  the 
"deliver  us  from  evil,"  though  including  the  "lead  us  not 
into  temptation." 

It  may  or  may  not  have  been  that  this  rationalization  of  religion 
was  originally  preached  by  the  same  sect  or  school  as  gave  the 
exalted  counsel  to  resist  not  evil  and  to  love  enemies — a  line  of 
thought  found  alike  in  India  and  in  China,  and,  in  the  moderate  form 
of  a  veto  on  retaliation,  in  Greece  and  Rome.^  But  it  is  incon- 
ceivable that  the  same  sect  originally  laid  down  the  doctrines  of 
the  blood  sacrifice  and  the  final  damnation  of  those  who  did  not 
accept  the  Messiah  (Mt.  x).  The  latter  dogmas,  with  the  myths, 
naturally  became  the  practical  creed  of  the  later  Church,  for  which 
the  counsel  of  non-solicitous  prayer  and  the  love  of  enemies  were 
unimaginable  ideals.^     Equally  incapable  of  realization  by  a  State 

*  E.g.,  Plato,  Crito,  Jowett's  tr.  3rd  ed.  ii,  150;  Seneca,  De  Ira,  ii,  32.  Valerius 
Maximus  (iv,  2,  4)  even  urges  the  returning  of  benefits  for  injuries. 

2  It  ig  impossible  to  find  in  the  whole  patristic  literature  a  single  display  of  the  "love" 
in  question.  In  all  early  Christian  history  there  is  nothing  to  represent  it  save  the 
attitude  of  martyrs  towards  their  executioners— an  attitude  seen  often  in  pagan  literature. 
{E.g.,  .Elian,  Far.  Hist,  xii,  49.) 


224      ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

Church  was  the  anti-Pharisaical  and  "Bohemian"  attitude  ascribed 
to  the  founder,  and  the  spirit  of  independence  towards  the  reigning 
powers.  For  the  rest,  the  occult  doctrine  that  a  little  faith  might 
suffice  to  move  mountains— a  development  from  the  mysticisms  of 
the  Hebrew  prophets — could  count  for  nothing  save  as  an  incitement 
to  prayer  in  general.  The  freethinking  elements  in  the  gospels,  in 
short,  were  precisely  those  which  historic  Christianity  inevitably 
cast  aside. 

§2 

Abeady  in  the  Epistles  the  incompatibility  of  the  original  critical 
spirit  with   sectarian  pohcy  has  become  clear.     Paul— if  the  first 
epistle  to  the  Thessalonians  be  his— exhorts  his  converts  to  "  prove 
all  things,  hold  fast  what  is  good  ";'  and  by  way  of  making  out  the 
Christist  case  against  unpliable  Jews  he  argues  copiously  in  his  own 
way  ;  but  as  soon  as  there  is  a  question  of  "  another  Jesus  "  ^  being 
set  up,  he  is  the  sectarian  fanatic  pure  and  simple,  and  he  no  more 
thinks  of  applying  the  counsel  of  criticism  to  his  dogma*  than  of 
acting  on  his  prescription  of  love  in  controversy.     "  Reasonings  " 
(XoyLo-^ovs)  are  specially  stigmatized :  they  must  be  "  cast  down."  * 
The  attitude  towards  slavery  now  becomes  a  positive  fiat  in  its 
support ;'  and  all  political  freethinking  is  superseded  by  a  counsel 
of   conformity.**     The   sHght   touch   of    rationalism   in   the  Judaic 
epistle  of  James,  where  the  principle  of  works  is  opposed  to  that 
of  faith,  is  itself  quashed  by  an  anti-rational  conception  of  works.' 
From  a  sect  so  taught,  freethinking  would  tend  to  disappear.     It 
certainly  obtruded  itself  early,  for  we  have  the  Pauline  complaint' 
that  "some  among  you  say  there  is  no  rising  from  the  dead";  but 
men  of  that  way  of  thinking  had  no  clear  ground  for  belonging  to 
the  community,  and  would  soon  be  preached  out  of  it,  leaving  only 
so  much  of  the  spirit  of  criticism  as  produced  heresies  within  the 
sphere  of  supernaturalism. 

§3 

When   the   new   creed,  spreading   through   the   Empire,  comes 
actively  in   contact  with   paganism,  the  rationalistic   principle   of 

1  1  Thess.  V.  21-  a  2  Cor.  xi,  4  ;  Gal.  i.  6.  \  Cp.  ^o^J-.^f '  ^tv  *   Hnn  • 

*  3  Cor.  X.  5.    Needless  to  say.  such  an  expression  savours  strongly  of  late  invention, 
but  in  any  case  it  tells  of  the  attitude  of  the  Christian  teachers  of  the  second  century. 

«  1  Cor.  vii,  20-24  (where  the  phrase  translated  in  English    use  xt  rather    unquestion- 
ably means  "  rather  continue  "  =  remain  a  slave.    Cp.  Eph.  vi.  5.  and  Variorum  Teacher  a 

^  6  Rom^^'iiii,  1.     Cp.  1  Peter  ii,  13-14;    Tit.  iii.  1.    The   anti-Roman   spirit   in   the 
Apocalypse  is  Judaic,  not  Gentile-Christian;  the  book  being  of  Jewish  origin. 
^  James  ii,  21.  ®  1  Cor.  xv.  12. 


ANCIENT  CHEISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS     ^25 

anti-idolatry,  still  preserved  by  the  Jewish  impulse,  comes  into 
prominence ;  and  insofar  as  they  criticized  pagan  myths  and 
pagan  image-worship,  the  early  Christians  may  be  said  to  have 
rationalized.*  Polytheists  applied  the  term  "  atheistical "  alike  to 
them^  and  the  Jews.^  As  soon  as  the  cult  was  joined  by  lettered 
men,  the  primitive  rationalism  of  Ev^meros  was  turned  by  them  to 
account ;  and  a  series  of  Fathers,  including  Clement  of  Alexandria, 
Arnobius,  Lactantius,  and  Augustine,  pressed  the  case  against  the 
pagan  creeds  with  an  unflagging  malice  which,  if  exhibited  by  later 
rationalists  towards  their  own  creed,  Christians  would  characterize 
in  strong  terms.  But  the  practice  of  criticism  towards  other  creeds 
was,  with  the  religious  as  with  the  philosophical  sects,  no  help  to 
self-criticism.  The  attitude  of  the  Christian  mass  towards  pagan 
idols  and  the  worship  of  the  Emperor  was  rather  one  of  frenzy* 
than  of  intellectual  superiority  ;*  and  the  Fathers  never  seem  to 
have  found  a  rationalistic  discipline  in  their  polemic  against  pagan 
beliefs.  Where  the  unbelieving  Lucian  brightly  banters,  they  taunt 
and  asperse,  in  the  temper  of  barbarians  deriding  the  Gods  of  the 
enemy.  None  of  them  seems  to  realize  the  bearing  against  his  own 
creed  of  the  pagan  argument  that  to  die  and  to  suffer  is  to  give  proof 
of  non-deity.^  In  the  end,  the  very  image- worship  which  had  been 
the  main  ground  of  their  rational  attack  on  paganism  became  the 
universal  usage  of  their  own  Church  ;  and  its  worship  of  saints  and 
angels,  of  Father,  Son,  and  Virgin  Mother,  made  it  more  truly  a 
polytheism  than  the  creed  of  the  later  pagans  had  been.^  It  is 
therefore  rather  to  the  heresies  within  the  Church  than  to  its 
attacks  on  the  old  polytheism  that  we  are  to  look  for  early  Christian 
survivals  of  ancient  rationalism ;  and  for  the  most  part,  after  the 
practically  rationalistic  refusal  of  the  early  Ebionites  to  accept  the 
doctrine  of  the  Virgin  Birth,®  these  heresies  were  but  combinations 
of  other  theosophies  with  the  Christian. 

Already  in  the  spurious  Epistles  to  Timothy  we  have  allusion  to 
the  "antitheses  of  the  gnosis  "^  or  pretended  occult  knowledge ;  and 

*.The  Apology  of  Athenagoras  (2nd  c.)  is  rather  a  defence  of  monotheism  than  a 
Christian  document ;  hence,  no  doubt,  its  speedy  neglect  by  the  Church. 

^  Justin  Martyr,  1  Apol.  c.  5 ;  Min.  Felix.  Octavius,  c.  10. 

^  The  inhabitants  of  Coelesyria,  Idumea,  and  Judea  are  principally  influenced  by  Aries 
and  Ares,  and  are  generally  audacious,  atheistical,  and  treacherous"  (Ptolemy,  Tetra- 
btblos,  ii,  3— Paraphrase  of  Proclus). 

*  Cp.  Tertullian,  De  Idolatria,  passim,  and  Ad  Scapulam,  c.  5. 

**  For  the  refusal  to  worship  men  as  Gods  they  had,  of  course,  abundant  pagan 
precedent.    See  above,  p.  186,  note. 

^  E.g.,  Tertullian,  De  Testimonio  Animce.  c.  1;  Arnobius,  Adversus  Oentes,  1,41,  etc.; 
Lactantius,  Divine  Institutes,  c.  xv;  Epit.  c.  vii. 

'  Cp.  J.  A.  Farrer,  Paganism  and  Christianity,  ch.  vii. 
n^     IJ^enapus.  Against  Heresies,  i,  26.    Cp.  Hagenbach,  Lehrhuch  der  Dogm^ngeschichte, 
3te  Aufl.  §  23,  4  (p.  37),  as  to  Cerinthus. 

**  1  Tim.  vi,  20.  The  word  persistently  translated  "oppositions"  is  a  specific  term  in 
Gnostic  lore.    Cp.  R.  W.  Mackay,  Bise  and  Progress  of  Christianity,  1854,  p.  115,  note. 

Q 


226     ANCIENT  CHKISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

to  early  Gnostic  influences  may  be  attributed  those  passages  in  the 
gospel,  above  cited,  which  affirm  that  the  Messiah's  teaching  is  not 
for  the  multitude  but  for  the  adepts.^  All  along,  Gnosticism'*  stood 
for  the  influence  of  older  systems  on  the  new  faith;  an  influence 
which  among  Gentiles,  untrained  to  the  cult  of  sacred  books,  must 
have  seemed  absolutely  natural.  In  the  third  century  Ammonios 
Saccas,  of  Alexandria,  said  to  have  been  born  of  Christian  parents, 
set  up  a  school  which  sought  to  blend  the  Christian  and  the  pagan 
systems  of  religion  and  philosophy  into  a  pantheistic  whole,  in 
which  the  old  Gods  figured  as  subordinate  daemons  or  as  allegorical 
figures,  and  Christ  as  a  reformer.^  The  special  leaning  of  the  school 
to  Plato,  whose  system,  already  in  vogue  among  the  scholars  of 
Alexandria,  had  more  affinity  than  any  of  its  rivals^  to  Christianity, 
secured  for  it  adherents  of  many  religious  shades,*  and  enabled  it 
to  develop  an  influence  which  permanently  affected  Christian 
theology ;  this  being  the  channel  through  which  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  entered.  According  to  Mosheim,  almost  no  other 
philosophy  was  taught  at  Alexandria  down  to  the  sixth  century.^ 
Only  when  the  regulative  zeal  of  the  Church  had  begun  to  draw 
the  lines  of  creed  definitely^  on  anti-philosophic  lines  did  the 
syncretic  school,  as  represented  by  Plotinus,  Porphyry,  and 
Hierocles,^  declare  itself  against  Christianity. 

Among  the  Church  sects,  as  distinguished  from  the  philosophic, 
the  syncretic  tendency  was  hardly  less  the  vogue.  Some  of  the 
leading  Fathers  of  the  second  century,  in  particular  Clement  of 
Alexandria  and  Origen,  show  the  Platonic  influence  strongly,^  and 
are  given,  the  latter  in  particular,  to  a  remarkably  free  treatment  of 
the  sacred  books,  seeing  allegory  wherever  credence  had  been  made 
difficult  by  previous  science,^°  or  inconvenient  by  accepted  dogma. 
But  in  the  multiplicity  of  Gnostic  sects  is  to  be  seen  the  main  proof 

1  Cp.  Harnack.  Outlines  of  the  History  cf  Dogma,  Mitchell's  trans,  p.  77  (ch.  vi),  p.  149 
(bk.  ii,  ch.  vi) ;  Gieseler.  Comp.  of  Eccles.  Hist,  i,  S  63,  Eng.  tr.  i,  234,  as  to  the  attitude  of 
Origen. 

^  The  term  "  Gnostic."  often  treated  as  if  applicable  only  to  heretical  sects,  was  adopted 
by  Clemens  of  Alexandria  as  an  honourable  title.    Cp.  Gieseler,  p.  241,  as  cited. 

8  Mosheim,  Eccles.  Hist.  2  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  i.  §§  4-12.  Cp..  however,  Abb6  Cognat, 
Clement  d' Alexandrie,  1859.  pp.  421-23,  and  Ueberweg,  i,  239,  as  to  the  obscurity  resting  on 
the  original  teaching  of  Ammonios. 

*  Cp.  Gieseler,  Compendium,  i,  §  52  (tr.  vol.  i,  p.  162).  ^^  Id.  §§  54,  55,  pp.  186-90. 

S  E.H.3  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  i.  §§  2-4. 

7  As  to  the  earlier  latitudinarianism,  cp.  Gieseler,  as  cited,  p.  166. 

»  Mosheim,  e'.  H.  3  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  iii,  §§  1-7 ;  Gieseler.  as  cited,  §  53,  pp.  162-65 ; 
Eusebius,  Eccles.  Hist,  vi,  19 ;  B.  Saint-Hilaire,  De  Vicole  d'Alexandrie.  1845,  p.  7 ;  Baur, 
Ch.  Hist.  Eng.  tr.  ii,  3-8.    But  cp.  Cognat,  CUment  d'Alexandrie,  1.  v,  ch.  v. 

10  Cp.  Mosheim  on  Origen.  Comm.  de  rebus  Christ,  ante  Const.  §§  27,  28,  summarized  in 
Schlegel's  note  to  Ec.  Hist.  Reid's  ed.  pp.  100-101 ;  Gieseler,  §  63 ;  Renan,  Marc-Aurele, 
pp.  114. 140.  Dr.  Hatch  {Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  on  the  Christian  Church,  pp.  82-83)  notes 
that  the  allegorical  method,  which  began  in  a  tendency  towards  rationalism,  came  later 
to  be  typically  orthodox. 


■► 


ANCIENT  CHBlSTlANiTt  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS     22? 

of  the  effort  of  Christians,  before  the  complete  collapse  of  the 
ancient  civilization,  to  think  with  some  freedom  on  their  religious 
problems.^  In  the  terms  of  the  case — apart  from  the  Judaizing  of 
the  Elcesaites  and  Clemens  Komanus — the  thought  is  an  adaptation 
of  pagan  speculation,  chiefly  oriental  and  Egyptian;  and  the 
commonest  characteristics  are :  (l)  in  theology,  an  explanation 
of  the  moral  confusion  of  the  world  by  assuming  two  opposed 
Powers,'*  or  by  setting  a  variety  of  good  and  bad  subordinate  powers 
between  the  world  and  the  Supreme  Being ;  and  (2)  in  ethics,  an 
insistence  either  on  the  inherent  corruptness  of  matter  or  on  the 
incompatibility  of  holiness  with  physical  pleasure.^  The  sects 
influenced  chiefly  from  Asia  teach,  as  a  rule,  a  doctrine  of  two  great 
opposing  Powers ;  those  influenced  from  Egypt  seek  rather  the 
solution  of  gradation  of  power  under  one  chief  God.  All  alike 
showed  some  hostility  to  the  pretensions  of  the  Jews.     Thus : — 

1.  Saturninus  of  Antioch  (second  century)  taught  of  a  Good 
and  an  Evil  Power,  and  that  the  world  and  man  were  made  by 
the  seven  planetary  spirits,  without  the  knowledge  or  consent 
of  either  Power ;  both  of  whom,  however,  sought  to  take 
control,  the  Good  God  giving  men  rational  souls,  and  subjecting 
them  to  seven  Creators,  one  of  whom  was  the  God  of  the  Jews. 
Christ  was  a  spirit  sent  to  bring  men  back  to  the  Good  God ; 
but  only  their  asceticism  could  avail  to  consummate  the  scheme. 
(Irenaeus,  Against  Heresies,  i,  24 ;  Epiphanius,  Hcereses,  xxiii.) 

2.  Similarly,  Marcion  (son  of  a  bishop  of  Pontus)  placed 
between  the  good  and  bad  Powers  the , Creator  of  the  lower 
world,  who  was  the  God  and  Lawgiver  of  the  Jews,  a  mixed 
nature,  but  just :  the  other  nations  being  subjects  of  the  Evil 
Power.  Jesus,  a  divine  spirit  sent  by  the  Supreme  God  to  save 
men,  was  opposed  by  both  the  God  of  the  Jews  and  the  Evil 
Power ;  and  asceticism  is  the  way  to  carry  out  his  saving 
purpose.  Of  the  same  cast  were  the  sects  of  Bardesanes  and 
Tatian.     (Irenaeus,   Against   Heresies,   i,    27,  28;   Epiphanius, 


1  "Gnosis  was  an  attempt  to  convert  Christianity  into  philosophy;  to  place  it  in  its 
widest  relation  to  the  universe,  and  to  incorporate  with  it  the  ideas  and  feelings  approved 
by  the  best  intelligence  of  the  times."  Mackay,  Rise  and  Progress  cf  Christianity,  p.  109. 
But  cp.  the  per  contra  on  p.  110 :  "it  was  but  a  philosophy  in  fetters,  an  effort  of  the  mind 
to  form  for  itself  a  more  systematic  belief  in  its  own  prejudices."  Again  (p.  115):  "a 
reaction  towards  freethought  was  the  essence  of  Gnosis."  So  also  Robins,  A  Defence  of 
the  Faith,  186-2.  pt.  i,  pp.  4-5.  153. 

2  This  view  could  be  supported  by  the  Platonists  from  Plato.  Laws,  bk.  x.  Cp. 
Chaignet,  La  vie  et  les  Merits  de  Flaton,  1871,  p.  422 ;  and  Milman,  Hist,  of  Christianity, 
bk.  ii,  ch.  V,  ed.  Paris,  1840,  i,  288.    It  is  explicitly  set  forth  by  Plutarch,  I.  and  O,  cc.  45-49. 

^  On  the  subject  in  general  cp.  Mosheim,  E.  H.  2  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  v  ;  also  his  Co7nmen- 
taries  on  the  Affairs  of  the  Christians  before  Constantine,  Eng.  tr.  vol.  ii;  Harnack, 
Outlines  of  the  Hist,  of  Dogma,  ch.  iv ;  King,  The  Gnostics  and  their  Remains ;  Mackay, 
Rise  and  Progress  of  Christianity,  pt.  iii,  §§  10,  11,  12;  Renan,  L'Eglise  Chretienne, 
chs.  ix,  x;  Milman,  Hist,  of  Christianity,  bk.  ii,  ch.  v;  Lardner,  Hist,  of  Heretics,  in 
Works,  ed.  1835,  vol.  viii;  Baur.  Church  History,  pt.  iii;  Jeremie,  Hist,  cf  the  Chr.  Church 
tn  2nd  and  3rd  Cent.  ch.  v  (in  Encyc.  Metropolitana). 


228     ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

H(Breses,  c.  56;  Eusebius,  Eccles.  Hist,  iv,  30.  Mosheim, 
E,  H.  2  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  v,  §§  7-9.  As  to  Marcion,  see 
Hamack,  Outlims,  ch.  v;  Mackay,  Bise  and  Progress  of 
Christianity,  pt.  iii.  §§  7,  12.  13;  Irenseus,  iv,  29,  30; 
Tertullian,  Against  Marcion.) 

3.  The  Manichean  creed  (attributed  to  the  Persian  Mani  or 
Manichseus,  third  century)  proceeded  on  the  same  dualistic 
lines.  In  this  the  human  race  had  been  created  by  the  Power 
of  Evil  or  Darkness,  who  is  the  God  of  the  Jews,  and  hence  the 
body  and  its  appetites  are  primordially  evil,  the  good  element 
being  the  rational  soul,  which  is  part  of  the  Power  of  Light. 
By  way  of  combining  Christism  and  Mithraism,  Christ  is 
virtually  identified  with  Mithra,  and  Manichaeus  claims  to  be 
the  promised  Paraclete.  Ultimately  the  Evil  Power  is  to  be 
overcome,  and  kept  in  eternal  darkness,  with  the  few  lost 
human  souls.  Here  again  the  ethic  is  extremely  ascetic,  and 
there  is  a  doctrine  of  purgatory.  (Milman,  Hist,  of  Christianity, 
bk.  iii,  ch.  i ;  Mosheim.  E.  H  3  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  v,  §§  2-11 ; 
Beausobre,  Hist.  Critique  de  ManicMe  et  dtc  ManicMisme,  1734  ; 
Lardner,  Cred.  of  the  Gospels,  pt.  ii,  ch.  Ixiii.) 

4.  Among  the  Egyptian  Gnostics,  again,  BasiHdes  taught 
that  the  one  Supreme  God  produced  seven  perfect  secondary 
Powers,  called  ^ons  (Ages),  two  of  whom,  Dynamis  and 
Sophia  (Power  and  Wisdom),  procreated  superior  angels,  who 
built  a  heaven,  and  in  turn  produced  lower  grades  of  angels, 
which  produced  others,  till  there  were  365  grades,  all  ruled  by 
a  Prince  named  Abraxas  (whose  name  yields  the  number  365). 
The  lowest  grades  of  angels,  being  close  to  eternal  matter 
(which  was  evil  by  nature),  made  thereof  the  world  and  men. 
The  Supreme  God  then  intervened,  like  the  Good  Power  in  the 
oriental  system,  to  give  men  rational  souls,  but  left  them  to  be 
ruled  by  the  lower  angels,  of  whom  the  Prince  became  God  of 
the  Jews.  All  deteriorated,  the  God  of  the  Jews  becoming  the 
worst.  Then  the  Supreme  God  sent  the  Prince  of  the  iEons, 
Christ,  to  save  men's  souls.  Taking  the  form  of  the  man 
Jesus,  he  was  slain  by  the  God  of  the  Jews.  Despite  charges 
to  the  contrary,  this  system  too  was  ascetic,  though  lenient  to 
paganism.  Similar  tenets  were  held  by  the  sects  of  Carpo- 
crates  -and  Valentinus,  all  rising  in  the  second  century ; 
Valentinus  setting  up  Thirty  ^ons,  male  and  female,  in  pairs, 
with  four  unmarried  males,  guardians  of  the  Pleroma  or 
Heaven — namely,  Horus,  Christ,  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  Jesus. 
The  youngest  ^on,  Sophia,  brought  forth  a  daughter,  Achamoth 
iScientia),  who  made  the  world  out  of  rude  matter,  and  pro- 
duced Demiourgos,  the  Artificer,  who  further  manipulated 
matter.     (Irenaeus,  bk.  i,  chs.  24,  25  ;  bk.  ii.) 

These  sects  in  turn  split   into   others,  with   endless   pecu- 
liarities. 


' 


ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS      229 

Such  was  the  relative  freethought  of  credulous  theosophic 
fantasy,*  turning  fictitious  data  to  fresh  purpose  by  way  of  solving 
the  riddle  of  the  painful  earth.  The  problem  was  to  account  for 
evil  consistently  with  a  Good  God;  and  the  orientals,  inheriting 
a  dualistic  religion,  adapted  that ;  while  the  Egyptians,  inheriting 
a  syncretic  monotheism,  set  up  grades  of  Powers  between  the  All- 
Ruler  and  men,  on  the  model  of  the  grades  between  the  Autocrat, 
ancient  or  modern,  and  his  subjects.  The  Manichaeans,  the  most 
thoroughly  organized  of  all  the  outside  sects,  appear  to  have 
absorbed  many  of  the  adherents  of  the  great  Mithraic  religion,  and 
held  together  for  centuries,  despite  fierce  persecution  and  hostile 
propaganda,  their  influence  subsisting  till  the  Middle  Ages.^  The 
other  Gnosticisms  fared  much  worse.  Lacking  sacred  books,  often 
setting  up  a  severe  ethic  as  against  the  frequently  loose  practice 
of  the  churches,®  and  offering  a  creed  unsuited  to  the  general 
populace,  all  alike  passed  away  before  the  competition  of  the 
organized  Church,  which  founded  on  the  Canon ^  and  the  concrete 
dogmas,  with  many  pagan  rites  and  beliefs **  and  a  few  great  pagan 
abracadabras  added. 

§4 

More  persistently  dangerous  to  the  ancient  Church  were  the 
successive  efforts  of  the  struggling  spirit  of  reason  within  to  rectify 
in  some  small  measure  its  most  arbitrary  dogmas.  Of  these  efforts 
the  most  prominent  were  the  quasi-Unitarian  doctrine  of  Arius 
(fourth  century),  and  the  opposition  by  Pelagius  and  his  pupil 
C^LESTIUS  (early  in  fifth  century)  to  the  doctrine  of  hereditary  sin 
and  predestinate  salvation  or  damnation — a  Judaic  conception  dating 
in  the  Church  from  Tertullian,  and  unknown  to  the  Greeks.® 

The  former  was  the  central  and  one  of  the  most  intelligible 
conflicts  in  the  vast  medley  of  early  discussion  over  the  nature  of 

*  "Mysticism  itself  is  but  an  insane  rationalism"  (Hampden,  Bampton  Lect.  on 
Scholastic  Philosophy,  3rd  ed.  intr.  p.  liii).  It  may  be  described  as  freethought  without 
regard  to  evidence— that  "lawless  thought"  which  Christian  polemists  are  wont  to 
ascribe  to  rationalists. 

^  Gieseler,  §§  61,  86  (pp.  228,  368,  370). 

*  In  the  fourth  century  and  later,  however,  the  gospel  of  asceticism  won  great  orthodox 
vogue  through  the  writings  of  the  so-called  Dionysius  the  Areopagite.  Cp.  Mosheim, 
4  Cent.  pt.  ii,  c.  iii,  §  12;  Westcott.  Beligious  Thought  in  the  West,  1891,  pp.  190-91. 

*  Compare  the  process  by  which  the  Talmudic  system  unified  Judaism.  Wellhausen, 
Israel,  as  cited,  pp.  541-42;  Milman,  History  of  Christianity,  bk.  ii,  ch.  4,  ed.  Paris,  1840, 
i.  276. 

fi  "  There  is  good  reason  to  suppose  that  the  Christian  bishops  multiplied  sacred  rites 
for  the  sake  of  rendering  the  Jews  and  the  pagans  moxe  friendly  to  them  "  (Mosheim, 
E.  H.  2  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  iv.  Cp.  ch.  iii,  §  17 ;  ch.  iv,  §§  3-7 ;  4  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  iii,  §§  1-3 ;  ch.  iv, 
§§  1-2  ;  5  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  iii,  §  2).  This  generalization  is  borne  out  by  nearly  every  other 
Church  historian.  Cp.  Hamack,  Outlines,  pt.  ii,  bk.  i,  ch.  i ;  Milman,  bk.  iv,  ch.  5, 
pp.  367-74  ;  Gieseler,  §§  98.  99, 101, 104  ;  Renan,  Marc-AurHe,  3e  edit.  p.  630.  Baur.  Church 
History,  Eng.  tr.  ii,  285-89. 

8  Gieseler,  §  87,  p.  373 ;  Hagenbach,  Lehrbuch  der  Dogmengeschichte,  3te  Aufl.  §  108. 


230      ANCIENT  CHEISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

the  Person  of  the  Founder — a  theme  susceptible  of  any  conceivable 
formula,  when  once  the  principle  of  deification  was  adopted. 
Between  the  Gnosticism  of  Athenagoras,  which  made  the  Logos 
the  direct  manifestation  of  Deity,  and  the  Judaic  view  that  Jesus 
was  "a  mere  man,"  for  stating  which  the  Byzantine  currier 
Theodotos  was  excommunicated  at  Kome  by  Bishop  Victor^  in  the 
third  century,  there  were  a  hundred  possible  fantasies  of  discrimina- 
tion ;''  and  the  record  of  them  is  a  standing  revelation  of  the  intel- 
lectual delirium  in  the  ancient  Church.  Theodotos  the  currier  is 
said  to  have  made  disciples^  who  induced  one  Natalius  to  become 
"a  bishop  of  this  heresy";  and  his  doctrine  was  repeatedly  revived, 
notably  by  Artemon.  According  to  a  trinitarian  opponent,  they 
were  much  given  to  science,  in  particular  to  geometry  and  medicine/ 
But  such  an  approach  to  rationalism  could  not  prosper  in  the 
atmosphere  in  which  Christianity  arose.  Arianism  itself,  when  put 
on  its  defence,  pronounced  Jesus  to  be  God,  after  beginning  by 
declaring  him  to  be  merely  the  noblest  of  created  beings,  and  thus 
became  merely  a  modified  mysticism,  fighting  for  the  conception 
homoiousios  (of  similar  nature)  as  against  that  of  homoousios  (of  the 
same  nature).'  Even  at  that,  the  sect  split  up,  its  chief  dissenters 
ranking  as  semi-Arians,  and  many  of  the  latter  at  length  drifting 
back  to  Nicene  orthodoxy.*'  At  first  strong  in  the  east,  where  it 
persecuted  when  it  could,  it  was  finally  suppressed,  after  endless 
strifes,  by  Theodosius  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  century ;  only  to 
reappear  in  the  west  as  the  creed  of  the  invading  Goths  and 
Lombards.  In  the  east  it  had  stood  for  ancient  monotheism  ;  in 
the  west  it  prospered  by  early  missionary  and  military  chance  till 
the  Papal  organization  triumphed.'  Its  suppression  meant  the  final 
repudiation  of  rationalism  ;  though  it  had  for  the  most  part  subsisted 
as  a  fanaticism,  no  less  than  did  the  Nicene  creed. 

More  philosophical,  and  therefore  less  widespread,  was  the 
doctrine  associated  in  the  second  century  with  the  name  of  Praxeas, 
in  the  third  with  those  of  Sabellius  and  Paul  of  Samosata,  and  in 

1  Eusebius,  v.  28 ;  Qieseler,  §  60,  p.  218. 

a  Cp.  Gieseler.  §§  80-83.  pp.  328-53 ;  Harnack.  Outlines,  pt.  ii,  bk.  i,  esp.  pp.  201-202. 

8  One  being  another  Theodotos,  a  money-changer. 

4  Eusebius.  as  last  cited.  The  sect  was  accused  of  altering  the  gospels  to  suit  its 
purposes.  The  charge  could  probably  be  made  with  truth  against  every  sect  in  turn,  as 
against  the  Church  in  general. 

5  In  the  end  the  doctrine  declared  orthodox  was  the  opposite  of  what  had  been 
declared  orthodox  in  the  Sabellian  and  other  controversies  (Mosheim.  4  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  v, 
§  9) ;  and  all  the  while  "  the  Arians  and  the  orthodox  embraced  the  same  theology  in 
substance  "  (Murdock,  note  on  Mosheim,  Reid's  ed.  p.  161).  An  eminent  modern  Catholic, 
however,  ha^  described  Arianism  as  "a  deistic  doctrine  which  had  not  the  cotirage  to  bury 
itaelf  in  the  fecund  obscurities  of  dogma  "  (Ozanam.  La  Civilisation  chretienne  chez  les 
Francs,  1849.  p.  35). 

6  Gieseler.  §  83.  p.  345. 

7  Cp.  the  author's  Short  History  of  Christianity,  2nd  ed.  pp.  176-81, 


^ 


ANCIENT  CHEISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS      231 

the  fourth  with  that  of  Photinus.  Of  this  the  essence  was  the  con- 
ception of  the  triune  deity  as  being  not  three  persons  but  three 
modes  or  aspects  of  one  person — a  theorem  welcomed  in  the  later 
world  by  such  different  types  of  believer  as  Servetus,  Hegel,  and 
Coleridge.  Far  too  reasonable  for  the  average  believer,  and  far  too 
unpropitious  to  ritual  and  sacraments  for  the  average  priest,  it  was 
always  condemned  by  the  majority,  though  it  had  many  adherents 
in  the  east,  until  the  establishment  of  the  Church  made  Christian 
persecution  a  far  more  effective  process  than  pagan  persecution  had 
ever  been. 

Pelagianism,  which  unlike  Arianism  was  not  an  ecclesiastical 
but  a  purely  theological  division,^  fared  better,  the  problem  at  issue 
involving  the  permanent  crux  of  religious  ethics.  Augustine,  whose 
supreme  talent  was  for  the  getting  up  of  a  play  of  dialectic  against 
every  troublesome  movement  in  turn,  without  regard  to  his  previous 
positions,^  undertook  to  confute  Pelagius  and  Caelestius  as  he  did 
every  other  innovator ;  and  his  influence  was  such  that,  after  they 
had  been  acquitted  of  heresy  by  a  church  council  in  Palestine  and 
by  the  Eoman  pontiff,  the  latter  was  induced  to  change  his  ground 
and  condemn  them,  whereupon  many  councils  followed  suit, 
eighteen  Pelagian  bishops  being  deposed  in  Italy.  At  that  period 
Christendom,  faced  by  the  portent  of  the  barbarian  conquest  of  the 
Empire,  was  well  adjusted  to  a  fatalistic  theology,  and  too  uncritical 
in  its  mood  to  realize  the  bearing  of  such  doctrine  either  on  conduct 
or  on  sacerdotal  pretensions.  But  though  the  movement  in  its  first 
form  was  thus  crushed,  and  though  in  later  forms  it  fell  considerably 
short  of  the  measure  of  ethical  rationalism  seen  in  the  first,  it  soon 
took  fresh  shape  in  the  form  of  so-called  semi-Pelagianism,  and  so 
held  its  ground  while  any  culture  subsisted;^  while  Pelagianism  on 
the  theme  of  the  needlessness  of  "  prevenient  grace,"  and  the  power 
of  man  to  secure  salvation  of  his  own  will,  has  been  chronic  in  the 
Church. 

For  a  concise  view  of  the  Pelagian  tenets  see  Murdock's  note 
on  Mosheim,  following  Walch  and  Schlegel  (Reid's  edition, 
pp.  208-209).  They  included  (1)  denial  that  Adam's  sin  was 
inherited ;  (2)  assertion  that  death  is  strictly  natural,  and  not 
a  mere  punishment  for  Adam's  sin ;  (3)  denial  that  children 
and  virtuous  adults  dying  unbaptized  are  damned,  a   middle 

1  "Pelagianism  is  Christian  rationalism"  (Harnack,  Outlines,  pt.  ii,  bk.  ii,  ch.  iv.  §  3, 
p.  364). 

2  He  was  first  a  Manichean  ;  later  an  anti-Manichean,  denying  predestination  ;  later, 
as  an  opponent  of  the  Pelagians,  an  assertor  of  predestination.  Cp.  Mackay,  Bise  and 
Progress  of  Christianity,  pt.  v.  §  15.  As  to  his  final  Manicheanism,  see  Milman,  Hist,  of 
Latin  Christianity,  3rd  ed.  i,  152. 

8  Cp.  Harnack,  Outliries,  pt.  ii,  bk.  ii,  ch.  v,  §  1  (p.  386). 


232     ANCIENT  CHEISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

state  being  provided  for  them ;    (4)  assertion  that  good  acts 
come  of  a  good  will,  and  that  the  will  is  free ;  grace  being  an 
enlightenment  of  the  understanding,  and  not  indispensable  to 
all  men.     The  relative  rationalism  of  these  views  is  presump- 
tively to  be  traced  to  the  facts  that  Pelagius  was  a  Briton  and 
Caelestius  an  Irishman,  and   that  both  were  Greek  scholars. 
(When  tried  in  Palestine  they  spoke  Greek,  like  the  council, 
but  the  accuser  could  speak  only  Latin.)     They  were  thus  bred 
in  an  atmosphere  not  yet  laden  with  Latin  dogma.     In  **  con- 
futing "  them  Augustine  developed  the  doctrine  (intelligible  as 
that  of  an  elderly  polemist  in  a  decadent  society)  that  all  men 
are  predestined  to  salvation  or  damnation  by  God's  **  mere  good 
pleasure  " — a  demoralizing  formula  which  he  at  times  hedged 
with  illogical  qualifications.     (Cp.  Murdock's  note  on  Mosheim, 
as  cited,  p.  210 ;  Gieseler,  §  87.)     But  an  orthodox  champion 
of  Augustine  describes  him    as    putting  the  doctrine  without 
limitations  (Rev.  W.  R.  Clarke,  St.  Augustine,  in  "  The  Fathers 
for  EngHsh  Readers  "  series,  p.  132).     It  was  never  adopted  in 
the  east  (Gieseler,  p.  387),  but  became  part  of  Christian  theo- 
logy, especially  under  Protestantism.     On  the  other  hand,  the 
Council  of  Trent  erected  several  Pelagian  doctrines  into  articles 
of   faith ;    and  the   Protestant   churches   have   in   part    since 
followed.     See  Sir  W,  Hamilton's  Discussions  on  Philosophy 
and  Literature,  1852,  pp.  493-94,  note;  and  Milman,  Hist,  of 
Latin  Christianity,  i,  142,  149. 

The  Latin  Church  thus  finally  maintained  in  religion  the  tradi- 
tion of  sworn  adherence  to  sectarian  formulas  which  has  been 
already  noted  in  the  Roman  philosophic  sects,  and  in  so  doing 
reduced  to  a  minimum  the  exercise  of  the  reason,  alike  in  ethics 
and  in  philosophy.  Its  dogmatic  code  was  shaped  under  the  influence 
of  (1)  Irenaeus  and  Tertullian,  who  set  scripture  above  reason  and, 
when  pressed  by  heretics,  tradition  above  even  scripture,^  and  (2) 
Augustine,  who  had  the  same  tendencies,  and  whose  incessant 
energy  secured  him  a  large  influence.  That  influence  was  used  not 
only  to  dogmatize  every  possible  item  of  the  faith,  but  to  enforce  in 
religion  another  Roman  tradition,  formerly  confined  to  pohtics— that 
of  systematic  coercion  of  heretics.  Before  and  around  Augustine 
there  had  indeed  been  abundant  mutual  persecution  of  the  bitterest 
kind  between  the  parties  of  the  Church  as  well  as  against  pagans ; 
the  Donatists,  in  particular,  with  their  organization  of  armed 
fanatics,  the  CircumceUiones,  had  inflicted  and  suffered  at  intervals 
all  the  worst  horrors  of  civil  war  in  Africa  during  a  hundred  years ; 
Arians  and  Athanasians  came  again  and  again  to  mutual  bloodshed ; 

i»Cp.  Hampden,  Bampton  Lectures  on  The  Scholastic  Philosophy,  1848,  pp.  xxxv-xxxvi. 
and  refs. 


1 


y 


A 


ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS      233 

and  the  slaying  of  the  pagan  girl-philosopher,  Hypatia,^  by  the 
Christian  monks  of  Alexandria  is  one  of  the  vilest  episodes  in  the 
whole  history  of  religion.  On  the  whole,  it  is  past  question  that  the 
amount  of  homicide  wrought  by  all  the  pagan  persecution  of  the 
earlier  Christians  was  not  a  tithe  of  that  wrought  by  their  successors 
in  their  own  quarrels.  But  the  spirit  which  had  so  operated,  and 
which  had  been  repudiated  even  by  the  bitter  Tertullian,  was  raised 
by  Augustine  to  the  status  of  a  Christian  dogma,^  which,  of  course, 
had  sufiBcient  support  in  the  sacred  books.  Judaic  and  Jesuist,  and 
which  henceforth  inspired  such  an  amount  of  murderous  persecution 
in  Christendom  as  the  ancient  world  had  never  seen.  When,  the 
temple  revenues  having  been  already  confiscated,  the  pagan  worships 
were  finally  overthrown  and  the  temples  appropriated  by  the  edict 
of  Honorius  in  the  year  408,  Augustine,  "though  not  entirely 
consistent,  disapproved  of  the  forcible  demolition  of  the  temples."^ 
But  he  had  nothing  to  say  against  the  forcible  suppression  of  their 
worship,  and  of  the  festivals.  Ambrose  went  as  far;^  and  such 
men  as  Firmicus  Maternus  would  have  had  the  emperors  go  much 
further.'' 

Economic  interest  had  now  visibly  become  at  least  as  potent  in 
the  shaping  of  the  Christian  course  as  it  had  ever  been  in  building 
up  a  pagan  cult.  For  the  humble  conditions  in  which  the  earlier 
priests  and  preachers  had  gained  a  livelihood  by  ministering  to 
scattered  groups  of  poor  proselytes,  there  had  been  substituted 
those  of  a  State  Church,  adopted  as  such  because  its  acquired 
range  of  organization  had  made  it  a  force  fit  for  the  autocrat's 
purposes  when  others  had  failed.  The  sequent  situation  was  more 
and  more  unfavourable  to  both  sincerity  of  thought  and  freedom  of 
speech.  Not  only  did  thousands  of  wealth-seekers  promptly  enter 
the  priesthood  to  profit  by  the  new  endowments  allotted  by  Con- 
stantino to  the  great  metropolitan  churches.  Almost  as  promptly 
the  ideal  of  toleration  was  renounced ;  and  the  Christians  began 
against  the  pagans  a  species  of  persecution  that  proceeded  on  no 
higher  motive  than  greed  of  gain.     Not  only  were  the  revenues  of 


1  Sokrates,  Eccles.  Hist.  bk.  vii,  ch.  15. 

2  Epist.  93.  Cp.  Schlegel's  notes  on  Mosheim,  in  Reid's  ed.  pp.  159, 198 ;  Rev.  W.  R. 
Clarke,  Saint  Augustine,  pp.  86-87  (a  defence);  Milman,  History  of  Latin  Christianity, 
bk.  ii,  ch.  ii,  3rd.  ed.  i,  163 ;  Boissier,  La  fin  du  paganisme,  2e  edit,  i,  69-79.  Harnack's 
confused  and  contradictory  estimate  of  Augustine  (Outlines,  pt.  ii,  bk  ii,  chs.  iii,  iv) 
ignores  this  issue.  He  notes,  however  (pp.  362-63),  some  of  Augustine's  countless  self- 
contradictions, 

8  Milman.  Hist,  of  Christianity,  bk.  iii,  ch.  viii;  ed.  cited,  ii,  182,  188,  and  note.  For 
the  views  of  Ambrose  see  p.  184.  In  Gaul,  St.  Martin  put  down  the  old  shrines  by  brute 
force.    Id.  p.  179. 

*  Cp.  Beugnot,  Histoire  de  la  destruction  du  paganisme  en  Occident,  1835,  i,  430. 

8  De  errore  profanarum  religionum,  end. 


234      ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

the  temples  confiscated  as  we  have  seen,  but  a  number  of  Christians 
took  to  the  business  of  plundering  pagans  in  the  name  of  the  laws 
of  Constantius  forbidding  sacrifice,  and  confiscating  the  property  of 
the  temples.  Libanius,  in  his  Oration  for  the  Temples'  (390), 
addressed  to  Theodosius,  circumstantially  avers  that  the  bands  of 
monks  and  others  who  went  about  dem£>lishing  and  plundering 
temples  were  also  wont  to  rob  the  peasants,  adding : — 

They  also  seize  the  lands  of  some,  saying  "  it  is  sacred  ";  and 
many  are  deprived  of  their  paternal  inheritance  upon  a  false 
pretence.  Thus  those  men  thrive  upon  other  people's  ruin  who 
say  *'  they  worship  God  with  fasting."     And  if  they  who  are 

wronged  come  to  the  pastor  in  the  city he  commends  (the 

robbers)   and  rejects  the  others Moreover,  if  they  hear  of 

any  land  which  has  anything  that  can  be  plundered,  they  cry 
presently,  "Such  an  one  sacrificeth,  and  does  abominable 
things,   and    a   troop   ought   to   be   sent   against    him."     And 

presently  the  self-styled  reformers  (o-ox^/ooi'to-Tat)  are  there 

Some  of  these deny  their  proceedings Others  glory  and 

boast  and  tell  their  exploits But  they  say,  "We  have  only 

punished  those  who  sacrifice  and  thereby  trangress  the  law 
which  forbids  sacrifice."     O  emperor,  when  they  say  this,  they 

lie Can  it  be  thought  that  they  who  are  not  able  to  bear 

the  sight  of  a  collector's  cloak  should  despise  the  power  of  your 

government? I   appeal   to   the  guardians   of    the  law  [to 

confirm  the  denial]  .'^ 

The  whole  testimony  is  explicit  and  weighty,'  and,  being  corro- 
borated by  Ammianus  Marcellinus,  is  accepted  by  clerical  historians.* 
Ammianus  declares  that  some  of  the  courtiers  of  the  Christian 
emperors  before  Julian  were  "  glutted  with  the  spoils  of  the 
temples."^ 

The  official  creed,  with  its  principle  of  rigid  uniformity  and 
compulsion,  is  now  recognizable  as  the  only  expedient  by  which  the 
Church  could  be  held  together  for  its  economic  ends.  Under  the 
Eastern  Empire,  accordingly,  when  once  a  balance  of  creed  was 
attained  in  the  Church,  the  same  coercive  ideal  was  enforced,  with 
whatever  dififerences  in  the  creed  insisted  on.  Whichever  phase  of 
dogma  was  in  power,  persecution  of  opponents  went  on  as  a  matter 

1  See  it  translated  in  fuU  by  Lardner  in  his  Testimonies  of  Ancient  Heathens,  ch.  xUx. 
Works,  ed.  1835,  vol.  viii.  ^  Lardner.  as  cited,  pp.  25727. 

3  As  to  the  high  character  of  Libanius.  who  used  his  influence  to  succour  his  Christian 
friends  in  the  reign  of  Julian,  see  Lardner,  pp.  15-17. 

*  Milman,  Hist,  of  Christianity,  bk.  iii.  ch.  vi ;  vol.  ii.  p.  131.  See  the  passage  there 
cited  from  the  Funeral  Oration  of  Libanius  On  Julian,  as  to  Christians  building  houses 
with  temple  stones ;  also  the  further  passages,  pp.  129.  161,  212.  of  Mr.  King's  tr.  of  the 
Oration  in  his  Julian  the  Emperor  (Bohu  Lib.). 

5  Ammianus,  xxii,  4. 


(f 


ANCIENT  CHEISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS      235 

of  course.*  Athanasians  and  Arians,  Nestorians  and  Monophysites, 
used  the  same  weapons  to  the  utmost  of  their  scope;  Cyril  of 
Alexandria  led  his  fanatics  to  the  pillage  and  expulsion  of  the  Jews, 
as  his  underling  Peter  led  them  to  the  murder  of  Hypatia ;  other 
bishops  wrought  the  destruction  of  temples  throughout  Egypt  ;^ 
Theodosius,  Marcian,  St.  Leo,  Zeno,  Justinian,  all  used  coercion 
against  every  heresy  without  a  scruple,  affirming  every  verbal 
fantasy  of  dogma  at  the  point  of  the  sword.  It  was  due  to  no 
survival  of  the  love  of  reason  that  some  of  the  more  stubborn 
heresies,  driven  into  communion  with  the  new  civilization  of  the 
Arabs,  were  the  means  of  carrying  some  of  the  seeds  of  ancient 
thought  down  the  ages,  to  fructify  ultimately  in  the  mental  soil  of 
modern  Europe. 

§5 

Against  the  orthodox  creed,  apart  from  social  and  official 
hostility,  there  had  early  arisen  critics  who  reasoned  in  terms  of 
Jewish  and  pagan  beliefs,  and  in  terms  of  such  rationaHsm  as 
survived.  Of  the  two  former  sorts  some  remains  have  been 
preserved,  despite  the  tendency  of  the  Church  to  destroy  their 
works.  Of  the  latter,  apart  from  Lucian,  we  have  traces  in  the 
Fathers  and  in  the  Neo-Platonists. 

Thus  Tertullian  and  Lactantius  tell  of  the  many  who  believe 
in  a  non-active  and  passionless  God,^  and  disdain  those  who 
turn  Christian  out  of  fear  of  a  hereafter ;  and  again*  of  Stoics  who 
deride  the  belief  in  demons.  A  third-century  author  quoted  by 
Eusebius  *  speaks  of  olttlo-tol  who  deny  the  divine  authorship  of  the 
holy  scriptures,  in  such  a  fashion  as  to  imply  that  this  was  done  by 
some  who  were  not  merely  pagan  non-Christians  but  deniers  of 
inspiration.  JambHchos,  too,^  speaks  of  opponents  of  the  worship 
of  the  Gods  in  his  day  (early  in  the  fourth  century).'^  In  the  fifth 
century,  again,  Augustine  complains  bitterly  of  those  impious  and 
reckless  persons  who  dare  to  say  that  the  evangelists  differ  among 
themselves.^  He  argues  no  less  bitterly  against  the  increduli  and 
infideles  who  would  not  believe  in  immortality  and  the  possibility 
of  eternal  torment;^  and  he  meets  them  in  a  fashion  which  con- 
stantly recurs  in  Christian  apologetics,  pointing  to  natural  anomalies, 
real  or  alleged,  and  concluding  that  since  we  cannot  understand  all 

»  Gibbon,  cb.  xlvii.    Bohn  ed.  v,  211-52,  264.  268.  272.    Mosheim.  passim. 

2  Milman,  as  cited,  p.  178.  ^  J>e  Testimonio  Anima,  c.2',  De  Ira  Deu 

<  Tertullian.  as  cited,  c.  3.  f^-^^'^^-^'-^.-,^^     s  r,  *      • 

6  On  the  Mysteries,  bk.  x,  ch.  2.  ^  Cp.  Minucius  Felix  (2nd  c),  Octavius,  c.  5. 

8  J)e  consensu  evangelistarnm,  1, 10.       ^  X>«  civ.  Dei,  xxi,  2,  5-7, 


236     ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

we  see  we  should  believe  all  we  hear — from  the  Church.  Those 
who  derided  the  story  of  Jonah  and  the  whale  he  meets  by  accusing 
them  of  believing  the  story  of  Arion  and  the  dolphin.^  In  the  same 
way  he  meets  ^  their  protest  against  the  iniquity  of  eternal  punish- 
ment by  a  juggle  over  the  ostensible  anomaly  of  long  punishments 
by  human  law  for  short  misdeeds.  Whatever  may  have  been  his 
indirect  value  of  his  habit  of  dialectic,  he  again  and  again  declares 
for  prone  faith  and  against  the  resort  to  reason  ;  and  to  this  effect 
may  be  cited  a  long  series  of  Fathers  and  ecclesiastics,  all  eager  to 
show  that  only  in  a  blind  faith  could  there  be  any  moral  merit.* 

Such  arguments  were  doubtless  potent  to  stupefy  what  remained 
of  critical  faculty  in  the  Roman  world.  In  the  same  period  Salvian 
makes  a  polemic  against  those  who  in  Christian  Gaul  denied  that 
God  exercised  any  government  on  earth.*  They  seem,  however,  to 
have  been  normal  Christians,  driven  to  this  view  by  the  barbarian 
invasions.  Fronto,  the  tutor  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  again,  seems  to 
have  attacked  the  Christians  partly  as  rationalist,  partly  as 
conservative.'* 

In  general,  the  orthodox  polemic  is  interesting  only  insofar  as  it 
preserves  that  of  the  opposition.  The  Dialogue  with  Trypho  by 
Justin  Martyr  (about  150)  is  a  mere  documental  discussion  between 
a  Christian  and  a  Jew,  each  founding  on  the  Hebrew  Scriptures, 
and  the  Christian  doing  nearly  all  of  the  argument.  There  is  not 
a  scintilla  of  independent  rationalism  in  the  whole  tedious  work.® 
Justin  was  a  type  of  the  would-be  "philosopher"  who  confessedly 
would  take  no  trouble  to  study  science  or  philosophize,  but  who 
found  his  sphere  in  an  endless  manipulation  of  the  texts  of  sacred 
books.  But  the  work  of  the  learned  Origen  Against  Celsus  preserves 
for  us  a  large  part  of  the  True  Discourse  of  Celsus,  a  critical  and 
extremely  well-informed  argument  against  Christianity  by  a  pagan 
of  the  Platonic '  school  in  the  time  of  Marcus  Aurelius,^  on  grounds 
to  a  considerable  extent  rationalistic.^  The  line  of  rejoinder 
followed   by  Origen,  one  of   the   most   cultured   of   the   Christian 

1  Id.  i,  14.  2  Id.  xxi,  11. 

8  See  the  citations  in  Abailard's  Sic  et  non,  §  1.  Quod  fides  humania  rationibua  sit 
adstruenda,  et  contra. 

*  De  Gubertiatione  Dei,  1.4. 

6  See  Renan.  L'Eglifie  Chretienne,  p.  493.  As  to  Crescens.  the  enemy  of  Justin  Martyr 
(3  Apol.  c.  3),  see  id.  p.  492.  Cp.  Arnobius,  Adwrsus  Oentea,  passim,  as  to  pa^an  objections. 
What  remains  of  Porphyry  will  be  found  in  Lardner's  Testimonies  of  the  Heathen, 
oh.  xxxvii.    Cp.  Baur,  C/iwro^  Ht«<orv.  Eng.  tr.  ii.  179-87. 

6  The  Controversy  between  Jason  and  Papiscus  regarding  Christ,  mentioned  by  Origen 
(Ag.  Celsus,  bk.  iv,  ch.  4).  seems  to  have  been  of  the  same  nature. 

7  Origen  repeatedly  calls  him  an  Epicurean  :  but  this  is  obviously  false.  The  Platoniz- 
ing  Christian  would  not  admit  that  a  Platonist  was  anti-Christian. 

«  Origen  places  him  in  the  reign  of  Hadrian ;  but  the  internal  evidence  is  all  against 
that  opinion.    Kain  dates  the  treatise  177-78. 
»  Cp.  Renan,  Marc-Aurde,  3e  6dit.  pp.  346-71. 


ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  ANt)  ITS  OPPONENTS     237 

Fathers,  is  for  the  most  part  otherwise.     When  Celsus  argues  that 
it  makes  no  difference  by  what  name  the  Deity  is  called,  Origen 
answers  ^  that  on  the  contrary  certain  God-names  have  a  miraculous 
or  magical  virtue  for  the   casting    out    of   evil   spirits ;    that  this 
mystery  is  known  and  practised  by  the  Egyptians  and  Persians ; 
and  that  the  mere  name  of  Jesus  has  been  proved  potent  to  cast  out 
many  such  demons.     When,  on  the  other  hand,  Celsus  makes  a  Jew 
argue  against  the  Christist  creed  on  the  basis  of  the  Jewish  story 
that   the   founder's    birth   was   illegitimate,^  the   Father's   answer 
begins  in  sheer  amiable  ineptitude,^  which  soon  passes  into  shocked 
outcry.*     In   other  passages   he   is   more   successful,  as  when   he 
convicts  Celsus's  Jew  of  arguing  alternately  that  the  disciples  were 
deceived,  and  that  they  were  deceivers.^     This  part  of  the  discussion 
is  interesting  chiefly  as  showing  how  educated  Jews  combated  the 
gospels  in  detail,  at  a  level  of  criticism  not  always  above  that  of  the 
believers.     Sometimes  the  Jew's  case  is  shrewdly  put,  as  when  he 
asks,^  '*  Did  Jesus  come  into  the  world  for  this  purpose,  that  we 
should  not  beheve  him?" — a  challenge  not  to  be  met  by  Origen's 
theology.     One  of  the  acutest  of  Celsus's  thrusts  is  the  remark  that 
Jesus  himself  declared  that  miracles  would  be  wrought  after  him  by 
followers  of  Satan,  and  that  the  argument  from  miracles  is  thus 
worthless.*^    To  this  the  rejoinder  of  Origen  is  suicidal ;  but  at  times 
the  assailant,  himself  a  believer  in  all  manner  of  miracles,  gives  away 
his  advantage  completely  enough. 

Of  a  deeper  interest  are  the  sections  in  which  Celsus  (himself 
a  believer  in  a  Supreme  Deity  and  a  future  state,  and  in  a  multitude 
of  lower  Powers,  open  to  invocation)  rests  his  case  on  grounds  of 
general  reason,  arguing  that  the  true  Son  of  God  must  needs  have 
brought  home  his  mission  to  all  mankind;®  and  sweeps  aside  as 
fooHsh  the  whole  dispute  between  Jews  and  Christians,®  of  which  he 
had  given  a  sample.  Most  interesting  of  all  are  the  chapters  ^^  in 
which  the  Christian  cites  the  pagan's  argument  against  the  homo- 
centric  theory  of  things.  Celsus  insists  on  the  large  impartiality  of 
Nature,  and  repudiates  the  fantasy  that  the  whole  scheme  is  adjusted 
to  the  well-being  and  the  salvation  of  man.  Here  the  Christian, 
standing  for  his  faith,  may  be  said  to  carry  on,  though  in  the  spirit 
of  a  new  fanaticism,  the  anti-scientific  humanism  first  set  up  by 
Sokrates ;  while  the  pagan,  though  touched  by  religious  apriorism, 
and  prone  to  lapse  from  logic  to  mysticism  in  his  turn,  approaches 


1  B.  i,  cc.  24.  25. 
*  cc.  37,  39. 
7  B.  ii,  c.  49. 


2  B.  i,  cc.  28,  32. 
6  B.  ii.  c.  26. 
8  B.  ii.  c.  30. 
10  B.  iv,  cc.  23-30,  64-60.  74. 


8  c.  32. 

6  B.  ii.  c.  78. 

9  B.  iii.  c.  1. 


f 


238     ANCIENT  CflEISTlANlTY  ANB  ITS  OPPONENTS 

the  scientific  standpoint  of  the  elder  thinkers  who  had  set  religion 
aside.^  Not  for  thirteen  hundred  years  was  his  standpoint  to  be 
regained  among  men.  His  protest  against  the  Christian  cultivation 
of  blind  faith,^  which  Origen  tries  to  meet  on  rationalistic  lines, 
would  in  a  later  age  be  regarded  as  conveying  no  imputation.  Even 
the  simple  defensive  subtleties  of  Origen  are  too  rationalistic  for  the 
succeeding  generations  of  the  orthodox.  The  least  embittered  of  the 
Fathers,  he  is  in  his  way  the  most  reasonable  ;  and  in  his  unhesi- 
tating resort  to  the  principle  of  allegory,  wherever  his  documents  are 
too  hard  for  belief,  we  see  the  last  traces  of  the  spirit  of  reason  as  it 
had  been  in  Plato,  not  yet  paralysed  by  faith.  Henceforth,  till  a 
new  intellectual  Hfe  is  set  up  from  without.  Christian  thought  is 
more  and  more  a  mere  disputation  over  the  unintelligible,  in  terms 
of  documents  open  always  to  opposing  constructions. 

Against  such  minds  the  strictest  reason  would  be  powerless  ; 
and  it  was  fitting  enough  that  LUCIAN,  the  last  of  the  great 
freethinkers  of  the  Hellenistic  world,  should  merely  turn  on  popular 
Christianity  some  of  his  serene  satire" — more,  perhaps,  than  has 
come  down  to  us  ;  though,  on  the  other  hand,  his  authorship  of  the 
De  Morte  Peregrini,  which  speaks  of  the  "  crucified  sophist,"  has 
been  called  in  question.*  The  forcible-feeble  dialogue  Philopatris, 
falsely  attributed  to  Lucian,  and  clearly  belonging  to  the  reign  of 
Julian,  is  the  last  expression  of  general  skepticism  in  the  ancient 
literature.  The  writer,  a  bad  imitator  of  Lucian,  avows  disbelief 
alike  in  the  old  Gods  and  in  the  new,  and  professes  to  respect,  if 
any,  the  '*  Unknown  God  "  of  the  Athenians  ;  but  he  makes  no  great 
impression  of  intellectual  sincerity.  Apart  from  this,  and  the  lost 
anti-Christian  work*  of  Hierocles,  Governor  of  Bithynia  under 
Diocletian,  the  last  direct  literary  opponents  of  ancient  Christianity 
were  Porphyry  and  Julian.  As  both  were  believers  in  many  Gods, 
and  opposed  Christianity  because  it  opposed  these,  neither  can  well 
rank  on  that  score  as  a  freethinker,  even  in  the  sense  in  which  the 
speculative  Gnostics  were  so.  The  bias  of  both,  like  that  of 
Plutarch,  seems  to  have  been  to  the  utmost  latitude  of  religious 
belief ;   and,  apart   from   personal  provocations   and  the  ordinary 

1  Cp.  A.  Kind.  Teleologie  und  Naturalismus  in  der  altchristlichen  Zeit,  1875;  Soury, 
BrHiaire  de  Vhistoire  du  Materialisme,  pp.  331-40.  '-*  B.  i,  chs.  9-11 ;  iii.  44. 

8  Cp.  Renan.  Marc-AurHe,  pp.  373-77. 

*  Christian  excisions  have  been  suspected  in  the  PeregrinuB,  §  11  (Bernays,  Lucian  und 
die  Kyniker,  1879,  p.  107).  But  see  Mr.  J.  M.  CotteriU's  Peregrinus  Proteus,  Edinburgh, 
1879,  for  a  theory  of  the  spuriousness  of  the  treatise,  which  is  surmised  to  be  a  fabrication 
of  Henri  Etienne. 

5  Logoi  Philaletheia,  known  only  from  the  reply  of  Eusebius.  Contra  Hiroclem. 
Hierocles  made  much  of  ApoUonius  of  Tyana.  as  having  greatly  outdone  Jesus  in 
miracles,  while  ranking  simply  as  a  God-beloved  man. 


ANCIENT  CHBlSTIANiTt  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS     239 

temper  of  religious  conservatism,  it  was  the  exiguity  of  the 
Christian  creed  that  repelled  them.  Porphyry's  treatise,  indeed, 
was  answered  by  four  Fathers,*  all  of  whose  replies  have  dis- 
appeared, doubtless  in  fulfilment  of  the  imperial  edict  for  the 
destruction  of  Porphyry's  book — a  dramatic  testimony  to  the  state 
of  mental  freedom  under  Theodosius  II.'^  What  is  known  of  his 
argument  is  preserved  in  the  incidental  replies  of  Jerome,  Augustine, 
Eusebius,  and  others.^  The  answer  of  Cyril  to  Julian  has  survived, 
probably  in  virtue  of  Julian's  status.  His  argumentations  against 
the  unworthy  elements,  the  exclusiveness,  and  the  absurdities  of  the 
Jewish  and  Christian  faith  are  often  reasonable  enough,  as  doubtless 
were  those  of  Porphyry;^  but  his  own  theosophic  positions  are 
hardly  less  vulnerable ;  and  Porphyry's  were  probably  no  better,  to 
judge  from  his  preserved  works.  Yet  it  is  to  be  said  that  the 
habitual  tone  and  temper  of  the  two  men  compares  favourably  with 
that  of  the  polemists  on  the  other  side.  They  had  inherited  some- 
thing of  the  elder  philosophic  spirit,  which  is  so  far  to  seek  in 
patristic  literature,  outside  of  Origen. 

The  latest  expressions  of  rationalism  among  churchmen  were 
to  the  full  as  angrily  met  by  the  champions  of  orthodoxy  as  the 
attacks  of  enemies;  and,  indeed,  there  was  naturally  something  of 
bitterness  in  the  resistance  of  the  last  few  critical  spirits  in  the 
Church  to  the  fast-multiplying  insanities  of  faith.  Thus,  at  the  end 
of  the  fourth  century,  the  Italian  monk  JOVINIAN  fought  against 
the  creed  of  celibacy  and  asceticism,  and  was  duly  denounced, 
vituperated,  ecclesiastically  condemned,  and  banished,  penal  laws 
being  at  the  same  time  passed  against  those  who  adhered  to  him. 
Contemporary  with  him  was  the  Eastern  Aerius,  who  advocated 
priestly  equality  as  against  episcopacy,  and  objected  to  prayers  for 
the  dead,  to  fasts,  and  to  the  too  significant  practice  of  slaying 
a  lamb  at  the  Easter  festival.®  In  this  case  matters  went  the  length 
of  schism.  With  less  of  practical  effect,  in  the  next  century, 
VIGILANTIUS  of  Aquitaine  made  a  more  general  resistance  to  a 
more  manifold  superstition,  condemning  and  ridiculing  the  venera- 

*  Methodius,  Eusebius,  Apollinaris,  and  Philostorgius. 
^  Cod.  Justin.  De  Summa  Trinitate,  1.  I,  tit.  i,  c.  3. 

8  Citations  are  given  by  Baur,  Ch.  Hist,  ii,  180  sq.  /  •,  • 

*  Cp.  Mackay.  Bise  and  Progress  of  Christianity,  p.  160.  Chrysostom  {De  Mundt 
Creations,  vi.  3)  testifies  that  Porphyry  "led  many  away  from  the  faith."  He  ably 
anticipated  the  "  higher  criticism  "  of  the  Book  of  Daniel.  See  Baur,  as  cited.  Porphyry, 
like  Celsus,  powerfully  retorted  on  the  Old  Testament  the  attacks  made  by  Christians  on 
the  immorality  of  pagan  myths,  and  contemned  the  allegorical  explanations  of  the 
Christian  writers  as  mere  evasions.  The  pagan  explanations  of  pagan  myths,  however, 
were  of  the  same  order. 

^  Gieseler.  §  106,  ii,  75.    Cp.  Mosheim,  4  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  iii.  §  22. 

»  Gieseler,  §  106,  vol.  ii,  p.  74  ;  Mosheim,  4  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  iii,  §  2  ;  and  Schlegel's  note  in 
Reid's  ed.  p.  152. 


240     ANCIENT  CHBISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 


tion  of  tombs  and  bones  of  martyrs,  pilgrimages  to  sbrines,  the 
miracle  stories  therewith  connected,  and  the  practices  of  fasting, 
celibacy,  and  the  monastic  life.  He  too  was  promptly  put  down, 
largely  by  the  efforts  of  his  former  friend  Jerome,  the  most  voluble 
and  the  most  scurrilous  pietist  of  his  age,  who  had  also  denounced 
the  doctrine  of  Jovinian.*  For  centuries  no  such  appeal  was  heard 
in  the  western  Church. 

The  spirit  of  reason,  however,  is  well  marked  at  the  beginning 
of  the  fifth  century  in  a  pagan  writer  who  belongs  more  truly  to 
the  history  of  freethought  than  either  Julian  or  Porphyry.  Macro- 
BIUS,  a  Koman  patrician  of  the  days  of  Honorius,  works  out  in  his 
Saturnalia,  with  an  amount  of  knowledge  and  intelligence  which 
for  the  time  is  remarkable,  the  principle  that  all  the  Gods  are  but 
personifications  of  aspects  or  functions  of  the  Sun.  But  such 
doctrine  must  have  been  confined,  among  pagans,  to  the  cultured 
few;  and  the  monotheism  of  the  same  writer's  treatise  On  the 
Dream  of  Scipio  was  probably  not  general  even  among  the  remain- 
ing pagans  of  the  upper  class.'* 

After  Julian,  open  rationaHsm  being  already  extinct,  anti- 
Christian  thought  was  simply  tabooed ;  and  though  the  leading 
historians  for  centuries  were  pagans,  they  only  incidentally  venture 
to  betray  the  fact.  It  is  told,  indeed,  that  in  the  days  of  Valens 
and  Valentinian  an  eminent  physician  named  Posidonius,  son  of  a 
great  physician  and  brother  of  another,  was  wont  to  say,  **  that 
men  do  not  grow  fanatic  by  the  agency  of  evil  spirits,  but  merely 
by  the  superfluity  of  certain  evil  humours ;  and  that  there  is  no 
power  in  evil  spirits  to  assail  the  human  race";*  but  though  that 
opinion  may  be  presumed  to  have  been  held  by  some  other 
physicians,  the  special  ascription  of  it  to  Posidonius  is  a  proof  that 
it  was  rarely  avowed.  With  public  lecturing  forbidden,  with  the 
philosophic  schools  at  Athens  closed  and  plundered  by  imperial 
force,*  with  heresy  ostracized,  with  pagan  worship,  including  the 
strong  rival  cult  of  Mithraism,  outwardly  suppressed  by  the  same 
power,*  unbelief  was  naturally  little  heard  of  after  the  fifth  century. 

1  Milman,  Hist,  of  Chr.  bk.  iii.  ch.  xi  (ii.  268-70);  Mosheim.  5  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  iii.  §  14; 
GiUy.  Vigilantius  and  his  Times,  liHi,  T?p.S,'iS9  sq.,  470  sq.  As  to  Jerome's  persecuting 
ferocity  see  also  Gieseler,  ii,  65  note.  For  a  Catholic  polemic  on  Jerome's  side  see  Amedee 
Thierry,  Saint  JSrome,  2e  6dit.  pp.  141,  363-66. 

'<*  See  a  good  account  of  the  works  of  Macrobius  in  Prof.  Dill's  Boman  Society  in  the 
last  Century  of  the  Western  Empire,  bk.  i,  ch.  iv. 

8  Philostorgius.  Eccles.  Hist.  Epit.  bk.  viii,  ch.  x. 

*  By  Justinian  in  529.  The  banished  thinkers  were  protected  by  Chosroes  in  Persia, 
who  secured  them  permission  to  return  (Gibbon,  Bohn  ed.  iv,  355-56;  Finlay,  Hist,  of 
Greece,  ed.  Tozer.  i,  277,  287).  Theodosius  II  had  already  forbidden  all  public  lectures  by 
independent  teachers  (id.  pp.  282-83). 

6  Theodosius  I,  Arcadius,  and  Theodosius  II  (379-450)  successively  passed  laws  forbidding 
and  persecuting  paganism  (Finlay,  i,  5286 ;  Beugnot.  Hist,  de  la  destr.  du  paganisme  en 


ANCIENT  CHEISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS     241 

About  its  beginning  we  find  Chrysostom  boasting^  that  the  works 
of  the  anti-Christian  writers  had  persuaded  nobody,  and  had  almost 
disappeared.     As   regarded   open   teaching,    it   was   only  too   true, 
though  the  statement  clashes  with  Chrysostom's   own   complaint 
that  Porphyry  had  led  many  away  from  the  faith.^     Proclus  was 
still  to  come  (410-485),  with  his  eighteen  Arguments  against  the 
Christians,  proceeding  on  the  principle,  still  cherished  from  the  old 
science,  that  the  world  was  eternal.     But  such  teaching  could  not 
reach  even  the  majority  of   the   more   educated;  and  the  Jewish 
dogma  of  creation  ex  nihilo  became  sacrosanct  truth  for  the  darken- 
ing world.     In  the  east  Eusebius,'  and   in   the  west   Lactantius,' 
expressed  for  the  whole  Church  a  boundless  contempt  of  everything 
in  the  nature  of  scientific  research  or  discussion ;  and  it  was  in  fact 
at  an  end  for  the  Christian  world  for  well-nigh  a  thousand  years. 
For  Lactantius,  the  doctrine  of  a  round  earth  and  an  antipodes  was 
mere  nonsense ;  he  discusses  the  thesis  with  the  horse-laughter  of 
a  self-satisfied  savage.'      Under  the  feet  of  arrogant    and  blatant 
ignorance  we  see  trampled  the  first  form  of  the  doctrine  of  gravita- 
tion, not  to  be  recovered  for  an  aeon.     Proclus  himself  cherished 
some  of  the  grossest  pagan  superstitions ;  and  the  few  Christians 
who  had  in  them  something  of   the  spirit  of   reason,  as  Cosmas 
" Indicopleustes,"  "the  Indian  navigator,"  who  belongs  to  the  sixth 
century,  were  turned  away  from  what  Hght  they  had  by  their  sacred 
books.     Cosmas  was  a  Nestorian,  denying  the  divinity  of  Mary,  and 
a  rational  critic  as  regards  the  orthodox  fashion  of  applying  Old 
Testament  prophecies  to  Jesus.'     But  whereas  pagan  science  had 
inferred  that  the  earth  is  a  sphere,  his  Bible  taught  him  that  it  is 
an  oblong  plain ;  and  the  great  aim  of  his  Topographia  Christiana, 
sive  Christianorum  opinio  de  mundo,  was  to  prove  this  against  those 
who  still  cultivated  science.  ,    , 

Such  pleadings  were  not  necessary  for  the  general  Christian 
pubhc,  who  knew  nothing  save  what  their  priests  taught  them.  In 
Chrysostom's  day  this  was  already  the  case.     There  remained  but  a 

accident,  i.  350  sq.).    Mithraism  was  suppressed  in  the  same  PJ^^^|i%°°J^'J^^o'nstIns 
ad  Laetam,  Sokrates,  Eccles.  Hist.  bk.  v.  ch.  xvi).    It  is  to  be/,^f^^,^^^_^f^e;^^o  persecute 
and  Constantius,  the  sons  of  Constantine,  had  commenced  at  lejst  on  pa^^^^^^ 
paganism  as  soon  as  their  father's  new  creed  was  s^^^f  rbnrf.b     It  was^^^^^  the^    ault 
10.  2.  4).  and  this  with  the  entire  approval  of  the  ;^hole  Church      ^iZt^^  and  Beugnot. 
that  it  subsisted  till  the  time  of  Theodosius  II  (cp.  Gieseler,  §7o,  pp.  306-3«S^  ana  geugno 
i.  138-48).    On  the  edict  of  Theodosius  I  see  MUman   bk.  in  ch  v        ed.  J^jed,  P  '^^      ^ 
1  In  S.  Babylam,  contra  Julianum,  c.   ii.      Cp.  his  Horn,  iv  on  isb  i..or.  r^ue 

'''?'The?e  is  also  a  suggestion  in  one  passage  of  Chrysostom  (Hom^in  1  Cor.  v^,  2  3)  that 
some  Christians  tended  to  doubt  the  actuality  of  apostolic   miracles,  seeing 
miracles  took  place  in  their  own  day.  5  jfi.  iii,  24. 

^  Preeparatio  Eva7igelica,x\,61.  .     ^^^- „  ^r"  Ivioim   ^^  Tpnt  nt  ii  ch.  iii.  §  5. 

6  Topographia,  lib.  v,  cited  by  Murdock  in  ^^ote  on  Mosheim  5  Cent.  pt.  u  en.  iii.  so. 
Reid's  ed.  p.  192.    Cp.  same  ed.  p.  219.  note;  and  Gibbon.  Bohn  ed.  iv,  259 .  v.  diy. 


242     ANCIENT  CHKISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

few  rational  heresies.  One  of  the  most  notable  was  that  of  Theodore 
of  Mopsuestia,  the  head  of  the  school  of  Antioch  and  the  teacher  of 
Nestorius,  who  taught  that  many  of  the  Old  Testament  prophecies 
commonly  applied  to  Jesus  had  reference  to  pre-Christian  events, 
and  discriminated  critically  among  the  sacred  books.  That  of  Job 
he  pronounced  to  be  merely  a  poem  derived  from  a  pagan  source, 
and  the  Song  of  Songs  he  held  to  be  a  mere  epithalamium  of  no 
religious  significance.  In  his  opinion  Solomon  had  the  Xoyos  yvwo-cw?, 
the  love  of  knowledge,  but  not  the  Xoyos  o-o</)tas,  the  love  of  wisdom.* 
No  less  remarkable  was  the  heresy  of  Photinus,  who  taught  that  the 
Trinity  was  a  matter  not  of  persons,  but  of  modes  of  deity.^  Such 
thinking  must  be  pronounced  the  high-water  mark  of  rational 
criticism  in  the  ancient  Church  ;  and  its  occurrence  in  an  age  of 
rapid  decay  is  memorable  enough.  But  in  the  nature  of  things  it 
could  meet  with  only  the  scantiest  support ;  and  the  only  critical 
heresy  which  bulked  at  all  largely  was  that  of  the  Unitarian 
Anomoeans  or  Eunomians,^  who  condemned  the  worship  of  rehcs,* 
and  made  light  of  scriptural  inspiration  when  texts,  especially  from 
the  Old  Testament,  were  quoted  against  them."  Naturally  Chry- 
sostom  himself  denounced  them  as  unbelievers.  Save  for  these 
manifestations,  the  spirit  of  sane  criticism  had  gone  from  the 
Christian  world,  with  science,  with  art,  with  philosophy,  with 
culture.  But  the  verdict  of  time  is  given  in  the  persistent  recoil  of 
the  modern  spirit  from  the  literature  of  the  age  of  faith  to  that  of 
the  elder  age  of  nascent  reason  ;  and  the  historical  outcome  of  the 
state  of  things  in  which  Chrysostom  rejoiced  was  the  re-estabHsh- 
ment  of  universal  idolatry  and  practical  polytheism  in  the  name  of 
the  creed  he  had  preached.  Every  species  of  superstition  known  to 
paganism  subsisted,  slightly  transformed.  While  the  emperors 
savagely  punished  the  pagan  soothsayers,  the  Christians  held  by  the 
same  fundamental  delusion ;  and  against  the  devices  of  pagan  magic, 
in  the  reality  of  which  they  unquestioningly  believed,  they  professed 
triumphantly  to  practise  their  own  sorceries  of  holy  water,  relics, 
prayer,  and  exorcism,  no  man  daring  to  impugn  the  insanities  of 
faith.®     On  the  face  of  religious  life,  critical  reason  was  extinct. 


1  Acta  concilia  Ccrnstantinop.  apud  Harduin,  ii.  65.  71. 

2  See  Schlegel's  note  on  Mosheim.  4  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  v,  §  19- 

8  The  first  name  came  from  Afdfxoiot,  "  unllke-natured  (to  the  Father),"  that  being 
their  primary  doctrinal  heresy  concerning  Jesus.  The  second  seems  to  have  been  a 
euphemism  of  their  own  making,  with  the  sense  of  "  holding  the  good  law." 

<  Jerome,  Adv,  Vigilantium,  cc.  9.  11.  *  Epiphanms,  Adv.  Hares.  Ixx,  S  6.         . 

6  Cp.  Augustine.  De  Civ.  Dei,  viii,  15-19;  xxi,  6 ;  De  Trinitate,  iii,  12,  13  (7.  8);  hpist. 
cxxxviii,  1&-30 ;  Sermo  cc,  itiEpiph.  Dom.  ii ;  Jerome,  Vita  S.  Uilarion.  cc.  6.  37. 


1 


ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS     243 

§  6 

It  might  safely  have  been  inferred,  but  it  is  a  matter  of  proved 
fact,  that  while  the  higher  intellectual  life  was  thus  being  paralysed, 
the  primary  intellectual  virtues  were  attainted.  As  formerly  in 
Jewry,  so  now  in  Christendom,  the  practice  of  pious  fraud  became 
normal :  all  early  Christian  literature,  and  most  of  the  ecclesiastical 
history  of  many  succeeding  centuries,  is  profoundly  compromised  by 
the  habitual  resort  to  fiction,  forgery,  and  interpolation.  The 
mystical  poetry  of  the  pagans,  the  Jewish  history  of  Josephus,  the 
gospels,  the  Epistles,  all  were  interpolated  in  the  same  spirit  as  had 
inspired  the  production  of  new  Gospels,  new  Epistles,  new  books  of 
Acts,  new  Sibylline  verses.  And  even  where  to  this  tendency  there 
was  opposed  the  growing  demand  of  the  organized  Church  for 
a  faithful  text,  when  the  documents  had  become  comparatively 
ancient,  the  disposition  to  invent  and  suppress,  to  reason  crookedly, 
to  delude  and  mislead,  was  normal  among  churchmen.  This  is  the 
verdict  of  orthodox  ecclesiastical  history,  a  dozen  times  repeated.^ 
It  of  course  carries  no  surprise  for  those  who  have  noted  the  religious 
doctrine  of  Plato,  of  Polybius,  of  Cicero,  of  Varro,  of  Strabo,  of  Dio 

Cassius. 

While  intelligence  thus  retrograded  under  the  reign  of  faith,  it  is 
impossible  to  maintain,  in  the  name  of  historical  science,  the  con- 
ventional claim  that  the  faith  wrought  a  countervailing  good.  What 
moral  betterment  there  was  in  the  decaying  Roman  world  was 
a  matter  of  the  transformed  social  conditions,  and  belongs  at  least 
as  much  to  paganism  as  to  Christianity  :  even  the  asceticism  of  the 
latter,  which  in  reality  had  no  reformative  virtue  for  society  at  large, 
was  a  pre-Christian  as  well  as  an  anti-Christian  phenomenon.  ^  It 
is  indeed  probable  that  in  the  times  of  persecution  the  Christian 
community  would  be  limited  to  the  more  serious  and  devoted  types ' 
—that  is  to  say,  to  those  who  would  tend  to  live  worthily  under  any 
creed.  But  that  the  normal  Christian  community  was  superior  in 
point  of  morals  is  a  poetic  hallucination,  set  up  by  the  legends  con- 
cerning the  martyrs  and  by  the  vauntings  of  the  Fathers,  which  are 
demonstrably  untrustworthy.  The  assertion,  still  at  times  made  by 
professed  Positivists,  that  the  discredit  of  the  marriage  tie  in  Roman 

1  Mosheim.  E.  H.  2Cent.  pt.  ii, ch.  iii.  §§  8. 15 ;  3  Cent,  pt,  i- ch  i.  §  5 ;  pt  i^^^h.  in  §§  10  H ; 
4  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  iii,  §§  3, 16  ;  Gieseler,.§  63.  P-.  235  ;  Waddington  Hist  ^y^i^j^f '"'J^.J^  S 
pp.  38-39  ;  Milman.  Hist,  of  Chr.  bk.  iv,  ch.  iii,  ed.  cited,  ii.  337.     Cp.  Mackay.  uise  atiu 

Progress  of  Christianity,  PT>.  11-12-  .        „  „  ^„     i.     ».  ••  ^u  m  s,  in-  q  Ponf  nh  ii 

a  Cp.  the  explicit  admissions  of  Mosheim..^.  H.  2  Cent  pt.  n.  ch.  m  §  16    3  Cent  pt  ii 
ch.  ii,  §§  4.  6;  4  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  ii.  §  8;  ch.  iii.  §  17;   Gieseler  &  103 jol.  ii,  p.  56.    ^^       to 
be  noted.  hoVever.  that  even  the  martyrs  were  at  times  ^^a-^characters  wh^^  "^ 

martyrdom  remiss  on  for  their  sins  (Gieseler.  §  74,  p.  206 ;  De  Wette.  as  theie  cited). 


244     ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

life   necessitated  a  new    religion,  and  that  the  new   religion  was 
regenerative,  is  only  a  quasi-scientific  variation  of  the  legend. 

The  evidence  as  to  the  failure  of  the  faith  to  reform  its 
adherents  is  continuous  from  the  first  generation  onwards. 
"  Paul "  complains  bitterly  of  the  sexual  licence  among  his  first 
Corinthian  converts  (1  Cor.  v,  1,  2).  and  seeks  to  check  it  by 
vehement  commands,  some  mystical  {id.  v.  5),  some  prescribing 
ostracism  {vv.  9-13)— a  plain  confession  of  failure,  and  a  com- 
plete reversal  of  the  prescription  in  the  gospel  (Mt.  xviii,  22). 
If  that  could  be  set  aside,  the  command  as  to  divorce  could  be 
likewise.  Justin  Martyr  {Dial  with  Trypho,  ch.  141)  describes 
the  orthodox  Jews  of  his  day  as  of  all  men  the  most  given  to 
polygamy  and  arbitrary  divorce.  (Cp.  Deut.  xxiv,  1 ;  Edersheim, 
History,  p.  294.)  Then  the  Christian  assumption  as  to  Roman 
degeneration  and  Eastern  virtue  cannot  be  sustained. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  third  century  we  have  the  decisive 
evidence  of  TertulUan  that  many  of  the  charges  of  immorality 
made  by  serious  pagans  against  Christians  were  in  large  part 
true.  First  he  affirms  {Ad  Nationes,  1.  i,  c.  5)  that  the  pagan 
charges  are  not  true  of  all,  "  not  even  of  the  greatest  part  of  us." 
In  regard  to  the  charge  of  incest  (c.  16),  instead  of  denying  it 
as  the  earher  apologist  Minucius  Felix  had  done  in  the  age  of 
persecution,  he  merely  argues  that  the  same  offence  occurs 
through  ignoraiice  among  the  pagans.  The  chapter  concludes 
by  virtually  admitting  the  charge  with  regard  to  misconduct  in 
*'  the  mysteries."  Still  later,  when  he  has  turned  Montanist, 
TertulHan  exphcitly  charges  his  former  associates  with  sexual 
licence  {De  Jejuniis,  cc.  1,  17  :  De  Virginihus  Velandis,  c.  14), 
pointing  now  to  the  heathen  as  showing  more  regard  for 
monogamy   than    do   the   Christians    {De   Exhort.  Castitatis, 

c.  13). 

From  the  fourth  century  onward  the  history  of  the  Church 
reveals  at  every  step  a  conformity  on  the  part  of  its  mernbers 
to  average  pagan  practice.  The  third  canon  of  the  Nicene 
Council  forbids  clerics  of  all  ranks  from  keeping  as  companions 
or  housekeepers  women  who  are  not  their  close  blood  relations. 
In  the  fifth  century  Salvian  denounces  the  Christians  alike  of 
Gaul  and  Africa  as  being  boundlessly  licentious  in  comparison 
with  the  Arian  barbarians  {De  Gubernatione  Dei,  lib.  5,  6,  7). 
They  do  not  even,  he  declares,  deny  the  charge,  contenting 
themselves  with  claiming  superior  orthodoxy.  (Cp.  Bury, 
Hist,  of  the  Later  Boman  Empire,  i,  198-99,  and  Finlay,  ii,  219, 
for  another  point  of  view.)  On  all  hands  heresy  was  reckoned 
the  one  deadly  sin  (Gieseler,  §  74,  p.  295,  and  refs.),  and  all 
real  misdeeds  came  to  seem  venial  by  comparison.  As  to 
sexual  vice  and  crime  among  the  Christianized  Germans,  see 
Gieseler,  §  125,  vol.  ii,  158-60. 


ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS     245 

In  the  East  the  conditions  were  the  same.  The  story  of  the 
indecent  performances  of  Theodora  on  the  stage  (Gibbon,  ch.  xl), 
probably  untrue  of  her,  implies  that  such  practices  openly 
occurred.  Milman  {Hist,  of  Chr.  bk.  iv,  ch.  ii.  ed.  cited,  ii,  327) 
recognizes  general  indecency,  and  notes  that  Zosimus  charged 
it  on  Christian  rule.  Salvian  speaks  of  unHmited  obscenity  in 
the  theatres  of  Christian  Gaul  {De  Gub.  Dei,  1.  6).  Cp.  Gibbon 
as  to  the  character  of  the  devout  Justinian's  minister  Trebonian  ; 
who,  however,  was  called  an  atheist.  (Suidas,  s.v.)  On  the 
collapse  of  the  iconoclastic  movement,  hcence  became  general 
(Finlay,  Hist,  of  Greece,  ed.  Tozer,  ii,  162).  But  even  in  the 
fourth  century  Chrysostom's  writings  testify  to  the  normahty 
of  all  the  vices,  as  well  as  the  superstitions,  that  Christianity  is 
supposed  to  have  banished;  the  churches  figuring,  like  the 
ancient  temples,  as  places  of  assignation.  (Cp.  the  extracts  of 
Lavoll^e,  Les  Moeiirs  Byzantines,  in  Essais  de  litterature  et 
d'histoire,  1891,  pp.  48-62,  89  ;  the  S.P.C.K.'s  St.  Chrysostom's 
Picture  of  his  Age,  1875,  pp.  6,  94,  96,  98,  100,  102-104,  108, 
194  ;  Chrysostom's  Homilies,  Eng.  tr.  1839,  Hom.  xii  on  1st  Cor. 
pp.  159-64  ;  Jerome,  Adv.  Vigila7itium,  cited  by  Gieseler,  ii,  66, 
note  19,  and  in  Gilly's  VigilantiiLS  a^id  his  Times,  1844,  pp.  406- 
407.)  The  clergy  were  among  the  most  licentious  of  all,  and 
Chrysostom  had  repeatedly  to  preach  against  them  (LavoU^e, 
ch.  iv  ;  Mosheim,  as  last  cited  ;  Gibbon,  ch.  xlvii,  Bohn  ed.  iv, 
232).  The  position  of  women  was  practically  what  it  had  been 
in  post-Alexandrian  Greece  and  Asia-Minor  (LavoU^e,  ch.  v; 
cp.  St.  Chrysostom's  Picture  of  his  Age,  pp.  180-82)  ;  and  the 
practice  corresponded.  In  short,  the  supposition  that  the 
population  of  Constantinople  as  we  see  it  under  Justinian,  or 
that  of  Alexandria  in  the  same  age,  could  have  been  morally 
austere,  is  fantastic. 

It  would  indeed  be  unintelligible  that  intellectual  decline  without 
change  of  social  system  should  put  morals  on  a  sound  footing.  The 
very  asceticism  which  seeks  to  mortify  the  body  is  an  avowal  of  the 
vice  from  which  it  recoils,  and  insofar  as  this  has  prevailed  under 
Christianity  it  has  specifically  hindered  general  temperance,^  inasmuch 
as  the  types  capable  of  self-rule  thus  leave  no  offspring. 

On  the  other  hand,  with  the  single  exception  of  the  case  of  the 
gladiatorial  combats  (which  had  been  denounced  in  the  first  century 
by  the  pagan  Seneca,^  and  in  the  fourth  by  the  pagan  Libanius,  but 
lasted  in  Rome  long  after  Christianity  had  become  the  State  rehgion  ;^ 
while  the  no  less  cruel  combats  of  men  with  wild  beasts  were  sup- 
pressed only  when  the  finances  of  the  falling  Empire  could  no  longer 


>  Cp.  Gieseler,  ii,  67-68.  «  Epist.  vii,  5 ;  xcv,  33.    Cp.  Cicero,  Tusculans,  ii.  17. 

*  Cp.  the  Bohn  ed.  of  Gibbon,  note  by  clerical  editor,  iii,  359. 


246     ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS 

maintain  them)/  the  vice  of  craelty  seems  to  have  been  in  no  serious 
degree  cast  out."*  Cruelty  to  slaves  was  certainly  not  less  than  in 
the  Rome  of  the/ntonines ;  and  Chrysostom'  denounces  just  such 
atrocities  by  cruel  mistresses  as  had  been  described  by  Horace  and 
Juvenal.  The  story  of  the  slaying  of  Hypatia,  indeed,  is  decisive  as 
to  Christian  ferocity/ 

In  fine,  the  entire  history  of  Christian  Egypt,  Asia,  and  Africa, 
progressively  decadent  till  their  easy  conquest  by  the  Saracens,  and 
the  entire  history  of  the  Christian  Byzantine  empire,  at  best 
stagnant  in  mental  and  material  life  during  the  thousand  years  of 
its  existence,  serve  conclusively  to  establish  the  principle  that  in 
the  absence  of  freethought  no  civilization  can  progress.  More 
completely  than  any  of  the  ancient  civilizations  to  which  they 
succeeded,  they  cast  out  or  were  denuded  of  the  spirit  of  free  reason. 
The  result  was  strictly  congruous.  The  process,  of  course,  was 
one  of  socio-political  causation  throughout ;  and  the  rule  of  dogma 
was  a  symptom  or  effect  of  the  process,  not  the  extraneous  cause. 
But  that  is  only  the  clinchiDg  of  the  sociological  lesson. 

Of  a  deep  significance,  in  view  of  the  total  historical  movement, 
is  the  philosophical  teaching  of  the  last  member  of  the  ancient 
Roman  world  who  exhibited  philosophical  capacity— the  long  famous 
BOETHIUS,  minister  of  the  conqueror  Theodoric,  who  put  him  to 
death  in  the  year  525.  Ostensibly  from  the  same  hand  we  have  the 
De  Consolatione  Philosopkiae,  which  is  substantially  non-Christian, 
and  a  number  of  treatises  expounding  orthodox  Christian  dogma. 

In   the   former  "we   find   him  in  strenuous  opposition to  the 

Christian  theory  of  creation ;  and  his  Dualism  is  at  least  as 
apparent  as  Plato's.  We  find  him  coquetting  with  the  anti- 
Christian  doctrine  of  the  immortality  of  the  world,  and  assuming 
a  position  with  regard  to  sin  which  is  ultra-Pelagian  and  utterly 
untenable  by  a  Christian  theologian.  We  find  him,  with  death 
before   his   eyes,   deriving   consolation   not   from   any   hopes   of   a 

resurrection but  from  the  present  contempt  of  all  earthly  pain 

and  ill  which  his  divine  mistress,  *  the  perfect   solace  of   wearied 

1  The  express  declaration  of  Salvian.  De  Chibematione  Dei,  1.  6.  On  the  general 
Question  compare  Mr.  Farrer's  Paganism  and  Christianity,  ch.  x;  Milman.  as  last  cited, 
p.  331 ;  and  Gieseler.  ii.  71.  note  6.  The  traditional  view  that  the  games  were  Buppressed 
by  Honorius,  though  accepted  by  Gibbon  and  by  Professor  Dill  {Boman  Society  tn  the 
Last  Century  of  the  Western  Empire,  2nd  ed.  p.  56).  appears  to  be  an  error.  Cp.  Beugnot. 
Destr.  du  Paoanisme,  ii,  95;  Fin\a.y,  Hist,  of  Greece,  i,  236.  .  xx  n  t^o 

2  As  to  the  specially  cruel  use  of  judicial  torture  by  the  later  Inquisition,  see  H.  C.  Lea, 
Superstition  and  Forc^,  3rd  ed.  p.  i5'l.  .     „.  .  ^  ,        ..  -n^        ^  fv,« 

8  Lavollee.  as  cited,  p.  93.  Cp.  St.  Chrysostom' s  Picture  of  his  Age,  p.  112,  and  the 
admissions  of  Milman.  bk.  iv,  ch.  i.  -r       ,       «  in^ 

*  As  to  the  spirit  of  hatred  roused  by  controversy  among  believers,  see  Gieseler,  9  104. 
vol.  ii.  pp.  64-67;  and  UUmann's  Oregory  of  Nazianzum,  Eng.  tr.  1851,  pp.  177-80. 


ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  AND  ITS  OPPONENTS     247 

souls,'  has  taught  him."*  Seeing  that  Theodoric,  though  a  pro- 
fessed admirer  of  the  ancient  life,  had  absolutely  put  down,  on  pain 
of  death,^  every  remaining  religious  practice  of  paganism,  it  is  certain 
that  Boethius  must  have  officially  professed  Christianity ;  but  his 
book  seems  to  make  it  certain  that  he  was  not  a  believer.  The 
only  theory  on  which  the  expounder  of  such  an  essentially  pagan 
philosophy  can  be  conceived  as  really  the  author  of  the  Christian 
tractates  ascribed  to  Boethius  is  that,  under  the  stroke  of  undeserved 
ruin  and  unjust  doom,  the  thinker  turned  away  from  the  creed  of 
his  oflicial  life  and  sought  healing  in  the  wisdom  of  the  older  world.^ 
Whether  we  accept  this  solution  or,  in  despite  of  the  specific 
testimony,  reject  the  theological  tractates  as  falsely  ascribed — 
either  by  their  writer  or  by  others— to  Boethius,'  the  significant 
fact  remains  that  it  was  not  the  Christian  tracts  but  the  pagan 
Consolation  that  passed  down  to  the  western  nations  of  the  Middle 
Ages  as  the  last  great  intellectual  legacy  from  the  ancient  world. 
It  had  its  virtue  for  an  age  of  mental  bondage,  because  it  preserved 
some  pulse  of  the  spirit  of  free  thought. 


1  H.  Fraser  Stewart.  Boethius :  An  Essay,  1891.  pp.  100-101. 

^  Cp.Bengnot..  De.-itructiondu  Pa ganis7tie,ii,  282-83.  .,    ^»^,     ^        i  s- 

8  rd   p   159     Mr.  Stewart  in  another  passage  (p.  106)  argues  that    The  Consolation  is 

intensely  artificial"— this  by  way  of  explaining  that  it  was  a  deliberate  exercise,  not 

representing  the  real  or  normal  state  of  its  author's  mind.    Yet  he  has  finally  to  avow 

(p.  107)  that  "  it  remains  a  very  noble  book"— a  character  surely  incompatible  with  intense 

^^  4  This  18  the  view  of  Maurice  {Medieval  Philosophy,  2nd  ed.  1859,  pp.,  14-16).  who 
decides  that  Boethius  was  neither  a  Christian  nor  a  '  pagan"— i.e..  a  believer  m  tne 
pagan  Gods.  This  is  simply  to  say  that  he  was  a  rationalist— a  pagan  phiiosopner, 
like  Aristotle.  But,  as  is  noted  by  Prof.  Bury  (ed.  of  Gibbon,  iv.  199).  Boethius  s  author- 
ship of  a  book,  De  sancta  trinitate,  et  capita  qucedam  dogmatica,  et  librum  cmitra 
Nestorium,  is  positively  asserted  in  the  Anecdoton  Holderi  (ed.  by  Usener,  Leipzig,  1877, 
p.  4),  a  fragment  found  in  a  10th  century  MS. 


Chapter  VIII 
FREETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM* 

The  freethinking  of  Mohammed  may  be  justly  said  to  begin  and 
end  with  his  rejection  of  popular  polytheism  and  his  acceptance  of 
the  idea  of  a  single  God.  That  idea  he  ostensibly  held  as  a  kind 
of  revelation,  not  as  a  result  of  any  traceable  process  of  reasoning; 
and  he  affirmed  it  from  first  to  last  as  a  fanatic.  One  of  the  noblest 
of  fanatics  he  may  be,  but  hardly  more.  Denouncing  all  idolatry, 
he  anchored  his  creed  to  the  Ka'aba,  the  sacred  black  stone  of  the 
remote  past,  which  is  to  this  day  its  most  revered  object. 

That  the  monotheistic  idea,  in  its  most  vivid  form,  reached  him 
in  middle  age  by  way  of  a  vision  is  part  of  the  creed  of  his  followers ; 
and  that  it  derived  in  some  way  from  Jews,  or  Persians,  or  Christians, 
as  the  early  unbelievers  declared,'^  is  probable  enough.  But  there  is 
evidence  that  among  his  fellow-Arabs  the  idea  had  taken  some 
slight  root  before  his  time,  even  in  a  rationalistic  form,  and  it  is 
clear  that  there  were  before  his  day  many  believers,  though  also 
many  unbeUevers,  in  a  future  state.^  There  is  no  good  ground  for 
the  oft-repeated  formula  about  fche  special  monotheistic  and  other 
religious  proclivities  of  "the  Semite";*  Semites  being  subject  to 
religious  influences  like  other  peoples,  in  terms  of  culture  and 
environment.  The  Moslems  themselves  preserved  a  tradition  that 
one  Zaid,  who  died  five  years  before  the  Prophet  received  his  first 
inspiration,  had  of  his  own  accord  renounced  idolatry  without 
becoming  either  Jew  or  Christian ;  but  on  being  told  by  a  Jew  to 

1  The  strict  meaning  of  this  term,  given  by  Mohammed  ("the  true  religion  with  God  is 
Islam  ";  Sura.  ill.  17).  is  "submission"— such  being  the  attitude  demanded  by  the  Prophet. 
"  Moslem  "  or  "  Muslim  "  means  one  who  accepts  Islam.  Koran  means  strictly,  not  book." 
but  "  reading  "  or  recitation. 

2  Rodwell's  tr.  of  the  Koran,  ed.  1861.  pref.  p.  xv.  .  ,      ^ 
8  Sale,  Preliminary  Discourse  to  tr.  of  the  Koran,  ed.  1833,  i.  42;   Muir's  Life  of 

Mohammad,  ed.  Weir.  1912.  p.  78.  Cp.  Freeman,  History  and  Conquests  of  the  Saracens, 
1856,  p.  35.  The  late  Prof.  Palmer,  in  introd.  to  his  tr.  of  the  Koran  (Sacred  Books  of  the 
East  series),  i,  p.  xv,  says  that  "  By  far  the  greater  number  had  ceased  to  believe  in  any- 
thing at  all ";  but  this  is  an  extravagance,  confuted  by  himself  in  other  passages— e.g.  p.  xi. 
*  These  generalizations  are  always  matched,  and  cancelled,  by  others  from  the  same 
sources.  Thus  Prof.  D.  B.  Macdonald  writes  of  "  the  always  flighty  and  skeptical  Arabs." 
and.  a  few  pages  later,  of  the  God-fearing  fatalism  "of  all  Muslim  thought,  the  faith  to 
which  the  Semite  ever  returns  in  the  end."  Development  qf  Muslim  Theology,  etc.  (in 
"  Semitic  Series  ").  New  York,  1903.  pp.  122. 126. 

248 


FEEETHOUGHT  UNDEB  ISLAM 


249 


become  a  Hanyf,^  that  is  to  say,  of  the  religion  of  Abraham,  who 
worshipped  nothing  but  God,  he  at  once  agreed.^  In  the  oldest 
extant  biography  of  Mohammed  an  address  of  Zaid's  has  been 
preserved,  of  which  six  passages  are  reproduced  in  the  Koran  ;^  and 
there  are  other  proofs*  that  the  way  had  been  partly  made  for 
Mohammedanism  before  Mohammed,  especially  at  Medina,  to  which 
he  withdrew  (the  Hej'ra)  with  his  early  followers  when  his  fellow- 
tribesmen  would  not  accept  his  message.  He  uses  the  term  Hanyf 
repeatedly  as  standing  for  his  own  doctrine.*^  In  some  of  the  Arab 
poetry  of  the  generation  before  Mohammed,  again,  there  is  "  a  deep 
conviction  of  the  unity  of  God,  and  of  his  elevation  over  all  other 
beings,"  as  well  as  a  clearly  developed  sense  of  moral  responsibility. 
The  doctrine  of  a  Supreme  God  was  indeed  general ;'  and  Moham- 
med's insistence  on  the  rejection  of  the  lesser  deities  or  com- 
panions of  God"  was  but  a  preaching  of  unitarianism  to  half- 
professed  monotheists  who  yet  practised  polytheism  and  idolatry. 
The  Arabs  at  his  time,  in  short,  were  on  the  same  religious  plane 
as  the  Christians,  but  with  a  good  deal  of  unbelief;  "Zendekism" 
or  rationalistic  deism  (or  atheism)  being  charged  in  particular  on 
Mohammed's  tribe,  the  Koreish  ;®  and  the  Prophet  used  traditional 
ideas  to  bring  them  to  his  unitary  creed.  In  one  case  he  even 
temporarily  accepted  their  polytheism.^  The  several  tribes  were 
further  to  some  extent  monolatrous,^°  somewhat  as  were  the  Semitic 
tribes  of  Palestine;  and  before  Mohammed's  time  a  special  wor- 
shipper of  the  star  Sirius  sought  to  persuade  the  Koreish  to  give 
up  their  idols   and   adore   that   star   alone.     Thus   between  their 

1  The  word  means  either  convert  or  pervert;  in  Heb.  and  Syr.  "heretic":  in  Arabic, 
"orthodox."  It  must  not  be  confounded  with  Hanyjite,\,he  name  of  an  orthodox  sect, 
founded  by  one  Hanyfa.  ,  „  .  ,,      .... 

2  See  Rodwell's  tr.  of  the  Koran,  ed.  1861,  pref.  pp.  xvi,  xvu;  and  Sura,  xvi  (Ixxui  m 
Rodwell's  chron.  arrangement),  v.  121,  p.  252,  note  2. 


Essai .... 

the  Arabs,  pp.  69. 149.  "  To  the  great  mass  of  the  citizens  of  Mecca  the  new  doctrme  was 
simply  the  Hanyflsm  to  which  they  had  become  accustomed;  and  they  did  not  at  first 
trouble  themselves  at  all  about  the  matter."  Palmer,  introd.  to  tr.  of  Koran,  i,  p.  xxiv. 
Cp.  Sprenger.  as  cited,  i,  46-60.  65.  ,     ^  ,^^        _._ 

s  The  word  Hanyf  or  Hanif  recurs  in  Sura  ii,  129  ;  iii.  60,  89 ;  iv,  124  ;  vi,  79, 162 ;  x.  105 , 
xvi.  121;  xxii.  32;  xxx,  29.  Cp.  H.  Derenbourg.  La  science  des  religions  et  VIslamisme 
1886.  pp.  42-43.  Palmer's  translation,  marred  as  it  unfortunately  is  by  slangmess,  is  on 
such  points  specially  trustworthy.  Rodwell's  does  not  always  indicate  the  use  of  the 
word  Hanyf ;  but  the  German  version  of  Ullmann,  the  French  of  Kasimirski,  and  Sale  s, 
do  not  indicate  it  at  all.  Sprenger  (p.  43)  derives  the  Hanyf s  from  Essenes  who  had 
almost  lost  all  knowledge  of  the  Bible.  Cp.  p.  67.  Prof.  Macdonald  writes  that  the  word 
"  is  of  very  doubtful  derivation.  But  we  have  evidence  from  heathen  Arab  poetry  that 
these  Hanif s  were  regarded  as  much  the  same  as  Christian  monks,  and  that  the  term 
hanif  was  used  as  a  synonym  for  rahib,  monk."    Work  cited,  p.  125. 

6  Sprenger,  as  cited,  p.  13.  ,  .   ^     ^  j  xt-  i,  i 

7  Cp.  Sale's  Prelim.  Discourse,  as  cited,  i,  38 ;  and  Palmer,  mtrod.  p.  xv ;  and  Nichol- 
son, pp.  139-40.  „  ,      „    ,.       ^. 

«  Al  Mostaraf,  cited  by  Pococke,  Specimen  Histor.  Arab.  p.  136;  Sale,  Prelim,  Disc,  as 
cited,  p.  45. 

9  Cp.  Nicholson,  pp.  15&-56  and  refs.  1°  Sale,  as  cited,  pp.  39-41. 


I 


i 


250 


FBEETHOUGHT  UNBEB  ISLAM 


partially  developed  monotheism,  their  partial  familiarity  with 
Haiiyf  monotheism,  and  their  common  intercourse  with  the 
nominally  monotheistic  Jews  and  Christians,  many  Arabs  were  in 
a  measure  prepared  for  the  Prophet's  doctrine  ;  which,  for  the  rest, 
embodied  many  of  their  own  traditions  and  superstitions  as  well  as 
many  orally  received  from  Christians  and  Jews. 

"  The  Koran  itself,"  says  Palmer,  "  is,  indeed,  less  the  inven- 
tion or  conception  of  Mohammed  than  a  collection  of  legends 
and  moral  axioms  borrowed  from  desert  lore  and  couched  in 
the  language  and  rhythm  of  desert  eloquence,  but  adorned  with 
the  additional  charm  of  enthusiasm.  Had  it  been  merely 
Mohammed's  own  invented  discourses,  bearing  only  the  impress 
of  his  personal  style,  the  Koran  could  never  have  appealed  with 
so  much  success  to  every  Arab-speaking  race  as  a  miracle  of 
eloquence."  ^ 

Kuenen  challenges  Sprenger's  conclusions  and  sums  up : 
"  We  need  not  deny  that  Mohammed  had  predecessors ;  but 
we  must  deny  that  tradition  gives  us  a  faithful  representation 
of  them,  or  is  correct  in  caUing  them  hamjfs.^  On  the  other 
hand,  he  concedes  that  "Mohammed  niade  Islam  out  of 
elements  which  were  supplied  to  him  very  largely  from  outside, 
and  which  had  a  whole  history  behind  them  already,  so  that 
he  could  take  them  up  as  they  were  without  further  elabora- 
tion."' 

"  During  the  first  century  of  Islam  the  forging  of  Traditions 
became  a  recognized  political  and  religious  weapon,  of  which 
all  parties  availed  themselves.  Even  men  of  the  strictest  piety 
practised  this  species  of  fraud,  and  maintained  that  the  end 
justified  the  means."  * 

The  final  triumph  of  the  religion,  however,  was  due  neither  to 
the  elements  of  its  Sacred  Book  nor  to  the  moral  or  magnetic  power 
of  the  Prophet.  This  power  it  was  that  won  his  first  adherents, 
who  were  mostly  his  friends  and  relatives,  or  slaves  to  whom  his 
religion  was  a  species  of  enfranchisement.*  From  that  point  forward 
his  success  was  military — thanks,  that  is,  to  the  valour  of  his 
followers — his  fellow  citizens  never  having  been  won  in  mass  to  his 
teaching.^  Such  success  as  his  might  conceivably  be  gained  by 
a  mere  military  chief.  Nor  could  the  spread  of  Islam  after  his 
death  have  taken  place  save  in  virtue  of  the  special  opportunities 

1  Palmer,  introd.  to  liis  Haroun  Alraschid.  1882.  p.  14.    Cp.  Derenbourg,  La  science  des 
religions  et  Vlalamisme,  p.  44,  controverting  Kuenen. 

2  Hibbert  Lectures,  On  National  and  Universal  Religions,  ed.  1901,  p.  21  and  Note  II. 
8  Id,  p.  31.  *  Nicholson.  Lit.  Hist,  of  the  Arabs,  p.  145. 

5  Rodwell,  note  to  Sura  xcvi  (R.  i),  10.  . 

6  Sprenger  estimates  that  at  his  death  the  number  really  converted  to  his  doctrme  did 
not  exceed  a  thousand.    Cp.  Nicholson,  pp.  153-58. 


\ 


f 


FBEETHOUGHT  UNDEB  ISLAM 


251 


for  conquest  lying  before  its  adherents — opportunities  already  seen 
by  Mohammed,  either  with  the  eye  of  statesmanship  or  with  that 
of  his  great  general,  Omar.^     It  is  an  error  to  assume,  as  is  still 
commonly  done,  that  it  was  the  unifying  and  inspiring  power  of  the 
religion  that  wrought  the  Saracen  conquests.      Warlike  northern 
barbarians    had   overrun    the  Western  Empire  without  any  such 
stimulus ;    the  prospect  of   booty  and  racial  kinship  sufficed  them 
for  the  conquest  of  a  decadent  community  ;  and  the  same  conditions 
existed    for    the    equally    warlike     Saracens,^    who    also,    before 
Mohammed,  had  learned  something  of  the  military  art  from  the 
Grseco-Eomans.^     Their  religious  ardour  would  have  availed  them 
little  against  the  pagan  legions  of  the  unbeheving  Caesar;  and  as 
a  matter  of  fact  they  could  never  conquer,  though  they  curtailed, 
the  comparatively  weak  Byzantine  Empire ;  its  moderate  economic 
resources  and  traditional  organization  sufficing  to  sustain  it,  despite 
intellectual  decadence,  till  the  age  of  Saracen  greatness  was  over. 
Nor  did  their  faith  ever  unify  them  save  ostensibly  for  purposes  of 
common  warfare  against  the  racial  foe— a  kind  of  union  attained  in 
all  ages  and  with  all  varieties  of  reUgion.     Fierce  domestic  strifes 
broke  out  as  soon  as  the  Prophet  was  dead.     It  would  be  as  true  to 
say  that  the  common  racial  and  mihtary  interest  against  the  Graeco- 
Koman  and  Persian  States  unified  the  Moslem  parties,  as  that  Islam 
unified  the  Arab  tribes  and  factions.     Apart  from  the  inner  circle  of 
converts,  indeed,  the  first  conquerors  were  in  mass  not  at  all  deeply 
devout,  and  many  of  them  maintained  to  the  end  of  their  generation, 
and   after   his   death,  the   unbelief   which   from  the  first  met  the 
Prophet  at  Mecca.*      Against  the  creed  of  Mohammed  "  the  con- 
servative and  material  instincts  of  the  people  of  the  desert  rose  in 
revolt ;  and  although  they  became  Moslems  e7i  masse,  the  majority 
of  them  neither  believed  in  Islam  nor  knew  what  it  meant.     Often 
their  motives  were  frankly  utiUtarian  :    they  expected  that  Islam 

would  bring  them  luck If  things  went  ill,  they  blamed  Islam  and 

turned  their  backs  on  it."'     It  is  told  of  a  Moslem  chief  of  the  early 
days  that  he  said :  "  If  there  were  a  God,  I  would  swear  by  his 

1  Renan  ascribes  the  idea  wholly  to  Omar.  Mudesd'histoire  et  de  «f.*^»«'ff-' ^d.  1862. 
p  250  The  faithful  have  preserved  a  sly  saying  that  Omar  was  many  a  time  of  a  certain 
opiEdon  and  the  Koran  was  then  revealed  accordingly."  ^o\<\e^,  Enc.  Brit,  ^rt,  on 
KoSaI  in  Sketches  from  Eastern  History,  1892,  p.  28.  On  the  other  hand,  Sedillot  decides 
(HrsfoirI^desArabe.lim,  p.  60)  that  "in  Mohammed  it  is  the  political  idea  that  domi- 
Ses/'  SoNi1h2lson(p.i69):  "At  Medina  the  days  of  pure  yejig^^,^,  ?.^"^Hn' m^m 
uassed  away  for  ever  and  the  prophet  is  overshadowed  by  the  statesman.  Cp.  pp.  173. 175. 
''^I'ontbe  measure  of  racial  Snify  set  up  by  Abyssinian  attacks  as  well  ^^by"ie  preten- 
sions of  the  Byzantine  and  Persian  empires,  see  Sedillot,  pp.  30.  38.  Cp.  \an  Vloten. 
Becherches  sicr  la  domination  arabe,  Amsterdam.  1894,  pp.  1-4.  7. 

8  Professor  Stanilas  Guyard,  ia  Ciuiiisaf ton  3fMSuima?ie.  1884,  p.  2i. 

4  rn  Renan  lYudes   DP  257-66;  Hauri.  Der  Islam  in  seineyn  Einjiuss  auf  das  Lehen 
8.i..r&?^t4r\f^PP.'^?4-S  •  Nic^  "  was  at  Medina  that  a  strict  Moham- 

medanism first  arose.  ^  Nicholson,  pp.  178-79,  and  ref. 


I 


252 


FKEETHOUGHT  UNDEE  ISLAM 


name  that  I  did  not  believe  in  him."'  A  general  fanaticism  grew  up 
later.  But  had  there  been  no  Islam,  enterprising  Arabs  would 
probably  have  overrun  Syria  and  Persia  and  Africa  and  Spain  all 
the  same.^  Attila  went  further,  and  he  is  not  known  to  have  been 
a  monotheist  or  a  believer  in  Paradise.  Nor  were  Jenghiz  Khan 
and  Tamerlane  indebted  to  religious  faith  for  their  conquests. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  a  Khalifate  was  anywhere  established 
by  miUtary  force,  the  faith  would  indeed  serve  as  a  nucleus  of 
administration,  and  further  as  a  means  of  resisting  the  insidious 
propaganda  of  the  rival  faith,  which  might  have  been  a  source  of 
political  danger.  It  was  their  Sacred  Book  and  Prophet  that 
saved  the  Arabs  from  accepting  the  religion  of  the  states  they 
conquered  as  did  the  Goths  and  Franks.  The  faith  thus  so  far 
preserved  their  military  polity  when  that  was  once  set  up ;  but  it 
was  not  the  faith  that  made  the  polity  possible,  or  gave  the  power  of 
conquest,  as  is  conventionally  held.  At  most,  it  partly  facilitated 
their  conquests  by  detaching  a  certain  amount  of  purely  superstitious 
support  from  the  other  side.  And  it  never  availed  to  unify  the  race, 
or  the  Islamic  peoples.  On  the  fall  of  Othman  "  the  ensuing  civil 
wars  rent  the  unity  of  Islam  from  top  to  bottom,  and  the  wound  has 
never  healed."^  The  feud  between  Northern  and  Southern  Arabs 
"  rapidly  developed  and  extended  into  a  permanent  racial  enmity." 
And  when,  after  the  Ommayade  dynasty  had  totally  failed  to  unify 
Semite  and  Aryan  in  Persia,  the  task  was  partially  accomplished  by 
the  Abassides,  it  was  not  through  any  greater  stress  of  piety,  but  by 
way  of  accepting  the  inevitable,  after  generations  of  division  and 
revolt/ 

§  2 

It  may  perhaps  be  more  truly  claimed  for  the  Koran  that  it  was 
the  basis  of  Arab  scholarship  ;  since  it  was  in  order  to  elucidate  its 
text  that  the  first  Arab  grammars  and  dictionaries  and  literary 
collections  were  made.®  Here  again,  however,  the  reflection  arises 
that  some  such  development  would  have  occurred  in  any  case,  on 
the  basis  of  the  abundant  pre-Islamic  poetry,  given  but  the  material 
conquests.  The  first  conquerors  were  ilHterate,  and  had  to  resort  to 
the  services  and  the  organization  of  the  conquered'  for  all  purposes 
of  administrative  writings,  using  for  a  time  even  the  Greek  and 

1  Hauri.  Der  IsZam.  p.  64.  . 

2  Cp.  Montesquieu.  Orandeur  et  dicadence  aes  Bomatns,  ch.  22. 

8  Nicholson,  p.  190.  <  Id.  p.  199.  «  Van  Vloten.  p.  70  and  passim.    _ 

6  Prof.  Quyard.  as  cited,  pp.  16,  51 ;   C.  E.  Oelsner,  Des  effeta  de   la   religion  de 
Mohammed,  etc..  1810.  p.  130. 

^  Guyard.  p.  21 ;  Palmer,  Haroun  Alraschid,  introd.  p.  19. 


FEEETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 


253 


Persian  languages.  There  was  nothing  in  the  Koran  itself  to 
encourage  literature;  and  the  first  conquerors  either  despised  or 
feared  that  of  the  conquered.^ 

When  the  facts  are  inductively  considered,  it  appears  that  the 
Koran  was  from  the  first  rather  a  force  of  intellectual  fixation  than 
one    of    stimulus.     As   we    have    seen,    there   was   a   measure   of 
rationalism   as   well   as   of   monotheism    among   the  Arabs  before 
Mohammed;    and   the   Prophet   set   his   face  violently  against  all 
unbelief.     The   word   "  unbeliever "    or   "  infidel "    in    the    Koran 
normally  signifies  merely  "  rejector  of  Mohammed  ";  but  a  number 
of    passages^   show   that    there   were    specific   unbelievers   in   the 
doctrine  of  a  future  state  as  well  as  in  miracles  ;  and  his  opponents 
put  to  him  challenges  which  showed  that  they  rationally  disbeUeved 
his  claim  to  inspiration.'     Hence,  clearly,  the  scarcity  of  miracles  in 
his  early  legend,  on  the  Arab  side.    On  a  people  thus  partly  "  refined, 
skeptical,  incredulous,"'  much  of  whose  poetry  showed  no  trace  of 
religion,'   the   triumph   of    Islam   gradually   imposed   a   tyrannous 
dogma,  entailing  abundance  of  primitive  superstition  under  the  asgis 
of  monotheistic  doctrine.     Some  moral  service  it  did  compass,  and 
for  this  the  credit  seems  to  be  substantially  due  to  Mohammed ; 
though    here    again    he   was    not    an    innovator.     Like    previous 
reformers,^    he    vehemently   denounced    the    horrible    practice    of 
burying  alive  girl  children;   and  when  the  Koran  became  law  his 
command  took  effect.     His  limitation  of    polygamy  too  may  have 
counted  for  something,  despite  the  unlimited  practice  of  his  latter 
years.     For  the  rest,  he  prescribes,  in  the  traditional  eastern  fashion, 
liberal  almsgiving;   this,  with  normal  integrity  and  patience,  and 
belief  in  "  God  and  the  Last  Day,  and  the  Angels,  and  the  Scrip- 
tures, and  the  Prophets," '  is  the  gist  of  his  ethical  and  religious 
code,  with  much  stress  on  hell-fire  and  the  joys  of  Paradise,  and  at 
the  same  time  on  predestination,  and  with  no  reasoning  on  any  issue. 

§  3 
The  history  of  Saracen  culture  is  the  history  of  the  attainment 

1  The  alleged  destruction  of  the  library  of  Alexandria  by  O^^^r  is  probably  a  my^^^ 
arising  out  of  a  story  of  Omar's  causing  some  Persian  books  to  be  thrown  mto  ^be  water. 
See  Prof.  Bury's  notes  in  his  ed.  of  Gibbon,  v,  452-54.    Cp.  Oelsner,  f «  ^U^d  pp.  14^3. 

2  Sura,  vi,  25,  29;  xix.  67;  xxvii,  68-70;  liv.  2;  Ixxxiii,  10-13.  Accordmg  to  Ivui.  28. 
however,  some  polytheists  denied  the  future  state.  a  Ty^„„„   oonit*>ri  r.  oqa 

»Ci>.Rena.n,%udesd'histoireetde  critique,  vv-232-3i.^  ^  ^^"^""Z^  ^l^lllrf^^^' 

5  Id.  p.  235.  Renan  and  Sprenger  conflict  on  this  point,  the  former  having  legard. 
apparently,  to  the  bulk  of  the  poetry,  the  latter  to  parts  of  it. 

6  Sedillot,  p.  39.    One  of  these  was  Zaid.    Nicholson,  p.  149.  T5«o^«vf>.  Qt^iifV.  in 

7  See  the  passage  (Sura  ii)  cited  with  praise  by  the  sympathetic  Mr-fosworth  Smith  in 
his  MohamyZd  and  Mohammedanism,  2nd  ed.p.  181 ;  where  a  so  del  gh  ted  Pf^^^e  is  given 
to  the  "description  of  Infidelity"  in  Sura  xxiv,  39-40.  The  infidels  in  quebtion  weie 
simply  non-Moslems. 


2 


I 


254  FEEETHOUGHT  UNDEK  ISLAM 

of  saner  ideas  and  a  higher  plane  of  thought.  Within  a  century  of 
the  Hej'ra'  there  had  arisen  some  rational  skepticism  m  the  Moslem 
schools,  as  apart  from  the  chronic  schisms  and  strifes  of  the  faithful. 
A  school  of  theology  had  been  founded  by  Hasan-al-Basri  at 
Bassorah;  and  one  of  his  disciples.  Wasil  ibn  Att^,  followmg 
some  previous  heretics— Mabad  al  Jhoni.  Ghailan  of  Damascus, 
and  Jonas  al  Aswari^— rejected  the  predestination  doctrine  of  the 
Koran  as  inconsistent  with  the  future  judgment ;  arguing  for  free- 
will and  at  the  same  time  for  the  humane  provision  of  a  purgatory. 
From  this  beginning  dates  the  Motazileh  or  class  of  MotaziUtes 
(or  Mu'tazilites),'  the  philosophic  reformers  and  moderate  free- 
thinkers of  Islam.  Other  sects  of  a  semi-political  character  had 
arisen  even  during  the  last  illness  of  ttie  Prophet,  and  others  soon 
after  his  death.'  One  party  sought  to  impose  on  the  faithful  the 
"  Sunna  "  or  "  traditions,"  which  really  represented  the  old  Arabian 
ideas  of  law,  but  were  pretended  to  be  unwritten  sayings  of 
Mohammed.'  To  this  the  party  of  Ali  (the  Prophet's  cousin) 
objected;  whence  began  the  long  dispute  between  the  Shiah  or 
Shiites  (the  anti-traditionists),  and  the  Sunnites ;  the  conquered 
and  oppressed  Persians  tending  to  stand  with  the  former,  and 
generally,  in  virtue  of  their  own  thought,  to  supply  the  heterodox 
element  under  the  later  Khalifates.'  Thus  Shiites  were  apt  to  be 
MotaziUtes.'  On  All's  side,  again,  there  broke  away  a  great  body 
of  Kharejites  or  Separatists,  who  claimed  that  the  Imaum  or  head 
of  the  Faith  should  be  chosen  by  election,  while  the  Shiites  stood 
for  succession  by  divine  right.'  All  this  had  occurred  before  any 
schools  of  theology  existed. 

The  MotaziUtes,  once  started,  divided  graduaUy  into  a  score  of 
sects,'  aU  more  or  less  given  to  rationaUzing  within  the  limits  of 
monotheism.''  The  first  stock  were  named  Kadarites,  because 
insisting  on  man's  power  {kadar)  over  his  acts."     Against  them  were 

1  The  Flight  (of  the  Prophet  to  Medina  from  Mecca.  mJ-:^)Jjom  ^which  begins  the 
^^''^xZ'^^^Jirfi^rhte  der  Chalifen,  ii.  261-64;    BuRb.C Histoire   des' philom>he8  et  des 

'^'klfnlfi  'T'''  "'^'^    ^^^^^"*^V  p^a^mef  lX°o^dno^^^^r^o.n  Alrascnul,  p.  14. 

e  As  S  the  Persian  influence  on  Arab  thought,  CP- A  Mailer  ^er  I^J^J^.!' ^69 ;  Palmer. 
A^  latt  cited-  Weil.  Geschichte  der  Chalifen,  n,  114  ff.;  Nicholson,  p.  2-20,  ja;^,  \JJ>\«°' 
^c/TlUJ^flvKomuuxhou  arabe,  p.  43.^  Vaa  Vloten's  treatise  is  a  lucid  ske  ch  of  the 
Rrfpin  nolitical  conditions  set  up  in  Persia  by  the  Arab  conquest.  ,  ^^  ^    '.]'  c  i« 

^"^^s  G    dS    H^sioire  S  philosophes   et    des    tMologiens    Mussulmans,  p.  44 ;   Sale, 

pp.  161,  174-78. 

^l  -^MftlzfliB^  represen?s  U  fsll'm^a  Protestantism  of  the  shade  of  Schleiermacber  " 
(Renan.  iSrroS  et  V AverroUme,  3e  ed.  p.  104).  Cp.  Syed  Ameer  All,  Crit.  hxam.  of  Life 
o/ Jifo?irtmm«d.  pp.  300-308;  Sale,  p.  161.  n,  an.  x>^^„r^     j^-^^r-^ni,,   n    ini      Tha 

11  Dugat,  pp.  28.  44;  Guyard,  p.  36;  Steiner.  pp.  24-35;  Renan,  ^,"«»^^7^'  PvAa^nif^l 
Kadarufes.  as   Sale  notes  (pp.  164-65),  are  really  an  older  group  than  the  Motazilites. 


FREETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 


255 


promptly  ranged  the  Jabarites,  who  affirmed  that  man's  will  was 
wholly  under  divine  constraint  {jabar)}  Yet  another  sect,  the 
Sifatites,  opposed  both  of  the  others,  some  of  them^  standing  for 
a  literal  interpretation  of  the  Koran,  which  is  in  part  predestina- 
tionist,  and  in  parts  assumes  freewill;  while  the  main  body  of 
orthodox,  following  the  text,  professed  to  respect  as  insoluble 
mystery  the  contradictions  they  found  in  it.'  The  history  of  Islam 
in  this  matter  is  strikingly  analogous  to  that  of  Christianity  from 
the  rise  of  the  Pelagian  heresy. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that,  while  the  heretics  in  time  came  under 
Greek  and  other  foreign  influences,  their  criticism  of  the  Koran  was 
at  the  outset  their  own.*  The  Shtites,  becoming  broadly  the  party 
of  the  Persians,  admitted  in  time  Persian,  Jewish,  Gnostic,  Mani- 
chsean,  and  other  duaHstic  doctrines,  and  generally  tended  to 
interpret  the  Koran  allegorically.'  A  particular  school  of  allegorists, 
the  Bathenians,  even  tended  to  purify  the  idea  of  deity  in  an 
agnostic  direction.'  All  of  these  would  appear  to  have  ranked 
generically  as  Motazilites;  and  the  manifold  play  of  heretical 
thought  gradually  forced  a  certain  habit  of  reasoning  on  the 
orthodox,'  who  as  usual  found  their  advantage  in  the  dissidences 
of  the  dissenters.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Motazilites  found  new 
resources  in  the  study  and  translation  of  Greek  works,  scientific 
and  philosophical.'  They  were  thus  the  prime  factors,  on  the 
Arab  side,  in  the  culture-evolution  which  went  on  under  the  earlier 
of  the  Abasside  Khalifs  (750-1258).  Greek  Hterature  reached  them 
mainly  through  the  Syrian  Christians,  in  whose  hands  it  had  been 
put  by  the  Nestorians,  driven  out  of  their  scientific  school  at  Edessa 
and  exiled  by  Leo  the  Isaurian  (716-741) ;'  possibly  also  in  part 
through  the  philosophers  who,  on  being  exiled  from  Athens  by 
Justinian,  settled  for  a  time  in  Persia.'^  The  total  result  was  that 
already  in  the  ninth  century,  within  two  hundred  years  of  the 
beginning  of  Mohammed's  preaching,  the  Saracens  in  Persia  had 
reached  not  only  a  remarkable  height  of  material  civilization,  their 

80-called.  their  founder  having  rejected  predestination  before  Wasil  did  ^iienen  (HU)bert 
Lect.  p.  47)  writes  as  if  all  the  Motazilites  were  maintainers  of  J^^/ewill.  but  tney  variea. 
See  Prof.  Macdonald.  as  cited,  p.  135  sq.  [  ?,^^%'fS^74 

2  For  a  view  of  the  various  schools  of  Sifatites  see  gale.  pp.  16b-74. 

8  Guvard  dd  37-38;  G.  D.  Osborn,  The  Khalifs  of  Baghdad,  1876,  P-.^^*-      ,      inflnfincfi 

<  Stllne?:  p.  16  Major  Osborn  (work  cited,  p.  136)  attributes  their  rise  to  the  mfluence 
of  Eastern  Christianity,  but  gives  no  proof. 

^  l^A"!^-  TSslhl^Sh'o'li/fe^c^o'^MSi&^were  called  by  one  witer  followers 
of  reason,  since  thev  relied  rather  on  their  judgment  than  on  tradition. 

7  steiner.  p.  5 ;  Nicholson,  p.  370. 

i,  470 ;  Ueberweg,  i,  402.  ,     ,      ^,    ,.,       ■•   oqi 

K^o  Ueberweg.  p.  403 ;  Weil,  Gesch.  der  Chaltjeii,  u,  281. 


256  FEEETHOUGHT  UNDEK  ISLAM 

wealth  exceeding  that  of  Byzantium,  but   a  considerable   though 
quasi-secret  measure  of  scientific  knowledge  and  rational  thought 
including    even    some    measure    of    pure    atheism.     All   forms   of 
rationalism  alike  were  called  zendeUsm  by  the  orthodox,  the  name 
having  the  epithetic  force  of  the  Christian  terms     mfidehty     and 

"atheism."^ 

Secrecy  was  long  imposed  on  the  MotaziUtes  by  the  orthodoxy 
of  the  Khalifs,'  who  as  a  rule  atoned  for  many  crimes  and  abundant 
breaches  of  the  law  of  the  Koran  by  a  devout  profession  of  faith. 
Freethinking,  however,  had  its  periods  of  pohtical  prosperity.     Even 
under  the  Ommayade  dynasty,  the  Khalif  Al  Walid  Ibn  Yazid  (the 
eleventh  of  the  race)  was  reputed  to  be  of  no  religion,  but  seems  to 
have  been  rather  a  ruffian  than  a  rationalist.^     Under  the  Abassides 
culture  made  much  more  progress.     The  KhaUf  Al  Mansour.  though 
he  played  a  very  orthodox  part,'  favoured  the  Motazihtes  (754-775), 
being  generally  a  patron  of  the  sciences  ;  and  under  him  were  made 
the  first  translations  from  the  Greek.'     Despite  his  orthodoxy  he 
encouraged  science ;  and  it  was  as  insurgents  and  not  as  unbelievers 
that  he  destroyed  the  sect  of  Kewandites  (a  branch  of  the  anti- 
Moslera  Ismailites),  who  are  said  to  have  believed  in  metempsy- 
chosis.'    Partly  on  pohtical  but  partly  also  on  religious  grounds  his 
successor  Al  Mahdi  made  war  on  the  Ismaihtes,  whom  he  regarded 
as   atheists,  and   who   appear   to   have   been   connected   with   the 
Motazilite   "Brethren   of    Purity," «   destroying    their    books    and 
causing    others    to   be   written   against   them.'     They   were    anti- 
Koranites;    hardly    atheists;    but   a   kind   of   informal  rationalism 
approaching  to  atheism,  and  involving  unbeUef  in  the  Koran  and 
the    Prophet,   seems    to    have    spread    considerably,    despite    the 

1  For  an  orthodox  account  of  the  beginnings  of  freethinking  ^<''^'^}^^^^^^^'^jf'J'Xo!! 

SSlson,  p.  375  and  ref.    Macdonald  p  >.?«; 'Xr'^o'Vf 'pur Uy"  o^  "  Stoce^e'  Brethren  " 
seem'JrrJve"ca'rrieVMXz°;iirfa"rnh'ougrth'rai4<^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

EurtVasi^iaffoi^^lSmably  listed  earlier     Cp^^H^^^^^^^ 

Poole's  Studies  m  a  MosQ<ie.  lMv°,hJ„vJff  ?.Hm  d  moSaada  whicb  honeycombed 

K^1n'd%'X^J^ru'nde?r^^ful'i1tlTh^ 

ment  is  "  the  great  mystery  of  Muslim  history    (pp.  lbo-70). 

I  I^J^ia'd'e  ftv-fplJgrimages  to  Mecca  and  fled  on  the  last.  ^^^  ^J^^^'l^^.m^t'^^Tt 
6  Weil    G.sch    ^f/X"n£u;-8  reigri  waTborS  Al'luaf ,  '^Sh^ikh'of  the  MotSlites.-  ^ 
'  Uugati.  p.  t)u.     xne  ^y:^  "  8  Nicholson,  p.  371  and  refs. 

°''9TS:''p°\l    He  pe^sefuted  ZendeTcs  in  general.    NicholsoB,  pp.  37^74. 


FEEETHOUGHT  UNDEE  ISLAM 


257 


slaughter  of  many  unbelievers  by  Al  Mahdi.  Its  source  seems  to 
have  been  Persian  aversion  to  the  alien  creed.^  The  great  philo- 
sophic influence,  again,  was  that  of  Aristotle;  and  though  his 
abstract  God-idea  was  nominally  adhered  to,  the  scientific  move- 
ment promoted  above  all  things  the  conception  of  a  reign  of  law.^ 
Al  Hadi,  the  successor  of  Al  Mahdi,  persecuted  much  and  killed 
many  heretics;  and  Haroun  Al  Easchid  (Aaron  the  Orthodox) 
menaced  with  death  those  who  held  the  moderately  rational  tenet 
that  "the  Koran  was  created,"''  as  against  the  orthodox  dogma  (on 
all  fours  with  the  Brahmanic  doctrine  concerning  the  Veda)  that 
it  was  eternal  in  the  heavens  and  uncreated.  One  of  the  rationalists, 
Al  Mozdar,  accused  the  orthodox  party  of  infideUty,  as  asserting  two 
eternal  things ;  and  there  was  current  among  the  Motazilites  of  his 
day  the  saying  that,  "  had  God  left  men  to  their  natural  liberty,  the 
Arabians  could  have  composed  something  not  only  equal  but  superior 
to  the  Koran  in  eloquence,  method,  and  purity  of  language."  ^ 

Haroun's  crimes,  however,  consisted  little  in  acts  of  persecution. 
The  Persian  Barmekides  (the  family  of  his  first  Vizier,  surnamed 
Barmek)  were  regarded  as  protectors  of  Motazilites  ;*  and  one  of 
the  sons,  Jaafer,  was  even  suspected  of  atheism,  all  three  indeed 
being  charged  with  it.'     Their  destruction,  on  other  grounds,  does 
not  seem   to   have   altered  the   conditions  for   the   thinkers;    but 
Haroun's  incompetent  son   Emin  was  a  devotee  and   persecutor. 
His  abler  brother  and  conqueror  Al  Mamoun  (813-833),  on  the  other 
hand,  directly  favoured  the  Motazilites,  partly  on  pohtical  grounds, 
to  strengthen  himself  with  the  Persian  party,  but  also  on  the  ground 
of   conviction.'     He  even  imprisoned  some  of  the  orthodox  theo- 
logians who  maintained  that  the  Koran  was  not  a  created  thing, 
though,  hke  certain  persecutors  of   other  faiths,  he  had  expressly 
declared  himself  in  favour  of  persuasion  as  against  coercion.'^    In 
one    case,    following   usage,    he   inflicted   a   cruel  torture.         His 
fatal  error,"  says   a   recent   scholar,    "  was   that    he   invoked  the 
authority  of  the  State  in  matters  of  the  intellectual  and  rehgious 
Ufe."^       Compared   with    others,   certainly,  he  did   not    carry  his 


1  rd  D  72-  Sale  pp.  184-85;  Tabari's  Chronicle,  pt.  v.  ch.  xcyii,  Zotenberg's  tr.  1874. 
iv  44^53  fabari' notes  (p^  448)  that  all  the  Moslem  theologians  afree  in  thinking 
z^xdtli^n  much  wo?se  than  any  of  the  false  religions,  since  it  rejects  all  and  denies  God 
as  well  as  the  Prophet.  .  ^-  ^     ^  -nr.  i^^  i   a^k. 

2  Cp.  Steiner.  pp.  55  SQ.,  66  sq.\  Ueberweg.  Hist.^  ^l^^S^-J'tf't  this  nrincinle 
8  Dugat,  p.  76.    See  Sale,  pp.  82-83, 162-63.  as  to  the  champions  of  this  principle. 

*  Sale,  p.  83;  Macdonald,  p.  150.    .,     ^  „     ,  ,    ,       ^.^ 

«  Dugat.  p.  79:  Osborn,  The  Khalif s  of  Baghdad,  P- 19o-     .  . 

6  Palmer  ffaroMu  ^?ra5c?ii<i.  p.  82.    They  were  really  theists.  ,.,i  ic 

7  Te^^GefcMchtl  dIrChalifen,  ii.  215,  261.^280;  A.  Muller  D.r  Islam,  pp.  514-15. 
was  believed  that  he  was  at  heart  a  zindiar    Nicholson,  p.  dbb. 

8  Dugat.  pp.  85-96.  ®  ^^^^-  Macdonald,  as  cited,  p.  154. 

S 


It 


258 


FEEETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 


coercion  far,  though,  on  being  once  publicly  addressed  as  Ameer 
of  the  Unbelievers,"  he  caused  the  fanatic  who  said  it  to  be  put  to 
death/  In  private  he  was  wont  to  conduct  meetings  for  discussion, 
attended  by  believers  and  unbelievers  of  every  shade,  at  which  the 
only  restriction  was  that  the  appeal  must  be  to  reason,  and  never  to 
the  Koran.'  Concerning  his  personal  bias,  it  is  related  that  he  had 
received  from  Kabul  a  book  in  old  Persian,  The  Eternal  Beason, 
which  taught  that  reason  is  the  only  basis  for  religion,  and  that 
revelation  cannot  serve  as  a  standing  ground.^  The  story  is 
interesting,  but  enigmatic,  the  origin  of  the  book  being  untraceable. 
Whatever  were  his  views,  his  coercive  policy  against  the  orthodox 
extremists  had  the  usual  effect  of  stimulating  reaction  on  that  side, 
and  preparing  the  ultimate  triumph  of  orthodoxy.^  The  fact 
remains,  however,  that  Mamoun  was  of  all  the  Khalifs  the  greatest 
promoter  of  science'  and  culture  ;  the  chief  encourager  of  the  study 
and  translation  of  Greek  literature  ;^  and,  despite  his  coercion  of 
the  theologians  on  the  dogma  of  the  eternity  of  the  Koran,  tolerant 
enough  to  put  a  Christian  at  the  head  of  a  college  at  Damascus, 
declaring  that  he  chose  him  not  for  his  rehgion  but  for  his  science. 
In  the  same  spirit  he  permitted  the  free  circulation  of  the  apologetic 
treatise  of  the  Armenian  Christian  Al  Kindy,  in  which  Islam  and 
the  Koran  are  freely  criticized.  As  a  ruler,  too,  he  ranks  among  the 
best  of  his  race  for  clemency,  justice,  and  decency  of  life,  although 
orthodox  imputations  were  cast  on  his  subordinates.  His  successors 
Motasim  and  Wathek  were  of  the  same  cast  of  opinion,  the  latter 
being,  however,  fanatical  on  behalf  of  his  rationalistic  view  of  the 
Koran  as  a  created  thing."^ 

A  violent  orthodox  reaction  set  in  under  the  worthless  and  Turk- 
ruled  KhaHf  Motawakkel'  (847-861),  by  whose  time  the  Khalifate 
was  in  a  state  of  poUtical  decadence,  partly  from  the  economic 
exhaustion  following  on  its  tyrannous  and  extortionate  rule  ;  partly 
from  the  divisive  tendencies  of  its  heterogeneous  sections  ;  partly 
from  the  corrupting  tendency  of  all  despotic  power.®  Despite  the 
official  restoration  of  orthodoxy,  the  private  cultivation  of  science 

1  Dugat,  p.  83.  2  See  extract  by  Major  Osborn,  Khalifs,  p.  250. 

8  Osborn.  Khalifs,  p.  249.  *  Macdonald,  pp.  154-58,  167. 

s  Nicholson,  pp.  358-59.  He  it  was  who  first  caused  to  be  measured  a  degree  of  tlie 
earth's  surface.  The  attempt  was  duly  denounced  as  atheistic  by  a  leading  theologian. 
Takyuddin.  Montucla,  Hist,  des  Mathenuitiques,  6d.  Lalande.  i,  355  sq.;  Draper.  Conflict 
of  Religion  and  Science,  p.  109.  ,       ..«„/,. 

6  A  Milller,  Der  Islam,  i,  509  sq,;  Weil,  Gesch.  der  Chalifen,  u,  280 #. 

7  Dugat.  pp.  105-11 ;  Sale.  p.  82.  Apart  from  this  one  issue,  general  tolerance  seems  to 
have  prevailed.    Osborn,  S^ai(^8.  p.  265.  .  , ,    i  i,   ^  .i,     ^„,.;f 

8  Dugat,  p.  112  ;  Steiner,  p.  79.  According  to  Abulfaragius,  Motawakkel  had  the  meiit 
of  leaving  men  free  to  believe  what  they  would  as  to  the  creation  of  the  Koran.    Sale,  p.  m. 

8  A  good  analysis  is  given  by  Dugat,  pp.  337-48. 


FEEETHOUGHT  UNDEK  ISLAM 


259 


and  philosophy  proceeded  for  a  time ;  the  study  and  translation  of 
Greek  books  continued ;  *  and  rationalism  of  a  kind  seems  to  have 
subsisted  more  or  less  secretly  to  the  end.  In  the  tenth  century  it 
is  said  to  have  reached  even  the  unlearned ;  and  though  the 
Motazilites  gradually  drifted  into  a  scholastic  orthodoxy,  downright 
unbelief  came  up  alongside,'^  albeit  secretly.  Faith  in  Mohammed's 
mission  and  law  began  again  to  shake  ;  and  the  learned  disregarded 
its  prescriptions.  Mystics  professed  to  find  the  way  to  God  without 
the  Koran.  Many  decided  that  religion  was  useful  for  regulating 
the  people,  but  was  not  for  the  wise.  On  the  other  side,  however, 
the  orthodox  condemned  all  science  as  leading  to  unbelief,^  and 
developed  an  elaborate  and  quasi-systematic  theology.  It  was 
while  the  scientific  encyclopedists  of  Bassorah  were  amassing  the 
knowledge  which,  through  the  Moors,  renewed  thought  in  the  West, 
that  Al  Ashari  built  up  the  Kaldm  or  scholastic  theology  which 
thenceforth  reigned  in  the  Mohammedan  East  ;^  and  the  philosopher 
Al  Gazzali  (or  Gazel),  on  his  part,  employed  the  ancient  and  modern 
device  of  turning  a  profession  of  philosophical  scepticism  to  the 
account  of  orthodoxy.^ 

In  the  struggle  between  science  and  religion,  in  a  politically 
decadent  State,  the  latter  inevitably  secured  the  administrative 
power.^  Under  the  KhaHfs  Motamid  (d.  892)  and  Motadhed  (d.  902) 
all  science  and  philosophy  were  proscribed,  and  booksellers  were  put 
upon  their  oath  not  to  sell  any  but  orthodox  books.^  Thus,  though 
philosophy  and  science  had  secretly  survived,  when  the  political  end 
came  the  popular  faith  was  in  much  the  same  state  as  it  had  been 
under  Haroun  Al  Easchid.  Under  Islam  as  under  all  the  faiths  of 
the  world,  in  the  east  as  in  the  west,  the  mass  of  the  people 
remained  ignorant  as  well  as  poor ;  and  the  learning  and  skill  of  the 
scholars  served  only  to  pass  on  the  saved  treasure  of  Greek  thought 
and  science  to  the  new  civilization  of  Europe.  The  fact  that  the  age 
of  military  and  political  decadence  was  that  of  the  widest  diffusion 
of  rationalism  is  naturally  fastened  on  as  giving  the  explanation  of 
the  decline ;  but  the  inference  is  pure  fallacy.     The  Bagdad  Khahfate 

'  The  whole  of  Aristotle,  except,  apparently,  the  Politics,  had  been  translated  in  the 
time  of  the  philosopher  Avicenna  (fl.  1000).  ^  Macdonald,  pp.  200,  205-206. 

•**  steiner.  Die  Mu' taziliten,  pp.  10-11,  following  Gazzali  (Al  Gazel);  Weil,  Gesch.  der 
Chalifen,  iii,  72. 

*  Guyard,  pp.  41-42;  Renan,  Averroh,  pp.  104-5 ;  Macdonald,  p.  186  sq.  The  cultivators 
of  Kal&m  were  called  Motecallemin. 

5  Ueberweg,  i,  405, 414;  Steiner,  p.  11;  Whewell.  Hist,  of  the  Inductive  Sciences.  3rd  ed. 
i,  193-94.  Compare  the  laudatory  account  of  Al  Gazzali  by  Prof.  Macdonald  (pt.  iii,  ch.  iv), 
who  pronounces  him  "certainly  the  most  sympathetic  figure  in  the  history  of  Islam" 
(p.  215). 

'  >  ^  Hence,  among  other  things,  a  check  on  the  practice  of  anatomy,  religious  feeling 
being  opposed  to  it  under  Islam  as  under  Christianity.    Dugat,  pp.  62-63. 

7  Dugat,  pp.  123-28. 


J 


1 


260 


FEEETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 


FEEETHOUGHT  UNDEE  ISLAM 


261 


declined  as  the  Christianized  Eoman  Empire  declined,  from  political 
and  external  causes ;  and  the  Turks  who  overthrew  it  proceeded  to 
overthrow  Christian  Byzantium,  where  rationalism  never  reared 
its  head. 

The  conventional  view  is  thus  set  forth  in  a  popular  work 
(The  Saracens,  by  Arthur  Gilman.  1887,  p.  385):  ''Uncon- 
sciously Mamun  began  a  process  by  which  that  implicit  faith 
which  had  been  at  once  the  foundation  and  the  inspiration  of 
Islam,  which  had  nerved  its  warriors  in  their  terrible  warfare, 
and  had  brought  the  nation  out  of  its  former  obscurity  to  the 
foremost  position  among  the  peoples  of  the  world,  was  to  be 
taken  from  them."  We  have  seen  that  this  view  is  entirely 
erroneous  as  regards  the  rise  of  the  Saracen  power  ;  and  it  is 
no  less  so  as  regards  the  decline.  At  the  outset  there  had  been 
no  "implicit  faith"  among  the  conquerors.  The  Eastern 
Saracens,  further,  had  been  decisively  defeated  by  the  Byzan- 
tines in  the  very  first  flush  of  their  fanaticism  and  success ;  and 
the  Western  had  been  routed  by  Charles  Martel  long  before 
they  had  any  philosophy.  There  was  no  overthrow  of  faith 
among  the  warriors  of  the  Khalifate.  The  enlistment  of 
Turkish  mercenaries  by  Mamoun  and  Motasim,  by  way  of 
being  independent  of  the  Persian  and  Arab  factions  in  the 
army  and  the  State,  introduced  an  element  which,  at  first 
purely  barbaric,  became  as  orthodox  as  the  men  of  Haroun's 
day  had  been.     Yet  the  decadence,  instead  of  being  checked, 

was  furthered. 

Nor  were  the  strifes  set  up  by  the  rationalistic  view  of  the 
Koran  nearly  so  destructive  as  the  mere  faction-fights  and 
sectarian  insurrections  which  began  with  Motawakkel.  The 
falling-away  of  cities  and  provinces  under  the  feeble  Moktader 
(908-932)  had  nothing  w^hatever  to  do  with  opinions,  but  was 
strictly  analogous  to  the  dissolution  of  the  kingdom  of  Charle- 
magne under  his  successors,  through  the  rise  of  new  provincial 
energies;  and  the  tyranny  of  the  Turkish  mercenaries  was  on 
all  fours  with  that  of  the  Pretorians  of  the  Eoman  Empire, 
and  with  that  of  the  Janissaries  in  later  Turkey.  The  writer 
under  notice  has  actually  recorded  (p.  408)  that  the  warlike 
sect  of  Ismailitic  Karmathians,  who  did  more  than  any  other 
enemy  to  dismember  the  Khalifate,  were  unbelievers  in  the 
Koran,  deniers  of  revelation,  and  disregarders  of  prayer.  The 
later  Khalifs,  puppets  in  the  hands  of  the  Turks,  were  one  and 
all  devout  believers. 

On  the  other  hand,  fresh  Moslem  and  non-Moslem  dynasties 
arose  alternately  as  the  conditions  and  opportunities  determined. 
Jenghiz  Khan,  who  overran  Asia,  was  no  Moslem ;  neither  was 
Tamerlane  ;  but  new  Moslem  conquerors  did  overrun  India,  as 
pagan   Alexander    had    done   in   his   day.     Theological  ideas 


I 


counted  for  as  little  in  one  case  as  in  the  other.  Sultan 
Mahmoud  of  Ghazni  (997-1030),  who  reared  a  new  empire 
on  the  basis  of  the  province  of  Khorassan  and  the  kingdom 
of  Bokhara,  and  who  twelve  times  successfully  invaded  India, 
happened  to  be  of  Turkish  stock ;  but  he  is  also  recorded  to 
have  been  in  his  youth  a  doubter  of  a  future  state,  as  well  as 
of  his  personal  legitimacy.  His  later  parade  of  piety  (as  to 
which  see  Baron  De  Slane's  tr.  of  Ibn  Khallikan's  Biog.  Diet. 
iii,  334)  is  thus  a  trifle  suspect  {British  India,  in  Edin.  Cab. 
Lib.  3rd  ed.  i,  189,  following  Ferishta) ;  and  his  avarice  seems 
to  have  animated  him  to  the  full  as  much  as  his  faith,  which 
was  certainly  not  more  devout  than  that  of  the  Brahmans  of 
Somnauth,  whose  hold  he  captured.  (Cp.  Prof.  E.  G.  Browne, 
A  Literary  History  of  Persia,  ii  (1906),  119.)  During  his  reign, 
besides,  unbelief  was  rife  in  his  despite  (Weil,  Geschichte  der 
Chalifen,  iii,  72),  though  he  burned  the  books  of  the  Motazilites, 
besides  crucifying  many  Ismailian  heretics  (Browne,  p.  160). 
The  conventional  theorem  as  to  the  political  importance  of 
faith,  in  short,  will  not  bear  investigation.  Even  Freeman 
here  sets  it  aside  (Hist.  a?id  Conq.  of  the  Saracens,  p.  124). 

§  4 

It  is  in  the  later  and  nominally  decadent  ages  of  the  Bagdad 
Khalifate,  w^hen  science  and  culture  and  even  industry  relatively 
prospered  by  reason  of  the  personal  impotence  of  the  Khalifs,  that 
we  meet  with  the  most  pronounced  and  the  most  perspicacious  of 
the  Freethinkers  of  Islam.  In  the  years  973-1057  there  dwelt  in 
the  little  Syrian  town  of  Marratun-Numan  the  blind  poet  Abu'L- 
ALA-AL-Ma*AKRI,  who  wrote  a  parody  of  the  Koran,^  and  in  his 
verse  derided  all  religions  as  alike  absurd,  and  yet  was  for  some 
reason  never  persecuted.  He  has  been  pronounced  "  incomparably 
greater  "  than  Omar  Khayyam  "  both  as  a  poet  and  as  an  agnostic."  '^ 
One  of  his  sayings  was  that  "  The  world  holds  two  classes  of  men — 
intelligent  men  without  religion,  and  religious  men  without  intelli- 
gence."^ He  may  have  escaped  on  the  strength  of  a  character  for 
general  eccentricity,  for  he  was  an  ardent  vegetarian  and  an 
opponent  of  all  parentage,  declaring  that  to  bring  a  child  into  the 
world  was  to  add  to  the  sum  of  suffering.'*  The  fact  that  he  was 
latterly  a  man  of  wealth,  yet  in  person  an  ascetic  and  a  generous 
giver,  may  be  the  true  explanation.     Whatever  be  the  explanation 

»  Browne,  Literary  History  of  Persia,  ii  (1906),  290,  293 ;  R.  A.  Nicholson,  Literary 
History  of  the  Arabs,  1907,  p.  318.  ,  .  ,  ^      ,      ^    .     ^     ,„„,  „. 

2  Browne,  as  cited,  p.  292.    Cp.  Von  Kremer.  Culturgescnichte  des  Orients,  1875-77, 
ii,  386-95 ;  Macdonald.  p.  199.  ,  ,  ,„,  «o 

3  Dugat.  p.  167 ;  Weil,  iii,  73.  *  Dugat,  pp.  164-68. 


1 

1 


262 


FREETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 


of  his  immunity,  the  frankness  of  his  heterodoxy  is  memorable. 
Nourished  perhaps  by  a  temper  of  protest  set  up  in  him  by  the 
bUndness  which  fell  upon  him  in  childhood  after  smallpox,  the  spirit 
of  reason  seems  to  have  been  effectually  developed  in  him  by  a  stay 
of  a  year  and  a-half  at  Bagdad,  where,  in  the  days  of  Al  Mansour, 
"Christians  and  Jews,  Buddhists  and  Zoroastrians,  Sabians  and 
Sufis,  materialists  and  rationalists,"  met  and  communed/  Before 
his  visit,  his  poems  are  substantially  orthodox ;  later,  their  burden 
changes.  He  denies  a  resurrection,  and  is  "  wholly  incredulous  of 
any  divine  revelation.  Religion,  as  he  conceives  it,  is  a  product  of 
the  human  mind,  in  which  men  believe  through  force  of  habit  and 
education,  never  stopping  to  consider  whether  it  is  true."  "His 
belief  in  God  amounted,  as  it  would  seem,  to  little  beyond  a  convic- 
tion that  all  things  are  governed  by  inexorable  Fate."     Concerning 

creeds  he  sings  in  one  stave  : — 

Now  this  religion  happens  to  prevail 
Until  by  that  one  it  is  overthrown  ; 
Because  men  will  not  live  with  men  alone, 
But  always  with  another  fairy-tale^ — 

a  summing-up  not  to  be  improved  upon  here. 

A  century  later  still,  and  in  another  region,  we  come  upon  the 
(now)  most  famous  of  all  Eastern  freethinkers,  OMAR  KHAYYAM. 
He  belonged  to  Naishdpiir  in  Khorassan,  a  province  which  had  long 
been  known  for  its  rationalism,^  and  which  had  been  part  of  the 
nucleus  of  the  great  Asiatic  kingdom  created  by  Sultan  Mahmoud  of 
Ghazni  at  the  beginning  of  the  eleventh  century,  soon  after  the  rise 
of  the  Fatimite  dynasty  in  Egypt.     Under  that  Sultan  flourished 
Ferdusi  (Firdausi),  one  of  the  chief  glories  of  Persian  verse.     After 
Mahmoud's  death,  his  realm  and  parts  of  the  Khalifate  in  turn  were 
overrun  by  the  Seljuk  Turks  under  Togrul  Beg  ;  under  whose  grand- 
son Mahk  it  was  that  Omar  Khayydm,  astronomer  and  poet,  studied 
and  sang  in  Khorassan.     The  Turk-descended  Shah  favoured  science 
as  strongly  as  any  of  the  Abassides ;  and  when  he  decided  to  reform 
the  calendar,  Omar  was  one  of  the  eight  experts  he  employed  to  do 
it.     Thus  was  set  up  for  the  East  the  JalAli  calendar,  which,  as 
Gibbon   has   noted,*   "surpasses   the   Juhan   and    approaches    the 
accuracy  of  the  Gregorian  style."     Omar  was,  in  fact,  one  of  the 
ablest  mathematicians  of  his  age. 

1    Nicholson,  pp.  314-15.  .  .        »        ^        ,     ««     j-.      in     i-r,    n-i     ae    n* 

2  Tlie  Diwan  of  Abu'l-Ala.  by  Henry  Baerlem,  1908,  st.  36.    Cp.  1.  37,>1.  42,  53.  81.  86.  94. 
and  the  extracts  given  by  Nicholson,  pp.  316-23.  V,      U'  'ii    x^;^-   «  a  a    m  ^ 

4  Decline  and  Fall,  ch.  Ivii.    Bohn  ed.  vi.  382.  and  7Wte.    Cp.  E.  H.  Whinfield.  The 
Quatrains  of  Omar  Khayy dm,  188-2,  p.  i.  „   ,j.  ^> 

5  See  the  preface  to  Fitzgerald's  translation  of  the  Bubdiyat. 


FKEETHOUGHT  UNDEK  ISLAM 


263 


His  name,  Omar  ibn  Ibrahim  al-Khayydmi,  seems  to  point  to 
Arab  descent.  "  Al-Khayy4mmi "  means  "the  tent-maker ";  but  in 
no  biographic  account  of  him  is  there  the  slightest  proof  that  he 
or  his  father  ever  belonged  to  that  or  any  other  handicraft.^ 
Always  he  figures  as  a  scholar  and  a  man  of  science.  Since, 
therefore,  the  patronymic  al-Khayydmi  is  fairly  common  now 
among  Arabs,  and  also  among  the  still  nomadic  tribes  of  Khuzistan 
and  Luristan,  the  reasonable  presumption  is  that  it  was  in  his  case 
a  patronymic  also.^  His  father  being  a  man  of  some  substance,  he 
had  a  good  schooUng,  and  is  even  described  in  literary  tradition  as 
having  become  an  expert  Koran  scholar,  by  the  admission  of  the 
orthodox  Al  Gazzali,  who,  however,  is  represented  in  another  record 
as  looking  with  aversion  on  Omar's  scientific  lore.^  The  poet  may 
have  had  his  lead  to  freethought  during  his  travels  after  graduating 
at  Naishapur,  when  he  visited  Samarkhand,  Bokhara,  Ispahan,  and 
Balk.*  He  seems  to  have  practised  astrology  for  a  living,  even  as 
did  Kepler  in  Europe  five  hundred  years  later  ;  and  he  perhaps 
dabbled  somewhat  in  medicine.*  A  hostile  orthodox  account  of  him, 
written  in  the  thirteenth  century,  represents  him  as  "versed  in  all 
the  wisdom  of  the  Greeks,"  and  as  wont  to  insist  on  the  necessity  of 
studying  science  on  Greek  lines.^  Of  his  prose  works,  two,  which 
were  of  standard  authority,  dealt  respectively  with  precious  stones 
and  climatology.' 

Beyond  question  the  poet-astronomer  was  undevout ;  and  his 
astronomy  doubtless  helped  to  make  him  so.  One  contemporary 
writes :  "  I  did  not  observe  that  he  had  any  great  belief  in  astro- 
logical predictions ;  nor  have  I  seen  or  heard  of  any  of  the  great 
(scientists)  who  had  such  belief."®  The  biographical  sketch  by 
Ibn  al  Kifti,  before  cited,  declares  that  he  "  performed  pilgrimages 
not  from  piety  but  from  fear,"  having  reason  to  dread  the  hostility 
of  contemporaries  who  knew  or  divined  his  unbelief ;  and  there  is 
a  story  of  a  treacherous  pupil  who  sought  to  bring  him  into  public 
odium.®  In  point  of  fact  he  was  not,  any  more  than  Abu'  1-Ala, 
a  convinced  atheist,  but  he  had  no  sympathy  with  popular  rehgion. 
"He  gave  his  adherence  to  no  religious  sect.  Agnosticism,  not 
faith,  is  the  keynote  of  his  works."  ^°  Among  the  sects  he  saw 
everywhere  strife  and  hatred  in  which  he  could  have  no  part. 
His  earher  EngUsh  translators,  reflecting  the  tone  of  the  first  half 

1  In  one  quatrain,  of  doubtful  authenticity,  is  the  line  "Khayy&m.  who  longtime 
stitched  the  tents  of  learning"  (Whinfield.  xxxviii).  which  excludes  the  idea  of  literal 
handicraft. 

2  J.  K.  M.  Shirazi,  Life  of  Omar  Al-Khayydmi,  ed.  1895,  pp.  30-41. 

8  Id.  pp.  51.  58.  *  Id.  p.  54.  5  Id.  p.  56.  6  id.  p.  59.         J  Id.  pp.  62-63. 

8  Id.  p.  93.  9  Id.  pp.  59-61.  10  Id.  pp.  69-76.  86-88. 


264 


FEEETHOUGHT  UNDEK  ISLAM 


of  the  last  century,  have  thought  fit  to  moralize  censoriously  over 
his  attitude  to  Hfe ;  and  the  first,  Prof.  Cowell,  has  austerely 
decided  that  Omar's  gaiety  is  "  but  a  risus  sardonicus  of  despair." 
Even  the  subtler  Fitzgerald,  who  has  so  admirably  rendered  some 
of  the  audacities  which  Cowell  thought  ''  better  left  in  the  original 
Persian,"  has  the  air  of  apologizing  for  them  when  he  partly  concurs 
in  the  same  estimate.  But  despair  is  not  the  name  for  the  humorous 
melancholy  which  Omar,  like  Abu'  1- Ala,  weaves  around  his  thoughts 
on  the  riddle  of  the  universe.  Like  Abu'  1-Ala,  again,  he  talks  at 
times  of  God,  but  with  small  signs  of  faith.  In  epigrams  which 
have  seldom  been  surpassed  for  their  echoing  depth,  he  disposes  of 
the  theistic  solution  and  the  lore  of  immortality ;  whereafter,  instead 
of  offering  another  shibboleth,  he  sings  of  wine  and  roses,  of  the 
joys  of  life  and  of  their  speedy  passage;  not  forgetting  to  add 
a  stipulation  for  beneficence.'  It  was  his  way  of  turning  into  music 
the  undertone  of  all  mortaUty  ;  and  that  it  is  now  preferable,  for 
any  refined  intelligence,  to  the  affectation  of  zest  for  a  "hereafter" 
on  which  no  one  wants  to  enter,  would  seem  to  be  proved  by  the 
remarkable  vogue  he  has  secured  in  modern  England,  chiefly  through 
the  incomparable  version  of  Fitzgerald.  Much  of  the  attraction, 
certainly,  is  due  to  the  canorous  cadence  and  felicitous  phrasing  of 
those  singularly  fortunate  stanzas;  and  a  similar  handling  might 
have  won  as  high  a  repute  among  us  for  Abu'  1-Ala,  whom,  as  we 
have  seen,  some  of  our  Orientalists  set  higher,  and  whose  verse  as 
recently  rendered  into  English  has  an  indubitable  charm.  Fitzgerald, 
on  the  other  hand,  has  added  much  to  Omar.  But  the  thoughts  of 
Omar  remain  the  kernels  of  Fitzgerald's  verses  ;  and  whereas  the 
counsel,  "  Gather  ye  roses  while  ye  may,"  is  common  enough,  it 
must  be  the  weightier  bearing  of  his  deeper  and  more  daring  ideas 
that  gives  the  quatrains  their  main  hold  to-day.  In  the  more 
exact  rendering  of  those  translators  who  closely  reproduce  the 
original  he  remains  beyond  question  a  freethinker,^  placing  ethic 
above   creed,  though  much  given  to   the  praise   of  wine.     Never 


1  Cited  in  introd.  to  Dole's  variorum  ed.  of  the  Rub4iy&t.  1896,  i,  p.  six.  Cp.  Mac- 
donald,  p.  199. 

2  "  Dost  thou  desire  to  taste  eternal  bliss  ?  .  ^  ,:,     .  ^ 

Vex  thine  own  heart,  but  never  vex  another."    (Whinfleld.  vi.) 
"  Seek  not  the  Kaaba.  rather  seek  a  heart."    (Id.  vii.) 
This  note  is  often  repeated.    E.g.  xxxii.  li. 

8  See  in  the  very  competent  translation  of  Mrs.  H.  M.  Cadell  (who  remarked  that 
•*  Fitzeerald  has  rather  written  a  poem  upon  Omar  than  translated  him  ").  quatrains  12. 
14  15  20.  28,  29.  42.  45.  48.  51d,  85.  88b,  133.  141.  143.  etc.;  in  the  artistically  turned  version  of 
Mr  A  H  Talbot,  which  follows  very  faithfully  the  literal  prose  translation  of  Mr.  Heron- 
Allen  "Nos  1  3  15  18. 19.  24,  33,  41.  45.  59.  72.  91,  115.  123.  148;  and  in  Whinfields  version. 
^o!{^^:kil%%.^,  68,  77.  84.  87. 104, 106.  111.  113.  118.  142.  144.  148,  151.  157.  161.  179. 
196,  200.  201.  203.  216. 


FEEETHOUGHT  UNDEK  ISLAM 


265 


popular  in  the  Moslem  world,^  he  has  had  in  ours  an  unparalleled 
welcome ;  and  it  must  be  because  from  his  scientific  vantage  ground 
in  the  East,  in  the  period  of  the  Norman  Conquest,  he  had  attained 
in  some  degree  the  vision  and  chimed  with  the  mood  of  a  later  and 
larger  age. 

That  Omar  in  his  day  and  place  was  not  alone  in  his  mood  lies 
on  the  face  of  his  verse.  Many  quatrains  ascribed  to  him,  indeed, 
are  admittedly  assignable  to  other  Persian  poets ;  and  one  of  his 
English  editors  notes  that  "  the  poetry  of  rebellion  and  revolt  from 
orthodox  opinion,  which  is  supposed  to  be  peculiar  to  him,  may  be 
traced  in  the  works  of  his  predecessor  Avicenna,  as  well  as  in  those 
of  Afdal-i-K4shI,  and  others  of  his  successors."  ^  The  allusions  to 
the  tavern,  a  thing  suspect  and  iUicit  for  Islam,  show  that  he  was 
in  a  society  more  Persian  than  Arab,  one  in  which  was  to  be  found 
nearly  all  of  the  free  intellectual  life  possible  in  the  Moslem  East  ;* 
and  doubtless  Persian  thought,  always  leaning  to  heresy,  and 
charged  with  germs  of  scientific  speculation  from  immemorial 
antiquity,  prepared  his  rationalism  ;  though  his  monism  excludes 
alike  duaUsm  and  theism.  "One  for  two  I  never  did  misread" 
is  his  summing  up  of  his  philosophy.* 

But  the  same  formula  might  serve  for  the  philosophy  of  the 
sect  of  Sufis,^  who  in  all  ages  seem  to  have  included  unbelievers  as 
well  as  devoutly  mystical  pantheists.  Founded,  it  is  said,  by 
a  woman,  Kabia,  in  the  first  century  of  the  Hej'ra,^  the  sect  really 
carries  on  a  pre- Mohammedan  mysticism,  and  may  as  well  derive 
from  Greece'^  as  from  Asia.  Its  original  doctrine  of  divine  love,  as 
a  reaction  against  Moslem  austerity,  gave  it  a  fixed  hold  in  Persia, 
and  became  the  starting  point  of  innumerable  heterodox  doctrines.® 
Under  the  Khalif  Moktader,  a  Persian  Sufi  is  recorded  to  have  been 
tortured  and  executed  for  teaching  that  every  man  is  God.^  In 
later  ages,  Sufiism  became  loosely  associated  with  every  species  of 


1  Shirazi.  pp.  102-108.  Early  in  the  thirteenth  century  he  was  denounced  by  a  Sufi 
mystic  as  an  "unhappy  philosopher,  atheist,  and  materialist."  Browne,  Lit.  Htst.  of 
Persia,  ii.  250.    Abu'  1-Ala.  of  course,  was  similarly  denounced. 

-i  Whinfleld,  cited  by  Browne,  pp.  109-110.  .,     .   .     ^ 

8  Cp.  Mrs.  Cadell,  The  Bub'yat  of  Ornar  Khayam,  1899.  Garnett's  introd.  pp.  xvii 
xviii-xxi.  xxiv.  and  Shirazi.  as  cited,  pp.  79-80.  ,         .,    -,   . 

^  Fitzgerald's  pref .  4th  ed.  p.  xiii ;  Whinfield,  No.  147.  Cp.  quatrams  cited  in  art. 
Sufiism,  in  Belig.  Systems  of  the  World,  2nd  ed.  pp.  325-26. 

5  Cp.  Whinfield,  p.  86.  note  on  No.  147. 

6  Guyard.  as  cited,  p.  42.    But  cp.  Ueberweg,  i,  411  ;  Nicholson,  pp.  233-34. 

7  It  is  not  impossible.  Max  Mtlller  notwithstanding,  that  the  name  may  have  come 
originally  from  the  Greek  sophoi,  "the  wise,"  though  it  is  usually  connected  with  sw^=the 
woollen  robe  worn  by  the  Sufite.  There  are  other  etymologies,  Cp.  Fraser,  Histor.  and 
Descrip.  Account  of  Persia,  183i,  p.  323,  note;  Dugat.  p.  326;  and  art.  Sufiism  in  Beltg. 
Systems  of  the  World,  2nd  ed.  p.  315.  On  the  Sufi  system  in  general  see  also  Max  Mtiller, 
Psychol.  Belig.  Lect.  vi. 

8  Cp.  Renan,  Averro^s,  p.  293,  as  to  Sufi  latitudinarianism. 
8  Guyard,  p.  44 ;  Belig.  Systems,  p.  319. 


266 


FKBETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 


independent  thinking ;  and  there  is  reason  to  suspect  that  the  later 
poets  Sadi  (fl.  thirteenth  century)  and  Hafiz^  (fl.  fourteenth 
century),  as  well  as  hundreds  of  lesser  status,  held  under  the  name 
of  Sufiism  views  of  life  not  far  removed  from  those  of  Omar 
Khayyam ;  who,  however,  had  bantered  the  Sufis  so  unmercifully 
that  they  are  said  to  have  dreaded  and  hated  him.'  In  any^case, 
Sufiism  has  included  such  divergent  types  as  Al  GazzaH,  the 
skeptical  defender  of  the  faith  ;  devout  pantheistic  poets  such  as 
J^mi ;  *  and  singers  of  love  and  wine  such  as  Hafiz,  whose  extremely 
concrete  imagery  is  certainly  not  as  often  allegorical  as  serious 
Sufis  assert,  though  no  doubt  it  is  sometimes  so.'  It  even  became 
nominally  associated  with  the  destructive  Ismailitism  of  the  sect 
of  the  Assassins,  whose  founder.  Hassan,  had  been  the  schoolfellow 
of  Omar  Khayydm.® 

Of  Sufiism  as  a  whole  it  may  be  said  that  whether  as  inculcatmg 
quietism,  or  as  widening  the  narrow  theism  of  Islam  into  pantheism, 
or   as   sheltering   an   unaggressive    rationalism,   it    has    made   for 
freedom  and  humanity  in  the  Mohammedan  world,  lessening  the 
evils   of   ignorance  where   it   could  not  inspire  progress.      It  long 
anticipated  the  semi-rationahsm   of   those  Christians  who   declare 
heaven  and  hell  to  be  names  for  bodily  or  mental  states  in  this  hfe. 
On  its  more  philosophic   side  too  it  connects  with  the  long  move- 
ment of  speculation  which,  passing  into  European  life  through  the 
Western  Saracens,  revived  Greek  philosophic  thought  in  Christendom 
after  the  night  of  the  Middle  Ages,  at  the  same  time  that  Saracen 
science  passed  on  the  more  precious  seeds  of  real  knowledge  to  the 
new  civilization. 

§5 

There  is  the  less  need  to  deal  at  any  length  in  these  pages  with 
the  professed  philosophy  of  the  eastern  Arabs,  seeing  that  it  was 
from  first  to  last  but  little  associated  with  any  direct  or  practical 
repudiation  of   dogma  and  superstition.'     What  freethought  there 

.  Hafiz  in.bis  own  day  was  reckoned  impious  by  many^^^Cp..  Ma^^^^^^  of 

aTet  he  was  disposed  to  put  to  death  those  who  claimed  mystic  intercourse  with  Deity. 

^^iVhosJ  Satiman  and  AhsaU  tr.  by  Fitzgerald,  is  so  little  noticed  in  comparison  with 

the  R«'^^^^^5,^^„?"?S'B,Kaiou.  Systsms,  as  cited,  p.  321 :  Dugat  p.  331. 

6  ^hira7i  DO  22-iia-  Fitzgerald's  pref.  following  Mirkhond :  Eraser  P<?r.na,  p.  329. 

?  Cv^mllv.^\  Syed  Ameer  Ali.  pp.  311-15;  Gobineau.  ie3  religtons  et  les  plnlo- 

'^i'TJTm''VZ''^^me  doar'inrislairly  ancient  in  India.    (Muir.  Orioinal  Sanskrit 
T.xe^ri!3f3.p..)^  A  belief  that  ^ell-^- ^m  not  be  et^^^^^^^ 

^in^L^  l^sld^Srs^therstrJe^  ^cTflV^^^"  '^  '^'^"' 

to  dust.    Id.  ib.  »  Cp.  Renan.  Averrois,  p.  101.    Cp.  p.  17J. 


FEEETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 


267 


was  had  only  an  unwritten  currency,  and  is  to  be  traced,  as  so  often 
happens  in  later  European  history,  through  the  protests  of  orthodox 
apologists.     Thus  the  Persian  Al  GazzaH,  in  the  preface  to  his  work, 
TJie  Destruction  of  the  Philosophers,  declares  of  the  subjects  of  his 
attack  that  "  the  source  of  all  their  errors  is  the  trust  they  have 
in  the  names  of  Sokrates,  Hippokrates,  Plato,  and  Aristotle;  the 
admiration   they  profess  for   their  genius   and  subtlety;    and  the 
beUef,   finally,    that   those   great   masters    have   been   led    by   the 
profundity  of  their  faculty  to  reject  all  religion,  and  to  regard  its 
precepts  as  the  product  of  artifice  and  imposture."^     This  implies 
an  abundant  rationalism,^  but,  as   always,  the  unwritten  unbelief 
lost   ground,    its   non-publication   being  the  proof   that  orthodoxy 
prevailed  against  it.     Movements  which  were  originally  liberal,  such 
as  that  of  the  Motecallemin,  ran  at  length  to  mere  dialectic  defence 
of  the  faith  against  the  philosophers.      Fighting    the  AristoteUan 
doctrine   of   the   eternity  of   matter,  they  sought  to  found  a  new 
theistic  creationism  on  the  atoms  of  Demokritos,  making  God  the 
creator  of  the  atoms,  and  negating  the  idea  of  natural  law.      Eastern 
Moslem  philosophy  in  general  followed  some  such  line  of  reaction 
and  petrifaction.      The  rationalistic  Al  KiNDl  (fl.  850)  seems  to 
have  been  led  to  philosophize  by  the  Motazihte  problems  ;  but  his 
successors  mostly  set  them  aside,  developing  an  abstract  logic  and 
philosophy  on  Greek  bases,  or  studying  science  for  its  own  sake, 
though   as  a  rule  professing  a  devout  acceptance  of   the  Koran. 
Such  was  AviCENNA  (Ibn  Sina :  d.  1037),  who  taught  that  men 
should  revere  the  faith  in  which  they  were  educated;  though  in 
comparison  with  his  predecessor  Al  Farabi,  who  leant  to  Platonic 
mysticism,  he  is  a  rationahstic  Aristotelian,^  with  a  strong  leaning 
to  pantheism.     Of  him  an  Arabic  historian  writes  that  in  his  old 
age  he  attached  himself  to  the  court  of  the  heretical  Ala-ud-Dawla 
at  Ispahan,  in  order  that  he  might  freely  write  his  own  heretical 
works.'     After  Al  Gazzali  (d.  llll),  who  attacked  both  Avicenna' 
and  Al  Farabi  somewhat  in  the  spirit  of  Cicero's  skeptical  Gotta 
attacking   the   Stoics   and   the   Epicureans,^  there  seems   to   have 
been  a  further  development  of  skepticism,  the  skeptical  defence  of 


1  Kenan's  tr.  in  Averroh,  p.  166.  The  wording  of  the  last  phrase  suggests  a  miscon- 
struction. 2cp.  p.  172. 

»  Renan.  Averro^s,  pp.  104-107.  *  Steiner.  IHe  Mu  taztliten,  p.  6. 

s  Ueberweg.  i,  412;  Renan.  Averrohs,  pp.  44,  96. 
6  E.  G.  Browne.  Lit.  Hist,  of  Persia,  ii.  107.  tt  i  nn 

'  Whom  he  pronounced  a  pagan  and  an  infidel.    Haureau,  11,  i.  ^59.  „,     ^j 

8  Cp.  Renan,  Averrois,  pp.  57.  96-98  ;  Whewell,  Hist,  of  the  Biductive  Sciences,  3rd.  ed.  i, 
193.  Renan.  following  Degenerando  (cp.  Whewell,  as  cited),  credits  Gazzali  with  anticipat- 
ing Hume's  criticism  of  the  idea  of  causation  ;  but  Gazzali's  position  is  that  of  dogmatic 
theism,  not  of  naturalism.    See  Lewes,  Hist,  of  Philos.  4th  ed.  ii,  57. 


268 


FEEETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 


the  faith  having  the  same  unsettling  tendency  in  his  as  in  later 
hands.  Ibn  Khaldun  seems  to  denounce  in  the  name  of  faith  his 
mixture  of  pietism  and  philosophy;  and  Makrisi  speaks  of  his 
doctrines  as  working  great  harm  to  religion'  among  the  Moslems. 
But  the  socio-political  conditions  were  too  unpropitious  to  permit  of 
any  continuous  advance  on  rational  Unes.  Ere  long  an  uncritical 
orthodoxy  prevailed  in  the  Eastern  schools,  and  it  is  in  Moorish 
Spain  that  we  are  to  look  for  the  last  efforts  of  Arab  philosophy. 

The  course  of  culture-evolution  there  broadly  corresponds  with 
that  of  the  Saracen  civiHzation  in  the  East.     In  Spain  the  Moors 
came  into  contact  with  the  Roman  imperial  polity,  and  at  the  same 
time  with  the  different  culture   elements   of    Judaism   and    Chris- 
tianity.    To  both  of  these  faiths  they  gave  complete  toleration,  thus 
strengthening  their  own  in  a  way  that  no  other  policy  could  have 
availed  to  do.     Whatever  was  left  of  Graeco-Roman  art,  handicraft, 
and  science,  saving  the  arts  of  portraiture,  they  encouraged ;  and 
whatever  of  agricultural  science  remained  from  Carthaginian  times 
they  zealously  adopted  and  improved.      Like  their  fellow-Moslems 
in  the  East,  they  further  learned  all  the  science  that  the  preserved 
literature  of  Greece  could  give  them.     The  result  was  that  under 
energetic  and  enhghtened  khaUfs  the  Moorish  civilization  became 
the  centre  of  light  and  knowledge  as  well  as  of  material  prosperity 
for  medieval  Europe.     Whatever  of  science  the  world  possessed  was 
to  be  found  in  their  schools  ;  and  thither  in  the  tenth,  eleventh,  and 
twelfth   centuries  flocked   students   from   the   Christian  States   of 
western  and  northern  Europe.     It  was  in  whole  or  in  part  from 
Saracen  hands  that  the  modem  world  received  astronomy,  chemistry, 
mathematics,  medicine,  botany,  jurisprudence,  and  philosophy.    They 
were,  in  fact,  the  revivers  of  civiHzation  after  the  age  of  barbarian 
Christianity.^     And  while  the  preservation  of  Greek  science,  lost 
from  the  hands  of  Christendom,  would  have  been  a  notable  service 
enough,  the  Arabs  did  much  more.     Alhazen  (d.  1038)  is  said  to 
have  done  the  most  original  work  in  optics  before  Newton,^  and  in 
the   same   century   Arab   medicine   and   chemistry   made    original 

advances.* 

While  the   progressive  period  lasted,  there  was  of   course  an 

1  Haur^au.  Hist,  de  laphiloa.  scolastique,  Ptie  II.  i.  35.  .    o     •  * . 

a  Cp  Seignobos  Hist,  de  la  Civ.  ii,  58  ;  Stanley  Lane-Poole.  The  Moors  in  Spain,  pref 
mim^nLa^^rChristianitv,  ith  ed.  ix,  108-18:  P.  «•  Burke,  msfory  o/  Spa.7i.  i.  c^^^^^ 
Baden  Powell,  as  cited,  pp.  94-104 ;  Gebhart.  Ongmes  de  la  Benaissance  en  Italie,  1879. 

^^8  ^^d^n  PowSh  His^t'.  0/  Nat.  Fhilos.  1834.  p.  97 ;  Whewell.  Hist,  of  the  Induct.  Sciences, 

^""^^  Dr.'li!^  Lelterc.  Hist,  de  la  Midecine  Arabe,  1876.  i.  462;  Dr.  E.  von.  Meyer.  Hist,  of 
Chemistry,  Eng.  tr.  2nd  ed.  p.  28. 


FEEETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 


269 


abundance  of  practical  freethought.  But  after  a  marvellously  rapid 
rise,  the  Moorish  civilization  was  arrested  and  paralysed  by  the 
internal  and  the  external  forces  of  anti-civilization — religious 
fanaticism  within  and  Christian  hostility  without.  Everywhere  we 
have  seen  culture-progress  depending  more  or  less  clearly  on  the 
failure  to  find  solutions  for  political  problems.  The  most  fatal 
defect  of  all  Arab  civiHzation — a  defect  involved  in  its  first  departure 
by  way  of  conquest,  and  in  its  fixedly  hostile  relation  to  the  Christian 
States,  which  kept  it  constantly  on  a  mihtary  basis — was  the  total 
failure  to  substitute  any  measure  of  constitutional  rule  for  despotism. 
It  was  thus  politically  unprogressive,  even  while  advancing  in  other 
respects.  But  in  other  respects  also  it  soon  reached  the  limits  set 
by  the  conditions. 

Whereas  in  Persia  the  Arabs  overran  an  ancient  civilization, 
containing  many  elements  of  rationalism  which  acted  upon  their 
own  creed,  the  Moors  in  Spain  found  a  population  only  slightly 
civiUzed,  and  predisposed  by  its  recent  culture,  as  well  as  by  its 
natural  conditions,*  to  fanatical  piety.  Thus  when,  under  their 
tolerant  rule,  Jews  and  Christians  in  large  numbers  embraced  Islam, 
the  new  converts  became  the  most  fanatical  of  all.^  All  rationalism 
existed  in  their  despite,  and,  abounding  as  they  did,  they  tended  to 
gain  power  whenever  the  KhaUf  was  weak,  and  to  rebel  furiously 
when  he  was  hostile.  When,  accordingly,  the  growing  pressure  of 
the  feudal  Christian  power  in  Northern  Spain  at  length  became 
a  menacing  danger  to  the  Moorish  States,  weakened  by  endless 
intestine  strife,  the  one  resource  was  to  call  in  a  new  force  of 
Moslem  fanaticism  in  the  shape  of  the  Almoravide^  Berbers,  who, 
to  the  utmost  of  their  power,  put  down  everything  scientific  and 
rationalistic,  and  estabhshed  a  rigid  Koranolatry.  After  a  time 
they  in  turn,  growing  degenerate  while  remaining  orthodox,  were 
overrun  by  a  new  influx  of  conquering  fanatics  from  Africa,  the 
Almohades,  who,  failing  to  add  poHtical  science  to  their  faith,  went 
down  in  the  thirteenth  century  before  the  Christians  in  Spain,  in 
a  great  battle  in  which  their  prince  sat  in  their  sight  with  the  Koran 
in  his  hand.*  Here  there  could  be  no  pretence  that  "unbelief" 
wrought  the  downfall.  The  Jonah  of  freethought,  so  to  speak,  had 
been  thrown  overboard ;  and  the  ship  went  down  with  the  flag  of 
faith  flying  at  every  masthead.* 


*  Cp.  Buckle.  Tntrod.  to  Hist,  of  Civ.  in  England,  1-voI.  ed.  p.  70. 

'j;  Ij&ne-Foole,  The  Moors  in  Spain,  V.  13.        ,.   .  ^,         .      ,  "«*„«„ v«.,+„ 

*  Properly  Morabethin=men  of  God  or  of  religion ;  otherwise  known  as    MaraDOUts. 

*  Sedillot.  p.  298.  ,  .    „, 
«  Cp.  Dozy.  Hist,  des  Musulmans  d'Espagne,  iii,  248-86;  Ueberweg,  i,  415. 


270  FKEETHOUGHT  UNDEK  ISLAM 

It  was  in  the  last  centuries  of  Moorish  rule  that  there  lived  the 
philosophers  whose  names  connect  it  with  the  history  of  European 
thought,  retaining  thus  a  somewhat  factitious  distmction  as  com- 
pared  with  the  men  of  science,  many  of  them  nameless  who 
developed  and  transmitted  the  sciences.  The  pantheistic  AVEM- 
PACE  (Ibn  Badja  :  d.  1138).  who  defended  the  reason  against  the 
theistic  skepticism  of  Al  Gazzali.^  was  physician,  astronomer  and 
mathematician,  as  well  as  metaphysician;  as  was  AbUBACER  (Abu 
Bekr.  also  known  as  Ibn  Tophail :  d.  1185).  who  regarded  religious 
systems  as  "  only  a  necessary  means  of  discipline  for  the  multitude, 
and  as  being  merely  symbols  of  the  higher  truth  reached  by  the 
philosopher.  Both  men,  however,  tended  rather  to  mysticism  than 
to  exact  thought ;  and  Abubacer's  treatise,  The  Self-taught  Philo- 
sopher, which  has  been  translated  into  Latin  (by  Pococke  in  1671  j, 
English,  Dutch,  and  German,  has  had  the  singular  fortune  of  bemg 
adopted  by  the  Quakers  as  a  work  of  edification.®  -o     i  j\ 

Very  different  was  the  part  played  by  AVERROES  (Ibn  Eoshdj, 
the  most  famous   of   all  Moslem  thinkers,  because  the  most  far- 
reaching  in  his  influence  on  European  thought.     For  the  Middle 
Ages  he  was  pre-eminently  the  expounder  of  Aristotle,  and  it  is  as 
setting  forth,  in  that  capacity,  the  pantheistic  doctrine  which  affirms 
the  eternity  of  the  material  universe  and  makes  the  individual  soul 
emanate   from   and   return   to   the   soul   of   all,  that   he   becomes 
important  alike  in  Moslem  and  Christian  thought.     Diverging  from 
the   asceticism   and   mysticism   of   Avempace   and   Abubacer,   and 
strenuously  opposing   the   anti-rationalism   of   Al  Gazzah.  against 
whose  chief  treatise  he  penned  his  o^n  Destruction  of  the  Destructio7i 
of  the  Philosophers,  Averroes  is  the  least  mystical  and  the  most 
rational  of  the  Arab  thinkers.'     At  nearly  all  vital  points  he  oppugns 
the  religious  view  of  things,  denying  bodily  resurrection,  which  he 
treats  (here  following  all  his  predecessors  in  heretical  Arab  ^  philo- 
sophy) as  a  vulgar  fable ;'  and  making  some  approach  to  a  scientific 
treatment  of  the  problem  of  "Freewill"  as  against,  on   the   one 
hand,  the  ethic-destroying  doctrine  of  the  Motecallemin,  who  made 
God's  wiU  the  sole  standard  of  right,  and  affirmed  predestination 
(Jabarism) ;  and  against,  on  the  other  hand,  the  anti-determinism 
of  the  Kadarites.'     Even  in  his  politics  he  was  original ;  and  m  his 
paraphrase  of  Plato's  Bepublic  he   has   said   a   notable  word    for 
women,  pointing   out   how  small  an  opening   is   offered   for   their 


1  Renan,  Averroes,  pp.  98-99. 
8  Renan.  Averrois.  p.  99. 
fi  Id.  pp.  156-58. 


a  Ueberweg,  i,  415 ;  Renan,  Averroes,  pp.  32,  99. 
*  Renan,  Averrois,  p.  145. 
6.1d.  pp.  159-60. 


FKEETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 


271 


faculties  in  Moslem  society.*     Of  all  tyrannies,  he  boldly  declared, 
the  worst  is  that  of  priests. 

In  time,  however,  a  consciousness  of  the  vital  hostility  of  his 
doctrine  to  current  creeds,  and  of  the  danger  he  consequently  ran, 
made  him,  like  so  many  of  his  later  disciples,  anxious  to  preserve 
priestly  favour.  As  regards  religion  he  was  more  complaisant  than 
Abubacer,  pronouncing  Mohammedanism  the  most  perfect  of  all 
popular  systems,'^  and  preaching  a  patriotic  conformity  on  that 
score  to  philosophic  students. 

From  him  derives  the  formula  of  a  two-fold  truth — one  truth 
for  science  or  philosophy,  and  another  for  religion — which  played 
so  large  a  part  in  the  academic  life  of  Christendom  for  centuries. 
In  two  of  his  treatises,  O/i  the  harmony  of  religion  with  philosophy 
and  On  the  demonstration  of  religious  dogmas,  he  even  takes  up 
a  conservative  attitude,  proclaiming  that  the  wise  man  never  utters 
a  word  against  the  established  creed,  and  going  so  far  as  to  say  that 
the  freethinker  who  attacks  it,  inasmuch  as  he  undermines  popular 
virtue,  deserves  death. ^  Even  in  rebutting,  as  entirely  absurd,  the 
doctrine  of  the  creation  of  the  world,  and  ascribing  its  currency  to 
the  stupefying  power  of  habit,  he  takes  occasion  to  remark  piously 
that  those  whose  religion  has  no  better  basis  than  faith  are 
frequently  seen,  on  taking  up  scientific  studies,  to  become  utter 
zendehs!'  But  he  lived  in  an  age  of  declining  culture  and  reviving 
fanaticism ;  and  all  his  conformities  could  not  save  him  from 
proscription,  at  the  hands  of  a  Khalif  who  had  long  favoured  him, 
for  the  offence  of  cultivating  Greek  antiquity  to  the  prejudice  of 
Islam.  All  study  of  Greek  philosophy  was  proscribed  at  the  same 
time,  and  all  books  found  on  the  subject  were  destroyed.^  Disgraced 
and  banished  from  court,  Averroes  died  at  Morocco  in  1198  ;  other 
philosophers  were  similarly  persecuted;^  and  soon  afterwards  the 
Moorish  rule  in  Spain  came  to  an  end  in  the  odour  of  sanctity. 

So  complete  was  now  the  defeat  of  the  intellectual  life  in 
Western  Islam  that  the  ablest  writer  produced  by  the  Arab  race 
in  the  period  of  the  Renaissance,  Ibn  Khaldun  of  Tunis  (1332- 
1406),  writes  as  a  bigoted  believer  in  revelation,  though  his  writings 
on  the  science  of  history  were  the  most  philosophic  since  the  classic 


«  Id.  pp.  165-66. 


*  Renan,  Averro&s,  pp.  160-62. 

2  Ueberweg,  i.  416 ;  Steiner,  p.  6 ;  Renan,  Averroes,  p.  162  sq. 
8  Ueberweg,  i,  460 ;  Renan,  pp.  258,  275. 

*  Renan,  Averroes,  p.  169,  and  references. 

^Jd.  p.5.    Ci>.theAvertissement,p.in.  ,      ^.,.^    ^    ^,       ,., 

"  Renan,  Averroes,  pp.  31-36.  Renan  surmises  that  the  popular  hostility  to  the  philo- 
sophers, which  was  very  marked,  was  largely  due  to  the  element  of  the  conquered 
Christians,  who  were  noted  for  their  neglect  of  astronomy  and  natural  science. 

^  Cp.  Ueberweg.  1,  415-17. 


272  FREETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 

period,  being  out  of  all  comparison  superior  to  those  of  the  Christian 
chroniclers  of  his  age/  So  rationalistic,  indeed,  is  his  method, 
relatively  to  his  time,  that  it  is  permissible  to  suspect  him  of 
seeking  to  propitiate  the  bigots/  But  neither  they  nor  his  race  in 
general  could  learn  the  sociological  lessons  he  had  it  in  him  to 
teach.     Their  development  was  arrested  for  that  period. 

§6 

Of   later  freethought    under   Islam  there  is  little  to  record   as 
regards  literary  output,  but  the  phenomenon  has  never  disappeared. 
Buckle,  in  his  haste,  declared  that  he  could  write  the  history  of 
Turkish  civilization  on  the  back  of  his  hand  ;^  but  even  in  Turkey, 
at  a  time  of  minimum  friendly  contact  with  other  European  life, 
there  have  been  traces  of  a  spirit  of  freethinking  nearly  as  active  as 
that  astir  in  Christendom  at  the  same  period.     Thus  at  the  end  of 
the  seventeenth  century  we  have  circumstantial  testimony  to  the 
vogue  of  a  doctrine  of  atheistic  Naturalism  at  Constantinople.     The 
holders  of  this  doctrine  were  called  Muserin,  a  term  said  to  mean 
'*  The  true  secret  is  with  us."     They  affirmed  a  creative  and  all-sus- 
taining Nature,  in  which  Man  has  his  place  like  the  plants  and  like 
the   planets;  and   they  were   said   to   form  a  very  large   number, 
including   Cadis    and    other    learned    as  well    as   some    renegade 
persons.*     But  Turkish  culture-conditions  in  the  eighteenth  century 
were  not  such  as  to  permit  of  intellectual  progress  on  native  lines  ; 
and  to  this  day  rationalism  in  that  as  in  other  Moslem  countries 
is   mainly   a   matter   of    reflex    action   set   up   by   the   impact   of 
European   scientific   knowledge,    or   social   contact.      There   is   no 
modern  rationalistic  literature. 

Motazilism,  so-called,  is  still  heard  of  in  Arabia  itself.'  In  the 
Ottoman  Empire,  indeed,  it  is  little  in  evidence,  standing  now  as  it 
does  for  a  species  of  broad-church  liberalism,  analogous  to  Christian 
Unitarianism ;'  but  in  Persia  the  ancient  leaning  to  rationalism  is 
still  common.  The  old-world  pantheism  which  we  have  seen 
conserved  in  Omar  Khayyam  gave  rise  in  later  centuries  to  similar 
developments  among  the  Parsees  both  in  Persia  and  in  India ;  and 
from  the  sixteenth  century  onwards  there  are  clear  traces  among 

1  Cp.  Flint,  History  of  the  Philosophy  of  History,  ed.  1893.  vol.  i.  p.  169. 

2  Cp.  Flint,  p.  129.  as  to  their  hostility  to  him. 
8  Huth,  Life  and  WHtings  of  Buckle,  ii.  171.. 

«  Ricaut,  Present  State  of  the  Ottoman  Empire,  1686.  P- 245.  ^_.*,v.,7  j^'^nnyinntion 

«  Dugat.  p.  59.    The  Ameer  Ali  Syed,  Moulvi,  M.A    L^.B    whose  Criftml  ^JJ^l^    ^^*^^ 

Of   the  Life  arid  Teachings  of  Mohammed  appeared  m  1873.  writes  as  a  MotaziUte  oi 

a  moderate  type. 

6  Macdonald,  pp.  120, 196,  286. 


FREETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 


273 


them  of  a  number  of  rationalizing  heresies,  varying  from  pantheism 
and  simple  deism  to  atheism  and  materialism.^  In  Persia  to-day 
there  are  many  thinkers  of  these  casts  of  thought.^  About  1830 
a  British  traveller  estimated  that,  assuming  there  were  between 
200,000  and  300,000  Sufis  in  the  country,  those  figures  probably 
fell  greatly  short  of  the  number  "  secretly  inclined  to  infidelity."* 
Whatever  be  the  value  of  the  figures,  the  statement  is  substantially 
confirmed  by  later  observers  ;  *  missionaries  reporting  independently 
that  in  Persia  **  most  of  the  higher  class,  of  the  nobility,  and  of  the 

learned  professions are  at  heart  infidels  or  sceptics."''     Persian 

freethought  is  of  course,  in  large  part,  the  freethought  of  ignorance, 
and  seems  to  co-exist  with  astrological  superstition;®  but  there  is 
obviously  needed  only  science,  culture,  and  material  development  to 
produce,  on  such  a  basis,  a  renascence  as  remarkable  as  that  of 
modern  Japan. 

The  verdict  of  Vamb^ry  is  noteworthy :  "  In  all  Asia,  with  the 
exception  of  China,  there  is  no  land  and  no  people  wherein  there  is 
so  little  of  religious  enthusiasm  as  in  Persia ;  where  freethinkers  are 
so  little  persecuted,  and  can  express  their  opinions  with  so  little 
disturbance ;  and  where,  finally,  as  a  natural  consequence,  the  old 
reHgious  structure  can  be  so  easily  shattered  by  the  outbreak  of  new 
enthusiasts.  Whoever  has  read  Khayyd.m's  blasphemies  against 
God  and  the  prophet,  his  jesting  verses  against  the  holiest  cere- 
monies and  commandments  of  Islam  ;  and  whoever  knows  the  vogue 
of  this  book  and  other  works  directed  against  the  current  religion, 
will  not  wonder  that  B^b  with  the  weapon  of  the  Word  won  so 
many  hearts  in  so  short  a  time."^ 

The  view  that  Babism  afl&liates  to  rationalism  is  to  be  understood 
in  the  sense  that  the  atmosphere  of  the  latter  made  possible  the 
growth  of  the  former,  its  adherents  being  apparently  drawn  rather 
from  the  former  orthodox.®     The  young  founder  of  the  sect,  Mirza- 

*  A.  Franck,  J^tudes  Orientales,  1861,  pp.  241-48,  citing  the  Dabistan. 

2  Gobineau,  Les  religions  et  les  philosophies  dans  VAsie  centrale,  2e  6dit.  ch.  v  ;  J.  K.  M. 
Shirazi,  Life  of  Omar  Khayydmi,  ed.  1905,  p.  102.  The  latter  writer  notes,  however,  that "  the 
cultured  classes,  who  ought  to  know  better,  are  at  no  pains  to  dissipate  the  existing 
religious  prejudice  against  one  [Omar]  of  whose  reputation  every  Persian  may  well  feel 

proud."    '  At  the  present  time the  name  of  Omar  is  no  less  execrated  by  the  Shi-ite 

mob  in  Persia  than  it  was  in  his  own  day."    Id.  p.  108. 

3  Fraser,  Persia,  p.  330.  This  writer  (p. 239)  describes  Sufiism  as  "the  superstition  of 
the  freethinker,"  and  as  "often  assumed  as  a  cloak  to  cover  entire  infidelity." 

*  E.g.,  Dr.  Wills,  The  Land  of  the  Lion  and  the  Sun,  ed.  1891,  p.  339. 

5  Smith  and  D wight.  Missionary  Besearches  in  Armenia,  1834,  p.  340.  Cp.  Rev.  H. 
Southgate.  Tour  through  Armenia,  etc.  1840,  ii,153  :  and  Morier's  Hadji  Babaof  Ispahan 
(1824),  ch.  xlvii,  near  end. 

6  Fraser,  Persia,  p.  331 ;  Malcolm,  Sketches  of  Persia,  ii,  108;  Gobineau.  as  cited,  ch.  v. 

7  H.  Vamb6ry,  De7-  Islam  im  neumehnten  Jahrhundert,  1875,  pp.  32-33.  Vamb6ry 
further  remarks:  "The  half-fanatical,  half-freethinking  tone  of  Persians  has  often 
surprised  me  in  my  controversies  with  the  most  zealous  Schiites." 

®  As  to  the  rise  of  this  sect  see  Gobineau,  as  cited,  pp.  141-358;  E.  G.  Browne's  The 
Episode  of  the  Bdb ;  and  his  lecture  on  Babiism  in  Religious  Systems  of  the  World.  Cp. 
Renan,  Les  Apdtres,  pp.  378-81. 


274 


fEEETHOUGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 


Ali-Mohammed,  declared  himself  "The  B4b,"  i.e,  "the  Gate"  (to 
the  knowledge  of  God),  as  against  the  orthodox  Moslem  teachers 
who  taught  that  "  since  the  twelve  Im&ms,  the  Gate  of  Knowledge 
is  closed."  Hence  the  name  of  the  sect.  Mirza-Ali,  who  showed 
a  strong  tendency  to  intolerance,  quickly  created  an  aggressive 
movement,  which  was  for  a  time  put  down  by  the  killing  of  himself 
and  many  of  his  followers. 

Since   his   execution   the   sect   has   greatly  multiplied   and   its 
doctrines  have  much  widened.     For  a  time  the  founder's  intolerant 
teachings  were   upheld   by  Ez61,  the  founder   of   one   of   the   two 
divisions  into  which  the  party  speedily  fell ;  while  his  rival  Beha, 
who  gave  himself  out  as  the  true  Prophet,  of  whom  the  B&b  was 
merely  the  precursor,  developed  a  notably  cosmopolitan  and  equaU- 
tarian  doctrine,  including  a  vague  belief  in  immortality,  without 
heaven,  hell,  or  purgatory.     Ez61  eventually  abandoned  his  claims, 
and   his    followers   now   number   less   than    two   thousand;    while 
the    B6haites    number    nearly   three    millions    out   of   the    seven 
millions  of  the  Persian  population,  and  some  two  millions  in  the 
adjacent  countries.     The  son  of  B6ha.  Abbas  Effendi.  who  bears 
the  title  of  "  The  Great  Branch,"  now  rules  the  cult,  which  promises 
to  be  the  future  religion  of  Persia.'     One  of  the  most  notable  pheno- 
mena of  the  earlier  movement  was  the  entrance  of  a  young  woman, 
daughter  of   a  leadmg  ulema,  who  for  the  first  time  in  Moslem 
history  threw  off  the  regulation  veil  and  preached  the  equality  of 
the  sexes.^     She  was  one  of  those  first  executed.     Persecution,  how- 
ever, has  long  ceased,  and  as  a  result  of  her  lead  the  position  of 
woman  in  the  cult  is  exceptionally  good.     Thus  the  last  century  has 
witnessed  within  the  sphere  of  Islam,  so  commonly  supposed  to  be 
impervious  to  change,  one  of  the  most  rapid  and  radical  religious 
changes    recorded    in    history.       There   is    therefore     no    ground 
for     holding    that     in    other    Moslem    countries    progress    is    at 

an  end. 

Everything  depends,  broadly  speaking,  on  the  possibilities  of 
culture-contact.  The  changes  in  Persia  are  traceable  to  the  element 
of  heretical  habit  which  has  persisted  from  pre-Moslem  times; 
future  and  more  scientific  development  will  depend  upon  the 
assimilation  of  European  knowledge.  In  Egypt,  before  the  period 
of  European  intervention,  freethinking  was  at  a  minimum;  and 
though   toleration  was  well  developed  as  regarded  Christians  and 

1  H.  Arak^lian.  Mimoire  sur  Le  Bdbisme  ert  Perse,  in  the  Actes  du  Fremier  Congrh 
Internatimial  d'Histoire  des  Beligions,  Paris.  1902,  2  Ftie.  I  asc.  i. 
a  Gobineau.  pp.  167  sq.;  180  sq.;  Arak^lian,  p.  94. 


PEEETHOUGHT  UNDEH  ISLAM 


275 


Jews,  freethinking  Moslems  dared  not  avow  themselves.^  Latterly 
rationahsm  tends  to  spread  in  Egypt  as  in  other  Moslem  countries ; 
even  under  Mohammed  Ali  the  ruling  Turks  had  begun  to  exhibit 
a  "remarkable  indifference  to  religion,"  and  had  "begun  to  under- 
mine the  foundations  of  El-Islam  ";  and  so  shrewd  and  dispassionate 
an  observer  as  Lane  expected  that  the  common  people  would  "  soon 
assist  in  the  work,"  and  that  "  the  overthrow  of  the  whole  fabric 
may  reasonably  be  expected  to  ensue  at  a  period  not  very  remote."  '^ 
To  evolve  such  a  change  there  will  be  required  a  diffusion  of  culture 
which  is  not  at  all  likely  to  be  rapid  under  any  Government ;  but 
in  any  case  the  ground  that  is  being  lost  by  Islam  in  Egypt  is  not 
being  retaken  by  Christianity. 

In  the  other  British  dominions,  Mohammedans,  though  less 
ready  than  educated  Hindus  to  accept  new  ideas,  cannot  escape 
the  rationalizing  influence  of  European  culture.  Nor  was  it  left  to 
the  British  to  introduce  the  rationalistic  spirit  in  Moslem  India. 
At  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  eclectic  Emperor  Akbar,^ 
himself  a  devout  worshipper  of  the  Sun,*  is  found  tolerantly  com- 
paring all  religions,*  depreciating  Islam,^  and  arriving  at  such 
general  views  on  the  equivalence  of  all  creeds,  and  on  the  improba- 
bility of  eternal  punishment,'  as  pass  for  liberal  among  Christians 
in  our  own  day.  If  such  views  could  be  generated  by  a  comparison 
of  the  creeds  of  pre-British  India  they  must  needs  be  encouraged 
now.  The  Mohammedan  mass  is  of  course  still  deeply  fanatical, 
and  habitually  superstitious ;  but  not  any  more  immovably  so  than 
the  early  Saracens.  In  the  eighteenth  century  arose  the  fanatical 
Wahabi  sect,  which  aims  at  a  puritanic  restoration  of  primeval 
Islam,  freed  from  the  accretions  of  later  belief,  such  as  saint- 
worship  ;  but  the  movement,  though  variously  estimated,  has  had 
small  success,  and  seems  destined  to  extinction.^  Of  the  traditional 
seventy-three  sects  in  Islam  only  four  to-day  count  as  orthodox.^ 

It  may  be  worth  while,  in  conclusion,  to  note  that  the  com- 
parative prosperity  or  progressiveness  of  Islam  as  a  proselytizing 

>  Lane,  Manners  and  Customs  of  the  Modem  Egyptians,  5th  ed.  1871.  i.  349. 356.  "  There 
are,  I  believe,"  says  Lane  (writing  originally  in  1836),  "very  few  professed  Muslims  who 
are  really  unbelievers ;  and  these  dare  not  openly  avow  their  unbelief  through  fear  of 
losing  their  heads  for  their  apostacy.  I  have  heard  of  two  or  three  such  who  have  been 
rendered  so  by  long  and  intimate  intercourse  with  Europeans ;  and  have  met  with  one 
materialist,  who  has  often  had  long  discussions  with  me." 

J  Id.  ii,  309.    (Suppl.  Ill,  "Of  Late  Innovations  in  Egypt.") 

,«^  ^®®  ^^®  documents  reproduced  by  Max  MUller,  Introd.  to  the  Science  of  Eeligion,  ed. 
1882.  App.l. 

J  Id.  pp.  214,  216.  5  ja,  pp.  210,  217,  224.  225. 

J  Id.  pp.  224,  226.  7  id.  pp.  226,  229. 

"  Guyard,  p.  45;  Steiner,  p.  5,  note;  Lane.  The  Modem  Egyptians,  ed.  1871,  i.  137-38. 
Cp.  Spencer,  Study  of  Sociology,  ch.  xii,  p.  292;  Bosworth  Smith,  Mohammed  and  Moham- 
medanism. 2nd  ed.  pp.  315-19. 

^  Derenbourg,  p.  72 ;  Steiner,  p.  1 ;  Lane,  i.  79. 


276 


JKEETHOXlGHT  UNDER  ISLAM 


and  civilizing  force  in  Africa— a  phenomenon  regarded  ^even  by 
some  Christians  with  satisfaction,  and  by  some  with  alarm '-—is  not 
strictly  or  purely  a  religious  phenomenon.  Moslem  civilization 
suits  with  negro  life  in  Africa  in  virtue  not  of  the  teaching  of  the 
Koran,  but  of  the  comparative  nearness  of  the  Arab  to  the  barbaric 
life.  He  interbreeds  with  the  natives,  fraternizes  with  them  (when 
not  engaged  in  kidnapping  them),  and  so  stimulates  their  civiliza- 
tion ;  where  the  European  colonist,  looking  down  on  them  as  an 
inferior  species,  isolates,  depresses,  and  degrades  them.  It  is  thus 
conceivable  that  there  is  a  future  for  Islam  at  the  level  of  a  low 
culture-stage;  but  the  Arab  and  Turkish  races  out  of  Africa  are 
rather  the  more  likely  to  concur  in  the  rationalistic  movement  of 
the  higher  civilization. 

Even  in  Africa,  however,  a  systematic  observer  notes,  and 
predicts  the  extension  of,  "a  strong  tendency  on  the  part  of  the 
Mohammedans  towards  an  easy-going  rationalism,  such  as  is  fast 
making  way  in  Algeria,  where  the  townspeople  and  the  cultivators 
in  the  more  settled  districts,  constantly  coming  in  contact  with 
Europeans,  are  becoming  indifferent  to  the  more  inconvenient 
among  their  Mohammedan  observances,  and  are  content  to  live 
with  little  more  religion  than  an  observance  of  the  laws,  and  a 
desire  to  get  on  well  with  their  neighbours."*  Thus  at  every 
culture-level  we  see  the  persistence  of  that  force  of  intellectual 
variation  which  is  the  subject  of  our  inquiry. 


1  Cp.  Bosworth  Smith,  Mohammed  and  Mohammedanism,  Lectures  I  and  IV;  Canon 
Isaac  Taylor,  address  to  Church  Congress  at  Wolverhampton,  1887,  and  letters  to  Times, 
Oct.  and  Nov.  1887.  On  the  other  or  anti-Mohammedan  side  see  Canon  Robinson,  Hausa- 
land,  3rd  ed.  1900.  p.  186  sq.—a.  somewhat  obviously  prejudiced  argument.    See  pp.  190-91. 

2  Sir  Harry  H.  Johnston,  History  of  the  CoUmiMation  of  Africa  by  Alien  Races, 
1899,  p.  283. 


Chapter  IX 

CHKISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

It  would  be  an  error,  in  view  of  the  biological  generalization  pro- 
ceeded on  and  the  facts  noted  in  this  inquiry,  to  suppose  that  even 
in  the  Dark  Ages,  so  called,^  the  spirit  of  critical  reason  was  wholly 
absent  from  the  life  of  Christendom.  It  had  simply  grown  very 
rare,  and  was  the  more  discountenanced  where  it  strove  to  speak. 
But  the  most  systematic  suppression  of  heresies  could  not  secure 
that  no  private  heresy  should  remain.  As  Voltaire  has  remarked, 
there  was  **  nearly  always  a  small  flock  separated  from  the  great. 
Apart  too  from  such  quasi-rationalism  as  was  involved  in  semi- 
Pelagianism,^  critical  heresy  chronically  arose  even  in  the  Byzantine 
provinces,  which  by  the  curtailment  of  the  Empire  had  been  left 
the  most  homogeneous  and  therefore  the  most  manageable  of  the 
Christian  States.  It  is  necessary  to  note  those  survivals  of  partial 
freethinking,  when  we  would  trace  the  rise  of  modern  thought. 


§  1.  Heresy  in  Byzantium 

It  was  probably  from  some  indirect  influence  of  the  new  anti- 
idolatrous  religion  of  Islam  that  in  the  eighth  century  the  soldier- 
emperor,  Leo  the  Isaurian,  known  as  the  Iconoclast,  derived  his 
aversion  to  the  image-worship*  which  had  long  been  as  general  in 
the  Christian  world  as  ever  under  polytheism.  So  gross  had  the 
superstition  become  that  particular  images  were  frequently  selected 
as  god-parents ;  of  others  the  paint  was  partly  scratched  off  to  be 
mixed  with  the  sacramental  wine  ;  and  the  bread  was  solemnly  put 
in  contact  with  them.*^     Leo  began  (726)  by  an  edict  simply  causing 

1  This  label  has  been  applied  by  scholars  to  the  seventh,  eighth,  ninth,  and  tenth 
centuries.  One  writer,  who  supposes  it  to  cover  the  period  from  500  to  1400,  and  protests, 
is  attacking  only  a  misconception.  (M.  A.  Lane,  The  Level  of  Social  Motioii,  New  York, 
1902.  p.  232.)  The  Renaissance  is  commonly  reckoned  to  begin  about  the  end  of  the  four- 
teenth century  (cp.  Symonds,  Age  of  the  Despots,  ch.  i).  But  the  whole  period  from  the 
fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  to  the  fall  of  Constantinople,  or  to  the  Reformation,  is  broadly 
included  in  the  "  Middle  Ages." 

2  Essai  sur  les  Moeurs,  ch.  xlv. 

8  According  to  which  God  predestinated  good,  but  merely  foreknew  evil. 

*  For  Leo's  contacts  with  the  Saracens  see  Finlay,  Hist,  of  Greece,  ed.  Tozer,  u.  14-20, 
24,  31-32.  34-35,  37.  etc.,  and  compare  p.  218.  See  also  Hardwick,  Church  History  :  Middle 
Age,  1833,  p.  78,  note  2 ;  and  Waddington,  History  of  the  Church,  1833,  p.  187,  note. 

«  Kurtz,  Hist,  of  the  Chr.  Church,  Eng.  tr.  i,  252. 

277; 


278 


CHKISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


the  images  to  be  placed  so  high  that  they  could  not  be  kissed,  but 
on  being  met  with  resistance  and  rebellion  he  ordered  their  total 
removal  (730).  One  view  is  that  he  saw  image- worship  to  be  the 
main  hindrance  to  the  spread  of  the  faith  among  Jews  and  Moslems, 
and  took  his  measures  accordingly/  Save  on  this  one  point  he  was 
an  orthodox  Christian  and  Trinitarian,  and  his  long  effort  to  put 
down  images  and  pictures  was  in  itself  rather  fanatical^  than 
rationalistic,  though  a  measure  of  freethinking  was  developed  among 
the  religious  party  he  created.'  Of  this  spirit,  as  well  as  of  the 
aversion  to  image-worship,*  something  must  have  survived  the 
official  restoration  of  idolatry  ;  but  the  traces  are  few.  The  most 
zealous  iconoclasts  seem  never  to  have  risen  above  the  flat  incon- 
sistency of  treating  the  cross  and  the  written  gospels  with  exactly 
the  same  adoration  that  their  opponents  paid  to  images  ;*  and  their 
appeal  to  the  scriptures — which  was  their  first  and  last  argument — 
was  accordingly  met  by  the  retort  that  they  themselves  accepted 
the  authority  of  tradition,  as  did  the  image- worshippers.  The 
remarkable  hostility  of  the  army  to  the  latter  is  to  be  explained, 
apparently,  by  the  local  bias  of  the  eastern  regions  from  which  the 
soldiers  were  mainly  recruited. 

In  the  ninth  century,  when  Saracen  rivalry  had  stung  the 
Byzantines  into  some  partial  revival  of  culture  and  science,^  the 
all-learned  Patriarch  Photius  (c.  820-891),  who  reluctantly  accepted 
ecclesiastical  office,  earned  a  dangerous  repute  for  freethinking  by 
declaring  from  the  pulpit  that  earthquakes  were  produced  by  earthly 
causes  and  not  by  divine  wrath."'  But  this  was  an  almost  solitary 
gleam  of  reason  in  a  generation  wholly  given  up  to  furious  strife 
over  the  worship  of  images,  and  Photius  was  one  of  the  image- 
worshippers.  The  battle  swung  from  extreme  to  extreme.  The 
emperor  Michael  II,  "the  Stammerer"  (820-828),  held  a  medium 
position,  and  accordingly  acquired  the  repute  of  a  freethinker.  A 
general  under  Leo  V,  "  the  Armenian,"  he  had  conspired  against 
him,  and  when  on  the  verge  of  execution  had   been  raised  to  the 

1  Kurtz,  p.  i253. 

a  As  to  his  hostility  to  letters  see  Gibbon,  ch.  liii—Bohn  ed.  vi,  228.  Of  course  the 
other  side  were  not  any  more  liberal.    Cp.  Finlay,  ii.  22*3. 

8  Gieseler,  ii.  202.  Per.  Ill,  Div.  I,  pt.  i.  §  1.  In  the  next  century  this  was  said  to  have 
gone  in  some  churches  to  the  point  of  rejection  of  Christ.    Id.  p.  '207,  note  28. 

4  Id.  pp.  205,  207  ;  Finlay.  ii.  195. 

5  Neander,  Hist,  of  Chr.  Church.  Bohn  tr.  v,  289;  vi,  266. 

6  On  their  connection  at  this  time  with  the  culture-movement  of  the  Khalifate  of 
Mamonn.  see  Finlay,  ii.  224-2.5 ;  Gibbon,  ch.  liii—Bohn  ed.  vi.  228-29. 

7  Finlay,  ii.  181.  note.  The  enemies  of  Photius  accused  him  of  lending  himself  to  the 
emperor's  buffooneries.  Neander.  vi.  303-304.  Cp.  Mosheim,  9  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  iii.  §  7; 
and  Gibbon,  ch.  xxxiii— ed.  cited,  vi,  229.  Finlay  declares  (p.  222)  that  no  Greek  of  the 
intellectual  calibre  of  Photius,  John  the  Grammarian,  and  Leo  the  Mathematician,  has 
since  appeared, 


HEEESY  IN  BYZANTIUM 


279 


throne  in  place  of  Leo,  who  was  assassinated  at  the  altar.  The 
new  emperor  aimed  above  all  things  at  peace  and  quietness ;  but  his 
methods  were  thoroughly  Byzantine,  and  included  the  castration  of 
the  four  sons  of  Leo.  Michael  himself  is  said  to  have  doubted  the 
future  resurrection  of  men,  to  have  maintained  that  Judas  was 
saved,  and  to  have  doubted  the  existence  of  Satan  because  he  is  not 
named  in  the  Pentateuch^ — a  species  of  freethinking  not  far 
removed  from  that  of  the  Iconoclasts,  whose  grounds  were  merely 
Biblical.  A  generation  later  came  Michael  IV,  "  the  Sot,"  bred 
a  wastrel  under  the  guardianship  of  his  mother,  Theodora  (who  in 
842  restored  image- worship  and  persecuted  the  Paulicians),  and  her 
brother  Bardas,  who  ultimately  put  her  in  a  convent.  Michael, 
repeatedly  defeated  by  the  Saracens,  long  held  his  own  at  home. 
Taking  into  favour  Basil,  who  married  his  (Michael's)  mistress,  he 
murdered  Bardas,  and  a  year  later  (867)  was  about  to  murder 
Basil  in  turn,  when  the  latter  anticipated  him,  murdered  the 
emperor,  and  assumed  the  purple.  It  was  under  Basil,  who  put 
down  the  Iconoclasts,  that  Photius,  after  formally  deposing  and 
being  deposed  by  the  Pope  of  Kome  (864-66)  was  really  deposed  and 
banished  (868),  to  be  restored  to  favour  and  ofiQce  ten  years  later. 
In  886,  on  the  death  of  Basil,  he  was  again  deposed,  dying  about 
891.  In  that  kaleidoscope  of  plot  and  faction,  fanaticism  and  crime, 
there  is  small  trace  of  sane  thinking.  Michael  IV,  in  his  dis- 
reputable  way,  was  something  of  a  freethinker,  and  could  even  with 
impunity  burlesque  the  religious  processions  of  the  clergy,'^  the 
orthodox  populace  joining  in  the  laugh ;  but  there  was  no  such 
culture  at  Constantinople  as  could  develop  a  sober  rationalism,  or 
sustain  it  against  the  clergy  if  it  showed  its  head.  Intelligence  in 
general  could  not  rise  above  the  plane  of  the  wrangle  over  images. 
While  the  struggle  lasted,  it  was  marked  by  all  the  ferocity  that 
belonged  from  the  outset  to  Christian  strifes ;  and  in  the  end,  as 
usual,  the  more  irrational  bias  triumphed. 

It  was  in  a  sect  whose  doctrine  at  one  point  coincided  with 
iconoclasm  that  there  were  preserved  such  rude  seeds  of  oriental 
rationalism  as  could  survive  the  rule  of  the  Byzantine  emperors, 
and  carry  the  stimulus  of  heresy  to  the  west.  The  rise  of  the 
Paulicians  in  Armenia  dates  from  the  seventh  century,  and  was 
nominally  by  way  of  setting  up  a  creed  on  the  lines  of  Paul  as 
against  the  paganized  system  of  the  Church.  Kising  as  they  did  on 
the  borders  of  Persia,  they  were  probably  affected  from  the  first  by 


*  Neander,  vi,  280. 


a  Finlay,  ii.  174-75. 180. 


280 


CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


Mazdean  influences,  as  the  dualistic  principle  was  always  affirmed 
by  their  virtual  founder,  Constantine,  afterwards  known  as  Sylvanus/ 
Their  original  tenets  seem  to  have  been  anti-Manichean,  anti-Gnostic 
(though  partly  Marcionite),  opposed  to  the  worship  of  images  and 
relics,  to  sacraments,  to  the  adoration  of  the  Virgin,  of  saints,  and 
of  angels,  and  to  the  acceptance  of  the  Old  Testament ;  and  in  an 
age  in  which  the  reading  of  the  Sacred  Books  had  already  come  to 
be  regarded  as  a  privilege  of  monks  and  priests,  they  insisted  on 
reading  the  New  Testament  for  themselves.^     In  this  they  were 
virtually  founding  on  the  old  pagan  conception  of  religion,  under 
which  all  heads  of  families  could  offer  worship  and  sacrifice  without 
the  intervention  of  a  priest,  as  against  the  Judaeo-Christian  sacer- 
dotalism, which  vetoed   anything   like  a   private   cultus.      In   the 
teaching  of  Sylvanus,  further,  there  were  distinct  Manichean  and 
Gnostic  characteristics — notably,  hostility  to  Judaism  ;  the  denial 
that  Christ  had  a  real  human  body,  capable  of  suffering ;  and  the 
doctrine  that  baptism  and  the  communion  were  properly  spiritual 
and   not   physical  rites.^      In  the  ninth  century,  when  they  had 
become  a  powerful  and  militant  sect,  often  at  war  with  the  empire, 
they  were  still   marked   by  their   refusal  to  make  any  difference 
between  priests  and  laymen.     Anti-ecclesiasticism  was  thus  a  main 
feature  of  the  whole  movement ;  and  the  Byzantine  Government, 
recognizing  in  its  doctrine  a  particularly  dangerous  heresy,  had  at 
once  bloodily  attacked  it,  causing  Sylvanus  to  be  stoned  to  death.* 
Still  it  grew,  even  to  the  length  of  exhibiting  the  usual  phenomena 
of  schism  within  itself.     One  section  obtained  the  protection  of  the 
first  iconoclastic  emperor,  who  agreed  with  them  on  the  subject  of 
images  ;  and  a  later  leader,  Sergius  or  Tychicus,  won  similar  favour 
from  Nicephorus  I ;  but  Leo  the  Armenian  (sue.  813),  fearing  the 
stigma  of  their  other  heresies,  and  having  already  trouble  enough 
from  his  iconoclasm,  set  up  against  them,  as  against  the  image- 
worshippers,  a  new  and  cruel  persecution.*     They  were  thus  driven 


1  Hardwick.  Church  History:  Middle  Age,  1853,  p.  85.  It  is  noteworthy  that  the 
"heathen"  Magyars  held  the  Mazdean  dualistic  principle,  and  that  tneir  evil  power  was 
named  Armanyos  {=Ahrimanes).    Mail4th,  Oeschichte  der  Magyaren,  1828.  i.  25-26. 

2  Gibbon,  ch.  liv;  Mosheim.  9  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  5;  Gieseler,  Per.  Ill,  Div.  I,  pt.  i,  §  3; 
G.  S.  Faber.  The  Ancient  Vallenses  mui  Waldenses.  1838,  pp.  32-60.  Some  fresh  light  is 
thrown  on  the  Paulician  docrines  by  the  discovery  of  the  old  Armenian  book.  The  Key  cf 
Truth,  edited  and  translated  by  F.  C.  Conybeare,  Oxford,  1898.  It  belonged  to  the 
Armenian  sect  of  Thonraki,  or  Thonrakians.  or  Thondrakians— people  of  the  village  of 
Thondrac  (Neander,  vi.  347)— founded  by  one  Sembat,  originally  a  Paulician.  in  the  ninth 
century  (Hardwick.  Church  History :  Middle  Age,  p.  201 ;  Neander,  last  cit.).  For 
a  criticism  of  Mr.  Conybeare's  theories  see  the  Church  Quarterly  Review,  Jan.  1899, 
Art.  V. 

3  Gieseler.  Per.  III.  §§  45.  46,  vol.  ii,  pp.  489,  492 ;  Hardwick,  p.  86.  The  sect  of  Euchites, 
also  anti- priestly,  seem  to  have  joined  them.    Faber  denies  any  Manichean  element. 

*  Gibbon,  as  cited,  vi,  241.  «  Gibbon,  vi,  242;  Hardwick,  pp.  88-90. 


HERESY  IN  BYZANTIUM 


281 


over  to  the  Saracens,  whose  advance-guard  they  became  as  against 
the  Christian  State ;  but  the  iconoclast  Constantine  Copronymus 
sympathetically  ^  transplanted  many  of  them  to  Constantinople  and 
Thrace,  thus  introducing  their  doctrine  into  Europe.  The  Empress 
Theodora  (841-855),  who  restored  image- worship,'^  sought  to 
exterminate  those  left  in  Armenia,  slaying,  it  is  said,  a  hundred 
thousand.^  Many  of  the  remnant  were  thus  forced  into  the  arms  of 
the  Saracens ;  and  the  sect  did  the  empire  desperate  mischief 
during  many  generations.* 

Meantime  those  planted  in  Thrace,  in  concert  with  the  main 
body,  carried  propaganda  into  Bulgaria,  and  these  again  were  further 
reinforced  by  refugees  from  Armenia  in  the  ninth  century,  and  in  the 
tenth  by  a  fresh  colony  transplanted  from  Armenia  by  the  emperor 
John  Zimisces,  who  valued  them  as  a  bulwark  against  the  barbarous 
Slavs.*  Fresh  persecution  under  Alexius  I  at  the  end  of  the  eleventh 
century  failed  to  suppress  them ;  and  imperial  extortion  constantly 
drove  to  their  side  numbers  of  fresh  adherents,®  while  the  Bulgarians 
for  similar  reasons  tended  in  mass  to  adopt  their  creed  as  against 
that  of  Constantinople.  So  greatly  did  the  cult  flourish  that  at  its 
height  it  had  a  regular  hierarchy,  notably  recalling  that  of  the  early 
Manicheans — with  a  pope,  twelve  magistri,  and  seventy-two  bishops, 
each  of  whom  had  a  filius  major  and  filius  minor  as  his  assistants. 
Withal  the  democratic  element  remained  strong,  the  laying  on  of 
the  hands  of  communicants  on  the  heads  of  newcomers  being  part 
of  the  rite  of  reception  into  full  membership.  Thus  it  came  about 
that  from  Bulgaria  there  passed  into  western  Europe,^  partly 
through  the  Slavonic  sect  called  Bogomiles  or  Bogomilians®  (  = 
Theophiloi,  "lovers  of  God"),  who  were  akin  to  the  Paulicians, 
partly  by  more  general  influences,®  a  contagion  of  democratic  and 
anti-ecclesiastical  heresy  ;  so  that  the  very  name  Bulgar  became 
the  French   bougre  =  h.evQtic — and  worse/"     It   specified   the   most 


'  Gibbon,  vi,  245,  and  Mote;  Finlay,  ii,  60.  ^    , 

2  Despite  the  express  decision,  the  use  of  statues  proper  (dyaXfiara)  gradually  dis- 
appeared from  the  Greek  Church,  the  disuse  finally  creating  a  strong  antipathy,  while 
pictures  and  ikons  remained  in  reverence  (Tozer's  note  to  Finlay,  ii,  165;  cp.  Waddington, 
History  of  the  Church,  1833,  p.  190,  note).  It  is  probable  that  the  sheer  loss  of  artistic  skill 
counted  for  much  in  the  change.  Cp.  Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  bk.  xiv,  ch.  ix;  4th 
ed.  ix.  308-12.  It  is  noteworthy  that,  whereas  in  the  struggle  over  images  their  use  was  for 
two  long  periods  legally  abolished,  it  was  in  both  cases  restored  by  empresses  Irene  and 
Theodora. 

8  Hardwick,  p.  80,  note ;  Neander.  vi,  340. 

*  Cp.  Kurtz,  His.  of  the  Chr.  Church,  Eng.  tr.  i,271.  ^     

s  Gibbon,  vi,  246  ;  Finlay.  iii,  64 ;  Mosheim,  10  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  v.  6  Fmlay,  in,  66. 

7  Gibbon,  as  cited  ;  R.  Lane  Poole,  Illustrations  of  the  History  of  Medieval  TJiought, 
1884,  pp.  91-96;  Mosheim,  11  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  v. 

8  Finlay,  iii,  67-68;  Mosheim,  12  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  v,  §  2.    Hardwick.  pp.  302-305;  Kurtz, 
i,  270-73.  »  Gieseler,  Per.  Ill,  Div.  II,  pt.  iii,  §  46. 

10  Gibbon,  vi,  249,  nofe;  Poole,  p.  91,  note;  De  Potter,  L'Esprit  de  L'Eglise,  1821,  vi, 
16,  note. 


282  CHKISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

obvious  source  of  the  new  anti-Komanist  heresies  of  the  Albigenses, 
if  not  of  the  Vaudois  (Waldenses). 

§  2.  Critical  Heresy  in  the  West 

In  the  west,  meanwhile,  where  the  variety  of  social  elements 
was  favourable  to  new  life,  heresy  of  a  rationalistic  kind  was  not 
wholly  lacking.  About  the  middle  of  the  eighth  century  we  find  one 
Feargal  or  Vergilius,  an  Irish  priest  in  Bavaria,  accused  by  St. 
Boniface,  his  enemy,  of  affirming,  "  in  defiance  of  God  and  his  own 
soul,"  the  doctrine  of  the  antipodes,'  which  must  have  reached  him 
through  the  ancient  Greek  lore  carried  to  Ireland  in  the  primary 
period  of  Christianization  of  that  province.  Of  that  influence  we 
have  already  seen  a  trace  in  Pelagius  and  Coelestius ;  and  we  shall 
see  more  later  in  John  the  Scot.  After  being  deposed  by  the  Pope, 
Vergilius  was  reinstated ;  was  made  Bishop  of  Salzburg,  and  held 
the  post  till  his  death  ;  and  was  even  sainted  afterwards ;  but  the 
doctrine  disappeared  for  centuries  from  the  Christian  world. 

Other  heresies,  however,  asserted  themselves.  Though  image- 
worship  finally  triumphed  there  as  in  the  east,  it  had  strong 
opponents,  notably  Claudius,  bishop  of  Turin  (fl.  830)  under  the 
emperor  Louis  the  Pious,  son  of  Charlemagne,  and  his  contemporary 
Agobard,  bishop  of  Lyons.'  It  is  a  significant  fact  that  both  men 
were  born  in  Spain  ;  and  either  to  Saracen  or  to  Jewish  influence— 
the  latter  being  then  strong  in  the  Moorish  and  even  in  the 
Christian^  world— may  fairly  be  in  part  attributed  their  marked 
bias  against  image-worship.  Claudius  was  slightly  and  Agobard 
well  educated  in  Latin  letters,  so  that  an  early  impression'  would 
seem  to  have  been  at  work  in  both  cases.  However  that  may  be, 
they  stood  out  as  singularly  rationalistic  theologians  in  an  age  of 
general  ignorance  and  superstition.  Claudius  vehemently  resisted 
alike  image- worship,  saint- worship,  and  the  Papal  claims,  and  is 
recorded  to  have  termed  a  council  of  bishops  which  condemned  him 
"  an  assembly  of  asses."  *  Agobard,  in  turn,  is  quite  extraordinary 
in  the  thoroughness  of  his  rejection  of  popular  superstition,  being 
not  only  an  iconoclast  but  an  enemy  to  prayer  for  change  in  the 

1  Boniface.  Ep.  Ixvi.  cited  by  Poole,  p.  23;  Reid's  Mosheim.  p.  263.  note  3;  Neander. 
-RiHt  of  the  Christian  Church,  BohnlT.v,m-%l\'ila.x^viic\!i,  v.  "22.  .    .    ^i      ,. 

a  For  excellent  accounts  of  both  see  Mr.  Poole's  Blmtratio^is,  pp.  28-50  As  to  Claudius 
cp.  Monastier.  Hist,  of  the  Vaudois  Church,  Eng.  tr.  1848,  pp.  13-42.  and  Faber,  The  Ancient 

^^"  See  Mr.  Pooie\musf rations,  pp.  46-48,  for  an  account  of  the  privileges  then  accorded 

*°  *This  is  not  incompatible  with  their  having  opposed  both  Saracens  (Claudius  in  actual 
war)  and  Jews,  as  Christian  bishops. 
5  Poole,  Illustraticnis,  p.  37. 


CEITICAL  HEKESY  IN  THE  WEST 


283 


weather,  to  belief  in  incantations  and  the  power  of  evil  spirits,  to 
the  ordeal  by  fire,  to  the  wager  of  battle,^  and  to  the  belief  in  the 
verbal  inspiration  of  the  Sacred  Books.  In  an  age  of  enormous 
superstition  and  deep  ignorance,  he  maintained  within  the  Church 
that  Keason  was  the  noble  gift  of  God.^  He  was  a  rationalist  born 
out  of  due  time.^ 

A  grain  of  rationalism,  as  apart  from  professional  self-interest, 
may  also  have  entered  into  the  outcry  made  at  this  period  by  the 
clergy  against  the  rigidly  predestinarian  doctrine  of  the  monk 
Gottschalk.^  His  enemy,  Kabanus  or  Hrabanus  (called  "the 
Moor"),  seems  again  to  represent  some  Saracen  influence,  inas- 
much as  he  reproduced  the  scientific  lore  of  Isidore  of  Seville.'^ 
But  the  philosophic  semi-rationalism  of  John  Scotus  (d.  875), 
later  known  as  Erigena  (John  the  Scot  =  of  Ireland — the  original 
"  Scots  "  being  Irish),  seems  to  be  traceable  to  the  Greek  studies 
which  had  been  cherished  in  Christianized  Ireland  while  the  rest  of 
western  Europe  lost  them,  and  represents  at  once  the  imperfect 
beginning  of  the  relatively  rationaHstic  philosophy  of  Nominahsm^ 
and  the  first  western  revival  of  the  philosophy  of  Plato  and 
Aristotle,  howbeit  by  way  of  accommodation  to  the  doctrine  of  the 
Church. "^ 

That  John  the  Scot  was  an  Irishman  remains  practically 
certain,  even  if  we  give  up  the  term  "  Erigena,"  which,  as  has 
been  shown  by  Floss,  the  most  careful  editor  of  his  works,  is 
not  found  in  the  oldest  MSS.  The  reading  there  is  lerugena, 
which  later  shades  into  Erugena  and  Eriugena.  (Cp.  Ueber- 
weg,  i,  359 ;  Poole,  pp.  55-56,  note ;  Dr.  Th.  Christlieb,  Leben 
und  Lehre  des  Johannes  Scotus  Erigena,  1860,  p.  14  sq.\  and 
Huber,  Johannes  Scotus  Erigena  :  ein  Beitrag  zur  Geschichte 
der  Philosophie  und  Theologie  im  Mittelalter,  1861,  pp.  38-40.) 
From  this  elusive  cognomen  no  certain  inference  can  be  drawn, 
too  many  being  open  ;  though  the  fact  that  John  had  himself 
coined  the  term   Graiugena  for  a  late  Greek  writer  makes  it 

1  This  when  the  Church  found  its  account  in  adopting  all  such  usages.  Lea,  Supersti- 
tion and  Force,  pp.  242,  280,  etc.  It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  one  Council,  that  of 
Valence.  855.  perhaps  under  the  influence  of  Agobard's  teaching,  published  a  canon 
prohibiting  all  duels,  and  praying  the  emperor  to  abolish  them.  Cited  by  Waddington, 
History  of  the  Church,  1833,  p.  242,  note,  from  Fleury. 

2  De  Orandine  et  tonitriiis,  c.  3  ;  and  De  imaninibus.  c.  13,  cited  by  Renter. 

^  "He  had  the  clearest  head  in  the  whole  ninth  century;  and  as  an  influence  (Mann 
der  Teude7}z)  is  above  comparison"  (Reuter,  Gesch.  der  religiosen  Axifkldrung  im  Mittel- 
alter,  i.  24).  As  to  his  acute  handling  of  the  thorny  question  of  reason  and  authority  see 
Reuter.  i.  40-41.  <  poole.  pp. 50-52. 

5  Noack,  Philosophie-Geschichtliches  Lexikon,  s.  v.  Rabanus.  As  to  the  doubtful 
works  in  which  Rabanus  coincides  with  Scotus  Erigena,  cp.  Poole,  p.  336;  Noack,  as 
cited  ;  Ueberweg,  i,  367-68. 

6  Ueberweg.  pp.  366,  371 ;  Poole,  pp.  99, 101,  336. 

■^  Ueberweg,  pp.  356-65.  That  there  was,  however,  an  Irish  scholasticism  as  early  as 
the  eighth  century  is  shown  by  Mosheim.  8  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  iii.  §  6,  note  3.  Cp.  Huber, 
Johannes  Scotus  Erigena,  1861,  p.  428  sq.;  Taillandier,  Scot  Erighxe  et  la  philosophie 
scolastiqus,  1843,  p.  198, 


/ 


284  CHEISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

likely  that  he  called  himself  lerugena  in  the  sense  of  "  born 
in  the  holy  (island)  "  =  Ireland.  But  the  name  Scotus,  occurrmg 
without  the  lerugena,  is  common  in  old  MSS.;  and  it  is  almost 
impossible  that  any  save  a  Scot  of  Ireland  should  have  possessed 
the  scholarship  of  John  in  the  ninth  century.  In  the  west, 
Greek  scholarship  and  philosophy  had  been  special  to  Ireland 
from  the  time  of  Pelagius  ;  and  it  is  from  Greek  sources  that 
John  draws  his  inspiration  and  cast  of  thought.  M.  Taillandier 
not  unjustly  calls  the  Ireland  of  that  era  "  I'lle  des  saints,  mais 
aussi  rile  des  hbres  penseurs."  (Scot  Engine  et  la  philosophie 
scolastiqtie,  1843,  p.  64.)  To  the  same  effect  Huber,  pp.  40-41. 
In  writing  that  Johannes  *'  was  of  Scottish  nationality,  but  was 
probably  bom  and  brought  up  in  Ireland,"  Ueberweg  (i.  358) 
obscures  the  fact  that  the  people  of  Ireland  were^  the  Scoti  of 
that  period.  All  the  testimony  goes  to  show  that  Ireland 
was  called  Scotia,  and  its  ruling  people  Scoti,  from  the  first 
appearance  of  these  names  down  to  the  eleventh  century.  But 
that  [the]  present  Scotland  was  called  Scotia,  or  its  people 
Scoti,  before  the  eleventh  century,  not  so  much  as  one  single 
authority  can  be  produced"  (Pinkerton,  Enquiry  into  the 
History  of  Scotland,  1789,  ii,  237).  Irish  Scots  gave  their 
name  to  Scotland,  and  it  was  adopted  by  the  Teutonic  settlers. 
While  the  land  of  John  the  Scot's  birth  is  thus  fairly  certain, 
the  place  of  his  death  remains  a  mystery.  Out  of  a  statement 
by  Asser  that  King  Alfred  made  one  John,  a  priest.  Abbot  of 
Athelney,  and  that  the  said  Abbot  was  murdered  at  the  altar 
by  hired  assassins,  there  grew  a  later  story  that  Alfred  made 
John  the  Scot  Abbot  of  Malmesbury,  and  that  he  was  slain 
with  the  styli  of  two  of  his  pupils.  It  is  clear  that  the  John 
of  Asser  was  an  "Old  Saxon,"  and  not  the  philosopher;  and 
it  is  difficult  to  doubt  that  the  second  story,  which  arises  in  the 
twelfth  century,  is  a  hearsay  distortion  of  the  first.  Cp. 
Christlieb,  who  argues  (p.  42  sq.)  for  two  Johns,  one  of  them 
Scotus,  and  both  assassinated,  with  Huber,  who  sets  forth 
(p.  108  sq.)  the  view  here  followed.  There  is  really  no  adequate 
ground  for  beheving  that  John  the  Scot  was  ever  a  priest.  We 
know  not  where  or  when  he  died ;  but  the  presumption  is  that 
it  was  in  France,  and  not  long  after  the  death  of  his  patron 
Charles— 877.     (Huber,  p.  121.) 

Called  in  by  Archbishop  Hincmar  of  Eheims,  himself  a  normally 
superstitious  believer,*  to  answer  Gottschalk,  John  Scotus  in  turn 
was  accused  of  heresy,  as  he  well  might  be  on  many  points  of  his 
treatise,   De  Praedestinatione^   (851).     He   fiercely   and   not   very 

2  "The  learned  and  "freethinking  guest  of  Charles  le  Chauve."  Hardwick  calls  him. 
p.  176.  It  needed  the  protection  of  Charles  to  save  him  from  the  orthodox.  Hmcmar 
included.  See  Ampere,  Histoire  litteraire  de  la  France,  1840,  in,  94-95,  as  to  the  anger 
against  him. 


CLEElCAL  HERESY  IN  THE  WEST 


285 


\ 


fairly  condemned  Gottschalk  as  a  heretic,  charging  him  with  deny- 
ing both  divine  grace  and  freewill,  but  without  disposing  of  Gott- 
schalk's  positive  grounds ;  and  arguing  that  God  could  not  be  the 
cause  of  sin,  as  if  Gottschalk  had  not  said  the  same  thing.  His 
superior  speculative  power  comes  out  in  his  undertaking  to  show 
that  for  the  Divine  Being  sin  is  non-ens  ;  and  that  therefore  that 
Being  cannot  properly  be  said  either  to  foreknow  or  to  predestinate, 
or  to  punish.  But  the  argument  becomes  inconsistent  inasmuch  as 
it  further  affirms  Deity  to  have  so  constituted  the  order  of  things 
that  sin  punishes  itself.^  It  is  evident  that  in  assimilating  his 
pantheistic  conceptions  he  had  failed  to  think  out  their  incom- 
patibility with  any  theistic  dogma  whatever ;  his  reasoning,  on  the 
whole,  being  no  more  coherent  than  Gottschalk's.  He  had  in  fact 
set  out  from  an  arbitrary  theistic  position  that  was  at  once  Judaic, 
Christian,  and  Platonic,  and  went  back  on  one  line  to  the  Gnostics ; 
while  on  another  his  argument  that  sin  has  no  real  existence  is 
a  variant  from  an  old  thesis— made  current,  as  we  saw,  by  EucUdes 
of  Megara — with  which  orthodoxy  had  met  the  Manicheans.^  But 
to  the  abstract  doctrine  he  gave  a  new  practical  point  by  declaring 
that  the  doctrine  of  hell-fire  was  a  mere  allegory  ;  that  heaven  and 
hell  alike  were  states  of  consciousness,  not  places.*  And  if  such 
concrete  freethinking  were  not  enough  to  infuriate  the  orthodox, 
they  had  from  him  the  most  explicit  declarations  that  authority  is 
derivable  solely  from  reason.* 

In  philosophy  proper  he  must  be  credited,  despite  his  inconsis- 
tency, with  deep  and  original  thought.''  Like  every  theologian  of 
philosophic  capacity  before  and  since,  he  passes  into  pantheism  as 
soon  as  he  grapples  closely  with  the  difficulties  of  theism,  and  "  the 
expressions   which   he   uses   are   identical  with   those  which  were 

afterwards  employed  by  Spinoza It  was  a  tradition  of  the  fourth 

or  fifth  century  transferred  to  the  ninth,  an  echo  from  Alexandria."^ 
Condemned  by  Pope  Nicholas  I  and  by  two  Church  Councils,^  his 
writings  none  the  less  availed  to  keep  that  echo  audible  to  later 
centuries. 

The  range   and  vigour  of    his  practical    rationalism   may  be 


*  See  the  whole  argument  summarized  by  Huber,  p.  59  sq. 

2  Cp.  Poole,  Illustrations,  pp.  61.  63.  65;  Neander,  Bohn  tr.  vi.  198  sa. J  and  the  present 

writer's  introd.  to  Shaftesbury's  Characteristics,  ed.  1900,  p.  xxxiv.    And  see  above,  p.  1«4. 

,  8  De  divisione  Nattirts,  1.  v ;   De  Frcedestinatione,  c.  17 :  Poole,  pp.  71-72 ;  Neander, 

vi,  198-99 ;  Huber,  as  cited,  p.  405.  ^      .         .^  .,  ^  r.„K,„«4- 

*  In  the  treatise  On  the  Division  of  Nature.  See  the  extracts  given  m  the  cabinet 
Cyclopeedia  survey  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  ii,  266-68.  They  prove,  says  the  author 
of  the  survey,  "that  John  Erigena  had  none  of  the  spirit  of  Christianity. 

f  Poole,  pp.  64, 76.  «  „   x.  .op^n 

«  S.  Robins.  A  Defence  of  the  Faith,  1863,  pp.  25-26.  '  Huber.  pp.  435-iO. 


286 


CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


gathered  from  his  attitude  in  the  controversy  begun  by  the  abbot 
Paschasius  Radbert  (831)  on  the  nature  of  the  Eucharist. 
Paschasius  taught  that  Hhere  was  a  real  transformation  of  the 
bread  and  wine  into  the  divine  body  and  blood ;  and  the  doctrine, 
thus  nakedly  put,  startled  the  freer  scholars  of  the  time,  who  were 
not  yet  habituated  to  Latin  orthodoxy.  Another  learned  monk, 
Eatramnus,  who  had  written  a  treatise  on  predestination  at  the 
request  of  the  rationalizing  emperor,  Charles  the  Bald  (discussing 
the  problem  in  Gottschalk's  sense'  without  naming  him),  produced 
on  the  same  monarch's  invitation  a  treatise  in  which  transubstantia- 
tion  was  denied,  and  the  "  real  presence  "  was  declared  to  be  spiritual 
— a  view  already  known  to  Paschasius  as  being  held  by  some.**  John 
Scotus,  also  asked  by  the  emperor  to  write  on  the  subject,  went  so 
far  as  to  argue  that  the  bread  and  wine  were  merely  symbols  and 
memorials.*  As  usual,  the  irrational  doctrine  became  that  of  the 
Church  ;*  but  the  other  must  have  wrought  for  reason  in  secret. 
For  the  rest,  he  set  forth  the  old  "modal"  view  of  the  Trinity, 
resolving  it  into  the  different  conceptual  aspects  of  the  universe, 
and  thus  propounding  one  more  vital  heresy.** 

Nothing  but  a  succession  of  rationalizing  emperors  could  have 
secured  continuance  for  such  teaching  as  that  of  Ratramnus  and 
John  the  Scot.  For  a  time,  the  cruelty  meted  out  to  Gottschalk 
kept  up  feeling  in  favour  of  his  views ;  Bishop  Remigius  of  Lyons 
condemned  Hincmar's  treatment  of  him  ;  and  others  sought  to 
maintain  his  positions,  with  modifications,  though  Hincmar  carried 
resolutions  condemning  them  at  the  second  Synod  of  Chiersy.  On 
the  other  hand.  Archbishop  Wenilo  of  Sens,  Bishop  Prudentius  of 
Troyes,  and  Floras,  a  deacon  of  Lyons,  all  wrote  against  the  doctrines 
of  John  the  Scot ;  and  the  second  Synod  of  Valence  (855),  while 
opposing  Hincmar  and  affirming  duplex  predestination,  denounced 
with  fury  the  reasonings  of  John  the  Scot,  ascribing  them  to  his 
nation  as  a  whole.'  The  pope  taking  the  same  line,  the  fortunes  of 
the  rationaUstic  view  of  the  eucharist  and  of  hell-fire  were  soon 
determined  for  the  Middle  Ages,  though  in  the  year  950  we  find  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  confronted  by  English  ecclesiastics  who 
asserted  that  there  was  no  transubstantiation,  the  elements  being 
merely  a  figure  of  the  body  and  blood  of  Christ.^ 

1  Cp.  Neander,  Hist,  of  the  Clir.  Church,  Bohn  tr.  vi.  192. 

a  De  Corpore  et  Sanguine  Domini,  rep.  Oxford.  1838.  cc.  8-16.  29.  56.  72-76.  etc.  . 

«  C.  19 :  "  Non  sicut  quidam  volunt.  anima  sola  hoc  mysterio  pascitur."    Neander,  vi,  210. 
*  Hardwick.  pp.  178. 181 ;  Neander,  vi,  217.  ^  Cp.  Neander.  vi,  219. 

6  Poole,  p.  69.  ,.     ..    XT       ^  - 

'  C.  6 :  "  Ineptas  qufiestiunculas  et  aniles  psene  f  abulas  Scotorumque  pultes.      Neander, 
vi.  207.  8  Neander.  vi.  219.  citing  Mabillon.  Anakcta,  i,  207. 


CRITICAL  HERESY  IN  THE  WEST 


287 


The  economic  explanation  clearly  holds  alike  as  regards  the 
attack  on  John  and  the  condemnation  of  Gottschalk  for  a  doctrine 
which  had  actually  been  established  for  centuries,  on  the  authority 
of  Augustine,  as  strict  orthodoxy.  In  Augustine's  time,  the  deter- 
mining pressures  were  not  economic  :  a  bankrupt  world  was  seeking 
to  explain  its  fate ;  and  Augustine  had  merely  carried  a  majority 
with  him  against  Pelagius,  partly  by  his  personal  influence,  partly 
by  force  of  the  fatalist  mood  of  the  time.  But  in  the  renascent  world 
of  Gottschalk's  day  the  economic  exploitation  of  fear  had  been 
carried  several  stages  forward  by  the  Church ;  and  the  question  of 
predestination  had  a  very  direct  financial  bearing.  The  northern 
peoples,  accustomed  to  compound  for  crimes  by  money  payments, 
had  so  readily  played  into  the  hands  of  the  priesthood  by  their 
eagerness  to  buy  surcease  of  purgatorial  pain  that  masses  for  the 
dead  and  "penitential  certificates"  were  main  sources  of  ecclesi- 
astical revenue.  Therefore  the  condemnations  of  such  abuses  passed 
by  the  Councils,  on  the  urging  of  the  more  thoughtful  clergy,  were 
constantly  frustrated  by  the  plain  pecuniary  interest  of  the  priests.^ 
It  even  appears  that  the  eucharist  was  popularly  regarded  not  as 
a  process  of  religious  "  communion,"  but  as  a  magical  rite  objectively 
efficacious  for  bodily  preservation  in  this  life  and  the  next.  Thus  it 
came  about  that  often  "  priests  presented  the  offering  of  the  mass 
alone  and  by  themselves,  without  any  participation  of  the 
congregation."^ 

If  then  it  were  to  be  seriously  understood  that  the  future  lot  of 
all  was  foreordained,  all  expenditure  on  masses  for  the  dead,  or  to 
secure  in  advance  a  lightening  of  purgatorial  penance,  or  even  to 
buy  off  penance  on  earth,  was  so  much  waste  ;  and  the  Teutons 
were  still  as  ready  as  other  barbarians  to  make  their  transactions 
with  Church,  God,  and  the  saints  a  matter  of  explicit  bargain.^ 
Gottschalk,  accordingly,  had  to  be  put  down,  in  the  general  interests 
of  the  Church.  It  could  not  truthfully  be  pretended  that  he  deviated 
from  Augustine,  for  he  actually  held  by  the  "  semi-Pelagian  "  incon- 
sistency that  God  predestinates  good,  but  merely  foreknows  evil.* 


*  Compare  the  Gemma  EcclesiasHca  of  Giraldus  Cambrensis  for  an  mside  view  of  the 
avarice  of  the  clergy  in  his  day.  , 

2  Neander,  Hist,  of  the  Chr.  Church,  v,  187.  See  the  whole  section  for  a  good  account 
of  the  general  economic  and  moral  evolution.  Neander  repeatedly  (pp.  186-87)  insists  on 
the  "magical"  element  in  the  doctrine  of  the  mass,  as  established  by  Gregory  the  Great. 

^  See  Neander,  as  cited,  v.  183-  The  point  was  well  put  some  centuries  later  by  the 
Italian  story-teller  Masuccio,  an  orthodox  Catholic  but  a  vehement  anti-clericalist,  in  a 
generalization  concerning  the  monks :  "  The  best  punishment  for  them  would  be  for  God 
to  abolish  Purgatory ;  they  would  then  receive  no  more  alms,  and  would  be  forced  to  go 
back  to  their  spades."  Cited  by  Burckhardt,  Tlie  Civilization  of  the  Renaissance  in  Italy, 
Eng.  tr.  1892.  p.  461.  ,.  ,„        ,„_  . 

*  Neander,  vi,  182.    Rabanus  Maurus  distinctly  belied  lum  on  this  score.    {la.  p.  183.; 


^88  CHEISTENDOM  IN  TflE  MIDDLE  AGES 

There  was  in  fact  no  clear  opposition  between  his  affirmations  and 
those  of  Kabanus  Maurus.  who  also  professed  to  be  an  Augustmian ; 
but  the  latter  laid  forensic  stress  on  the  "desire"  of  God  that  all 
men  should  be  saved,  and  on  the  formula  that  Christ  died  for  all ; 
while  Gottschalk,  more  honestly,  insisted  that  predestmation  is  pre- 
destination, and  applied  the  principle  not  merely,  as  had  been 
customary,  to  the  future  state  of  the  good,  but  to  that  of  the  bad, 
insisting  on  a  pra^destmatio  duplex.  His  own  fate  was  thus  economi- 
cally predestinate  ;  and  he  was  actually  tortured  by  the  scourge  till 
he  cast  into  the  fire  his  written  defence,  **  a  document  which  contained 
nothing  but  a  compilation  of  testimonies  from  Scripture,  and  from 
the  older  church -teachers."* 

Gottschalk  later  challenged  a  fourfold  ordeal  of  "  boiling 
water,  oil,  and  pitch."  His  primary  doctrine  had  been  the 
immutability  of  the  divine  will ;  but  he  brought  himself  to  the 
behef  that  God  would  work  a  miracle  in  his  favour.  His  con- 
ception of  "  foreordination  "  was  thus  framed  solely  with  regard 
to  the  conception  of  a  future  state.  The  ordeal  was  not  granted, 
the  orthodox  party  fearing  to  try  conclusions,  and  he  died 
without  the  sacraments,  rather  than  recant.  Then  began  the 
second  reaction  of  feeling  against  his  chief  persecutor,  Hincmar. 

Neander,  vi,  190.  .   ,  „.       ^,         n  i 

A  recent  writer,  who  handles  very  intelligently  and  tempe- 
rately the  problem  of  persecution,  urges  that  in  that  connection 
"  one  ought  not  to  lay  great  stress  on  the  old  argument  of  the 
HaUam  and  Macaulay  school  as  to  the  strength  of  vested 
interests,  though  it  has  a  certain  historical  importance,  because 
the  priest  must  subsist  somehow "  {Beligiaus  Persecution  :  a 
Study  in  Psychology,  by  E.  S.  P.  Haynes,  1904.  p.  4;  If  the 
"certain  importance"  be  in  the  ratio  of  the  certainty  of  the 
last  adduced  fact,  the  legitimate  "  stress  "  on  the  argument  m 
question  would  seem  sufficient  for  most  purposes.  The  writer 
adds  the  note  :  "  It  is  not  unfair,  however,  to  quote  the  case  of 
Dr.  Middleton,  who,  writing  to  Lord  Radnor  in  1750  in  respect 
of  his  famous  work  on  Miracles,  admits  frankly  enough  that  he 
would  never  have  given  the  clergy  any  trouble,  had  he  received 
some  good  appointment  in  the  church."  If  the  essayist  has 
met  with  no  other  historic  fact  illustrative  of  the  play  of  vested 
interests  in  ecclesiastical  history,  it  is  extremely  candid  of  him 
to  mention  that  one.  Later  on,  however,  he  commits  himself 
to  the  proposition  that  "the  history  of  medieval  persecution 
leads  one  to  infer  that  the  clergy  as  a  whole  were  roused  to  much 

1  Formerly  only  the  saved  had  been  spoken  of  as  pradeatinati,  the  reprobate  being 

'"^^SI^^  iTcvl  H'al^Pden,  Bampton  Lectures  on  T..  Scnolastic  FnUoaopnv, 
3rd  ed.  p.  418 ;  and  Amp*re.  Miatoire  htUraire  de  France,  1840,  lu,  82. 


CKITICAL  HEEESY  IN  THE  WEST 


289 


greater  activity  by  menaces  to  their  material  comforts  in  this 
world  than  by  an  altruistic  anxiety  for  the  fate  of  lay  souls  in 
the  next  "  {id.  p.  60.  Cp.  p.  63).  This  amount  of  "  stress  "  on 
vested  interests  will  probably  satisfy  most  members  of  the 
Hallam  and  Macaulay  school ;  and  is  ample  for  the  purposes 
of  the  present  contention. 

From  this  point  onward,  the  slow  movement  of  new  ideas  may 
for  a  time  be  conveniently  traced  on  two  general  lines — one  that  of 
the  philosophic  discussion  in  the  schools,  reinforced  by  Saracen 
influences,  the  other  that  of  partially  rationalistic  and  democratic 
heresy  among  the  common  people,  by  way  first  of  contagion  from 
the  East.  The  latter  was  on  the  whole  as  influential  for  sane 
thought  as  the  former,  apart  from  such  ecclesiastical  freethinking  as 
that  of  Berengar  of  Tours  and  Roscelin  (Rousselin),  Canon  of  Com- 
pi^gne.  Berengar  (c.  1050)  was  led  by  moral  reflection^  to  doubt  the 
priestly  miracle  of  the  Eucharist,  and  thenceforth  he  entered  into 
a  stormy  controversy  on  the  subject,  in  the  course  of  which  he  twice 
recanted  under  bodily  fear,  but  passionately  returned  to  his  original 
positions.  Fundamentally  sincere,  and  indignantly  resentful  of  the 
gross  superstition  prevailing  in  the  Church,  he  struck  fiercely  in  his 
writings  at  Popes  Leo  IX  and  Nicholas  II  and  Archbishop  Lanfranc,^ 
all  of  whom  had  opposed  him.  At  length,  after  much  strife,  he  threw 
up  the  contest,  spending  the  latter  part  of  his  long  life  in  seclusion ; 
Pope  Gregory  VII,  who  was  personally  friendly  to  him,  having 
finally  shielded  him  from  persecution.  It  seems  clear  that,  though 
accused,  with  others  of  his  school,  of  rejecting  certain  of  the  gospel 
miracles,^  he  never  became  a  disbeliever ;  his  very  polemic  testifying 
to  the  warmth  of  his  belief  on  his  own  lines.  His  teaching,  however, 
which  went  far  by  reason  of  the  vividness  of  his  style,  doubtless  had 
the  effect  of  promoting  not  only  the  rationalistic-Christian  view  of 
the  Eucharist,^  but  a  criticism  which  went  further,  inasmuch  as  his 
opponents  forced  on  the  bystanders  the  question  as  to  what  reality 
there  was  in  the  Christian  creed  if  his  view  were  true.*  All  such 
influences,  however,  were  but  slight  in  total  mass  compared  with  the 
overwhelming  weight  of  the  economic  interest  of  the  priesthood ; 
and  not  till  the  Reformation  was  Berengar's  doctrine  accepted  by 
a  single  organized  sect.  The  orthodox  doctrine,  in  fact,  was  all- 
essential  to  the  Catholic  Church.  Given  the  daily  miracle  of  the 
"real  presence,"  the   Church   had  a  vital  hold  on  the  Christian 


^  Poole,  p.  103.    Cp.  Neander,  vi,  225  ^  Neander,  vi,  237-38. 

8  Id.  pp.  255-56.  ^  Id.  p.  257. 

*  Id.  p.  258.     As  to  the  wide  extent  of  the  discussion  see  Eeuter,  Geschichte  der 
religioseti  AvSklcirung  im  Mittelalter,  i,  112. 

u 


290 


CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


world,  and  the  priest  was  above  all  lay  rivalry.  Seeing  as  much, 
the  Council  of  the  Lateran  (1059)  met  the  new  criticism  by  estab- 
lishing the  technical  doctrine  of  the  real  presence  for  the  first  time 
as  an  article  of  faith  ;  and  as  such  it  will  doubtless  stand  while  there 
is  a  Catholic  priesthood.  Berengar's  original  view  must  have  been 
shared  by  thousands ;  but  no  Catholic  carried  on  his  propaganda. 
The  question  had  become  one  of  life  and  death. 

Berengar's  forced  prevarications,  which  are  unsympathetically 
set  forth  by  Mosheim  (11  Cent.,  pt.  ii,  ch.  iii,  §§  13-18),  are  made 
much  more  intelligible  in  the  sympathetic  survey  of  Neander 
(vi,  225-60).  See  also  the  careful  inquiry  of  Renter,  Gesch.  der 
religiosen  Aufkldrung  im  Mitielalter,  i,  91  sq.  As  to  Berengar's 
writings,  see  further  Murdock's  note  to  Mosheim,  last  cit.,  §  18. 
The  formal  compromise  forced  on  him  by  Pope  Hildebrand,  who 
was  personally  friendly  to  him,  consisted  in  adding  to  his  denial 
of  the  change  of  the  bread  and  wine  into  *'  body  and  blood  "  the 
doctrine  that  the  body  and  blood  were  "  superadded  to  the  bread 
and  wine  in  and  by  their  consecration."  This  formula,  of  course, 
did  not  represent  the  spirit  of  Berengar's  polemic.  As  to  the 
disputes  on  the  subject,  which  ran  to  the  most  unseemly  length 
of  physiological  detail,  see  Voltaire,  Essai  snr  les  Mceicrs,  ch.  xlv. 
It  is  noteworthy  that  Augustine  had  very  expressly  set  forth  a 
metaphorical  interpretation  of  the  Eucharist — De  doctrma  Chris- 
tiana, 1.  iii,  c.  16.  But  just  as  the  Church  later  set  aside  the 
verdict  of  Thomas  Aquinas  that  the  Virgin  Mary  was  "  born  in 
sin,"  so  did  it  reverse  Augustine's  judgment  on  the  Eucharist. 
Always  the  more  irrational  view  carried  the  day,  as  being  more 
propitious  to  sacerdotal  claims. 

So  far  as  the  Church  by  her  keenly  self-regarding  organization 
could  attain  it,  all  opinion  was  kept  within  the  strict  bounds  of  her 
official  dogma,  in  which  life  in  the  Middle  Ages  so  long  stagnated. 
For  centuries,  despite  the  turmoil  of  many  wars— which,  indeed, 
helped  to  arrest  thought— the  Hfe  of  the  mind  presented  a  uniformity 
hardly  now  conceivable.  The  common  expectation  of  the  ending  of 
the  world,  in  the  year  1000,  in  particular  had  an  immense  prepotency 
of  paralysing  men's  spirits ;  and  the  grooves  of  habit  thus  fixed  were 
hard  to  alter.  For  most  men,  the  notion  of  possible  innovation  in 
thought  did  not  exist :  the  usual  was  the  sacred  :  the  very  ideal  of 
an  improvement  or  reformation,  when  it  arose,  was  one  of  reaching 
back  to  a  far-away  perfection  of  the  past,  never  of  remoulding  things 
on  lines  laid  down  by  reason.  Yet  even  into  this  half-stifled  world 
there  entered,  by  eastern  ways,  and  first  in  the  guise  of  rude  demotic 
departures  from  priestly  prescription,  the  indestructible  spirit  of 
change. 


POPULAR  ANTI-CLERICAL  HERESY 


291 


§  3.  Popular  Anti- Clerical  Heresy 

The  first  Western  traces  of  the  imported  Paulician  heresy  are 
about  the  year  1000,^  when  a  rustic  of  Chalons  is  heard  of  as 
destroying  a  cross  and  a  religious  picture,  and  asserting  that  the 
prophets  are  not  wholly  to  be  believed.^  From  this  time  forward, 
the  world  having  begun  to  breathe  again  after  the  passing  of  the 
year  1000  without  any  sign  of  the  Day  of  Judgment,  heresy  begins 
to  multiply,  the  chief  movers  being  "  distinguished  by  a  tendency  to 
rationalism."  ^  In  1010  there  is  trace  of  it  in  Aquitaine."*  In  the 
year  1022  (or,  as  the  date  is  sometimes  put,  in  1017)  we  hear  of  the 
unveiling  of  a  secret  society  of  rationalizing  mystics  at  Orleans,  ten 
canons  of  one  church  being  members.^  An  Italian  woman  was  said 
to  be  the  founder,  and  thirteen  were  burned  alive  on  their  refusal  to 
recant.  According  to  the  records,  they  denied  all  miracles,  including 
the  Virgin  Birth  and  the  Resurrection  ;  rejected  baptism  and  the 
miracle  of  the  Eucharist ;  took  the  old  "  Docetic  "  view  of  Jesus, 
denying  his  actual  humanity ;  and  affirmed  the  eternity  of  matter 
and  the  non-creation  of  the  world.  They  were  also  accused,  like 
the  first  Christians,  of  promiscuous  nocturnal  orgies  and  of  eating 
sacrificed  infants  ;  but  unless  such  charges  are  to  be  held  valid  in 
the  other  case,  they  cannot  be  here.^  The  stories  told  of  the 
Manichean  community  who  lived  in  the  castle  of  Monforte,  near 
Asti  in  Lombardy,  in  the  years  1025-1040,  and  who  at  length  were 
likewise  burned  alive,  are  similarly  mixed  with  fable.^  On  this  case 
it  is  recorded  that,  while  the  Archbishop  of  Milan  investigated  the 
heresy,  the  burning  of  the  victims  was  the  work  of  the  fanatical 
populace  of  Milan,  and  was  done  against  his  will. 

A  less  savage  treatment  may  have  made  possible  the  alleged 
success  of  Gerhard,  bishop  of  Cambray  and  Arras,  in  reconciling  to 
the  Church  at  Arras,  in  1025  or  1030,  a  number  of  laymen — also 
said  to  have  been  taught  by  an  Italian — who  as  a  body  rejected  all 
external  worship,  setting  aside  priestly  baptism  and  the  sacraments, 
penance   and   images,  funeral   rites,  holy  oil,  church    bells,  cross- 


*  In  945.  however,  Atto,  Bishop  of  Verceil.  is  found  complaining  that  some  people  from 
the  Italian  border  had  introduced  heresies. 

2  Mosheim,  10  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  v,  §  3;  Poole,  Illustrations,  p.  91. 

8  Hardwick,  p.  203.  *  Kurtz,  History  of  the  Christian  Church,  Eng.  tr.  1868,  i,  435. 

5  Renault,  Ahr^g^  chronologique,  ann.  1022;  Neander.  Hist,  of  the  Chr.  Belig.  and 
Church,  Eng.  tr.  Bohn  ed.  vi,  349  sq.;  Mosheim,  10  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  v.  §  3;  De  Potter, 
L' Esprit  de  I'Eglise,  vi.  18-19;  Poole,  pp  96-98;  Lea,  History  of  the  Inquisition,  i,  104, 
108-109.  218;  Gieseler.  Per.  III.  Div.  ii.  §  46.  The  contemporary  accounts  say  nothing  as  to 
the  heretics  being  Manicbeans.    Neander.  p.  350,  note.  , 

6  Cp.  Murdock's  note  on  Mosheim.  Raid's  ed.  p.  386 ;  Monastier.  Hist,  of  the  Vaudots 
Church,  p.  33 ;  Waddington,  p.  356;  Hardwick,  p.  203.  note,  and  p.  207. 

7  De  Potter,  pp.  20-21 ;  Gieseler,  as  cited,  p.  497 ;  Lea,  i,  104, 109. 


292 


CHEISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


worship,  altars,  and  even  churches,  and  denied  the  necessity  of  an 
order  of  priests.^  Few  of  the  Protestants  of  a  later  age  were  so 
thorough-going;  but  the  fact  that  many  of  the  sect  stood  to  the 
old  Marcionite  veto  on  marriage  and  the  sexual  instinct  gives  to 
their  propaganda  its  own  cast  of  fanaticism.  This  last  tenet  it 
seemingly  was  that  gave  the  Paulicians  their  common  Greek  name 
of  cathari^  "the  pure,"  corrupted  or  assimilated  in  Italian  to 
gazzari,  whence  presumably  the  German  word  for  heretic,  Ketzer. 
Such  a  doctrine  had  the  double  misfortune  that  if  acted  on  it  left 
the  sect  without  the  normal  recruitment  of  members'  children, 
while  if  departed  from  it  brought  on  them  the  stigma  of  wanton 
hypocrisy;  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  every  movement  of  the  kind, 
ancient  and  modern,  seems  to  have  contained  within  it  the  two 
extremes    of    asceticism    and    licence,  the  former  generating  the 

latter. 

It  could  hardly,  however,  have  been  the  ascetic  doctrine  that 
won  for  the  new  heresy  its  vogue  in  medieval  Europe ;  nor  is  it 
likely  that  the  majority  of  the  heretics  even  professed  it.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  we  ask  how  it  was  that  in  an  age  of  dense  super- 
stition so  many  uneducated  people  were  found  to  reject  so  promptly 
the  most  sacrosanct  doctrines  of  the  Church,  it  seems  hardly  less 
difficult  to  account  for  the  phenomenon  on  the  bare  ground  of  their 
common  sense.  Critical  common  sense  there  must  have  been,  to 
allow  of  it  at  all ;  but  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  then,  as 
clearly  happened  later  at  the  Reformation,  common  sense  had  a 
powerful  stimulus  in  pecuniary  interest. 

With  the  evidence  as  to  Christian  practice  in  the  fourth  century 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  later  evidence  as  to  clerical  life  on  the 
other,  we  are  certain  of  a  common  play  of  financial  motive  through- 
out the  Middle  Ages.  And  whereas  it  is  intelligible  that  such 
rapacity  as  we  have  seen  described  by  Libanius  should  evoke  a 
heresy  which  rejected  alike  religious  ceremonial  and  the  claims  of 
the  priest,  it  is  further  reasonable  to  surmise  that  resentment  of 
priestly  rapacity  and  luxury  helped  men  to  similar  heresy  m 
Western  Europe  when  the  doctrine  reached  them.  If  any  centuries 
are  to  be  singled  out  as  those  of  maximum  profligacy  and  extortion 


1  Mosheim.  as  last  cited.  §  4  ;  Gieseler.  ii.  496  (§  46) ;  Hardwick.  pp.  203.  204. 
a  Mosbeim.  11  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  v.  §  2.  and  Murdock's  notes  ;  12  Cent.  P*-  J^-  cb/,  §§  4  5 
8  Hardwick.  p.  306;  Kurtz,  i,  433.  The  derivation  through  t^e  Italian  /f  however 
disputed.  Cp.  Murdock's  note  to  Mosheim,  Reid's  ed.  p.  385.  ^nd  Gieseler  ii,  486.  The 
CJta^art.  a  Turkish  (Crimean)  people,  partly  Christian  and  P^^^^^  ^osleni  in  the  mn^^^ 
century  (Gieseler.  as  cited),  may  have  given  the  name  oi  Gazzari,  ^t^'ljfi^^r  .^^^^tv  nf  the 
and  the  German  Ketzer  may  have  come  directly  from  Chuzar  '^^^J^^^^'^'^'^^^^ }^^l 
Chazars,  influenced  by  neighbourhood  with  Islam,  seems  to  have  been  a  very  iree 
syncretism. 


POPULAK  ANTI-CLEBICAL  HEEESY 


293 


among  the  clergy,  they  are  the  ninth  and  the  three  following.^  It 
had  been  part  of  the  policy  of  Charlemagne  everywhere  to  strengthen 
the  hands  of  the  clergy  by  way  of  checking  the  power  of  the  nobles  ;^ 
and  in  the  disorder  after  his  death  the  conflicting  forces  were  in 
semi-anarchic  competition.  The  feudal  habit  of  appointing  younger 
sons  and  underlings  to  livings  wherever  possible  ;  the  disorders  and 
strifes  of  the  papacy ;  and  the  frequent  practice  of  dispossessing 
priests  to  reward  retainers,  thereby  driving  the  dispossessed  to  plunder 
on  their  own  account,  must  together  have  created  a  state  of  things 
almost  past  exaggeration.  It  was  a  matter  of  course  that  the  clergy 
on  their  part  should  make  the  utmost  possible  use  of  their  influence 
over  men's  superstitious  fears  in  order  to  acquire  bequests  of  lands  ;^ 
and  such  bequests  in  turn  exasperated  the  heirs  thus  disinherited. 

Thus  orthodoxy  and  heterodoxy  alike  had  strong  economic 
motives ;  and  in  these  may  be  placed  a  main  part  of  the  explana- 
tion of  the  gross  savagery  of  persecution  now  normal  in  the  Church. 
Such  a  heresy  as  that  of  Gottschalk,  we  saw,  by  denying  to  the 
priest  all  power  of  affecting  the  predestined  course  of  things  here 
or  hereafter,  logically  imperilled  the  very  existence  of  the  whole 
hierarchy,  and  was  by  many  resented  accordingly.  The  same 
principle  entered  into  the  controversies  over  the  Eucharist.  Still 
more  would  the  clergy  resent  the  new  Manichean  heresy,  of  which 
every  element,  from  the  Euchite  tenet  of  the  necessity  of  personal 
prayer  and  mortification,  as  against  the  innate  demon,  to  the  rejection 
of  all  the  rites  of  normal  worship  and  all  the  pretensions  of  priests, 
was  radically  hostile  to  the  entire  organization  of  the  Church. 
When  the  heretics  in  due  course  developed  a  priestly  system  of 
their  own,*  the  hostility  was  only  the  more  embittered. 

The  crisis  was  the  more  acute,  finally,  because  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  tenth  century  the  common  expectation  that  the  world 
would  end  with  the  year  1000  had  inspired  enormous  donations  to 
the  Church,*  with  a  proportionally  oppressive  effect  on  the  general 
population,  moving  them  to  economic  self-defence.  It  is  in  fact 
clear  that  an  anti-clerical  element  entered  largely  into  the  beginnings 
of  the  communal  movement  in  France  in  the  eleventh  century.     In 


1  Cp.  Gieseler,  Per.  Ill,  §§  24.  34 ;  Abb^  Queant.  Qerhert,  ou  Sylvestre  II,  1868,  pp.  3-5, 
citing  Chev6,  Histoire  des  papes,  t.  ii,  and  Baronius,  Annales,  ad  ann.  9(X),  n.  1 ;  Mosheim, 
9  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  ii,  §§  1-4;  with  his  and  Murdock's  refs.;  10  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  ii,  SS  1.  2; 
11  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  ii,  §  1 ;  ch.  iii,  §§  1-3;  12  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  ii.  §  1 :  13  Cent.  pt.  ii^  ch.  ii, 
§§  1-7.    The  authorities  are  often  eminent  Churchmen,  as  Agobard.  Batherius,  Bernard, 

and  Gregory  VIII.  _  ^.  ^    -,    t^  ••   ,„« 

2  See  Mosheim.  8  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  ii,  §  5,  note  z.    Cp.  Duruy.  Hist,  de  France,  ii.  170. 
s  Cp.  Prof.  Abdy,  Lectures  on  Feudalism,  1890,  p.  72. 

<  Mosheim,  12  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  V.  §  6.  ,„.„.,,    t.   •        ,«  />,     4-      4.    •• 

5  Cp.  Morin,  Origines  de  la  dimocratte,  de  6d.  pp.  164-65;  Mosheim.  10  Cent.  pt.  u, 
cb.  iii.  §  3. 


294 


CHBISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


1024  we  find  the  citizens  of  Cambrai  forming  a  league  to  drive  out 
the  canons  ;^  and  though  that  beginning  of  revolt  was  crushed  out 
by  massacre,  the  same  spirit  expressed  itself  in  heresy.  The  result 
was  that  rehgious  persecution  ere  long  eclipsed  political.  Bishop 
Wazon  of  Luttich  (d.  1048)  in  vain  protested  against  the  universal 
practice  of  putting  the  heretics  to  death.""  Manicheans  who  were 
detected  in  1052  at  Goslar,  in  Germany,  were  hanged,'  a  precedent 
being  thus  established  in  the  day  of  small  things. 

All  this  went  on  while  the  course  of  the  papacy  was  so  scandalous 
to  the  least  exacting  moral  sense  that  only  the  ignorance  of  the  era 
could  sustain  any  measure  of  reverence  for  the  Church  as  an  institu- 
tion.    In  the  year  963  the  ablest  of  the  emperors  of  that  age.  Otto 
the  Great,  had  the  consent  of  the  people  of  Kome  to  his  deposition 
of  Pope  John  XII,  a  disorderly  youth  of  twenty-five,  "  the  most 
profligate  if  not  the  most  guilty  of  all  who  have  worn  the  tiara,"  * 
and  to  his  appointing  the  Pope  in  future  ;  but  Teutonic  administra- 
tion  soon   drove   the   populace   to   repeated    revolt,    quenched    by 
massacre,  till   at   length   John   returned,  speedily   to   be   slain   by 
a  wronged  husband.      Economic  interest  entered  largely  into  the 
subsequent  attempts  of  the  Komans  to  choose  their  own  Pope  and 
rule  their  own  city,  and  into  the  contrary  claim  of  the  emperors 
to    do    both ;    and   in   the   nature    of    things    the    usually   absent 
emperors  could  only  spasmodically  carry  their   point.     The  result 
was  an  epoch  of  riotous  disorder  in  the  papacy.     Between  John  and 
Leo  IX  (955-1048)  six  popes  were  deposed,  two  murdered,  and  one 
mutilated  ;^  and  the  Church  was  a  mere  battle-ground  of  the  factions 
of  the  Koman  and  Italian  nobiUty.^     At  last,  in  1047,  "  a  disgraceful 
contest  between  three  claimants  of  the  papal  chair  shocked  even  the 
reckless  apathy  of  Italy  ";^    and  the  emperor  Henry  III  deposed 
them  all  and  appointed  a  pope  of  his  own  choosing,  the  clergy  again 
consenting.     Soon,  however,  as  before,  the  local  claim  was  revived  ; 
and    in    the    papacy   of    the    powerful   Gregory   VII,    known    as 
Hildebrand,    the   head   of    the   Church   determinedly   asserted    its 
autonomy  and  his  own  autocracy.     Then  came  the  long  "  war  of  the 
investitures  "  between  the  popes   and  the  emperors,  in  which  the 
former  were  substantially  the  gainers.     The  result  was,  in  addition 

1  Morin,  p.  168.    Compare,  on  the  whole  communal  movement.  Duruy,  Hist,  de  France, 
ch.  xxi,  and  Michelet. 

2  Gieseler.  Per.  Ill,  §  46,  eiid;  Lea,  i,  109.  218. 

8  Monastier,  Hist,  of  the  Vaudois  Ch.  p.  32;  Lea.  i.  110. 

4  Bryce,  The  Holy  lianian  Empire, 8th  ed.  p.  134.  See  p.  135  for  a  list  of  John  s  offences ; 
and  cp.  p.  85  as  to  other  papal  records.  For  a  contemporary  account  of  Pope  Honorius  II 
(d.  11:30)  see  Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  iii,  448-49. 

5  Hallam,  Middle  Ages,  11th  ed.  ii,  174. 

6  Cp.  MUller.  AUgemetne  Geschichte,  B.  xiv,  Cap.  17.  ^  Bryce.  p.  152. 


POPULAR  ANTI-CLEEICAL  HEBESY 


295 


to  the  endless  miseries  set  up  by  war,  a  systematic  development  of 
that  financial  corruption  which  already  had  been  scandalous  enough. 
The  cathedral  chapters  and  the  nobles  traded  in  bishoprics ;  the 
popes  sold  their  ratifications  for  great  sums ;  the  money  was 
normally  borrowed  by  the  bishops  from  the  papal  usurers ;  and 
there  was  witnessed  throughout  Europe  the  spectacle  of  the  Church 
denouncing  all  usury  as  sin,  while  its  own  usurers  were  scrupulously 
protected,  the  bishops  paying  to  them  their  interest  from  the  revenues 
they  were  able  to  extort.^  Satirical  comment  naturally  abounded 
wherever  men  had  any  knowledge  of  the  facts ;  and  what  current 
literature  there  was  reflected  the  feeling  on  all  sides. 

The  occurrence  of  the  first  and  second  crusades,  the  work 
respectively  of  Peter  the  Hermit  and  St.  Bernard,  created  a  period 
of  new  fanaticism,  somewhat  unfavourable  to  heresy  ;  but  even  in 
that  period  the  new  sects  were  at  work,^  and  in  the  twelfth  century, 
when  crusading  had  become  a  mere  feudal  conspiracy  of  conquest 
and  plunder,^  heresy  reappeared,  to  be  duly  met  by  slaughter.  A 
perfect  ferment  of  anti-clerical  heresy  had  arisen  in  Italy,  France,  and 
Flanders.^  At  Orvieto,  in  Italy,  the  heretics  for  a  time  actually  had 
the  mastery,  and  were  put  down  only  after  a  bloody  struggle.^  In 
France,  for  a  period  of  twenty  years  from  1106,  Peter  de  Brueys 
opposed  infant  baptism,  the  use  of  churches,  holy  crosses,  prayers 
for  the  dead  (the  great  source  of  clerical  income),  and  the  doctrine 
of  the  Real  Presence  in  the  eucharist  (the  main  source  of  their 
power),  and  so  set  up  the  highly  heretical  sect  of  Petrobrussians.^ 
Driven  from  his  native  district  of  Vallonise,  he  long  maintained 
himself  in  Gascony,  till  at  length  he  was  seized  and  burned  (1126 
or  1130).  The  monk  Henry  (died  in  prison  1148)  took  a  similar  line, 
directly  denouncing  the  clergy  in  Switzerland  and  France ;  as  did 
TanqueHn  in  Flanders  (killed  by  a  priest,  1125) ;  though  in  his  case 
there  seems  to  have  been  as  much  of  religious  hallucination  as  of 
the  contrary.'^  A  peasant,  Eudo  of  Stella  (who  died  in  prison),  is 
said  to  have  half-revolutionized  Brittany  with  his  anti-ecclesiastical 
preaching.*^  The  more  famous  monk  Arnold  of  Brescia  (strangled 
and  burned  in  1155),  a  pupil  of  Abailard,  but  orthodox  in  his  theology 
and  austere  in  his  life,  simplified  his  plan  of  reform  (about  1139) 
into  a  proposal  that  the  whole  wealth  of  the  clergy,  from  the  pope 

*  "Janus,"  The  Pope  and  the  Councils,  Eng.  tr.  pp.  178-79. 

2  Cp.  Heeren,  Essai  surl'influence  des  Croisades,  1808,  p.  172. 

8  Sir  G.  Cox,  The  Crusades,  p.  111.  ^  Cp.  Lea,  i.  111.  ^  u.  p.  115. 

6  Hardwick,  p.  310 ;  Lea,  i,  68;  Reuter.  Gesch.  der  religiosen  Aufhldrung  %m  Mittelalter, 
i,  148-49;  Mosheim,  as  last  cited,  §  7. 

7  Cp.  Motley,  Biseof  the  Dutch  Bepublic,  ed.  1863,  p.  36. 

8  Mosheim,  12  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  v,  §§  7-9,  and  varior.  notes;  Monastier,  pp.  38-41,  43-47; 
Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  v,  384-90. 


296 


CHKISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


to  the  monks,  should  be  transferred  to  the  civil  power,  leaving 
churchmen  to  lead  a  spiritual  life  on  voluntary  offerings.*  For 
fifteen  years  the  stir  of  his  movement  lasted  in  Lombardy,  till  at 
length  his  formation  of  a  republic  at  Eome  forced  the  papacy  to 
combine  with  the  Emperor  Frederick  II,  who  gave  Arnold  up  to 
death.  But  though  his  movement  perished,  anti-clericahsm  did  not ; 
and  heretical  sects  of  some  kind  persisted  here  and  there,  in  despite 
of  the  Church,  till  the  age  of  the  Eeformation.  In  Italy,  during  the 
age  of  the  Eenaissance,  all  alike  were  commonly  called  paterini  or 
patarini — a  nickname  which  seems  to  come  from  pataria,  a  Milanese 
word  meaning  "popular  faction"  or  "rowdies."^  Thus  in  the 
whole  movement  of  fresh  popular  thought  there  is  a  manifest  con- 
nection with  the  democratic  movement  in  politics,  though  in  the 
schools  the  spirit  of  discussion  and  dialectic  had  no  similar 
relationship. 

During  the  first  half  of  the  century  its  warfare  with  the  emperors, 
and  the  frequent  appointment  of  anti-popes,  prevented  any  syste- 
matic policy  on  the  part  of  the  Holy  See,^  repression  being  mostly 
left  to  the  local  ecclesiastical  authorities.  It  was  in  1139  that 
Innocent  II  issued  the  first  papal  decree  against  Cathari,  expeUing 
them  from  the  Church  and  calHng  on  the  temporal  power  to  give 
full  effect  to  their  excommunication.*  In  1163  Pope  Alexander  III, 
being  exiled  from  Eome  by  Frederick  I  and  the  anti-pope  Victor, 
called  a  great  council  at  Tours,  where  again  a  pohcy  of  excommuni- 
cation was  decided  on,  the  secular  authorities  being  commanded  to 
imprison  the  excommunicated  and  confiscate  their  property,  but  not 
to  slay  them.  In  the  same  year  some  Cathari  arrested  at  Cologne 
had  been  sentenced  to  be  burned  ;  but  the  Council  did  not  go  so 
far.     As  a  result  the  decree  had  little  or  no  effect.'* 

So  powerless  was  the  Church  at  this  stage  that  in  1167  the 
Cathari  held  a  council  of  their  own  near  Toulouse  ;  a  bishop  of 
their  order,  Nicetas,  coming  from  Constantinople  to  preside;  and 
a  whole  system  of  French  sees  was  set  on  foot.®  So  numerous  had 
the  Cathari  now  become  that  their  highest  grade,  the  perfecti,  alone 
was  reckoned  to  number  4,000  ;^  and  from  this  time  it  is  of  Cathari 
that  we  read  in  the  rolls  of  persecution.  About  1170  four  more  of 
them,  from  Flanders,  were  burned  at  Cologne ;  and  others,  of  the 

1  Hardwick,  p.  267 ;  Mosheim.  as  last  cited,  §  10 ;  Monastier.  p.  49. 

2  Hardwick.  p.  204,  note;  Kurtz,  i.  433.  Cp.  the  Transactions  of  the  New  IShaJeeftpenre 
Society,  1875-76,  pt.  ii,  p.  313 ;  Mosheim,  11  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  ii.  §  13,  and  note ;  Milman,  Latin 
Christianity,  v.  401.  On  the  sects  in  general  see  De  Potter,  vi.  217-310  ;  and  Cantii.  Gli 
Eretici  d' Italia,  1865,  i.  149-53. 

8  Lea.  i,  115.  *  Id.  pp.  117-18.  «  Id.  p.  119. 

6  Kurtz,  i,  435;  Lea,  i,  119. 

7  Hardwick.  p.  308.  note ;  Murdock's  note  to  Mosheim.  p.  426 ;  Monastier.  pp.  106  -107. 


POPULAE  ANTI-CLEBICAL  HEEESY 


297 


higher  grade  called  hos  homes  {  =  boni  homines,  "good  men"),  at 
Toulouse.  In  1179,  the  heresy  still  gaining  ground,  an  oecumenical 
council  (the  Third  Lateran)  was  held  at  Rome  under  Pope  Alexander 
III,  decreeing  afresh  their  excommunication,  and  setting  up  a  new 
machinery  of  extirpation  by  proclaiming  a  crusade  at  once  against 
the  orderly  heretics  of  southern  France  and  the  companies  of  openly 
irreligious  freebooters  who  had  arisen  as  a  result  of  many  wars  and 
much  misgovernment.  To  all  who  joined  in  the  crusade  was  offered 
an  indulgence  of  two  years.  In  the  following  year  Henry  of 
Clairvaux,  Cardinal  of  Albano,  took  the  matter  in  hand  as  papal 
plenipotentiary ;  and  in  1181  he  raised  a  force  of  horse  and  foot  and 
fell  upon  the  ill-defended  territory  of  the  Viscount  of  Beziers,  where 
many  heretics,  including  the  daughter  of  Raymond  of  Toulouse,  had 
taken  refuge.  The  chief  stronghold  was  captured,  with  two  Catharist 
bishops,  who  renounced  their  heresy,  and  were  promptly  given 
prebends  in  Toulouse.  Many  others  submitted ;  but  as  soon  as  the 
terms  for  which  the  crusaders  had  enlisted  were  over  and  the  army 
disbanded,  they  returned  to  their  heretical  practices.^  Two  years 
later  an  army  collected  in  central  France  made  a  campaign  against 
the  freebooters,  slaying  thousands  in  one  battle,  hanging  fifteen 
hundred  after  another,  and  blinding  eighty  more.  But  freebooting 
also  continued.^ 

The  first  crusade  against  heresy  having  failed,  it  was  left  by  the 
papacy  for  a  number  of  years  to  itself ;  though  anti-pope  Lucius  III 
in  1184  sought  to  set  up  an  Inquisition;  and  in  1195  a  papal  legate 
held  a  council  at  Montpelher,  seeking  to  create  another  crusade. 
The  zeal  of  the  faithful  was  mainly  absorbed  in  Palestine ;  while 
the  nobles  at  home  were  generally  at  war  with  each  other.  Heresy 
accordingly  continued  to  flourish,  though  there  was  never  any 
suspension  of  local  persecution  outside  of  Provence,  where  the 
heretics  were  now  in  a  majority,  having  more  theological  schools 
and  scholars  than  the  Church.^  In  France  in  particular,  in  the 
early  years  of  the  reign  of  Philip  Augustus  (sue.  1180),  many 
paterini  were  put  to  death  by  burning;*  and  the  clergy  at  length 
persuaded  the  king  to  expel  the  Jews,  the  work  being  done  almost 
as  cruelly  as  it  was  two  centuries  later  in  Spain.  In  England, 
where  there  was  thus  far  little  heresy,  it  was  repressed  by  Henry  II. 
Some  thirty  rustics  came  from  Flanders  in  1166,  fleeing  persecution, 

1  Lea,  i,  124.  2  j^.  p.  126.  3  Id.  pp.  127-28. 

*  Kitchin,  History  of  France,  4th  ed.  1889,  i.  286;  citing  Chron.  de  St.  Denis,  p.  350. 
The  Annales  Victoriani  at  Philip's  death  (1223)  pronounce  himecclesiarum  et  religionarum 
personarum  amator  et  fautor  (Renault's  Abr^gS  Chronologique).  Among  the  many 
Cathari  put  to  death  in  his  reign  was  Nicholas,  the  most  famous  painter  in  France- 
burned  at  Braine  in  1204.    Lea,  i,  131. 


298 


CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


and  vainly  sought  to  propagate  their  creed.  Zealous  to  prove  his 
orthodoxy  in  the  period  of  his  quarrel  with  Becket,  Henry  presided 
over  a  council  of  bishops  called  by  him  at  Oxford  to  discuss  the  case  ; 
and  the  heretics  were  condemned  to  be  scourged,  branded  in  the  facoi 
and  driven  forth— to  perish  in  the  winter  wilds.  "  England  was  not 
hospitable  to  heresy  ; "  and  practically  her  orthodoxy  was  "  unsullied 
until  the  rise  of  WicHf."  ' 

In  southern  Europe  and  northern  Italy  in  the  last  quarter  of  the 
century  a  foremost  place  began  to  be  taken  by  the  sect  of  the 
Waldenses,  or  Vaudois  (otherwise  the  Poor  Men  of  Lyons),  which — 
whether  deriving  from  ancient  dissent  surviving  in  the  Vaux  or 
Valleys  of  Piedmont,^  or  taking  its  name  and  character  from  the 
teaching  of  the  Lyons  merchant,  Peter  Waldus,  or  an  earlier  Peter 
of  Vaux  or  Valdis^ — conforms  substantially  to  the  general  heretical 
tendencies  of  that  age,  in  that  it  rejected  the  papal  authority, 
contended  for  the  reading  of  the  Bible  by  the  laity,  condemned 
tithes,  disparaged  fasting,  stipulated  for  poverty  on  the  part  of 
priests  and  denied  their  special  status,  opposed  prayers  for  the 
dead,  and  preached  peace  and  non-resistance.  In  1199,  at  Metz, 
they  were  found  in  possession  of  a  French  translation  of  the  New 
Testament,  the  Psalms,  and  the  book  of  Job — a  new  and  startling 
invasion  of  the  priestly  power  in  the  west.  Above  all,  their  men 
and  women  alike  w^ent  about  preaching  in  the  towns,  in  the  houses, 
and  in  the  churches,  and  administered  the  eucharist  without  priests.* 
Thus  Cathari,  Paterini,  Manicheans,  and  non-Manichean  Albigenses 
and  Waldenses  were  on  all  fours  for  the  Church,  as  opponents  of  its 
economic  claims;  and  when  at  length,  under  Celestine  III  and 
Innocent  III,  the  Holy  See  began  to  be  consolidated  after  a  long 
period  of  incessant  change,*^  desperate  measures  began  to  be  contem- 
plated. Organized  heresy  was  seen  to  be  indestructible  save  by 
general  extirpation;  and  on  economic  grounds  it  was  not  to  be 
tolerated.  At  Orvieto  the  heresy  stamped  out  with  blood  in  1125 
was  found  alive  again  in  1150  ;   was  again  put  down  in  1163  by 

»  Lea.  i,  113-14.    Cp.  Ranke,  Hiot.  of  the  Popefi,  Eng.  tr.  1-vol.  ed.  p.  13. 

a  Cp.  Hardwick.  p.  312 ;  Mosheiui,  12  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  v,  §  11,  and  notes  in  Reid's  ed.; 
Monastier.  Hist,  of  the  Vaudois  Church,  Eng.  tr.  1848.  pp.  12-29;  Faber,  The  Ancient 
Vallenses  and  Albigenses,  pp.  28.  284,  etc.  As  Vigilantius  took  refuge  in  the  Cottian  Alps. 
his  doctrine  may  have  survived  there,  as  argued  by  Monastier  (p.  10)  and  Faber  (p.  290). 
The  influence  of  Claudius  of  Turin,  as  they  further  contend,  might  also  come  into  play. 
On  the  whole  subject  see  Gieseler.  Per.  III.  Div.  iii,  §  88. 

8  Cp.  Mosheim  with  Faber,  bk.  iii.  chs.  iii,  viii ;  Hardwick.  as  cited ;  and  Monastier. 
pp.  53-82.  Waddington.  p.  353.  holds  Mosheim  to  be  in  error;  and  there  are  some  grounds 
for  dating  the  Waldensian  heresy  before  Waldus,  who  flourished  117Q-1180  {id.  p.  354). 
Waldus  had  to  flee  from  France,  and  finally  died  in  Bohemia.  1197  (Kurtz,  i.  439). 

*  Cp.  Lea,  Hist,  of  the  Inquisition,  i,  73-88.  Waldensian  theology  varied  from  time 
to  time. 

5  Between  1153  and  1191  there  were  ten  popes,  three  of  them  anti-popes.  Celestine  III 
held  the  chair  from  1191  to  1198 ;  and  Innocent  III  from  the  latter  year  to  1216. 


HEEESY  IN  SOUTHEKN  FEANCE 


299 


burning,  hanging,  and  expulsion  ;  and  yet  was  again  found  active  at 
the  close  of  the  century.^  In  1198  Innocent  III  is  found  beginning 
a  new  Inquisition  among  the  Albigenses ;  and  in  1199,  while 
threatening  them  with  exile  and  confiscation,^  he  made  a  last 
diplomatic  attempt  to  force  the  obstinately  heretical  people  of 
Orvieto  to  take  an  oath  of  fidelity  in  the  year  1199.  It  ended 
in  the  killing  of  his  representative  by  the  people.^  The  papacy 
accordingly  laid  plans  to  destroy  the  enemy  at  its  centre  of 
propagation. 

§  4.  Heresy  in  Southern  France 

In  Provence  and  Languedoc,  the  scene  of  the  first  great  papal 
crusade  against  anti-clerical  heresy,  there  were  represented  all  the 
then  existing  forces  of  popular  freethought ;  and  the  motives  of  the 
crusade  were  equally  typical  of  the  cause  of  authority. 

1.  In  addition  to  the  Paulician  and  other  movements  of  religious 
rationalism  above  noted,  the  Languedoc  region  was  a  centre  of  semi- 
popular  literary  culture,  which  was  to  no  small  extent  ant i- clerical, 
and  by  consequence  somewhat  anti-religious.  The  Latin-speaking 
jongleurs  or  minstrels,  known  as  Goliards,^  possessing  as  they  did 
a  clerical  culture,  were  by  their  way  of  life  committed  to  a  joyous 
rather  than  an  ascetic  philosophy ;  and  though  given  to  blending  the 
language  of  devotion  with  that  of  the  drinking-table,  very  much  after 
the  fashion  of  Hafiz,  they  were  capable  of  burlesquing  the  mass,  the 
creed,  hymns  to  the  Virgin,  the  Lord's  Prayer,  confessions,  and  parts 
of  the  gospels,  as  well  as  of  keenly  satirizing  the  endless  abuses  of 
the  Church.**  "  One  is  astonished  to  meet,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  in 
a  time  always  represented  as  crushed  under  the  yoke  of  authority, 
such  incredible  audacities  on  the  papacy,  the  episcopacy,  chivalry,  on 
the  most  revered  dogmas  of  religion,  such  as  paradise,  hell,  etc."^ 
The  rhymers  escaped  simply  because  there  was  no  police  that  could 
catch  them.  Denounced  by  some  of  the  stricter  clergy,  they  were 
protected  by  others.  They  were,  in  fact,  the  minstrels  of  the  free- 
living  churchmen.' 

1  De  Potter,  vi,  26 ;  Lea.  i,  115.  2  Lea.  i.  290.  ^  pg  Potter,  vi.  28. 

*  See  Bartoli,  Storia  della  Letteratura  Italiana,  1878,  i,  262,  note,  also  his  I  Precursor i 
del  Renascimento,  1877,  p.  37.  In  this  section  and  in  the  next  chapter  I  am  indebted  for 
various  clues  to  the  Rev.  John  Owen's  Skeptics  of  the  Italian  Benaissance.  As  to  the 
Goliards  generally,  see  that  work,  pp.  38-45;  Bartoli,  Storia,  cap.  viii;  Milman,  Latin 
Christianity,  bk.  xiv,  ch.  iv  ;  and  Gebhart,  Les  Origines  de  la  Renaissance  en  Italic,  1879, 
pp.  125-26.    The  name  Goliard  came  from  the  type-name  Golias,  used  by  many  satirists. 

5  Bartoli,  Storia,  i.  271-79.  Cp.  Schlegel's  note  to  Mosheim,  Reid's  ed.  p.  332,  following 
Ratherius  ;  and  Gebhart,  as  cited.  Milman  (4th  ed.  ix.  189)  credits  the  Goliards  with  "a 
profound  respect  for  sacred  things,  and  freedom  of  invective  against  sacred  persons." 
This  shows  an  imperfect  knowledge  of  much  of  their  work. 

6  C.  Lenient,  La  Satire  en  France  an  rnoyen  dge,  1859,  pp.  38-39. 

7  Owen,  as  cited,  pp.  43,  45 ;  Bartoli,  Storia,  i,  293. 


300 


CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


Of  this  type  is  Guiot  of  Provence,  a  Black  Friar,  the  author  of 
La  Bible  Guiot,  written  between  1187  and  1206.  He  is  a  lover  of 
good  living,  a  champion  of  aristocrats,  a  foe  of  popular  movements,' 
and  withal  a  little  of  a  buffoon.  But  it  is  to  be  counted  to  him  for 
righteousness  that  he  thought  the  wealth  devoured  by  the  clergy 
might  be  more  usefully  spent  on  roads,  bridges,  and  hospitals.^  He 
has  also  a  good  word  for  the  old  pagans  who  Hved  "  according  to 
reason  ";  and  as  to  his  own  time,  he  is  sharply  censorious  alike  of 
princes,  pope,  and  prelates.  The  princes  are  rascals  who  '*  do  not 
believe  in  God,"  and  depress  their  nobility ;  and  the  breed  of  the 
latter  has  sadly  degenerated.  The  pope  is  to  be  prayed  for  ;  but  he 
is  ill  counselled  by  his  cardinals,  who  conform  to  the  ancient  ten- 
dency of  Kome  to  everything  evil ;  many  of  the  archbishops  and 
bishops  are  no  better;  and  the  clergy  in  general  are  eaten  up  by 
greed  and  simony.'     This  is  in  fact  the  common  note.* 

A  kindred  spirit  is  seen  in  much  of  the  verse  alike  of  the  northern 
Trouv^res  and  the  southern  Troubadours.  A  modern  Catholic  his- 
torian of  medieval  literature  complains  that  their  compositions 
"  abound  with  the  severest  ridicule  of  such  persons  and  of  such 
things  as,  in  the  temper  of  the  age.  were  highly  estimated  and  most 
generally  revered,"  and  notes  that  in  consequence  they  were  ranked 
by  the  devout  as  "lewd  and  impious  libertines."'  In  particular 
they  satirized  the  practice  of  excommunication  and  the  use  made  by 
the  Church  of  hell  and  purgatory  as  sources  of  revenue.^  Their 
anti-clerical  poetry  having  been  as  far  as  possible  destroyed  by  the 
Inquisition,  its  character  has  to  be  partly  inferred  from  the  remains 
of  the  northern  trouv^res — e.g.,  Ruteboeuf  and  Raoul  de  Houdan,  of 
whom  the  former  wrote  a  Voya  de  Paradis,  in  which  Sloth  is  a 
canon  and  Pride  a  bishop,  both  on  their  way  to  heaven  ;  while 
Raoul  has  a  Songe  d'enfer  in  which  hell  is  treated  in  a  spirit  of  the 
most  audacious  burlesque.'  In  a  striking  passage  of  the  old  tale 
Aucassin  et  Nicolette  there  is  naively  revealed  the  spontaneous 
revolt  against  pietism  which  underlay  all  these  flings  of  irreverence. 
"Into  paradise,"  cries  Aucassin,  "  go  none  but those  aged  priests, 

1  Disparagement  of  the  serf  is  a  commonplace  of  medieval  literature.  Langlois, 
La  Vie  en  France  au  moyen  dge,  1908.  p.  169,  and  ^wte;  Lanson,  Hist,  de  la  litt.frangaise, 
p.  96.  At  this  point  the  semi-aristocratic  jongleurs  and  the  writers  of  bourgeois  bias,  such 
as  some  of  the  contributors  to  Reynard  the  Fox,  coincided.  The  Benart  stories  are  at  once 
anti-aristocratic,  anti-clerical,  and  anti-demotic.  ,«     *.  -i 

2  C.  Lenient.  La  Satire  en  France,  p.  115.  Lenient  cites  from  Erasmus  s  letters  (Sept.  1. 
1528)  a  story  of  a  German  burned  alive  in  his  time  for  venting  the  same  idea. 

»  Langlois.  as  cited,  pp.  30-68. 

*  Cp.  Langlois.  pp.  107.  129.  263.  etc.    C.  Lenient,  as  cited,  p.  115. 

5  Rev,  Joseph  Berington,  Literary  History  of  tJie  Middle  Ages,  ed.  1846,  p.  229.  Cp. 
Owen.  p.  43. 

6  Owen.  p.  43:  Bartoli.  Storia,  i,  295.  as  to  the  French /a bhawx. 

7  Labitte,  La  divine  comidie  avant  Dante,  in  Charpentier  ed.  of  Dante,  pp.  133-34. 


HEEESY  IN  SOUTHERN  FEANCE 


301 


i 


and  those  old  cripples,  and  the  maimed,  who  all  day  long  and  all 
night  cough  before  the  altars,  and  in  the  crypts  beneath  the  churches  ; 

those who  are  naked  and  barefoot  and  full  of  sores Such  as 

these  enter  in  paradise,  and  with  them  have  I  nought  to  do.  But 
in  hell  will  I  go.  For  to  hell  go  the  fair  clerks  and  the  fair 
knights  who  are  slain  in  the  tourney  and  the  gi'eat  wars,  and  the 
stout  archer  and  the  loyal  man.  With  them  will  I  go.  And  there 
go  the  fair  and  courteous  ladies  [of  many  loves] ;  and  there  pass  the 
gold   and   the  silver,  the  ermine   and   all   rich   furs,  harpers   and 

minstrels,  and  the  happy  of  the  world.     With  these  will  I  go "  ^ 

It  was  such  a  temper,  rather  than  reasoned  unbelief,  that  inspired 
the  blasphemous  parodies  in  Beynard  the  Fox  and  other  popular 
works  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

The  Proven9al  literature,  further,  was  from  the  first  influenced 
by  the  culture  of  the  Saracens,^  who  held  Sicily  and  Calabria  in  the 
ninth  and  tenth  centuries,  and  had  held  part  of  Languedoc  itself  for 
a  few  years  in  the  eighth.  On  the  passing  of  the  duchy  of  Provence 
to  Eaymond  Berenger,  Count  of  Barcelona,  at  the  end  of  the 
eleventh  century,  not  only  were  the  half-Saracenized  Catalans 
mixed  with  the  Provengals,  but  Eaymond  and  his  successors  freely 
introduced  the  arts  and  science  of  the  Saracens  into  their  dominion.^ 
In  the  Norman  kingdom  of  Sicily  too  the  Saracen  influence  was 
great  even  before  the  time  of  Frederick  II ;  and  thence  it  reached 
afresh  through  Italy  to  Provence,*  carrying  with  it  everywhere,  by 
way  of  poetry,  an  element  of  anti-clerical  and  even  of  anti-Christian 
rationalism.^  Though  this  spirit  was  not  that  of  the  Cathari  and 
Waldenses,  yet  the  fact  that  the  latter  strongly  condemned  the 
Crusades®  was  a  point  in  common  between  them  and  the  sympa- 
thizers with  Saracen  culture.  And  as  the  tolerant  Saracen  schools 
of  Spain  or  the  Christian  schools  of  the  same  region,  which  copied 
their  curriculum,'  were  in  that  age  resorted  to  by  youth  from  each 
of  the  countries  of  western  Europe  for  scientific  teaching® — all  the 


1  Aucassin  and  Nicolette,  tr.  by  Eugene  Mason,  p.  6. 

'•^  Sismondi.  Literature  of  Southern  Europe,  Eng.  tr.  i,  74-95.  ^  Id.  p.  76. 

*  Zeller,  Histoire  d'ltalie,  1853.  p.  152  ;  Renan.  Averro^s,  p.  184. 

5  "The  Troubadours  in  truth  were  freethinkers"  (Owen,  Italian  Skeptics,  -p.  i8).  Cp. 
Lea.  Hist,  of  the  Inquisition,  ii,  2 ;  and  Hardwick.  p.  274.  note  4,  as  to  the  common  animus 
against  the  papacy.  ,         _ 

6  Heeren.  Essai  sur  Vinfluence  des  Croisades,  French  tr.  1808,  p.  174,  note  ;  Owen, 
Italian  Skeptics,  p.  44.  note. 

7  Abb6  Queant,  Gerbert,  ou  Sylvestre  II,  1868,  pp.  30-31.  ,...,«  ^     . 

8  Sismondi,  as  cited,  p.  82;  Owen,  pp.  66,  68  ;  Mosheim,  11  Cent.  pt.  u.  ch.i,  §  4;  12  Cent, 
pt.  ii,  ch.  i,  §  9,  and  Reid's  note  to  §  8 ;  Hampden.  Bampton  Lectures,  p.  446.  The  familiar 
record  that  Gerbert,  afterwards  Pope  Sylvester  II.  studied  in  Spain  among  the  Arabs 
(Ueberweg,  i,  369)  has  of  late  years  been  discredited  (Olleris,  Vie  de  Gerbert,  1867,  chs.  n 
and  XXV ;  Ueberweg,  p.  430;  Poole,  Illustrations,  p.  88);  but  its  very  currency  depended 
on  the  commonness  of  some  such  proceeding  in  his  age.  In  any  case,  the  teaching  he 
would  receive  at  the  Spanish  monastery  of  Borel  would  owe  all  its  value  to  Saracen 


302 


CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


latest  medical  and  most  other  scientific  knowledge  being  in  their 
hands— the  influence  of  such  culture  must  have  been  pecuUarly 
strong  in  Provence/ 

The  medieval  mystery-plays  and  moralities,  already  common  in 
Provence,  mixed  at  times  with  the  normal  irreverence  of  iUiterate 
faith '^  a  vein  of  surprisingly  pronounced  skeptical  criticism,^  which 
at  the  least  was  a  stimulus  to  critical  thought  among  the  auditors, 
even  if  they  were  supposed  to  take  it  as  merely  dramatic.  Inas- 
much as  the  drama  was  hereditarily  pagan,  and  had  been  continually 
denounced  and  ostracized  by  Fathers  and  Councils,*  it  would  be 
natural  that  its  practitioners,  even  when  in  the  service  of  the  Church, 
should  be  unbeHevers. 

The  philosophy  and  science  of  both  the  Arabs  and  the  Spanish 
Jews  were  specially  cultivated  in  the  Provence  territory.  The 
college  of  Montpellier  practised  on  Arab  lines  medicine,  botany,  and 
mathematics ;  and  the  Jews,  who  had  been  driven  from  Spain  by 
the  Almohades,  had  flourishing  schools  at  Narbonne,  Beziers,  Nimes, 
and  Carcassonne,  as  well  as  MontpeUier,  and  spread  alike  the 
philosophy  of  Averroes  and  the  semi-rational  theology  of  the 
Jewish  thinker  Maimonides,*  whose  school  held  broadly  by 
Averroism. 

For  the  rest,  every  one  of  the  new  literary  influences  that  were 
assaihng  the  Church  would  tend  to  flourish  in  such  a  civiHzation  as 
that  of  Languedoc,  which  had  been  peaceful  and  prosperous  for 
over  two  hundred  years.  Unable  to  lay  hold  of  the  popular  poets 
and  minstrels  who  propagated  anti-clericahsm,  the  papacy  could 
hope  to  put  down  by  brute  force  the  social  system  in  which  they 
flourished,  crushing  the  pious  and  more  hated  heretic  with  the 
scofter.  And  Languedoc  was  a  peculiarly  tempting  field  for  such 
operations.  Its  relative  lack  of  military  strength,  as  well  as  its 
pre-eminence  in  heresy,  led  Innocent  III,  a  peculiarly  zealous 
assertor  of  the  papal  power,**  to  attack  it  in  preference  to  other  and 
remoter  centres  of  enmity.     In  the  first  year  of  his  pontificate,  1198, 

culture.  Cp.  Abb6  Queant.  Gerbert,  pp.  26-32.  The  greatness  of  the  service  he  rendered 
to  northern  Europe  in  introducing  the  Arabic  numerals  is  expressed  in  the  legend  of  his 
magical  powers.    Compare  the  legends  as  to  Roger  Bacon. 

1  Sismondi,  p.  83.  .      .    -      ,  ,     ^     ^ 

2  Cp.  G.  H.  Lewes.  The  Spanish  Draina,  1846,  pp.  11-14  ;  Littr6,  Etudes  aur  les  barbares 

et  le  moyeii  dge,  3e  6dit.  p.  356. 

8  See  the  passages  cited  by  Owen.  p.  58. 

*  Cp.  Bartoli,  Storia,  pp.  200-202.  ,      .  „  , 

6  Gebhart.  Les  Origines  de  la  Renaissance,  pp.  4. 17:  Renan,  Averroes  et  I  Averrolsme, 
pp.  145, 183.  185 ;  Libri.  Hist.des  sciences  tnathematiques  en  Italic,  i,  153;  Michelet.  Hisf. 
d£  France,  t.  vii,  Renaissance,  introd.  note  du  §  vii ;  Haur^au,  Hist,  de  la philos.  scolastique, 
i,  382.    Cp.Fr&nck,  :^tucUs  Orientates,  imi,  p.  357.  ,  .     .  .i 

6  As  to  the  Pope's  character  compare  Sismondi,  Hist,  of  the  Crusades  against  the 
Albigense.siEng.tr.  from  vols,  vi  and  vii  of  his  Histoire  des  Fran^ats),  p.  10;  Hallam, 
Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages,  Uth  ed.  ii,  198;  Mosheim,  13  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  ii.  §§  6-8. 


HEEESY  IN  SOUTHERN  FRANCE 


303 


he  commenced  a  new  and  zealous  Inquisition*  in  the  doomed  region  ; 
and  in  the  year  1207,  when  as  much  persecution  had  been  accom- 
plished as  the  lax  faith  of  the  nobility  and  many  of  the  bishops 
would  consent  to — an  appeal  to  the  King  of   France  to  interfere 
being  disregarded — the  scheme  of  a  crusade  against  the  dominions 
of   Raymond   Count    of    Toulouse   was    conceived   and    gradually 
matured.     The  alternate  weakness  and  obstinacy  of  Raymond,  and 
the  fresh  provocation  given  by  the  murder,  in  1208,  of  the  arrogant 
papal  legate,  Pierre  de  Castelnau,^  permitted   the   success   of   the 
scheme  in  such  hands.     The  crusade  was  planned  exactly  on  the 
conditions    of   those    against   the    Saracens — the  heretics  at   home 
being   declared   far  worse   than   they.^     The  crusaders  were  freed 
from  payment  of  interest  on  their  debts,  exempted  from  the  juris- 
diction of  all  law  courts,  and  absolved  from  all  their  sins  past  or 
future.*     To  earn  this  reward  they  were  to  give  only  forty  days' 
service* — a  trifle  in  comparison  with  the  hardships  of  the  crusades 
to  Palestine.     **  Never  therefore  had  the  cross  been  taken  up  with 
a  more  unanimous  consent."^     Bishops  and  nobles  in  Burgundy 
and  France,  the  English  Simon  de  Montfort,  the  Abbot  of  Citeaux, 
and  the  Bernardino  monks  throughout    Europe,  combined  in  the 
cause ;  and  recruits  came  from  Austria  and  Saxony,  from  Bremen, 
even  from  Slavonia,  as  well  as  from  northern  France.'     The  result 
was  such  a  campaign  of  crime  and  massacre  as  European  history 
cannot  match.*^     Despite   the   abject   submission   of  the   Count   of 
Toulouse,  who  was  publicly  stripped  and  scourged,  and  despite  the 
efforts  of  his  nephew  the  Count  of  Albi  to  make  terms,  village  after 
village   was   fired,   all   heretics   caught   were   burned,   and   on   the 
capture  of  the  city  and  castle  of  Beziers  (1209),  every  man,  woman, 
and  child  within  the  walls  w^as   slaughtered,  many  of  them  in  the 
churches,  whither  they  had  run   for  refuge.     The   legate,  Arnold 
abbot  of  Citeaux,  being  asked  at  an  early  stage  how  the  heretics 
were  to  be  distinguished  from  the  faithful,  gave  the  never-to-be- 
forgotten    answer,   "Kill   all;  God   will   know   his   ow^n."^     Seven 
thousand  dead  bodies  were  counted  in  the  great  church  of  St.  Mary 
Magdalene.     The  legate  in  writing  estimated  the  total  quarry  at 

^  As  to  previous  acts  of  inquisition  and  persecution  by  Pope  Alexander  III  (noted 
above)  see  Llorente,  Hist.  Crit.  de  Vlnquisition  en  Espagne,  French  tr.2e  edit.  i. 27-30,  and 
Lea.  History  of  the  Inauisition,  i,  118.    Cp.  Gieseler,  Per.  Ill,  Div.  iii,  §  89  (Amer.  ed.  ii,  564). 

^  Hardwick,  p.  309 ;  Lea,  i,  145. 

°  Sismondi,  Crusades  against  the  Albigenses.  p.  21. 

*  On  the  previous  history  of  indulgences  see  Liea,,  History  of  the  Itiquisition,  i,  il-il ; 
De  Potter,  Esprit  de  VEglise,  vii,  22-39.  For  the  later  developments  cp.  Lea's  Studies  in 
Church  History,  1869,  p.  450;  Vieusseux,  History  of  Switzerland,  1840.  pp.  121, 125. 

^  Sismondi,  Crusades,  pp.  28-29.  6  j^.  p.  23.  7  Lea,  i,  149. 

•^  For  a  modern  Catholic  defence  of  the  whole  proceedings  see  the  Comte  de  Montalem- 
bert's  Histoire  de  Sainte  Elisabeth  de  Hongrie,  13e  6dit.  intr.  pp.  35-40. 

^  Sismondi,  Crusades,  p.  35,  and  refs.;  Lea,  i,  154. 


304 


CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


15,000 ;  others  put  the  number  at  sixty  thousand/  When  all  in 
the  place  were  slain,  and  all  the  plunder  removed,  the  town  was 
burned  to  the  ground,  not  one  house  being  left  standing.  Warned 
by  the  fate  of  Beziers,  the  people  of  Carcassonne,  after  defending 
themselves  for  many  days,  secretly  evacuated  their  town ;  but  the 
legate  contrived  to  capture  a  number  of  the  fugitives,  of  whom  he 
burned  alive  four  hundred,  and  hanged  fifty.'  Systematic  treachery, 
authorized  and  prescribed  by  the  Pope,'  completed  the  success  of 
the  undertaking.  The  Church  had  succeeded,  in  the  name  of 
religion,  in  bringing  half  of  Europe  to  the  attainment  of  the  ideal 
height  of  wickedness,  in  that  it  had  learned  to  make  evil  its  good  ; 
and  the  papacy  had  on  the  whole  come  nearer  to  destroying  the 
moral  sense  of  all  Christendom*  than  any  conceivable  combination 
of  other  causes  could  ever  have  done  in  any  age. 

According  to  a  long  current  fiction,  it  was  the  Pope  who  first 
faltered    when    "the   whole    of    Christendom    demanded    the 
renewal   of   those   scenes   of   massacre"   (Sismondi,   Crusades, 
p.  95) ;  but  this  is  disproved  by  the  discovery  of  two  letters  m 
which,  shortly  before  his  death,  he  excitedly  takes   on  himself 
the  responsibiHty   for   all   the   bloodshed    (Michelet,  Hist,  de 
France,  vii,  introd.  note   to    §    iv).     Michelet    had   previously 
accepted    the   legend   which   he  here    rejects.      The    bishops 
assembled    in    council    at    Lavaur,    in    1213.   demanded   the 
extermination  of   the  entire  population  of  Toulouse.     Finally, 
the  papal  poHcy  is  expressly  decreed  in  the  third  canon  of  the 
Fourth  General  Council  of  Lateran,  1215.     On  that  canon  see 
The  Statutes  of  the  Fourth  General  Council  of  Lateran,  by  the 
Rev.  John  Evans,  1843.     On  the  crusade  in  general,  cp.  Lea, 
History  of  the   Inquisition,  bk.  i,  ch.  iv ;    Gieseler,  Per.  Ill, 
Div.  iii,  §  89. 
The   first   crusade   was   followed   by   others,  in   which    Simon   de 
Montfort  reached  the  maximum  of  massacre,  varying  his  procedure 
by  tearing  out  eyes  and  cutting  off  noses  when  he  was  not  hanging 
victims  by  dozens  or  burning  them  by  scores  or  putting  them  to  the 
sword   by   hundreds*   (all  being   done  "with  the   utmost   joy")  ; 
though  the  "  White  Company  "  organized  by  the  Bishop  of  Toulouse^ 
maintained  a  close  rivalry.     The  Church's  great  difficulty  was  that 
as  soon  as  an  army  had  bought  its  plenary  indulgence  for  all  possible 
sin  by  forty  days'  service,  it  disbanded.     Nevertheless,  "  the  greater 


»  Sismondi,  pp.  36-37,  and  refs.  ^  Id.  pp.  37-43. 

8  Id.  pp.  21,  41.    Cp.  p.  85  as  to  later  treachery  towards  Saracens  ;  and  p.  123  as  to  tne 
deeds  of  the  Bishop  of  Toulouse.    See  again  pp.  140-42  as  to  the  massacre  of  Marmande. 
*  As  to  the  international  character  of  the  crusade  see  Sismondi.  6  ru.sartes.  p.  on. 
fi  Sismondi.  p.  62  sq,  6  Pp.  77.  78.  '  PP-  74,  75. 


HERESt  IN  SOUTHERN  FRANCE 


305 


part  of  the  population  of  the  countries  where  heresy  had  prevailed 
was  exterminated."^  Organized  Christianity  had  contrived  to 
murder  the  civiUzation  of  Provence  and  Languedoc^  while  the 
fanatics  of  Islam  in  their  comparatively  bloodless  manner  were 
doing  as  much  for  that  of  Moorish  Spain.  Heresy  indeed  was  not 
rooted  out:  throughout  the  whole  of  the  thirteenth  century  the 
Inquisition  met  with  resistance  in  Languedoc^  but  the  preponder- 
ance of  numbers  which  alone  could  sustain  freethinking  had  been 
destroyed,  and  in  course  of  time  it  was  eliminated  by  the  sleepless 
engines  of  the  Church. 

It  was  owing  to  no  lack  of  the  principle  of  evil  in  the  Christian 
system,  but  simply  to  the  much  greater  and  more  uncontrollable 
diversity  of  the  political  elements  of  Christendom,  that  the  whole 
culture  and  intelligence  of  Europe  did  not  undergo  the  same  fate. 
The  dissensions  and  mutual  injuries  of  the  crusaders  ultimately 
defeated  their  ideal  ^  after  Simon  de  Montfort  had  died  in  the  odour 
of  sanctity  ^  the  crusade  of  Louis  VIII  of  France  in  1226  seems  to 
have  been  essentially  one  of  conquest,  there  being  practically  no 
heretics  left ;  and  the  disasters  of  the  expedition,  crowned  by 
the  king's  death,  took  away  the  old  prestige  of  the  movement. 
Meanwhile,  the  heresy  of-  the  Albigenses,  and  kindred  ideas,  had 
been  effectually  driven  into  other  parts  of  Europe  ^  and  about 
1231  we  find  Gregory  IX  burning  a  multitude  of  them  at  the  gates 
of  the  church  of  Santa  Maria  Maggiore  in  Rome  ^  and  compassing 
their  slaughter  in  France  and  Germany.'  In  Italy  the  murderous 
pertinacity  of  the  Dominicans  gradually  destroyed  organized  heresy 
despite  frequent  and  desperate  resistance.  About  1230  we  hear 
of  one  eloquent  zealot,  chosen  podest^  by  the  people  of  Verona, 
using  his  power  to  burn  in  one  day  sixty  heretics,  male  and  female.^ 
The  political  heterogeneity  of  Europe,  happily,  made  variation 
inevitable ;  though  the  papacy,  by  making  the  detection  and  perse- 
cution of  heresy  a  means  of  gain  to  a  whole  order  of  its  servants, 

1  p.  87.  "The  worship  of  the  reformed  Albigenses  had  everywhere  ceased"  (p.  115). 
Cp.  p.  116  as  to  the  completeness  of  the  final  massacres.  It  is  estimated  (Monastier  p.  115. 
following  De  la  Mothe-Langon)  that  a  million  Albigenses  were  slain  in  the  first  half  of  the 
thirteenth  century.    The  figures  are  of  course  speculative. 

2  Cp.  Lea,  ii,  159 ;  Lenient.  La  Satire  en  France  au  moyendge,  1859,  p.  4d.     -     ,        .„„ 
8  Lea.  vol.  ii.  ch.  i.  ■*  Sismondi,  pp.  115. 117.  ^  M.  p.  133. 

6  Id.  pp.  235-39 ;  Lea.  ii,  247,  259,  319,  347,  429,  etc.        ,, 

7  Sismondi,  p.  236;  Llorente,  as  cited,  i,  60-64  ;  Lea,  ii.  200.  ^^f,-^c  wova  hnmpd 

8  Matthew  Paris  records  that  in  1249  four  hundred  and  forty-three  ^^^^retics  were  burned 
in  Saxony  and  Pomerania.  Previously  multitudes  had  been  burned  by  the  Inquisitor 
Conrad,  who  was  himself  finally  murdered  in  revenge.  .  He  was  ^^^e  confessor  of  Saint 
Elizabeth  of  Hungary,  and  he  taught  her  among  other  thmgs.  ^Be  merciful  to  j;our  neigh- 
bour." and  "  Do  to  others  whatsoever  you  would  that  they  shoiild  do  to  you.  See  his 
praises  recorded  by  Montalembert,  as  cited,  vol.  i.  ch.  x.    Cp.  Gieseler.  Per.  Ill,  Div.  m, 

^  ^9  Le^il:  204.    This  was  the  "  peace-maker  "  described  by  Dr.  Lea  as-in  that  capacity 
— "  so  worthy  a  disciple  of  the  Great  Teacher  of  divine  love    (i,  240). 


306 


CHKISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLB  AGES 


had  set  on  foot  a  machinery  for  the  destruction  of  rational  thought 

such  as  had  never  before  existed. 

It  is  still  common  to  speak  of  the  personnel  of  the  Inquisition 
as  disinterested,  and  to  class  its  crimes  as  "conscientious." 
Buckle  set  up  such  a  thesis,  without  due  circumspection,  as 
a  support  to  one  of  his  generahzations.  (See  the  present 
writer's  ed.  of  his  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Civilization  in 
England,  pp.  105-108,  notes,  and  the  passages  in  McCrie  and 
Llorente  there  cited.)  Dr.  Lea,  whose  History  of  the  Inqnisition 
is  the  greatest  storehouse  of  learning  on  the  subject,  takes  up 
a  similar  position,  arguing  (i,  239):  "That  the  men  who 
conducted  the  Inquisition,  and  who  toiled  sedulously  m  its 
arduous,  repulsive,  and  often  dangerous  labour,  were  thoroughly 
convinced  that  they  were  furthering  the  kingdom  of  God,  is 
shown  by  the  habitual  practice  of  encouraging  them  with  the 
remission  of  sins,  similar  to  that  offered  for  a  pilgrimage  to  the 
Holy  Land"  —  a  somewhat  surprising  theorem.  Parallel 
reasoning  would  prove  that  soldiers  never  plunder  and  are 
always  Godly  ;  that  the  crusaders  were  all  conscientious  men  ; 
and  that  poUcemen  never  take  bribes  or  commit  perjury.  The 
interpretation  of  history  calls  for  a  less  simple-minded  psycho- 
logy. That  there  were  devoted  fanatics  in  the  Inquisition  as  in 
the  Church  is  not  to  be  disputed  ;  that  both  organizations  had 
economic  bases  is  certain  ;  and  that  the  majority  of  office- 
bearers in  both,  in  the  ages  of  faith,  had  regard  to  gain,  is 
demonstrated  by  all  ecclesiastical  history. 

Dr.  Lea's  own  History  shows  clearly  enough  (i,  471-533) 
that  the  Inquisition,  from  the  first  generation  of  its  existence, 
lived  upon  its  fines  and  confiscations.  "Persecution,  as 
a  steady  and  continuous  policy,  rested,  after  all,  upon  confisca- 
tion .  ..When  it  was  lacking,  the  business  of  defending  the 
faith  lagged  lamentably"  (i,  529).  "  But  for  the  gains  to  be 
made  out  of  fines  and  confiscations  its  [the  Inquisition'sJ  work 
would  have  been  much  less  thorough,  and  it  would  have  sunk 
into  comparative  insignificance  as  soon  as  the  first  frantic  zeal 
of  bigotry  had  exhausted  itself "  (pp.  532-33).  Why,  in  the  face 
of  these  avowals,  "  it  would  be  unjust  to  say  that  greed  and  thirst 
for  plunder  were  the  impeUing  motives  of  the  Inquisition" 
(p.  532)  is  not  very  clear.  See  below,  ch.  x,  §  3,  as  to  the 
causation  in  Spain.  Cp.  Mocatta,  The  Jews  and  the  Inquisition, 
pp.  37,  44,  52.  On  the  Inquisition  in  Portugal,  in  turn.  Pro- 
fessor W.  E.  CoUins  sums  up  that  "  it  was  founded  for  reasons 
ostensibly  religious  but  actually  fiscal  "  (in  the  *  Cambridge 
Modern  History,"  vol.  ii.  The  Reformation,  ch.  xii,  p.  415). 
Every  charge  of  economic  motive  that  CathoUcism  can  bring 
against  Protestantism  is  thus  balanced  by  the  equivalent  charge 
against  its  own  Inquisition. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  SCHOOLS 


307 


§  6.  Freethought  in  the  Schools 

The  indestructibility  of  freethought,  meanwhile,  was  being 
proved  even  in  the  philosophic  schools,  under  all  their  conformities 
to  faith.  Already  in  the  ninth  century  we  have  seen  Scotus  Erigena 
putting  the  faith  in  jeopardy  by  his  philosophic  defence  of  it. 
Another  thinker,  Eoscelin  (or  Koussellin :  fl.  1090),  is  interesting  as 
having  made  a  critical  approach  to  freethought  in  religion  by  way 
of  abstract  philosophy.  With  him  definitely  begins  the  long 
academic  debate  between  the  Nominalists  and  Realists  so  called. 
In  an  undefined  way,  it  had  existed  as  early  as  the  ninth  century,^ 
the  ground  being  the  Christian  adoption  of  Plato's  doctrine  of  ideas 
— that  individual  objects  are  instances  or  images  of  an  ideal 
universal,  which  is  a  real  existence,  and  prior  to  the  individual 
thing:  '' universalia  ante  rem.''  To  that  proposition  Aristotle  had 
opposed  the  doctrine  that  the  universal  is  immanent  in  the  thing — 
'' ujiiversalia  iji  re  " — the  latter  alone  being  matter  of  knowledge;'* 
and  in  the  Middle  Ages  those  who  called  Aristotle  master  carried 
his  negation  of  Plato  to  the  extent  of  insisting  that  the  "  universal " 
or  "abstract,"  or  the  "form"  or  "species,"  is  a  mere  subjective 
creation,  a  name,  having  no  real  existence.  This,  the  Nominalist 
position — mistakenly  ascribed  to  Aristotle^ — was  ultimately  expressed 
in  the  formula,  "  universalia  post  rem.*' 

Such  reasonings  obviously  tend  to  implicate  theology ;  and 
Eoscelin  was  either  led  or  helped  by  his  Nominalist  training  to 
deny  either  exjDlicitly  or  implicitly  the  unity  of  the  Trinity,  arguing 
in  effect  that,  as  only  individuals  are  real  existences,  the  actuality 
of  the  persons  of  the  Trinity  involves  their  disunity.^  The  thesis, 
of  course,  evoked  a  storm,  the  English  Archbishop  Anselm  and 
others  producing  indignant  answers.  Of  Eoscelin's  writing  only 
one  letter  is  extant ;  and  even  Anselm,  in  criticizing  his  alleged 
doctrine,  admits  having  gathered  it  only  from  his  opponents,  whose 
language  suggests  perversion.^  But  if  the  testimony  of  his  pupil 
Abailard  be  truthful,^  he  was  at  best  a  confused  reasoner ;  and  in 
his  theology  he  got  no  further  than  tritheism,  then  called  ditheism.' 
Thus,  though  "NominaUsm,  by  denying  any  objective  reality  to 
general  notions,  led  the  way  directly  to  the  testimony  of  the  senses 
and    the   conclusions   of    experience,"^  it  did   so   on   lines   fatally 

^  Ueberweg.  i,  366 ;  Poole,  pp.  99, 100. 

*  As  to  the  verbal  confusion  of  Aristotle's  theory  see  Ueberweg. 

J  Id.  i.  160.  <  Id.  i,  375. 

J  Cp.  Mosbeim's  note,  Reid's  ed.  p.  388.  ^  Ueberweg.  i,  374. 

^  Poole,  p.  104,  note;  Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  4th  ed.  i,  54. 

"  Hampden,  Bampton  Lectures.  On  the  Scholastic  Fhilosophy,  1848,  p.  71. 


308 


CHKISTENDOM  IN  THE  MlDDLfi  AGES 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  SCHOOLS 


309 


subordinate  to  the  theology  it  sought  to  correct.  Eoscelin's  thesis 
logically  led  to  the  denial  not  only  of  trinity-in-unity  but  of  the 
Incarnation  and  transubstantiation  :  yet  neither  he  nor  his  opponents 
seem  to  have  thought  even  of  the  last  consequence,  he  having  in 
fact  no  consciously  heretical  intention.  Commanded  to  recant  by 
the  Council  of  Soissons  in  1092,  he  did  so,  and  resumed  his  teachmg 
as  before ;  whereafter  he  was  ordered  to  leave  France.  Coming  to 
England,  he  showed  himself  so  little  of  a  rebel  to  the  papacy  as  to 
contend  strongly  for  priestly  celibacy,  arguing  that  all  sons  of  priests 
and  all  born  out  of  wedlock  should  alike  be  excluded  from  clerical 
office.  Expelled  from  England  in  turn  for  these  views,  by  a  clergy 
still  anti-celibate,  he  returned  to  Paris,  to  revive  the  old  philosophic 
issue,  until  general  hostility  drove  him  to  Aquitaine,  where  he  spent 
his  closing  years  in  peace.^ 

Such  handling  of  the  cause  of  Nominalism  gave  an  obvious 
advantage  to  Kealism.  That  has  been  justly  described  by  one 
clerical  scholar  as  **  Philosophy  held  in  subordination  to  Church- 
Authority  ";'  and  another  has  avowed  that  "the  spirit  of  Kealism 
was  essentially  the  spirit  of  dogmatism,  the  disposition  to  pronounce 
that  truth  was  already  known,"  while  "  Nominalism  was  essentially 
the  spirit  of  progress,  of  inquiry,  of  criticism." '  But  even  a  critical 
philosophy  may  be  made  to  capitulate  to  authority,  as  even  k  priori 
metaphysic  may  be  to  a  certain  extent  turned  against  it.  Realism 
had  been  markedly  heretical  in  the  hands  of  John  Scotus  ;  and  in 
a  later  age  the  Reahst  John  Huss  was  condemned  to  death— perhaps 
on  poHtical  grounds,  but  not  without  signs  of  sectarian  hate—by 
a  majority  of  Nominalists  at  the  Council  of  Constance.  Everything 
depended  on  the  force  of  the  individual  thinker  and  the  degree  of 
restraint  put  upon  him  by  the  authoritarian  environment.*  The 
world  has  even  seen  the  spectacle  of  a  professed  indififerentist 
justifying  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew ;  and  the  Platonist 
MarsiUo  Ficino  viUfied  Savonarola,  basely  enough,  after  his  execution, 
adjusting  a  pantheistic  Christianity  to  the  needs  of  the  political 
situation  in  Medicean  Florence.  Valid  freethinking  is  a  matter  of 
thoroughness  and  rectitude,  not  of  mere  theoretic  assents. 

Tried  by  that  test,  the  Nominalism  of  the  medieval  schools  was 
no  very  potent  emancipator  of  the  human  spirit,  no  very  clear  herald 

1  Mosheim,  as  cited,  and  refs.  ^  Hampdeo.  p.  70.      ,, , 

3  A  S.  Farrar.  Crit.  Hist,  of  Freethought,  1862,  p.  111.  Farrar  adds;  Neque  entm 
auaero  intelligere  ut  credam,  set  credo  ut  intelligam '  are  the  words  of  the  Reahst  Anseim 
(Prolog,  i.  43,  ed.  Gerberon) :  '  Dubitando  ad  inquisitioiiem  venimus ;  tnquirendo  verttatem 
mrcivimus  '  are  those  of  the  Nominalist  Abailard  {Sic  et  Non,  p.  16.  ed.  Cousin). 

4  Cp.  Haureau,  Hist,  de  la  philos.  scolastiaue,  i.  ch.  19.  aa  to  orthodoxy  among  both 
Nominalists  and  Realists . 


of  freedom  or  new  concrete  truth.  A  doctrine  which  was  so  far 
adjusted  to  authority  as  to  affirm  the  unquestionable  existence  of 
three  deities.  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit,  and  merely  disputed  the  not 
more  supra-rational  theorem  of  their  unity,  yielded  to  the  rival 
philosophy  a  superiority  in  the  kind  of  credit  it  sought  for  itself. 
Nominalism  was  thus  "  driven  to  the  shade  of  the  schools,"  where  it 
was  "  regarded  entirely  in  a  logical  point  of  view,  and  by  no  means 
in  its  actual  philosophic  importance  as  a  speculation  concerning  the 
grounds  of  human  knowledge."  ^  For  RosceUn  himself  the  question 
was  one  of  dialectics,  not  of  faith,  and  he  made  no  practical  ration- 
alists.    The  popular  heresies  bit  rather  deeper  into  life.^ 

It  is  doubtless  true  of  the  Pauhcians  that  "  there  was  no 
principle  of  development  in  their  creed  :  it  reflected  no  genuine 
freedom  of  thought  "  (Poole,  Ilhistratiofis,  p.  95) ;  but  the  same 
thing,  as  we  have  seen,  is  clearly  true  of  scholasticism  itself. 
It  may  indeed  be  urged  that  "the  contest  between  Ratramn 
and  Paschase  on  the  doctrine  of  the  Eucharist ;  of  Lanfranc 
with  Berengar  on  the  same  subject ;  of  Anseim  with  Roscelin 
on  the  nature  of  Universals ;  the  complaints  of  Bernard  against 
the  dialectical  theology  of  Abelard ;  are  all  illustrations  of  the 

collision   between   Reason   and  Authority varied   forms  of 

rationahsm— the  pure  exertions  of  the  mind  within  itself.....^, 
against  the  constringent  force  of  the  Spiritual  government" 
(Hampden,  Bampton  Lectures  on  The  Scholastic  Philosophy, 
3rd  ed.  p.  37 ;  cp.  Hardwick,  Church  History  :  Middle  Age, 
p.  203);  but  none  of  the  scholastics  ever  professed  to  set 
Authority  aside.  None  dared.  John  Scotus  indeed  affirmed 
the  identity  of  true  reHgion  with  true  philosophy,  without 
professing  to  subordinate  the  latter ;  but  the  most  eminent  of 
the  later  scholastics  affirmed  such  a  subordination.  The 
vassalage  of  philosophy  consisted  in  the  fact  that  an  impassable 
limit  was  fixed  for  the  freedom  of  philosophizing  in  the  dogmas 
of  the  Church"  (Ueberweg,  i,  357);  and  some  of  the  chief 
dogmas  were  not  allowed  to  be  philosophically  discussed ; 
though,  "  with  its  territory  thus  limited,  philosophy  was  indeed 
allowed  by  theology  a  freedom  which  was  rarely  and  only  by 
exception  infringed  upon"  {ib.  Cp.  Milman,  Latin  Chris- 
tianity, 4th  ed.  ix,  151).  "The  suspicion  of  originahty  was 
fatal  to  the  reputation  of  the  scholastic  divine"  (Hampden, 
pp.  46-47).  The  popular  heresy,  indeed,  lacked  the  intellectual 
stimulus  that  came  to  the  schools  from  the  philosophy  of 
Averroes ;  but  it  was  the  hardier  movement  of  the  two. 
Already  in  the  eleventh  century,  however,  the  simple  fact  of  the 
production  of  a  new  argument  for  the  existence  of  God  by  Anseim, 


1  Hampden,  pp.  70,  449, 


a  Cp.  Lea,  Hist,  of  the  Inquisition,  iii,  550, 


310 


CHBISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  is  a  proof  that,  apart  from  the  published 
disputes,  a  measure  of  doubt  on  the  fundamental  issue  had  arisen  in 
the  schools.  It  is  urged*  that,  though  the  argumentation  of  Anselm 
seems  alien  to  the  thought  of  his  time,  there  is  no  proof  that  the  idea 
of  proving  the  existence  of  God  was  in  any  way  pressed  on  him  from 
the  outside.  It  is,  however,  inconceivable  that  such  an  argument 
should  be  framed  if  no  one  had  raised  a  doubt.  And  as  a  matter 
of  fact  the  question  was  discussed  in  the  schools,  Anselm's  treatise 
being  a  reproduction  of  his  teaching.  The  monks  of  Bee,  where  he 
taught,  urged  him  to  write  a  treatise  wherein  nothing  should  be 
proved  by  mere  authority,  but  all  by  necessity  of  reason  or  evidence 
of  truth,  and  with  an  eye  to  objections  of  all  sorts.''  In  the  preface 
to  his  Our  Deus  Honio,  again,  he  says  that  his  first  book  is  an 
answer  to  the  objections  of  infidels  who  reject  Christianity  as 
irrational.*  Further,  the  nature  of  part  of  Anselm's  theistic 
argument  and  the  very  able  but  friendly  reply  of  Gaunilo  (a  Count 
of  Montigni,  who  entered  a  convent  near  Tours,  1044-1083)  show 
that  the  subject  was  within  the  range  of  private  discussion.  Anselm 
substantially  follows  St.  Augustine;*  and  men  cannot  have  read  the 
ancient  books  which  so  often  spoke  of  atheism  without  confronting 
the  atheistic  idea.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  Gaunilo  was  an 
unbeliever ;  but  his  argumentation  is  that  of  a  man  who  had 
pondered  the  problem.* 

Despite  the  ostensibly  rationalistic  nature  of  his  argument, 
however,  Anselm  stipulated  for  absolute  submission  of  the  intellect 
to  the  creed  of  the  Church  ;®  so  that  the  original  subtitle  of  his 
Proslogium,  Fides  qiiaerens  intellecttim,  in  no  way  admits  rational 
tests.  In  the  next  century  we  meet  with  new  evidence  of  sporadic 
unbelief,  and  new  attempts  to  deal  with  it  on  the  philosophic  side. 
John  of  SaHsbury  (1120-1180)  tells  of  having  heard  many  discourse 
on  physics  "  otherwise  than  faith  may  hold  'V  and  the  same  vivacious 
scholar  put  in  his  list  of  "  things  about  which  a  wise  man  may  doubt, 

so that  the  doubt  extend  not  to  the  multitude,"  some  "things 

which  are  reverently  to  be  inquired  about  God  himself."  Giraldus 
Cambrensis  (1147-1223),  whose  abundant  and  credulous  gossip 
throws  so  much  light  on   the  inner  life  of   the  Church  and  the 


1  Poole,  ninstr.  of  the  Hist,  of  Medieval  Thought,  pp.  104-105. 

*  Prcp/atio  iii  Mmwlogium. 

8  As  to  the  various  classes  of  doubters  known  to  Anselm  see  Renter,  Gesch.  der 
religidHen  Aufkliirung  im  Mittelalter,  i,  129-31,  and  refs.  Anselm  writes:  Fides  eiiim 
nostra  contra  impios  ratiotie  defenda  est.    Epist.  ii,  41.  *  Ueberweg.  i,  381. 

«  See  it  in  Ueberweg,  i,  384-85;  cp.  Ch.  de  R^musat,  Saint  Anseline,  1853.  pp.  61-62; 
Dean  Churcb.  Saint  Anselm,  ed.  1888.  pp.  86-87.  As  to  previous  instances  of  Anselm's 
argument  cp.  Poole.  Illustrations,  p.  338  sq.  »  Cp.  Ueberweg,  i,  379-80. 

^  Cited  by  Hampden,  Bampton  Lect.  p.  443.  ^  Metalogicus,  vii.  2 ;  Poole,  p.  223. 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  SCHOOLS 


311 


laity  in  his  age,  tells  that  the  learned  Simon  of  Tournay  thought 
not  soundly  on  the  articles  of  the  faith,"  saying  privately,  to  his 
intimates,  things  that  he  dared  not  utter  publicly,  till  one  day,  in 
a  passion,  he  cried  out,  "  Almighty  God !  how  long  shall  this  super- 
stitious sect  of  Christians  and  this  upstart  invention  endure?"; 
whereupon  during  the  night  he  lost  the  power  of  speech,  and 
remained  helpless  till  his  death. ^  Other  ecclesiastical  chroniclers 
represent  Simon  as  deriding  alike  Jesus,  Moses,  and  Mahomet — an 
ascription  to  him  of  the  "  three  impostors "  formula.^  Again, 
Giraldus  tells  how  an  unnamed  priest,  reproved  by  another  for 
careless  celebration  of  the  mass,  angrily  asked  whether  his  rebuker 
really  believed  in  transubstantiation,  in  the  incarnation,  in  the  Virgin 
Birth,  and  in  resurrection  ;  adding  that  it  was  all  carried  on  by 
hypocrites,  and  assuredly  invented  by  cunning  ancients  to  hold  men 
in  terror  and  restraint.  And  Giraldus  comments  that  inter  nos  there 
are  many  who  so  think  in  secret.^  As  his  own  picture  of  the  Church 
exhibits  a  gross  and  almost  universal  rapacity  pervading  it  from  the 
highest  clergy  to  the  lowest,  the  statement  is  entirely  credible.*  Yet 
again,  in  the  Komance  of  the  Holy  Grail,  mention  is  twice  made  of 
clerical  doubters  on  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  ;*  and  on  that  side,  in 
the  crusading  period,  both  the  monotheistic  doctrine  of  Islam  and 
the  Arab  philosophy  of  Averroes  were  likely  to  set  up  a  certain 
amount  of  skepticism.  In  the  twelfth  century,  accordingly,  we  have 
Nicolas  of  Amiens  producing  his  tractate  De  articulis  (or  arte) 
catholiccB  fidei  in  the  hope  of  convincing  by  his  arguments  men 
"  who  disdain  to  believe  the  prophecies  and  the  gospel." 

To  meet  such  skepticism  too  was  one  of  the  undertakings  of  the 
renowned  Abailard  (1079-1142),  himself  persecuted  as  a  heretic 
for  the  arguments  with  which  he  sought  to  guard  against  unbelief. 
Of  the  details  of  his  early  life  it  concerns  us  here  to  note  only  that 
he  studied  under  Eoscelin,  and  swerved  somewhat  in  philosophy 
from  his  master's  theoretic  Nominalism,  which  he  partly  modified 
on  AristoteHan  lines,  though  knowing  little  of  Aristotle.'^  After  his 
retirement  from  the  world  to  the  cloister,  he  was  induced  to  resume 
philosophic  teaching ;  and  his  pupils,  like  those  of  Anselm,  begged 
their  master  to  give  them  rational  arguments  on  the  main  points  of 


1  Gemma  Ecclesiastica,  Distinctio  i.  c.  51;  Works,  ed.  Brewer,  Rolls  Series,  ii,  148-49; 
pref.  p.  XXXV.  „        ,  •   i.         i. 

2  Cp.  Haur^au,  Hist,  de  'la  philos.  scolastique,  Ptie.  II  (1880).  i,  61.   Haur6au  pomts  out 

that  Simon's  writings  are  strictly  orthodox,  whatever  his  utterances  may  have  been. 

*  Dtsftncfto,  ii,  c.  24  ;  pp.  liv,  285. 

^  Cv.'Peo.vson,  Hist,  of  England  during  the  Early  and  Middle  Ages,  n,50i.    ^      „       , 

5  The  Saynt  Graal,  ed.  Furnivall.  1861,  pp.  7.  84;  History  of  the  Holy  Grail,  ed. 
Furnivall,  1874,  pp.  5-7 ;  Pearson,  as  cited,  i.  606-607.  n  t.     ■,  -^i  in 

6  Haur6au,  Hist,  de  la  philos.  scolastique,  i,  1870.  p.  502.  ^  Poole,  pp.  141-42. 


312 


CHKISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


the  faith/     He  accordingly  rashly  prepared  a  treatise,  De  Unitate  et 

Trinitate  divina,  in  which  he  proceeded  "by  analogies  of  human 

reason,"    avowing    that    the    difficulties   were   great. '^      Thereupon 

envious  rivals,  of  whom  he  had  made  many  by  his  arrogance  as  well 

as  by  his  fame,  set  up  against  him  a  heresy  hunt ;  and  for  the  rest 

of  his  life  he  figured  as  a  dangerous  person.     While,  however,  he 

took  up  the  relatively  advanced  position  that  reason  must  prepare 

the  way  for  faith,  since  otherwise  faith  has  no  certitude,*  he  was  in 

the  main  dependent  on  the  authority  either  of  second-hand  Aristotle  * 

or  of  the  Scriptures,  though  he  partly  set  aside  that  of  the  Fathers.*^ 

When  St.  Bernard  accused  him  of  Arianism  and  of  heathenism  he 

was  expressing  personal  ill-will  rather  than  criticizing.      Abailard 

himself  complained  that  many  heresies  were  current  in  his  time  ^; 

and   as   a   matter   of   fact   "more   intrepid   views   than   his   were 

promulgated   without    risk   by   a    multitude    of    less    conspicuous 

masters."^     For  instance,  Bernard  Sylvester  (of    Chartres),  in  his 

cosmology,  treated  theological  considerations  with  open  disrespect®; 

and  William  of  Conches,  who  held  a  similar  tone  on  physics,^  taught, 

until  threatened  with  punishment,  that  the  Holy  Ghost  and  the 

Universal  Soul  were  convertible  terms.^*'     This  remarkably  rational 

theologian  further  rejected  the  literal  interpretation  of  the  creation 

of  Eve ;  in  science  he  adopted  the  Demokritean  doctrine  of  atoms ; 

and  in  New   Testament   matters   he  revived   the   old  rationalistic 

heresy  that  the  three  Persons  of  the  Trinity  are  simply  three  aspects 

of  the  divine  personality — power,  wisdom,  and  will — which  doctrine 

he  was  duly  forced  to  retract.     It  is  clear  from  his  works  that  he 

lived  in  an  atmosphere  of  controversy,  and  had  to  fight  all  along 

with  the  pious  irrationalists  who,  "  because  they  know  not  the  forces 

of  nature,  in  order  that  they  may  have  all  men  comrades  in  their 

ignorance,  suffer  not  that  others  should  search  out  anything,  and 

would  have  us  believe  like  rustics  and  ask  no  reason."        If  they 

perceive  any  man  to  be  making  search,  they  at  once  cry  out  that 

he   is  a  heretic."      The  history  of   a   thousand   years  of   struggle 

between  reason  and  religion  is  told  in  those  sentences. 

1  "  Humanas  ac  philosophicas  rationea  requirebant ;  et  plus  quse  intelligi  quam  quae 
dici  possent  efflagitabant  "  (Historia  calarnitatum  vwarum,  ed.  Gr6ard.  p.  36). 

2  Id.  ib.  ^  Ueberwefi.  i.  387. 
*  Ueberweg,  i.  391.   Cp.  Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  ix.  111. 

5  Ueberweg,  i,  394-95.  ^  Hampden,  Bampton  Lect.  pp.  420-21. 

7  Poole,  p.  175.  It  is  not  impossible  that,  as  Sismondi  suggests  (Histoire  des  Frangais, 
ed.  1823.  V.  294-96),  Abailard  was  persecuted  mainly  because  of  the  dangerous  anti-papal 
movement  maintained  in  Italy  for  fifteen  years  (1139-1155)  by  his  doctrinally  orthodox 
pupil.  Arnold  of  Brescia.  But  Hampden  (p.  40),  agreeing  with  Guizot  (Hist,  de  Civ.  en 
Europe ;  Hist.inod.  LeQon  6).  pronounces  that  "  there  was  no  sympathy  between  the  efforts 
of  the  Italian  Republics  to  obtain  social  liberty,  and  those  within  the  Clmrch  to  recover 
personal  freedom  of  thought."  ,«  „     ,  ,-„ 

8  Poole,  pp.  117-23, 169.  ^  Ueberweg,  i,  398.  ^o  Poole,  p.  173. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  SCHOOLS 


313 


\ 


I 


As  to  William's  doctrines  and  writings  see  Poole,  pp.  124-30, 
346-59.  His  authorship  of  one  treatise  is  only  latterly  cleared 
up.  In  the  work  which  under  the  title  of  Elementa  Philosophiae 
is  falsely  ascribed  to  Bede,  and  under  the  title  De  Philosophia 
Mundi  to  Honorius  of  Autun  (see  Poole,  pp.  340-42,  347  sg.), 
but  which  is  really  the  production  of  William  of  Conches,  there 
occurs  the  passage :  "  What  is  more  pitiable  than  to  say  that 
a  thing  is,  because  God  is  able  to  do  it,  and  not  to  show  any 
reason  why  it  is  so ;  just  as  if  God  did  everything  that  he  is 
able  to  do !  You  talk  like  one  who  says  that  God  is  able  to 
make  a  calf  out  of  a  log.  But  did  he  ever  do  it  ?  Either,  then, 
show  a  reason  why  a  thing  is  so,  or  a  purpose  wherefore  it  is 
so,  or  else  cease  to  declare  it  so."  Migne,  Patrolog.  Latin,  xc, 
1139.  It  is  thus  an  exaggeration  to  say  of  Abailard,  as  does 
Cousin,  that  **  il  mit  de  cote  la  vieille  6cole  d'Anselme  de  Laon, 
qui  exposait  sans  expliquer,  et  fonda  ce  qu'on  appelle  aujourd'hui 
le  rationalisme  "  {Oicvr.  inddits  d'Abelard,  1836,  intr.  p.  ii). 

Abailard  was  not  more  explicit  on  concrete  issues  than  this  con- 
temporary— who  survived  him,  and  studied  his  writings.  If,  indeed, 
as  is  said,  he  wrote  that  "  a  doctrine  is  behoved  not  because  God  has 
said  it,  but  because  we  are  convinced  by  reason  that  it  is  so,"^  he 
went  as  far  on  one  line  as  any  theologian  of  his  time  ;  but  his  main 
service  to  freethought  seems  to  have  lain  in  the  great  stimulus  he 
gave  to  the  practice  of  reasoning  on  all  topics.  His  enemy, 
St.  Bernard,  on  the  contrary,  gave  an  "  immense  impulse  to  the 
growth  of  a  genuinely  superstitious  spirit  among  the  Latin  clergy." 

Dr.  Kashdall  pronounces  Abailard  "  incomparably  the  greatest 
intellect  of  the  Middle  Ages  ;  one  of  the  great  minds  which 
mark  a  period  in  the  world's  intellectual  history";  and  adds 
that  "  Abailard  (a  Christian  thinker  to  the  very  heart's  core, 
however  irredeemable  (sic)  the  selfishness  and  overweening 
vanity  of  his  youth)  was  at  the  same  time  the  representative  of 
the  principle  of  free  though  reverent  inquiry  in  matters  of 
rehgion  and  individual  loyalty  to  truth."  {The  Universities  of 
Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  1895,  i,  56-57.)  If  the  praise  given 
be  intended  to  exalt  Abailard  above  John  Scotus,  it  seems 
excessive. 

On  a  survey  of  Abailard's  theological  teachings,  a  modern  reader 

1  Cp.  Poole,  p.  153.  It  is  difficult  to  doubt  that  the  series  of  patristic  deliverances 
against  reason  in  the  first  section  of  Sic  et  Non  was  compiled  by  Abailard  in  a  spirit  of 

2  Cp!  Hardwick,  p.  279;  and  see  p.  275,  note,  for  Bernard's  dislike  of  his  demand  for 
clearness  :  "Nihil  viflet  per  speculum  et  in  asnigmate,  sed  facie  adfaciem  orrmta  tntuetiir. 

8  Poole,  p.  161.  Cp.  Dr.  Hastings  Rashdall  on  the  "  pious  scurrility  "  of  Bernard.  The 
Universities  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  1895.  i.  57,  note.  Contrast  the  singularly  lauda- 
tory account  of  St.  Bernard  given  by  two  contemporary  Positivists.  Mr.  Cotter  Morison  in 
liis  Life  and  Times  of  St.  Bernard,  and  Mr.  F.  Harrison  in  his  essay  on  that  work  in  his 
Choice  of  Books.  The  subject  is  discussed  in  the  present  writer's  paper  on  The  Ethics  of 
Propaganda  "  in  Essays  in  Ethics, 


314 


CHEISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


IS  apt  to  see  the  spirit  of  moral  reason  most  clearly  m  one  set  forth 
in  his  commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Komans,  to  the  effect  that 
Jesus  was  not  incarnate  to  redeem  men  from  damnation,  but  solely 
to  instruct  them  by  precept  and  example,  and  that  he  suffered  and 
died  only  to  show  his  charity  towards  men.  The  thesis  was  implicit 
if  not  explicit  in  the  teaching  of  Pelagius  ;  and  for  both  men  it 
meant  the  efifort  to  purify  their  creed  from  the  barbaric  taint  of  the 
principle  of  sacrifice.  In  our  own  day,  revived  by  such  theologians 
as  the  English  Maurice,  it  seems  likely  to  gain  ground,  as  an 
accommodation  to  the  embarrassed  moral  sense  of  educated 
believers.  But  it  is  heresy  if  heresy  ever  was,  besides  being  a  blow 
at  the  heart  of  Catholic  sacerdotaHsm  ;  and  Abailard  on  condemna- 
tion retracted  it  as  he  did  his  other  Pelagian  errors.  Ketractation, 
however,  is  publication ;  and  to  have  been  sentenced  to  retract  such 
teaching  in  the  twelfth  century  is  to  leave  on  posterity  an  impression 
of  moral  originality  perhaps  as  important  as  the  fame  of  a  meta- 
physician. In  any  case,  it  is  a  careful  judge  who  thus  finally 
estimates  him :  "  When  he  is  often  designated  as  the  rationalist 
among  the  schoolmen,  he  deserves  the  title  not  only  on  account  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  which  approaches  Sabellianism  in  spite 
of  all  his  polemics  against  it,  and  not  only  on  account  of  his  critical 
attempts,  but  also  on  account  of  his  ethics,  in  which  he  actually 
completely  agrees  in  the  principal  point  with  many  modern  ration- 
alists."^ And  it  is  latterly  his  singular  fate  to  be  valued  at  once  by 
many  sympathetic  Catholics,  who  hold  him  finally  vindicated  ahke 
in  life  and  doctrine,  and  by  many  freethinkers. 

How  far  the  stir  set  up  in  Europe  by  his  personal  magnetism 
and  his  personal  record  may  have  made  for  rational  culture,  it  is 
impossible  to  estimate ;  but  some  consequence  there  must  have  been. 
John  of  Salisbury  was  one  of  Abailard's  disciples  and  admirers  ;  and, 
as  we  saw,  he  not  only  noted  skepticism  in  others  but  indicated  an 
infusion  of  it  in  his  own  mind — enough  to  earn  for  him  from 
a  modem  historian  the  praise  of  being  a  sincere  skeptic,  as  against 
those  false  skeptics  who  put  forward  universal  doubt  as  a  stalking 
horse  for  their  mysticism,'*  But  he  was  certainly  not  a  universal 
skeptic^;  and  his  denunciation  of  doubt  as  to  the  goodness  and 
power  of  God*  sounds  orthodox  enough.  What  he  gained  from 
Abailard  was  a  concern  for  earnest  dialectic. 

The  worst  side  of  scholasticism  at  all  times  was  that  it  was  more 

J  Erdmann,  History  of  Philosophy,  Eng.  tr.  3rd  ed.  i.  325. 

2  Haur6au.  Hist,  delaphilos.  scolastiqice,  i(1872).  534-46. 

8  Id.  citing  the  Folycratictta,  1.  vii,  c.  2.  *  Folycraticus,  1.  vii,  c.  7. 


I 


i 


SAKACEN  AND  JEWISH  INFLUENCES 


315 


often  than  not  a  mere  logical  expatiation  in  vacuo ;  this  partly  for 
sheer  lack  of  real  knowledge.  John  of  Salisbury  probably  did  not  do 
injustice  to  the  habit  of  verbiage  it  developed  ^  and  the  pupils  of 
Abailard  seem  to  have  expressed  themselves  strongly  to  him  con- 
cerning the  wordy  emptiness  of  most  of  what  passed  current  as 
philosophic  discourse  ;  speaking  of  the  teachers  as  blind  leaders  of 
the  blind.'*  One  version  of  the  legend  against  Simon  of  Tournay  is 
to  the  efi'ect  that,  after  demonstrating  by  the  most  skilful  arguments 
the  truth  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  he  went  on  to  say,  when 
enraptured  listeners  besought  him  to  dictate  his  address  so  that  it 
might  be  preserved,  that  if  he  had  been  evilly  minded  he  could 
refute  the  doctrine  by  yet  better  arguments.^  Heresy  apart,  this 
species  of  dialectical  insincerity  infected  the  whole  life  of  the  schools, 
even  the  higher  spirits  going  about  their  work  with  a  certain  amount 
of  mere  logical  ceremony. 


§  6.  Saraceii  atid  Jewish  Influences 

Even  in  the  schools,  however,  over  and  above  the  influence  of 
the  more  original  teachers,  there  rises  at  the  close  of  the  twelfth 
century  and  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  some  measure  of  a  new 
life,  introduced  into  philosophy  through  the  communication  of 
Aristotle  to  the  western  world  by  the  Saracens,  largely  by  the 
mediation  of  the  Jews.*  The  latter,  in  their  free  life  under  the  earlier 
Moorish  toleration,  had  developed  something  in  the  nature  of  a  school 
of  philosophy,  in  which  the  Judaic  Platonism  set  up  by  Philo  of 
Alexandria  in  the  first  century  was  blended  with  the  Aristotelianism 
of  the  Arabs.  As  early  as  the  eighth  and  ninth  centuries,  anti- 
Talmudic  (the  Karaites)  and  pro-Talmudic  parties  professed  alike  to 
appeal  to  reason  * ;  and  in  the  twelfth  century  the  mere  production  of 
the  Guide  of  the  Perplexed  by  the  celebrated  Moses  Maimonides 
(1130-1205)^  tells  of  a  good  deal  of  practical  rationalism  (of  the  kind 
that  reduced  miracle  stories  to  allegories),  of  which,  however,  there  is 

^  Cp.  Poole,  pp.  220-22;  the  extracts  of  Hampden,  pp.  438-43;  and  the  summing-up  of 
Haur^au,  Hist,  de  la  philos.  scolastiqiie,  i  (1870),  357. 

2  Hi.'itoria  calamitatum,  as  cited.  Cp.  p.  10  for  Abailard's  own  opinion  of  Anselm  of 
Laon,  whom  he  compares  to  a  leafy  but  fruitless  tree. 

3  Matthew  Paris,  sub.  ann.  1201.  There  is  a  somewhat  circumstantial  air  about  this 
story.  Simon's  reply  being  made  to  begin  humorously  with  a  Jesule.  Jesulet  Matthew, 
however,  tells  on  this  item  the  story  of  Simon's  miraculous  punishment  which  Giraldus 
tells  on  a  quite  different  text.  Matthew  is  indignant  with  the  scholastic  arrogance  which 
has  led  many  to  "  suppress  "  the  miracle. 

*  Ueberweg,  i,  419,  430;  Hampden,  p.  443  sq.    Cp.  Renan,  Averro^s,  p.  173  sq. 
^  Ueberweg,  i.  418.    The  Karaites  may  be  described  as  Jewish  Protestants  or  Puritans. 
Cp.  Schechter.  Studies  in  Judaism,  1896,  pp.  252-54. 

6  Schechter  (as  cited,  pp.  197,  417)  gives  two  sets  of  dates,  the  second  being  113&-12()4. 


316  CHKISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

little  direct  literary  result  save  of  a  theosophic  kind.'  Levi  ben 
Gershom  (1286-1344),  commonly  regarded  as  the  greatest  successor 
of  Maimonides,  is  like  him  guardedly  rationalistic  in  his  commen- 
taries on  the  Scriptures.'  But  the  doctrine  which  makes  Aristotle 
a  practical  support  to  rationalism,  and  which  was  adopted  not  only 
by  Averroes  but  by  the  Motazilites  of  Islam— the  eternity  of  matter 
—was  rejected  by  Maimonides  (as  by  nearly  all  other  Jewish 
teachers,  with  the  partial  exception  of  Levi  ben  Gershom),'  on 
Biblical  grounds;  though  his  attempts  to  rationaUze  Biblical 
doctrine  and  minimize  miracles  made  him  odious  to  the  orthodox 
Jews,  some  of  whom,  in  France,  did  not  scruple  to  call  in  the  aid  of 
the  Christian  inquisition  against  his  partisans.'  The  long  struggle 
between  the  Maimonists  and  the  orthodox  is  described  as  endmg  in 
the  "triumph  of  peripatetism  "  or  Averroism  in  the  synagogue';  but 
Averroism  as  modified  by  Maimonides  is  only  a  partial  accommoda- 
tion of  scripture  to  common  sense.  It  would  appear,  in  fact,  that 
Jewish  thought  in  the  Saracen  world  retrograded  as  did  that  of  the 
Saracens  themselves  ;  for  we  find  Maimonides  exclaiming  over  the 
apparent  disbelief  in  creatio  ex  nihilo  in  the  "  Chapters  of  Rabbi 
Eliezer  the  Great,"  believed  by  him  to  be  ancient,  but  now  known 
to  be  a  product  of  the  eighth  century.'  The  pantheistic  teaching  of 
Solomon  ben  Gebirol  or  Ibn  Gebirol,  better  known  as  Avicebron,' 
who  in  point  of  time  preceded  the  Arab  Avempace,  and  who  later 
acquired  much  Christian  authority,  was  orthodox  on  the  side  of  the 
creation  dogma  even  when  many  Jews  were  on  that  head  ration- 
alistic' The  high-water  mark,  among  the  Jews,  of  the  critical 
rationalism  of  the  time,  is  the  perception  by  Aben  or  Ibn  Ezra 
(1119-1174)  that  the  Pentateuch  was  not  written  by  Moses— a  dis- 
covery which  gave  Spinoza  his  cue  five  hundred  years  later ;  but 
Ibn  Ezra,  liberioris  ingenii  vir,  as  Spinoza  pronounced  him,  had  to 
express  himself  darkly.® 

Thus  the  Jewish  influence  on  Christian  thought  in  the  Middle 
Ages  was  chiefly  metaphysical,  carrying  on  Greek  and  Arab 
impulses;  and  to  call  the  Jewish  people,  as  does  Renan,  the 
principal  representative  of  rationalism  during  the  second  half  of 

1  For  a  good  survey  of  the  medieval  Hebrew  thought  in  general,  see  Joel.  Beitrilge  zur 
Gesch.  der  Philos.  1876;  and  as  to  Maimonides  see  A.  Franck's  i^^ucie-s  Orieiitales  1861; 
Haur^au,  Hist,  dela  philos.  scolastique,  Ptiell.  i.  41-46:  and  Renan,  Averrods,  pp.  177-62. 

2  Schechter,  Studies  in  Judaism,  pp.  422-23.  I  Id.  p.  208. 

*  Ueberweg.  i.  428  ;  Schechter.  p.  424.  «  Renan,  Averroia,  p.  183. 

6  Schechter,  pp.  83-85.  .     ,  ,       , ,  ,  ,    ^  ^  i.-u    ,^«cf 

7  Haureau  pronounces  (II,  i.  29-34)  that  Avicebron  should  be  ranked  among  the  most; 
sincere  and  resolute  of  pantheists.    His  chief  work  was  the  Fans  vita. 

8  Renan,  Averrols,  pp.  100.  175. 

9  Spinoza,  Tractatus  Theologico-Politicus,  c.  8,  adinit. 


SARACEN  AND  JEWISH  INFLUENCES 


317 


the  Middle  Age  "  is  to  make  too  much  of  the  academic  aspects  of 
freethinking.  On  the  side  of  popular  theology  it  is  difficult  to 
believe  that  they  had  much  Unitarian  influence;  though  Joinville 
in  his  Life  of  Saint  Louis  tells  how,  in  a  debate  between  Churchmen 
and  Jews  at  the  monastery  of  Cluny,  a  certain  knight  saw  fit  to 
break  the  head  of  one  of  the  Jews  with  his  staff  for  denying  the 
divinity  of  Jesus,  giving  as  his  reason  that  many  good  Christians, 
listening  to  the  Jewish  arguments,  were  in  a  fair  way  to  go  home 
unbelievers.  It  was  in  this  case  that  the  sainted  king  laid  down  the 
principle  that  when  a  layman  heard  anyone  blaspheme  the  Christian 
creed  his  proper  course  was  not  to  argue,  but  to  run  the  blasphemer 
through  with  his  sword.^  Such  admitted  inability  on  the  part  of  the 
laity  to  reason  on  their  faith,  however,  was  more  likely  to  accompany 
a  double  degree  of  orthodoxy  than  to  make  for  doubt ;  and  the  clerical 
debating  at  the  Abbey  of  Cluny,  despite  the  honourable  attitude  of 
the  Abbot,  who  condemned  the  knight's  outrage,  was  probably  a 
muster  of  foregone  conclusions. 

For  a  time,  indeed,  in  the  energetic  intellectual  life  of  northern 
France  the  spirit  of  freethought  went  far  and  deep.  After  the  great 
stimulus  given  in  Abailard's  day  to  all  discussion,  we  find  another 
Breton  teacher,  AmaurY  or  Amalrich  of  B6ne  or  Bena  (end  of 
twelfth  century)  and  his  pupil  David  of  Dinant,  partly  under  the 
earlier  Arab  influence,^  partly  under  that  of  John  the  Scot,'  teaching 
a  pronounced  pantheism,  akin  to  that  noted  as  flourishing  later 
among  the  Brethren  of  the  Free  Spirit'  and  some  of  the  Franciscan 
Fraticelli.  Such  a  movement,  involving  disregard  for  the  sacraments 
and  ceremonies  of  the  Church,  was  soon  recognized  as  a  dangerous 
heresy,  and  dealt  with  accordingly.  The  Church  caused  Amaury  to 
abjure  his  teachings  ;  and  after  his  death,  finding  his  party  still 
growing,  dug  up  and  burned  his  bones.  At  the  same  time  (1209) 
a  number  of  his  followers  were  burned  alive  ;  David  of  Dinant  had 
to  fly  for  his  life ;''  and  inasmuch  as  the  new  heresy  had  begun  to 
make  much  of  Aristotle,  presumably  as  interpreted  by  Averroes,  a 
Council  held  at  Paris  vetoed  for  the  university  the  study  alike  of  the 
pagan  master  and  his  commentators,  interdicting  first  the  Physics 
and  soon  after  the  Metaphysics,^    This  veto  held  until  1237,  when 

*  Mhnoires  de  Joinville,  ed.  1871,  ii,  16. 

8  HuUr'.  Johant;  Tcof^Erioena,  p.  435;  Christlieb.  Leben  und  Lenre  ^«Jf '^"^f 
Scotus  Eriaena  1860  p.  438.  Copies  of  John's  writings  were  found  m  the  hands  of  the 
£ctariefTZal?[ciAnd  and  in  1226  the  writings  in  question  were  condemned 

and  burnt  accordingly,    ^e^^re^^- Hist,  dela  philos.  scolastiqiie,i  a  223.  Hahn 

*  Ueberweg.  i,  388.  431 ;  Milman.  Latin  Christianity,  ix.  112-14,  Renan,  p.  -SAJ.  uann. 
Geachichte  der  KetzerimMittelalter,18i^50,  III,  176^.  ttaV.ovtxtac»  i  iqi 

5  Mosheim,  13  Cent.  pt.  ii.  oh.  v,  §  12.  ^  Poole.  p.  225 .  Ueberweg.  1.  431. 


318 


CHEISTENBOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


the  school  which  adapted  the  lore  of  Aristotle  to  Christian  purposes 
began  to  carry  the  day. 

The  heretical  Aristotelianism  and  the  orthodox  system  which 
was  to  overpower  it  were  alike  radiated  from  the  south,  where  the 
Arab  influence  spread  early  and  widely.  There,  as  we  shall  see, 
the  long  duel  between  the  Emperor  Frederick  II  and  the  papacy 
made  a  special  opportunity  for  speculative  freethought ;  and  though 
this  was  far  from  meaning  at  all  times  practical  enmity  to 
Christian  doctrine,*  that  was  not  absent.  It  is  clear  that  before 
Thomas  Aquinas  (1225-1274)  a  Naturalist  and  Averroist  view  of 
the  universe  had  been  much  discussed,  since  he  makes  the  remark 
that  "  God  is  by  some  called  Natiira  naturans  "  ^ — Nature  at  work — 
an  idea  fundamental  aHke  to  pantheism  and  to  scientific  naturalism. 
And  throughout  his  great  work — a  marvel  of  mental  gymnastic 
which  better  than  almost  any  other  writing  redeems  medieval 
orthodoxy  from  the  charge  of  mere  ineptitude — Thomas  indicates 
his  acquaintance  with  unorthodox  thought.  In  particular  he  seems 
to  owe  the  form  of  his  work  as  well  as  the  subject-matter  of  much 
of  his  argument  to  Averroes."  Born  within  the  sphere  of  the 
Saracen-Sicihan  influence,  and  of  high  rank,  he  must  have  met 
with  what  rationalism  there  was,  and  he  always  presupposes  it.* 
"He  is  nearly  as  consummate  a  skeptic,  almost  atheist,  as  he  is 
a  divine  and  theologian,"  says  one  modern  ecclesiastical  dignitary;*^ 
and  an  orthodox  apologist®  more  severely  complains  that  "  Aquinas 

presented so  many  doubts  on  the  deepest  points so  many 

plausible   reasons   for   unbelief that   his   works   have  probably 

suggested  most  of  the  skeptical  opinions  which  were  adopted  by 

others  who  were  trained  in  the  study  of  them He  has  done  more 

than  most  men  to  put  the  faith  of  his  fellow-Christians  in  peril." 
Of  course  he  rejects  Averroism.  Yet  he,  like  his  antagonist  Duns 
Scotus,  inevitably  gravitates  to  pantheism  when  he  would  rigorously 
philosophize.^ 

What  he  did  for  his  church  was  to  combine  so  ingeniously  the 
semblance  of  Aristotelian  method  with  constant  recurrence  to  the 
sacred  books  as  to  impose  their  authority  on  the  life  of  the  schools 

1  Lecky's  description  {Rationalism  in  Europe,  ed.  1887,  i,  48)  of  Averroism  as  a  "  stern 
and  uncompromising  infidelity"  is  hopelessly  astray. 

J»  Summa  Theologica,  Prima  Secundae.  Qufflst.  LXXXV.  Art.  6.  Compare  Haur6au. 
Hist,  de  la  philos.  scolastique,  i.  189,  for  a  trace  of  the  idea  of  natura  naturans  in  John 
Scotus  and  Heiric.  in  the  ninth  century.  «  Renan,  p.  236  SQ. 

*  Cp.  Reuter,  Qesch.  der  religidsen  Aufkldrung  im  Mittelalter,  ii,  130. 

6  Milman.  Latin  Christianity,  4th  ed.  ix,  133. 

6  Robins.  A  Befence  of  the  Faith,  1862.  pt.  i.  pp.  3&-39.  Compare  Rashdall.  Universities 
tn  the  Middle  Ages,  i,  264;  and  Maurice.  Medieval  Philosophy,  2nd  ed.  pp.  188-90.  It  is 
noteworthy  that  the  Summa  of  Thomas  was  a  favourite  study  of  Descartes,  who  read 
hardly  any  other  theologian.  1  Cp,  Milman,  ix,  143. 


SABACEN  AND  JEWISH  INFLUENCES 


319 


i"j 


no  less  completely  than  it  dominated  the  minds  of  the  unlearned. 
Meeting  method  with  method,  and  showing  himself  well  aware  of 
the  lore  he  circumvented,  he  built  up  a  system  quite  as  well  fitted 
to  be  a  mere  gymnastic  of  the  mind  ;  and  he  thereby  effected  the 
arrest  for  some  three  centuries  of  the  method  of  experimental  science 
which  Aristotle  had  inculcated.  He  came  just  in  time.  Koger 
Bacon,  trained  at  Paris,  was  eagerly  preaching  the  scientific  gospel ; 
and  while  he  was  suffering  imprisonment  at  the  hands  of  his 
Franciscan  superiors  for  his  eminently  secular  devotion  to  science, 
the  freer  scholars  of  the  university  were  developing  a  heresy  that 
outwent  his. 

Now,  however,  began  to  be  seen  once  for  all  the  impossibility 
of  rational  freedom  in  or  under  a  church  which  depended  for  its 
revenue  on  the  dogmatic  exploitation  of  popular  credulity.  For  a 
time  the  Aristotelian  influence,  as  had  been  seen  by  the  churchmen 
who  had  first  sought  to  destroy  it,^  tended  to  be  Averroist  and 
rationalist.^  In  1269,  however,  there  begins  a  determined  campaign, 
led  by  the  bishop  of  Paris,  against  the  current  Averroist  doctrines, 
notably  the  propositions  '*  that  the  world  is  eternal ";  "  that  there 
never  was  a  first  man  ";  "  that  the  intellect  of  man  is  one  ";  "  that 
the  mind,  which  is  the  form  of  man,  constituting  him  such,  perishes 
with  the  body  ";  "  that  the  acts  of  men  are  not  governed  by  divine 
providence";  "that  God  cannot  give  immortahty  or  incorruptibility 
to  a  corruptible  or  mortal  thing."  ^  On  such  doctrines  the  bishop 
and  his  coadjutors  naturally  passed  an  anathema  (1270) ;  and  at 
this  period  it  was  that  Albertus  Magnus  and  Thomas  Aquinas  wrote 
their  treatises  against  Averroism.* 

Still  the  freethinkers  held  out,  and  though  in  1271  official 
commands  were  given  that  the  discussion  of  such  matters  in  the 
university  should  cease,  another  process  of  condemnation  was  carried 
out  in  1277.  This  time  the  list  of  propositions  denounced  includes 
the  following  :  "  that  the  natural  philosopher  as  such  must  deny  the 
creation  of  the  world,  because  he  proceeds  upon  natural  causes  and 
reasons  ;  while  the  believer  {fidelis)  may  deny  the  eternity  of  the 
world,  because  he  argues  from  supernatural  causes  ";  "  that  creation 
is  not  possible,  although  the  contrary  is  to  be  held  according  to 
faith";  "that  a  future  resurrection  is  not  to  be  believed  by  the 
philosopher,  because  it  cannot  be  investigated  by  reason ";  '  that 
the  teachings  of  the  theologians  are  founded  on  fables  ";  "  that  there 

1  See  the  comments  of  Giraldus  Cambrensis  in  the  proem  to  his  Speculum  Ecclesice 
Brewer's  ed.  in  Rolls  Series,  i,  9  :  and  pref.  pp.  xii-xiii. 

2  Cp.  Renan,  Averrois,  p.  267,  as  to  the  polemic  of  William  of  Auyergne. 

8  Renan,  pp.  567-68.  *  I^-  PP-  269-71,  and  refs. 


320 


CHEISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


I 


are  fables  and  falsities  in  the  Christian  religion  as  in  others  ";  "that 
nothing  more  can  be  known,  on  account  of  theology ";  "  that  the 
Christian  law  prevents  from  learning";^  "that  God  is  not  triune 
and  one,  for  trinity  is  incompatible  with  perfect  simplicity";  "that 
ecstatic  states  and  visions  take  place  naturally,  and  only  so."  Such 
vital  unbehef  could  have  only  one  fate ;  it  was  reduced  to  silence  by 
a  papal  Bull,'  administered  by  the  orthodox  majority;  and  the 
memory  of  the  massacres  of  the  year  1209,  and  of  the  awful  crusade 
against  the  Albigenses,  served  to  cow  the  thinkers  of  the  schools 
into  an  outward  conformity. 

Henceforward  orthodox   Aristotelianism,  placed  on  a  canonical 

footing  in  the  theological  system   of   Thomas  Aquinas,  ruled   the 

universities  ;  and  scholasticism  counts  for  little  in  the  liberation  of 

European  life  from  either  dogma  or  superstition.^     The  practically 

progressive  forces  are  to  be  looked  for  outside.     In  the  thirteenth 

century  in  England  we  find  the  Franciscan  friars  in  the  school  of 

Eobert  Grosst^te  at  Oxford  discussing  the  question  "  Whether  there 

be  a  God?"*  but  such  a  dispute  was   an   academic  exercise  like 

another ;  and  in  any  case  the  authorities  could  be  trusted  to  see 

that  it  came  to  nothing.     The  work  of  Thomas  himself  serves  to 

show   how   a   really   great   power   of   comprehensive    and    orderly 

thought  can  be  turned  to  the  subversion  of  judgment  by  accepting 

the  prior  dominion  of  a  fixed  body  of  dogma  and  an  arbitrary  rule 

over  opinion.     And  yet,  so  strong  is  the  principle  of  ratiocination  in 

his  large  performance,  and  so  much  does  it  embody  of  the  critical 

forces  of  antiquity  and  of  its  own  day,  that  while  it  served  the 

Church  as  a  code  of  orthodoxy  its  influence  can  be   seen   in  the 

skeptical  philosophy  of  Europe  as  late  as  Spinoza  and  Kant.     It 

appears  to  have  been  as  a  result  of  his  argumentation  that  there 

became  established  in  the  later  procedure  of  the  Church  the  doctrine 

that,  while  heretics  who  have  once  received  the  faith  and  lapsed 

are  to  be  coerced  and  punished,  other  unbelievers  (as  Moslems  and 

Jews)  are  not.      This  principle  also,  it  would  appear,  he   derived 

from  the  Moslems,  as  he  did  their  rule  that  those  of  the  true  faith 

must  avoid  intimacy  with  the  unbehevers,  though  believers  firm  in 

the  faith  may  dispute  with  them  "  when  there  is  greater  expectation 

of  the  conversion  of  the  infidels  than  of  the  subversion  of  the  fidels." 

And  to  the  rule  of  non-inquisition  into  the  faith  of  Jews  and  Moslems 

1  Renan,  pp.  273-75.  and  refs.;  Ueberweg.  i.  460,  and  refs.;  Maywald,  Die  Lehre  von  der 
zweifachen  WahrhHt,  1871,  p.  11 ;  Lange.  i,  182  (tr.  i.  218). 

2  Of  John  XXI,  who  had  in  1276  condemned  the  doctrine  of  a  twofold  truth. 
8  Cp.  Gebhart,  OHgines  de  la  Benaiasance,  pp.  29-44.  And  see  above,  p.  308. 
*  Berington,  Lit.  Hist,  of  the  Middle  Ages,  p.  246.    See  above,  p.  310. 


SAKACEN  AND  JEWISH  INFLUENCES 


321 


the  Church  professed  to  adhere  while  the  Inquisition  lasted,  after 
having  trampled  it  under  foot  in  spirit  by  causing  the  expulsion  of 
the  Jews  and  the  Moriscoes  from  Spain.^ 

We  shall  perhaps  best  understand  the  inner  life  of  the  schools  in 
the  Middle  Ages  by  likening  it  to  that  of  the  universities  of  our  own 
time,  where  there  is  unquestionably  much  unbelief  among  teachers 
and  taught,  but  where  the  economic  and  other  pressures  of  the 
institution  suffice  to  preserve  an  outward  acquiescence.  In  the 
Middle  Ages  it  was  immeasurably  less  possible  than  in  our  day  for 
the  unbeliever  to  strike  out  a  free  course  of  life  and  doctrine  for 
himself.  If,  then,  to-day  the  scholarly  class  is  in  large  measure  tied 
to  institutions  and  conformities,  much  more  so  was  it  then.  The 
cloister  was  almost  the  sole  haven  of  refuge  for  studious  spirits,  and 
to  attain  the  haven  they  had  to  accept  the  discipline  and  the 
profession  of  faith.  We  may  conclude,  accordingly,  that  such  works 
as  Abailard's  Sic  et  Noii,  setting  forth  opposed  views  of  so  many 
doctrines  and  problems,  stood  for  and  made  for  a  great  deal  of  quiet 
skepticism  ;^  that  the  remarkable  request  of  the  monks  of  Bee  for  a 
ratiocinative  teaching  which  should  meet  even  extravagant  objections, 
covered  a  good  deal  of  resigned  unfaith  ;  and  that  in  the  Franciscan 
schools  at  Oxford  the  disputants  were  not  all  at  heart  believers. 
Indeed,  the  very  existence  of  the  doctrine  of  a  "  twofold  truth  " — 
one  truth  for  religion  and  another  for  philosophy— was  from  the 
outset  a  witness  for  unbelief.  But  the  unwritten  word  died,  the 
litera  scripta  being  solely  those  of  faith,  and  liberation  had  to  come, 
ages  later,  from  without.  Even  when  a  bold  saying  won  general 
currency— as  that  latterly  ascribed,  no  doubt  falsely,  to  King  Alfonso 
the  Wise  of  Castile,  that  "  if  he  had  been  of  God's  council  when  he 
made  the  world  he  could  have  advised  him  better" — it  did  but 
crystallize  skepticism  in  a  jest,  and  supply  the  enemy  with  a  text 

against  impiety. 

All  the  while,  the  Church  was  forging  new  and  more  murderous 
weapons  against  reason.  It  is  one  of  her  infamies  to  have  revived 
the  use  in  Christendom  of  the  ancient  practice  of  judicial  torture, 

J  See  the  Smmna  of  the  Inquisitor  Bartholomseus  Fumus,  Venet.  1554.  s.j.  Infidelitas. 
fol.  261.  §  5 ;  and  the  Siimma  of  Thomas.  Secunda  Secundee,  <^^8esf-X't5«  •;«,'«  hv  M   de 

a  It  is  sometimes  described  as  a  formidable  product  of  doubt ;  and  again  by  M.de 
Remusat  as  "  consecrated  to  controversy  rather  than  to  skepticism  Cp.  f  ^^Tf  ^g;^^^^^^^^ 
of  England  in  the  Early  and  Middle  Ages,  1867.  i,  609.  The  ^^^w  in  the  text  seems  the  just 
mean  Cp.  Lea.  Hist,  of  the  Inquisition,  i.  57.  In  itself  the  book  V^/o^  «■  °iX  °ion  n^^^^^^ 
mere  collection  of  the  edifying  contradictions  of  theologians  ;  but  such  «; <^°llf.^^^^„°^.^^^^^^ 
in  any  age  have  been  a  perplexity  to  faith;  and  it  is  ^ot  furprising  that  it  r^^^^ 
unpublished  until  edited  by  Cousin  (see  the  Ouvrages  ^''^^'^''^^^r^f'All^^^^  salutaiie  " 
writer  justly  sums  up  that  such  antinomies'  co^^amnentl  esprit  4  undoutes^^^^^^^ 
Thfi  Rav  a  ^  Vnrrar  nronounces  that  the  critical  mdependence  of  JNominaiism.  in 
a  mm^aTike^ihat^of Ablitad  r"  prSents  the  destructive  '-^lonotJree^°^iht.  partly  as 
early  Protestantism,  partly  as  skepticism"  (Crtt.  Hist,  of  Freethought.  p.  12). 


322 


CHEISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


and  this  expressly  for  the  suppression  of  heresy.  The  later  European 
practice  dates  from  the  Bull  of  Innocent  IV.  Ad  extirpanda,  dated 
1252.  At  first  a  veto  was  put  on  its  administration  by  clerical 
hands ;  but  in  1256  Alexander  IV  authorized  the  inquisitors  and 
their  associates  to  absolve  one  another  for  such  acts.  By  the 
beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century  torture  was  in  use  not  only 
in  the  tribunals  of  the  Inquisition  but  in  the  ordinary  ecclesiastical 
courts,  whence  it  gradually  entered  into  the  courts  of  lay  justice.^ 
It  is  impossible  to  estimate  the  injury  thus  wrought  at  once  to 
culture  and  to  civilization,  at  the  hands  of  the  power  which  claimed 
specially  to  promote  both. 

§  7.  Frcethoiight  in  Italy 

Apart  from  the  schools,  there  was  a  notable  amount  of  hardy 
freethinking  among  the  imperialist  nobles  of  northern  Italy,  in  the 
time  of  the  emperors  Henry  IV  and  V,  the  attitude  of  enmity  to  the 
Holy  See  having  the  effect  of  encouraging  a  rude  rationalism.     In 
1115,   while    Henry   V   was   vigorously   carrying   on    the   war   of 
investitures  begun  by  his  father,  and  formerly  condemned  by  him- 
self, the  Countess  Matilda  of  Tuscany  bequeathed  her  extensive  fiefs 
to   the  papacy;    and   in   the   following  year  Henry  took  forcible 
possession  of  them.     At  this  period  the  strife  between  the  papal  and 
the  imperial  factions  in  the  Tuscan  cities  was  at  its  fiercest ;  and 
the  Florentine  chronicler  Giovanni  Villani  alleges  that  among  many 
other  heretics  in  1115  and  1117  were  some  "  of  the  sect  of  the 
Epicureans,"  who  "with  armed  hand  defended  the  said  heresy" 
against   the   orthodox.'     But   it   is   doubtful   whether    the    heresy 
involved    was    anything     more     than     imperiahst     anti-papalism. 
Another  chronicler  speaks  of  the  heretics  as  Paterini ;    and  even 
this  is  dubious.     The  title  of  Epicurean  in  the  time  of  Villani  and 
Dante  stood  for  an  unbeUever  in  a  future  state;*  but  there  was  an 
avowed  tendency  to  call  all  Ghibellines  Faterini ;  and  other  heretical 
aspersions  were  hkely  to  be  applied   in  the  same  way.*^     As  the 
Averroist  philosophy  had  not  yet  risen,  and  rationalistic  opinions 
were  not  yet  current  among  the  western  Saracens,  any  bold  heresy 

1  Lea.  Hist,  of  the  Inquisition,  i.  421-22.  556-58.  575 ;  U.  Burke.  Hist,  of  Spain,  Hume's 
ed.  1900,  ii.  351-52.  For  a  detailed  description  of  the  methods  of  ecclesiastical  torture, 
Burke  refers  to  the  treatise,  De  Catholicis  Institutionibus,  by  Simancas,  Bishop  ot  lieja, 
Rome.  1575.  tit.  Ixv,  X)e  rorm^ntis,  p.  491  sa.        ,      , ^  ...      „.  ;.^^,   „r.rio,. 

2  Torture  was  inflicted  on  witnesses  in  England  in  1311.  by  special  inquisitors,  under 
the  mandate  of  Clement  V.  in  defiance  of  English  law  ;  and  under  Edward  II  it  was  used 
in  England  as  elsewhere  against  the  Templars.  ,  „      ^  ,  one 

3  Istorie  fiorentine,  iv.  29.  ^  See  below,  p.  325. 

6  Villari.  Two  First  Centuries  of  Florentine  History ,  Eng.  tr.  1901,  pp.  110-12. 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  ITALY 


323 


among  the  anti-papalists  of  Florence  must  be  assigned  either  to  a 
spontaneous  growth  of  unbelief  or  to  the  obscure  influence  of  the 
great  poem  of  Lucretius,  never  wholly  lost  from  Italian  hands. 
But  the  Lucretian  view  of  things  among  men  of  the  world  naturally 
remained  a  matter  of  private  discussion,  not  of  propaganda ;  and  it 
was  on  the  less  rationalistic  but  more  organized  anti-clericalism 
that  there  came  the  doom  of  martyrdom.  So  with  the  simple  deism 
of  which  we  find  traces  in  the  polemic  of  Guibert  de  Nogent 
(d.  1124),  who  avowedly  wrote  his  tract  De  Incaniationc  adversiis 
JudcBOS  rather  as  an  apology  against  unbelievers  among  the  Chris- 
tians ;  ^  and  again  among  the  pilgrim  community  founded  later  in 
France  in  commemoration  of  Thomas  k  Becket.'*  Such  doubters 
said  little,  leaving  it  to  more  zealous  reformers  to  challenge  creed 
with  creed. 

Freethought  in  south-western  Europe,  however,  had  a  measure 
of  countenance  in  very  high  places.  In  the  thirteenth  century  the 
Emperor  Frederick  II  had  the  repute  of  being  an  infidel  in  the 
double  sense  of  being  semi-Moslem^  and  semi-atheist.  By  Pope 
Gregory  IX  he  was  openly  charged,  in  a  furious  afterthought,*  with 
saying  that  the  world  had  been  deceived  by  three  impostors 
{baratores)— Moses,  Jesus,  and  Mohammed;  also  with  putting  Jesus 
much  below  the  other  two,  and  with  delighting  to  call  himself  the 
forerunner  of  Antichrist. 

The  Pope's  letter,  dated  July  1,  1239,  is  given  by  Matthew 
Paris  (extracts  in  Gieseler,  vol.  iii,  §  55),  and  in  Labbe's 
Concilia,  t.  xiii,  col.  1157.  Cp.  the  other  references  given  by 
Eenan,  Averroes,  3e  6dit.  pp.  296-97.  As  Voltaire  remarks 
(Essai  sur  les  Moeurs,  ch.  Hi),  the  Pope's  statement  is  the  basis 
for  the  old  belief  that  Frederick  had  written  a  treatise  dealing 
with  Moses,  Jesus,  and  Mohammed  as  The  Three  Impostors. 
The  story  is  certainly  a  myth;  and  probably  no  such  book 
existed  in  his  century.  Cp.  Maclaine's  note  to  Mosheim, 
13  Cent.  pt.  i,  e7id ;  Renan,  Averrods,  pp.  280-81,  295.  The 
authorship  of  such  a  book  has  nevertheless  been  ascribed  by 
CathoHc  writers  successively  to  Averroes,  Simon  of  Tournay, 
Frederick,  his  Minister,  Pierre  des  Vignes,  Arnaldo  de  Villa- 
nueva,  Boccaccio,  Poggio,  Pietro  Aretino,  MachiaveUi,  Sym- 
phorien,  Champier,  Pomponazzi,  Cardan,  Erasmus,  Rabelais, 
Ochinus,  Servetus,  Postel,  Campanella,  Muret,  Geoffroi  Valine, 
Giordano  Bruno,  Dolet,  Hobbes,  Spinoza,  and  Vanini  (cp. 
Sentimens  sur  le  traitd  des  trois  imposteurs  in  the  French  ed.  of 

1  Renter.  Gesch.  der  religiosen  Aufklaruna  im  Miftelnlter,  i,  167.  ^        2  j^.  i,  164-66. 
3  The  Moslems  were  inclined  to  regard  him  as  of  their  creed    because  educated  m 
Sicily."    Cantu,  Oli  Eretici  d'ltalia,  1865,  i.  66.  .„„       . 

*  See  Gieseler,  as  cited  below;  and  Reid's  Mosheim.  p.  437.  note. 


« 


324  CHEISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

1793  ;  and  Lea,  Hist,  of  the  Inquis.  in,  560)  ;  and  the  seven- 
teenth-century apologist  Mersenne  professed  to  have  seen  it 
in  Arabic  (Lea,  iii,  297).  These  references  may  be  dismissed 
as  worthless.  In  1654  the  French  physician  and  mathematician 
Morin  wrote  an  Epistola  de  tribus  impostoribus  under  the  name 
of  Panurge,  but  this  attacked  the  three  contemporary  writers 
Gassendi,  Neure,  and  Bernier ;  and  in  1680  Kortholt  of  Kiel 
published  under  the  title  De  tribus  impostoribus  niagnis  an  attack 
on  Herbert,  Hobbes,  and  Spinoza.  The  Three  Impostors  current 
later,  deahng  with  Moses,  Jesus,  and  Mohammed,  may  have 
been  written  about  the  same  time,  but,  as  we  shall  see  later, 
is  identical  with  L' Esprit  de  Spinoza,  first  published  in  1719. 
A  Latin  treatise  purporting  to  be  written  de  tribus  famosissimis 
deceptoribus,  and  addressed  to  an  Otho  illustrissimus  (conceiv- 
ably Otho  Duke  of  Bavaria,  13th  c),  came  to  light  in  MS.  in 
1706,  and  was  described  in  1716,  but  was  not  printed.  The 
treatise  current  later  in  French  cannot  have  been  the  same. 
On  the  whole  subject  see  the  note  of  K.  C.  Christie  (reprinted 
from  Notes  and  Queries)  in  his  Selected  Essays  and  Papers, 
1902,  pp.  309,  315 ;  and  the  full  discussion  in  Eeuter's 
Geschichte  der  religiosen  Aufkldrung,  ii,  251-96.  The  book 
De  tribus  impostoribus,  bearing  the  date  1598,  of  which  several 
copies  exist,  seems  to  have  been  really  published,  with  its  false 
date,  at  Vienna  in  1753. 

Frederick  was  in  reality  superstitious  enough  ;  he  worshipped 
relics ;  and  he  was  nearly  as  merciless  as  the  popes  to  rebellious 
heretics  and  Manicheans  ;  ^  his  cruelty  proceeding,  seemingly,  on 
the  belief  that  insubordination  to  the  emperor  was  sure  to  follow 
intellectual  as  distinguished  from  political  revolt  against  the  Church. 
He  was  absolutely  tolerant  to  Jews  and  Moslems,^  and  had  trusted 
Moslem  counsellors,  thereby  specially  evoking  the  wrath  of  the 
Church.  Greatly  concerned  to  acquire  the  lore  of  the  Arabs,^  he 
gave  his  favour  and  protection  to  Michael  Scotus,  the  first  translator 
of  portions  of  Averroes  into  Latin,*  and  presumptively  himself  a 
heretic  of  the  Averroi'st  stamp  ;  whence  the  legend  of  his  wizardry, 
adopted  by  Dante.*  Thus  the  doubting  and  persecuting  emperor 
assisted  at  the  birth  of  the  philosophic  movement  which  for  centuries 
was  most  closely  associated  with  unbelief  in  Christendom.     For  the 

1  Milman.  Latin  Christianity,  vi.  150;  Lea,  Hist,  of  the  Inquisition,  i,  221. 

2  Milman,  vi.  150,  158.  3  Renan.  Averroes,  p.  289. 

4  Ren&n,  Averrods,  pp.  205-10.  Michael  Scotus  may  have  been,  like  John  Scotus,  an 
Irishman,  but  his  refusal  to  accept  the  archbishopric  of  Cashel,  on  the  ground  that  he  did 
not  know  the  native  language,  makes  this  doubtful.  The  identification  of  him  with  a 
Scottish  knight,  Sir  Michael  Scott,  still  persisted  in  by  some  scholars  on  the  strength  of 
Sir  Walter  Scott's  hasty  note  to  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,  is  destitute  of  probability. 
See  the  Rev.  J.  Wood  Brown's  Inquiry  into  the  Life  and  Legend  of  Michael  Scot,  1897, 
pp.  160-61, 175-76. 

*  Inferno,  xx,  51&-17. 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  ITALY 


325 


( 


I 


rest,  he  is  recorded  to  have  ridiculed  the  doctrine  of  the  Virgin  Birth, 
the  viaticum,  and  other  dogmas,  '*  as  being  repugnant  to  reason  and 
to  nature 'V  and  his  general  hostility  to  the  Pope  would  tend  to 
make  him  a  bad  Churchman.  Indeed  the  testimonies,  both  Christian 
and  Moslem,  as  to  his  freethinking  are  too  clear  to  be  set  aside. 
Certainly  no  monarch  of  that  or  any  age  was  more  eagerly  interested 
in  every  form  of  culture,  or  did  more,  on  tyrannous  lines,  to  promote 
it  ;^  and  to  him  rather  than  to  Simon  de  Montfort  Europe  owes 
the  admission  of  representatives  of  cities  to  Parliaments.*  Of  his 
son  Manfred  it  is  recorded  that  he  was  a  thorough  Epicurean, 
believing  neither  in  God  nor  in  the  saints.*  But  positive  unbelief  in 
a  future  state,  mockery  of  the  Christian  religion,  and  even  denial 
of  deity — usually  in  private,  and  never  in  writing — are  frequently 
complained  of  by  the  clerical  writers  of  the  time  in  France  and 
Italy  f  while  in  Spain  Alfonso  the  Wise,  about  1260,  speaks  of  a 
common  unbelief  in  immortality,  alike  as  to  heaven  and  hell ;  and 
the  Council  of  Tarragona  in  1291  decrees  punishments  against  such 
unbelievers.'  In  Italy,  not  unnaturally,  they  were  most  commonly 
found  among  the  Ghibelline  or  imperial  party,  the  opponents  of  the 
papacy,  despite  imperial  orthodoxy.  *'  Incredulity,  affected  or  real, 
was  for  the  oppressed  Ghibellines  a  way  among  others  of  distin- 
guishing themselves  from  the  Guelph  oppressors."^ 

The  commonest  form  of  rationalistic  heresy  seems  to  have  been 
unbelief  in  immortality.  Thus  Dante  in  the  Inferno  estimates  that 
among  the  heretics  there  are  more  than  a  thousand  followers  of 
Epicurus,  "who  make  the  soul  die  with  the  body,"^  specifying 
among  them  the  Emperor  Frederick  II,  a  cardinal,^''  the  Ghibelline 
noble  Farinata  degli  Uberti,  and  the  Guelph  Cavalcante  Cavalcanti.^ 
He  was  thinking,  as  usual,  of  the  men  of  his  own  age ;  but,  as  we 
have  seen,  this  particular  heresy  had  existed  in  previous  centuries, 

1  Cantii,  Gli  Eretici  d' Italia,  i,  65-66 ;  the  Pope's  letter,  as  cited ;  Renan,  Averroes, 
pp.  287-91,  296. 

'^  See  the  verdict  of  Gieseler,  Eng.  tr.  iii  (1853),  p.  103.  note.  8  Milman.  vi,  158-59. 

*  Id.  p.  154.    Cp.  the  author's  Evolution  of  States,  1912,  p.  382. 

5  G.  Villani,  Istorie  fiorentine,  vi.  46. 

6  Mosheim,  13  Cent,  pt.  i,  ch.  ii,  §  2,  citing  in  particular  Moneta's  Summa  contra 
Catharos  et  Valdenses,  lib.  V,  cc.  4, 11,  15;  Tempier  (bishop  of  Paris),  Indiculum  Errorum 
(1272)  in  the  Bibliotheca  Patrum  Maxima,  t.  xxv  ;  Bulseus,  Hist.  Acad.  Paris,  iii,  433— as 
to  the  Averroists  at  Paris,  described  above,  p.  319.  Cp.  Renan,  Averroes,  pp.  230-31,  citing 
William  of  Auvergne,  and  pp.  283,  285:  Ozanam.  Danfe,  6e  ^dit.  pp.  86, 101, 111-12;  Gebhart. 
Origines  de  la  Benais.  pp.  79-81 ;  Lange,  i,  182  (tr.  i.  218) ;  Sharon  Turner,  Hist,  of  England 
during  the  Middle  Ages,  2nd  ed.  v,  136-38. 

■^  Lea,  Hist,  of  the  Inquisition,  iii,  560-61. 

^  Perrens,  La  civilisation  fiorentine  du  13e  au  16e  si^cle,  1892,  p.  101.    Above,  p.  322. 

8  Inferno,  Canto  x,  14-15,  118. 

10  Ottavio  Ubaldini,  d.  1273.  of  whom  the  commentators  tell  that  he  said  that  if  there 
were  such  a  thing  as  a  soul  he  had  lost  his  for  the  cause  of  the  Ghibellines. 

11  As  to  whom  see  Renan,  Averrods,  p.  285,  note;  Gebhart,  Renaissance,  p.  81.  His  son 
Quido,  "  the  first  friend  and  the  companion  of  all  the  youth  of  Dante,"  was  reputed  an 
atheist  {Decameron,  vi,  9).  Cp.  Cesare  Balbo,  Vita  di  Dante,  ed.  1853,  pp.  48-49.  But  see 
Owen,  Skeptics  of  the  Ital.  Benais.  p.  138,  note. 


326 


CHEISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


having  indeed  probably  never  disappeared  from  Italy.  Other 
passages  in  Dante's  works ^  show,  in  any  case,  that  it  was  much 
discussed  in  his  time;''  and  it  is  noteworthy  that,  so  far  as  open 
avowal  went,  Itahan  freethought  had  got  no  further  two  hundred 
years  later.  In  the  period  before  the  papacy  had  thoroughly  estab- 
lished the  Inquisition,  and  diplomacy  supervened  on  the  tempestuous 
strifes  of  the  great  factions,  there  was  a  certain  hardihood  of  speech 
on  all  subjects,  which  tended  to  disappear  alongside  of  even  a  more 
searching  unbelief. 

"  Le  16e  si^cle  n'a  eu  aucune  mauvaise  pens^e  que  le  13e 
n'ait  eue  avant  lui  "  (Renan,  Averroi^s,  p.  231).    Renan,  however, 
seems  astray  in  stating  that  "  Le  Po^me  de  la  Descente  de  Saint 
Paul  aux  enfers  parle  avec  terreur  d'une  soci6t6  secrete  qui 
avait  jur6  la  destruction  de  Christianisme  "   {id.  p.  284).     The 
poem  simply  describes  the  various  tortures  of  sinners  in  hell, 
and  mentions  in  their  turn  those  who  "  en  terre,  k  sainte  Iglise 
firent  guerre,"    and   in  death    "  Verbe  Deu  refusouent";  also 
those  "  Ki  ne  croient  que  Deu  fust  nez  (n6).  ne  que  Sainte 
Marie   Teust   portez,    ne   que   por   le   peuple  vousist   (voulait) 
mourir,  ne  que  peine  deignast  soffrir."     See  tbe  text  as  given 
by  Ozanam,  Dante,  ed.  6i6me,  Ptie.  iv— the  version  cited  by 
Renan. 
So,  with  regard  to  the  belief  in  magic,  there  was  no  general 
advance  in  the  later  Renaissance  on  the  skepticism  of  Pietro  of 
Abano,  a  famous  Paduan  physician  and  AverroTst,  who  died,  at  the 
age  of  80,  in  1305.     He  appears  to  have  denied  alike  magic  and 
miracles,  though  he  held  fast  by  astrology,  and  ascribed  the  rise 
and  progress  of  all  religions  to  the  influence  of  the  stars.     Himself 
accused  of  magic,  he  escaped  violent  death  by  dying  naturally  before 
his  trial  was  ended ;  and  the  Inquisition  burned  either  his  body  or 
his  image.®     After  him,  superstition  seems  to  have  gone  step  for 
step  with  skepticism. 

Dante's  own  poetic  genius,  indeed,  did  much  to  arrest  intellectual 
evolution  in  Italy.  Before  his  time,  as  we  have  seen,  the  trouv^res 
of  northern  France  and  the  GoHards  of  the  south  had  handled  hell 
in  a  spirit  of  burlesque ;  and  his  own  teacher,  Brunetto  Latini,  had 
framed  a  poetic  allegory,  II  Tesoretto,  in  which  Nature  figures  as 
the  universal  power,  behind  which  the  God-idea  disappeared."*     But 

1  In  the  Convito,  ii.  9.  he  writes  that,  ** among  all  the  bestialities,  that  is  the  most 
foolish,  the  most  vile,  the  most  damnable,  which  believes  no  other  life  to  be  after  tms 

life."    Another  passage  (iv.  5)  heaps  curses  on  the  "  most  foolish  and  vile  beasts wbo 

presume  to  speak  against  our  Faith."  ,    .  , .  ^ 

2  Cp.  Ozanam.  Dante.  6e  6dit.  pp.  111-12.  as  to  anti-Christian  movements. 

8  Lecky.  Rationalism  in  Europe,  i.  83.  note;  Renan,  Averro^s,  pp.  326-27;  Cantii,  GZt 
Eretici  d' Italia,  i,  177.  and  note  13  on  p.  196. 

*  Cp.  Labitte,  La  JHvine  CoivUdie  avant  Dante,  as  cited,  p.  139. 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  ITALY 


327 


Dante's  tremendous  vision  ultimately  effaced  all  others  of  the  kind ; 
and  his  intellectual  predominance  in  virtue  of  mere  imaginative  art 
is  at  once  the  great  characteristic  and  the  great  anomaly  of  the  early 
Renaissance.     Happily  the  inseparable  malignity  of  his  pietism  was 
in  large  part  superseded  by  a  sunnier  spirit ; '  but  his  personality 
and  his  poetry  helped  to  hold  the  balance  of  authority  on  the  side 
of  faith.'     Within  a  few  years  of  his  death  there  was  burned  at 
Florence  (1327)  one  of  the  most  daring  heretics  of  the  later  Middle 
Ages,    Cecco    Stabili   D'Ascoli,  a  professor   of   philosophy  and 
astrology  at  Bologna,  who  is  recorded  to  have  had  some  intimacy 
with  Dante,  and  to  have  been  one  of  his  detractors.'     Cecco  has 
been  described  as  **  representing  natural  science,  against  the  Christian 
science  of   Dante "  ; '    and  though   his   science  was   primitive,  the 
summing-up  is  not  unwarranted.     Combining  strong  anti-Christian 
feeling  with  the  universal  behef  in  astrology,  he  had  declared  that 
Jesus  lived  as  a  sluggard  {come  un  poltrone)  with  his  disciples,  and 
died  on  the  cross,  under  the  compulsion  of  his  star.'     In  view  of 
the  blasphemer's  fate,  such  audacity  was  not  often  repeated. 

As  against  Dante,  the  great  literary  influence  for  tolerance  and 
liberalism  if  not  rationalism  of  thought  was  BOCCACCIO  (1313-1375), 
whose  Decameron'  anticipates  every  lighter  aspect  of  the  Renaissance 
—its  levity,  its  licence,  its  humour,  its  anti- clericalism,  its  incipient 
tolerance,  its   irreverence,  its   partial  freethinking,  as  well   as   its 
exuberance  in  the  joy  of  living.     On  the  side  of  anti-clericahsm, 
the  key-note  is  struck  so  strongly  and  so  defiantly  in  some  of  the 
opening  tales  that  the  toleration  of  the  book  by  the  papal  authorities 
can  be  accounted  for  only  by  their  appreciation  of  the  humour  of 
the  stories  therein  told  against  them,  as  that'  of  the  Jew  who,  after 
seeing  the  utter  corruption  of  the  clergy  at  Rome,  turned  Christian 
on  the   score   that   only  by  divine   support  could   such  a  system 
survive      No  Protestant  ever  passed  a  more  scathing  aspersion  on 
the  whole  body  of  the  curia  than  is  thus  set  in  the  forefront  of  the 
Decameron.     Still  more  deeply  significant   of   innovating   thought, 

Burckbarft'p.  497     But  the  t'""?' tSJ^e'tu'Si^r  Te'riTes-flCto  ftVg/ounr  sl°e 
Eretici  d'IMia.  i.  144  so.  on  the  wli<''f„J"«J'"'°%  „  ,,, 

grxitral^  ^^''4Ti»Vcar1an,*'sirBayie,  art.  Cabpak.  note  Q;   and  op.  Kenan. 

''Tcp^  Owe?*pp.  128. 135-4-2 ;  Hallam,  Lit.  Hist,  i,  141-42;  Milman,  bk.  xiv,  oh.  v,  end. 
7  Decam.  Qior.  i,  nov.  2. 


328 


CHEISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


however,  is  the  famous  story  of  The  Three  Bings,^  embodied  hiter 
by  Lessing  in  his  Nathan  the  Wise  as  an  apologue  of  tolerance. 
Such  a  story,  introduced  with  whatever  parade  of  orthodox  faith, 
could  not  but  make  for  rational  skepticism,  summarizing  as  it  does 
the  whole  effect  of  the  inevitable  comparison  of  the  rival  creeds 
made  by  the  men  of  Italy  and  those  of  the  east  in  their  intercourse. 
The  story  itself,  centring  on   Saladin,  is  of  eastern  origin,^  and  so 
tells  of  even  more  freethinking  than  meets  the  eye  in  the  history  of 
Islam.*    It  is  noteworthy  that  the  Kabbi  Simeon  Duran  (1360-1444), 
who  follows  on  this  period,  appears  to  be  the  first  Jewish  teacher  to 
plead  for  mutual  toleration  among  the  conflicting  schools  of  his  race.* 
Current  in  Italy  before  Boccaccio,  the  tale  had  been  improved 
from  one  Italian  hand  to  another;*  and  the  main  credit  for  its  full 
development  is  Boccaccio's.^     Though  the  Church  never  officially 
attempted  to  suppress  the  book — leaving  it  to  Savonarola  to  destroy 
as  far  as  possible  the  first  edition — the  more  serious  clergy  naturally 
resented  its  hostility,  first  denouncing  it,  then  seeking  to  expurgate 
all  the  anti-clerical  passages  ;'  and  the  personal  pressure  brought  to 
bear  upon  Boccaccio  had  the  effect  of  dispiriting  and  puritanizing 
him ;  so  that  the  Decameron  finally  wrought  its  effect  in  its  author's 
despite.^     So  far  as  we  can  divine  the  deeper  influence  of  such  a 
work  on  medieval  thought,  it  may  reasonably  be  supposed  to  have 
tended,    like   that   of   Averroism,  towards  Unitarianism  or    deism, 
inasmuch  as  a  simple  belief  in  deity  is  all  that  is  normally  implied 
in  its  language  on  religious  matters.     On  that  view  it  bore  its  full 
intellectual  fruit  only  in  the  two  succeeding  centuries,  when  deism 
and  Unitarianism   alike   grew  up  in   Italy,  apparently  from  non- 
scholastic  roots. 

It  is  an  interesting  problem  how  far  the  vast  calamity  of  the 
Black  Death  (1348-49)  told  either  for  skepticism  or  for  superstition 

^  Gior.  i.  nov.  3. 

2  Dr.  Marcus  Landau,  Die  Quelleti  des  Dekameron,  2te  Aufl.  1884.  p.  182. 

8  The  story  is  recorded  to  have  been  current  among  the  Motecallemin— a  party  kindred 
to  the  Motazilites— in  Bagdad.  Renan.  Averrois,  p.  293.  citing  Dozy.  Renan  thinks  it 
may  have  been  of  Jewish  origin.    Id.  p.  294,  note. 

*  Schechter,  Studies  in  Judaism.  1896,  pp.  207-208. 

6  It  is  found  some  time  before  Boccaccio  in  the  Cento  Novella  antiche  (No.  72  or  73)  in 
a  simpler  form;  but  Landau  (p.  183)  thinks  Boccaccio's  immediate  source  was  the  version 
of  Busone  da  Gubbio  (b.  1280),  who  had  improved  on  the  version  in  the  Ceiito  Novelle, 
while  Boccaccio  in  turn  improved  on  him  by  treating  the  Jew  more  tolerantly.  Bartoli 
(I  FrecursoH  del  Boccaccio,  1876.  pp.  26-28)  disputes  any  immediate  debt  to  Busone ;  as 
does  Owen,  Skeptics  of  the  Ital.  Benais.  p.  29.  note. 

s  BurckhsLTdt  iBenaisftance  in  Italy,  p.  493, 7iote)  points  out  that  Boccaccio  is  the  first 
to  name  the  Christian  religion,  his  Italian  predecessors  avoiding  the  idea;  and  that  in 
one  eastern  version  the  story  is  used  polemically  against  the  Christians. 

7  Owen.  p.  142.  and  refs. 

«  Id.  pp.  143-45.  He  was  even  so  far  terrorized  by  the  menaces  of  a  monk  (who  appeared 
to  him  to  have  occult  knowledge  of  some  of  his  secrets)  as  to  propose  to  give  up  his 
classical  studies  ;  and  would  have  done  so  but  for  Petrarch's  dissuasion.  Petrarch's 
letter  {Epist.  Senil.  i,  5)  is  translated  (Lett,  xii)  by  M.  Develay.  Lettres  de  FHrarque 
d  Boccace. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  ITALY 


329 


in  this  age.  In  Boccaccio's  immortal  book  we  see  a  few  refined 
Florentines  who  flee  the  pest  giving  themselves  up  to  literary 
amusement ;  but  there  is  also  mention  of  many  who  had  taken  to 
wild  debauchery,  and  there  are  many  evidences  as  to  wild  outbreaks 
of  desperate  licence  all  over  Europe.^  On  the  other  hand,  many 
were  driven  by  fear  to  religious  practices;^  and  in  the  immense 
destruction  of  life  the  Church  acquired  much  new  wealth.  At  the 
same  time  the  multitudes  of  priests  who  died^  had  as  a  rule  to  be 
replaced  by  ill-trained  persons,  where  the  problem  was  not  solved 
by  creating  pluralities,  the  result  being  a  general  falling-off  in  the 
culture  and  the  authority  of  the  clergy/  But  there  seems  to  have 
been  little  or  no  growth  of  such  questioning  as  came  later  from  the 
previously  optimistic  Voltaire  after  the  earthquake  of  Lisbon ;  and 
the  total  effect  of  the  immense  reduction  of  population  all  over 
Europe  seems  to  have  been  a  lowering  of  the  whole  of  the  activities 
of  life.  Certainly  the  students  of  Paris  in  1376  were  surprisingly 
freethinking  on  scriptural  points  ;^  but  there  is  nothing  to  show 
that  the  great  pestilence  had  set  up  any  new  movement  of  ethical 
thought.  In  some  ways  it  grievously  deepened  bigotry,  as  in  regard 
to  the  Jews,  who  were  in  many  regions  madly  impeached  as  having 
caused  the  plague  by  poisoning  the  wells,  and  were  then  massacred 
in  large  numbers. 

Side  by  side  with  Boccaccio,  his  friend  Petkarch  (1304-1374), 
who  with  him  completes  the  great  literary  trio  of  the  late  Middle 
Ages,  belongs  to  freethought  in  that  he  too,  with  less  aggressiveness 
but  also  without  recoil,  stood  for  independent  culture  and  a  rational 
habit  of  mind  as  against  the  dogmatics  and  tyrannies  of  the  Church.^ 
He  was  in  the  main  a  practical  humanist,  not  in  accord  with  the 
verbalizing  scholastic  philosophy  of  his  time,  and  disposed  to  find 
his  intellectual  guide  in  the  skeptical  yet  conservative  Cicero.  The 
scholastics  had  become  as  fanatical  for  Aristotle  or  Averroes  as  the 
churchmen  were  for  their  dogmas ;'  and  Petrarch  made  for  mental 
freedom  by  resisting  all  dogmatisms  alike.^  The  general  liberahty 
of  his  attitude  has  earned  him  the  titles  of  *'  the  first  modern  man  "  ^ 
and  "  the  founder  of  modern  criticism  "  ^° — both  somewhat  high- 
pitched."     He   represented   in   reality  the  sobering   and   clarifying 


1  Gasauet.  Tlie  Great  Pestileiice,  1893,  pp.  28.  32,  37,  and  refs.  2  id.  pp.  n,  41. 

8  Probably  25,000  in  England  alone,  including  monks.    Id.  p.  204. 
*  Id.  pp.  205-208,  213,  216.  ^  Below.  §  11. 

6  As  to  his  anti-clericalism,  cp.  Gebhart,  Orig.  de  la  Benais.  p.  71,  and  ref. ;  Owen,  p.  113. 

7  Cp.  Hashdall,  Universities  in  the  Middle  Ages,  i,  264. 

^  See  the  exposition  of  Owen,  pp.  109-28,  and  refs.  on  p.  113. 

8  Renan,  Averroes,  p.  328.  ^^  M6zi6res,  Petrarque,  1868,  p.  362. 

"  It  is  to  be  noted  that  in  his  opposition  to  the  scholastics  he  had  predecessors. 
Cp.  Gebhart,  Orig.  de  la  Benais.  p.  65. 


330 


CHEISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


influence  of  the  revived  classic  culture  on  the  fanaticisms  developed 
in  the  Middle  Ages  ;  and  when  he  argued  for  the  rule  of  reason  in 
all  things^  it  was  not  that  he  was  a  deeply  searching  rationalist,  but 
that  he  was  spontaneously  averse  to  all  the  extremes  of  thought 
around  him,  and  was  concerned  to  discredit  them.  For  himself, 
having  little  speculative  power,  he  was  disposed  to  fall  back  on  a 
simple  and  tolerant  Christianity.  Thus  he  is  quite  unsympathetic 
in  his  references  to  those  scholars  of  his  day  who  privately  indicated 
their  unbeHef.  Knowing  nothing  of  the  teaching  of  Averroes,  he 
speaks  of  him,  on  the  strength  of  Christian  fictions,  as  "that  mad 
dog  who,  moved  by  an  execrable  rage,  barks  against  his  Lord  Christ 
and  the  Catholic  faith."  ^  Apart  from  such  conventional  odium 
theologicum,  his  judgment,  like  his  literary  art,  was  clear  and 
restrained  ;  opening  no  new  vistas,  but  bringing  a  steady  and  placid 
light  to  bear  on  its  chosen  sphere. 

Between  such  humanistic  influences  and  that  of  more  systematic 
and  scholastic  thought,  Italy  in  that  age  was  the  chief  source  of 
practical  criticism  of  Christian  dogmas ;  and  the  extent  to  which  a 
unitarian  theism  was  now  connected  with  the  acceptance  of  the 
philosophy  of  Averroes  brought  it  about,  despite  the  respectful 
attitude  of  Dante,  who  gave  him  a  tranquil  place  in  hell,^  that  he 
came  to  figure  as  Antichrist  for  the  faithful.*  Petrarch  in  his  letters 
speaks  of  much  downright  hostiHty  to  the  Christian  system  on  the 
part  of  Averroists  ;^  and  the  association  of  Averroism  with  the  great 
medical  school  of  Padua**  must  have  promoted  practical  skepticism 
among  physicians.  Being  formally  restricted  to  the  schools,  however, 
it  tended  there  to  undergo  the  usual  scholastic  petrifaction ;  and  the 
common-sense  deism  it  encouraged  outside  had  to  subsist  without 
literary  discipline.  In  this  form  it  probably  reached  many  lands, 
without  openly  affecting  culture  or  life  ;  since  Averroism  itself  was 
professed  generally  in  the  Carmelite  order,  who  claimed  for  it 
orthodoxy.^ 

Alongside,  however,  of  intellectual  solvents,  there  were  at  work 
others  of  a  more  widely  effective  kind,  set  up  by  the  long  and  sinister 


1  Owen.  p.  113.  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  Dante  also  {Convito,  ii.  8.  9;  iii.  14 :  iv.  7) 
exalts  Reason ;  but  he  uses  the  word  in  the  old  sense  of  mere  mentality— the  thinking  as 
distinguished  from  the  sensuous  element  in  man ;  and  he  was  fierce  against  all  resort 
to  reason  as  against  faith.  Petrarch  was  of  course  more  of  a  rationalist.  As  to  his 
philosophic  skepticism,  see  Owen,  p.  120.    He  drew  the  line  only  at  doubting  those  thmgs 

in  which  doubt  is  sacrilege."    Nevertheless  he  grounded  his  belief  in  immortality  not  on 
the  Christian  creed,  but  on  the  arguments  of  the  pagans  (Burckhardt.  p.  546). 

2  Epist.  sine  titulo,  cited  by  Renan.  Averroes,  p.  299.    For  the  phrases  put  in  AverroSs 
mouth  by  Christians,  see  pp.  294-98.  ^  ^  ,  „«.,.. 

8  Inferno,  iv.  144.  *  Renan.  Averroes,  pp.  301-15. 

5  IL  pp.  333-37 ;  Cantii.  Gli  Eretici  d'ltalia,  i.  176  and  refs. 
e  Renan.  pp.  326-27.  ^  Id.  pp.  318-20. 


SECTS  AND  OEDEES 


831 


historic  episode  of  the  Great  Papal  Schism.     The  Church,  already 
profoundly  discredited  in  the  eleventh  century  by  the  gross  disorders 
of  the  papacy,  continued  frequently  throughout  the  twelfth  to  exhibit 
the  old  spectacle  of  rival  popes  ;  and  late  in  the  fourteenth  (1378) 
there  broke  out  the  greatest  schism  of  all.     Ostensibly  beginning  in 
a  riotous  coercion  of  the  electing  cardinals  by  the  Eoman  populace, 
it  was  maintained  on  the  one  side  by  the  standing  interest  of  the 
clergy  in  Italy,  which  called  for  an  Italian  head  of  the  Church,  and 
on   the   other   hand  by  the   French   interest,  which   had    already 
enforced  the  residence  of  the  popes  at  Avignon  from  1305  to  1376. 
It  was  natural  that,  just  after  the  papal  chair  had  been  replaced  in 
Italy  by  Gregory  IX,  the  Eomans  should  threaten  violence  to  the 
cardinals  if  they  chose  any  but  an  Italian ;  and  no  less  natural  that 
the  French  court  should  determine  to  restore  a  state  of  things  in 
which  it  controlled  the  papacy  in  all  save  its  corruption.     During 
the  seventy  years  of  "  the  Captivity,"  Eome  had  sunk  to  the  condi- 
tion of  a  poor  country  town  ;  and  to  the  Italian  clergy  the  struggle 
for  a  restoration  w^as  a  matter  of  economic  life  and  death.     For 
thirty-nine   years    did   the   schism   last,  being  ended  only  by  the 
prolonged  action  of  the  great  Council  of  Constance  in  deposing  the 
rivals  of  the  moment  and  appointing  Martin  V  (1417)  ;  and  this  was 
achieved  only  after  there  had  slipped  into  the  chair  of  Peter  "  the 
most   worthless   and   infamous   man   to   be  found."  ^     During   the 
schism  every  species  of  scandal  had  flourished.      Indulgences  had 
been  sold  and  distributed  at  random  ;'  simony  and  venality  abounded 
more  than  ever;'  the  courts  of  Eome  and  Avignon  were  mere  rivals 
in  avarice,  indecorum,  and  reciprocal  execration  ;  and  in  addition  to 
the  moral  occasion  for  skepticism  there  was  the  intellectual,  since 
no  one  could  show  conclusively  that  the  administration  of  sacraments 
was  valid  under  either  pope.* 


§  8.  Sects  and  Orders 

Despite,  therefore,  the  premium  put  by  the  Church  on  devotion 
to  its  cause  and  doctrine,  and  despite  its  success  in  strangling 
specific  forms  of  heresy,  hostility  to  its  own  pretensions  germinated 
everywhere,'   especially  in   the   countries   most   alien   to   Italy  in 

1  Justinger,  cited  in  The  Pope  aif  the  Council,  Eng  tr.  P-  2^;  1L4  ^^^^3^'  "''  ^^'  """'"• 

3  Cp.Bonnechose.B6/onrier.9&^/oret;iai?e/ormatton  Eng.tr.  1^ 

4  "  Tftniis"  (i  e  Dollinger).  The  Pope  and  the  Council,  Eng.  tr.  2nd  ed.  laby.  pp.  ^y^-yo. 
This  weShty  work  somltTmes  mistakenly  ascribed  to  Huber.  who  collaborated  m  it,  was 
?ecasrby  comrision  and  posthumously  published  as  Das  Papstthum.  by  J.  Friedrich. 

^""^n^ll^^ Middle  Ages,  11th  ed.  ii,  218;  Lea,  Hist,  of  the^Quis.i,  5-34 :  Gieseler,  §  90 
(ii.  572) ;  Freytag.  Bilder  aiis  der  deutschen  Vergangenhett.  4te  aufl.  11.  318  19. 


SECTS  AND  OEDEKS 


333 


332 


CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


i 


language  and  civilization.  An  accomplished  Catholic  scholar^  sums 
up  that  "from  about  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  century  the  whole 
secular  and  religious  literature  of  Europe  grew  more  and  more  hostile 
to  the  papacy  and  the  curia."  The  Church's  own  economic 
conditions,  constantly  turning  its  priesthood,  despite  all  precautions, 
into  a  money-making  and  shamelessly  avaricious  class,  ensured  it 
a  perpetuity  of  ill-will  and  denunciation.  The  popular  literature 
which  now  began  to  grow  throughout  Christendom  with  the  spread 
of  pohtical  order  was  everywhere  turned  to  the  account  of  anti- 
clerical satire  ;^  and  only  the  defect  of  real  knowledge  secured  by  the 
Church's  own  policy  prevented  such  hostility  from  developing  into 
rational  unbelief.  As  it  was,  a  tendency  to  criticize  at  once  the 
socio-economic  code  and  practice  and  the  details  of  creed  and 
worship  is  seen  in  a  series  of  movements  from  the  thirteenth 
century  onwards  ;  and  some  of  the  most  popular  literature  of  that 
age  is  deeply  tinged  with  the  new  spirit.  After  the  overthrow  of  the 
well-organized  anti-clericalism  of  the  Cathari  and  other  heretics  in 
Languedoc,  how^ever,  no  movement  equally  systematic  and  equally 
heretical  flourished  on  any  large  scale ;  and  as  even  those  heresies 
on  their  popular  side  were  essentially  supernaturalist,  and  tended  to 
set  up  one  hierarchy  in  place  of  another,  it  would  be  vain  to  look 
for  anything  like  a  consistent  or  searching  rationalism  among  the 
people  in  the  period  broadly  termed  medieval,  including  the 
Eenaissance. 

It  would  be  a  bad  misconception  to  infer  from  the  abundant 
signs  of  popular  disrespect  for  the  clergy  that  the  mass  of  the  laity 
even  in  Italy,  for  instance,  were  unbelievers."  They  never  were 
anything  of  the  kind.  At  all  times  they  were  deeply  superstitious, 
easily  swayed  by  religious  emotion,  credulous  as  to  relics,  miracles, 
visions,  prophecies,  responsive  to  pulpit  eloquence,  readily  passing 
from  derision  of  worldly  priests  to  worship  of  austere  ones.*  When 
Machiavelli  said  that  religion  was  gone  from  Italy,  he  was  thinking 
of  the  upper  classes,  among  whom  theism  was  normal,*  and  the 
upper  clergy,  who  were  often  at  once  superstitious  and  corrupt.  As 
for  the  common  people,  it  was  impossible  that  they  should  be 
grounded  rationalists  as  regarded  the  great  problems  of  life.     They 

1  The  P&pe  aiid  the  Council,  p.  220.    For  proofs  see  same  work,  pp.  220-34. 

2  "  La  satire  est  la  plus  complete  manifestation  de  la  pens^e  libre  au  moyen  &ge.  Dans 
ce  monde  ou  le  dogmatisme  impitoyable  au  sein  de  I'Eglise  et  de  I'^cole  frappe  comme 
h6r6tique  tout  dissident.  I'esprit  critique  n'a  pas  trouv6  de  voie  plus  siire.  plus  rapide  et 
plus  populaire,  que  la  parodie"  (Lenient,  La  Satire  en  France  an  moyen  dge,  1859,  p.  14). 

^  Cp.  Lenient,  as  cited,  p.  21. 

<  See  in  Symonds's  Renaissance  in  Italy,  vol.  i  (Age  of  the  Despots),  ed.  1897.  pp.  361-69. 
and  Appendix  IV,  on  "'  Religious  Revivals  in  Medieval  Italy."  Those  revivals  occurred 
from  time  to  time  after  Savonarola. 

5  Cp.  Villari.  Machiavelli,  i,  138. 


were  merely  the  raw  material  on  which  knowledge  might  work  if  it 
could  reach  them,  which  it  never  did.     And  the  common  people 
everywhere  else  stood  at  or  below  the  culture  level  of  those  of  Italy. 
For  lack  of  other  culture  than  Biblical,  then,  even  the  popular 
heresy  tended  to  run  into  mysticisms  which  were  only  so  far  more 
rational  than  the  dogmas  and  rites  of  the  Church  that  they  stood  for 
some  actual  reflection.     A  partial  exception,  indeed,  may  be  made  in 
the  case  of  the  Brethren  of  the  Free  Spirit,  a  sect  set  up  in  Germany 
in  the  early  years  of  the  thirteenth  century,  by  one  Ortlieb,  on  the 
basis  of  the  pantheistic  teachings  of  Amaury  of  B6ne  and  David  of 
Dinant.^     Their  doctrines  were  set   forth   in  a  special  treatise  or 
sacred  book,  called  The  Nine  Bocks.     The  Fratres  liheri  spiritus 
seem  to  have  been  identical  with  the  sect  of  the  "  Holy  Spirit";^ 
but  their  tenets  were  heretical  in  a  high  degree,  including  as  they 
did  a  denial  of  personal  immortality,  and  consequently  of  the  notions 
of  heaven,  hell,  and  purgatory.    Even  the  sect's  doctrine  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  was  heretical  in   another  way,  inasmuch    as   it   ran,  if  its 
opponents  can  be  believed,  to  the  old  antinomian  assertion  that 
anyone  filled  with  the  Spirit  was  sinless,  whatever  deeds  he  might 
do.^     As  always,  such  antinomianism  strengthened  the  hands  of  the 
clergy  against  the  heresy,  though  the  Brethren  seem  to  have  been 
originally  very  ascetic  ;  and  inasmuch  as  their  pantheism  involved 
the  idea  that  Satan  also  had  in  him  the  divine  essence,  they  were 
duly  accused  of  devil-worship."*     On  general  principles  they  were 
furiously  persecuted ;  but  all  through  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centuries,  and  even  in  the  fifteenth,  they  are  found  in  various  parts 
of  central  and  western  Europe,^  often  in  close  alHance  with  the 
originally  orthodox  communities  known  in  France  and  Holland  by 
the  names  of  Turlupins  and  Beguins  or  Beguines,  and  in  Germany 
and  Belgium  as  Begiittce  or  Beghards,^  akin  to  the  Lollards. 

These  in  turn  are  to  be  understood  in  connection  with  develop- 
ments which  took  place  in  the  thirteenth  century  within  the  Church 
— notably  the  rise  of  the  great  orders  of  Mendicant  Friars,  of  which 
the  two  chief  were  founded  about  1216  by  Francis  of  Assisi  and  the 
Spanish  Dominic,  the  latter  a  fierce  persecutor  in  the  Albigensian 
crusade.     Nothing  availed  more  to  preserve  or  restore  for  a  time  the 

»  Gieseler.  Per.  Ill,  Div.  iii,  §  90 :  Lea.  Hist,  of  Inquis.  ii.  319-20.         2  Kurtz,  i,  435-36. 

8  Lea,  i,  320-21.  Cp.  Ullmann.  Baformers  before  the  Beforination,  Eng.  tr.  ii,  15-22 ;  and 
Mosheim,  13  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  v.  §  11.  and  notes.  The  doctrine  of  the  treatise  De  Novem 
Bnpibus  is  that  of  an  educated  thinker,  and  is  in  parts  strongly  antinomian,  but  always 
on  pantheistic  grounds.  „ ,  ..  „^„  ,_ 

*  Lea,  i,  323-24.  ^  Cp.  Reuter,  Gesch.  der  religiosen  Avfklarung,  ii,  240-49. 

6  Mosheim.  13  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  ii.  §§  40-43,  and  notes;  ch.  v,  §  9.  The  names  Beguin  and 
Beghard  seem  to  have  been  derived  from  the  old  German  verb  beggan,  to  beg.  In  the 
Netherlands,  Beguine  was  a  name  for  women  ;  and  Beghard  for  men. 


334 


CHBISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


Church's  prestige.  The  old  criticism  of  priestly  and  monastic  avarice 
and  worldliness  was  disarmed  by  the  sudden  appearance  and  rapid 
spread  of  a  priesthood  and  brotherhood  of  poverty  ;  and  the  obvious 
devotion  of  thousands  of  the  earlier  adherents  went  to  the  general 
credit  of  the  Church.  Yet  the  descent  of  the  new  orders  to  the 
moral  and  economic  levels  of  the  old  was  only  a  question  of  time ; 
and  no  process  could  more  clearly  illustrate  the  futility  of  all 
schemes  of  regenerating  the  world  on  non-rational  principles. 
Apart  from  the  vast  encouragement  given  to  sheer  mendicancy 
among  the  poor,  the  orders  themselves  substantially  apostatized 
from  their  own  rules  within  a  generation. 

The  history  of  the  Franciscans  in  particular  is  like  that  of  the 
Church  in  general — one  of  rapid  lapse  into  furious  schism,  with  a 
general  reversion  to  gross  self-seeking  on  the  part  of  the  majority, 
originally  vowed  to  utter  poverty.  Elias,  the  first  successor  of 
Francis,  appointed  by  the  Saint  himself,  proved  an  intolerable 
tyrant;  and  in  his  day  began  the  ferocious  strife  between  the 
"  Spirituals,"  who  insisted  on  the  founder's  ideal  of  poverty,  and 
the  majority,  who  insisted  on  accepting  the  wealth  which  the  world 
either  bestowed  or  could  be  cajoled  into  bestowing  on  the  order. 
The  majority,  of  course,  ultimately  overbore  the  Spirituals,  the 
papacy  supporting  them.*  They  followed  the  practically  universal 
law  of  monastic  life.  The  Humiliati,  founded  before  the  thirteenth 
century,  had  to  be  suppressed  by  the  Pope  in  the  sixteenth,  for 
sheer  corruption  of  morals  ;  and  the  Franciscans  and  Dominicans, 
who  speedily  became  bitterly  hostile  to  each  other,  were  in  large 
measure  little  better.  Even  in  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century 
they  were  attacked  by  the  Sorbonne  doctor,  William  of  St.  Amour, 
in  a  book  on  The  Perils  of  the  Latter  Times  ;^  and  in  England  in 
the  fourteenth  century  we  find  Wiclif  assailing  the  begging  friars  as 
the  earlier  satirists  had  assailed  the  abbots  and  monks.  That  all 
this  reciprocal  invective  was  not  mere  partizan  calumny,  but  broadly 
true  as  against  both  sides,  is  the  conclusion  forced  upon  a  reader 
of  the  Philobiblon  ascribed  to  Eichard  de  Bury,  Bishop  of  Durham 
and  Treasurer  and  Chancellor  under  Edward  III.  In  that  book, 
written  either  by  the  bishop  or  by  one  of  his  chaplains,  Eobert 
Holkot,*  the  demerits  of  all  orders  of  the  clergy  from  the  points  of 
view  of  letters  and  morals  are  set  forth  with  impartial  emphasis  ; 

1  See  the  record  in  Lea,  Hist,  of  the  Inquisition,  bk.  iii,  chs.  i-iii. 

2  Praised  in  the  Bnman  de  la  Bose.Eag.  vers,  in  Skeafs  Chaucer,  1.244;  Bell's  ed.  iv, 
228.    William  was  answered  by  the  Dominican  Thomas  Aquinas. 

3  See  Biog.  Introd.  to  ed.  of  the  Philobiblon  by  E.  C.  Thomas,  1888.  pp.  xliii-xlvii. 

*  C.  i,  Querimonia  librorum  contra  clericos  jam  promotos;  0. 5|  contra  religiosos 

jioasessionatoa :  C.  6 contra  religiosos  mendicantes. 


SECTS  AND  OBDEES 


335 


and  the  character  of  the  bishop  in  turn  is  no  less  effectively  dis- 
posed of  after  his  death  by  Adam  Murimuth,  a  distinguished  lawyer 
and  canon  of  St.  Paul's.* 

The  worst  of  the  trouble  for  the  Church  was  that  the  mendicants 
were  detested  by  bishops  and  the  beneficed  priests,  whose  credit 
they  undermined,  and  whose  revenues  they  intercepted.     That  the 
Franciscans   and  Dominicans   remained   socially  powerful   till   the 
Eeformation  was  due  to  the  energy  developed  by  their  corporate 
organization  and  the  measure  of  education  they  soon  secured  on 
their  own  behalf ;  not  to  any  general  superiority  on  their  part  to 
the  "  secular  "  clergy  so-called.'^     Indeed  it  was  to  the  latter,  within 
the  Church,  that  most  pre-Eeformation  reformers  looked  for  sym- 
pathy.    At  the  outset,  however,  the  movement  of  the  Mendicant 
Friars  gave  a  great  impulsion  to  the  lay  communities  of  the  type  of 
the  Beguines  and  Beghards  who  had  originated  in  the  Netherlands, 
and  who  practised  at  once  mendicancy  and  charity  very  much  on 
the  early  Franciscan  lines  ;^  and  the  spirit  of  innovation  led  in  both 
cases  to  forms  of  heresy.     That  of  the  Beguines  and  Beghards  arose 
mainly  through   their   association  with  the  Brethren  of   the  Free 
Spirit ;  and  they  suffered  persecution  as  did  the  latter  ;  while  among 
the  "Spiritual"  Franciscans,  who  were  despisers  of  learning,  there 
arose  a  species  of  new  religion.     At  the  beginning  of  the  century. 
Abbot  Joachim,  of  Flora  or  Flores  in  Calabria  (d.  1202),  who  "  may 
be  regarded  as  the  founder  of  modern  mysticism," '  had  earned  a 
great  reputation  by  devout  austerities,  and  a  greater  by  his  vaticina- 
tions,' which  he  declared  to  be  divine.     One  of   his  writings  was 
condemned   as   heretical,   thirteen   years   after   his   death,  by   the 
Council  of  Lateran  ;  but  his  apocalyptic  writings,  and  others  put 
out  in  his  name,  had  a  great  vogue  among  the  rebellious  Franciscans. 
At  length,  in  1254,  there  was  produced  in  Paris   a  book  called 
The  Everlasting  Gospel,  consisting  of  three  of  his  genuine  works, 
with  a  long  and  audacious  Introduction  by  an  anonymous  hand, 
which  expressed  a  spirit  of  innovation  and  revolt,  mystical  rather 
than  rational,  that  seemed  to  promise  the  utter  disruption  of  the 


1  Ed.  Thomas,  as  cited,  pp.  xlvi-vii.  ,,.,„     ^  i,     ••  „«.  o.  r-^KViovf 

a  Cp.  Mosheim.  13  C.  pt.  ii.  ch.  ii.  §§  18-40:  Tla.lUm,  Middle  Ages,  ch.  v".  Pt-  2    Gebhart. 
Ongines  de  la  Benais.  p.  42  ;  Berington.  Lit.  Hist,  of  the  Middle  ^/f  •.?,; ^^^ .  Lea  ^^^^^ 
Inq.  bk.  iii,  ch.  i.    The  special  work  of  the  Dommicans  was  the  establiohnient  eveiywbero 
of  the  Inquisition.     Mosheim.  as  last  cited,  ch.  v.  §&  3-^-  ^nd  7i^  es  ;   Lea.  i.^.  200-201 
Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  ix,  155-56;  Llorente,  Hist.  Crit.  de  I  Liquts.  en  Espagne,  as 

"^t^As'to^the  di've'lopment  of  the  Befiuines  from  an  original  basis  of  charitable  co-opera- 
tion see  Ullmann,  Beforniers  before  the  Beformation,  n.  13 ;  Lea,  u,  6bi. 

5  sle  the  tMrteenth-century  memoirs  of  Fra  Salimbene.  Eng.  tr.  in  T.  K.  L.  Oliphant's 
TJie  Duke  a7ul  the  Scholar,  1875.  pp.  98. 103-104. 108-10, 116, 130. 


336  CHKISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

Church.     It  declared  that,  as   the   dispensation   of   the   Son   had 
followed  on  that  of  the  Father,  so  Christ's  evangel  in  turn  was  to 
be   superseded  by  that   of   the  "Holy  Spirit."^     Adopted  by  the 
*'  Spiritual "  section  of  the  Franciscans,  it  brought  heresy  within 
the  organization  itself,  the  Introduction  being  by  many  ascribed— 
probably  in   error— to   the  head  of   the  order,  John  of   Parma,  a 
devotee  of  Joachim.     On  other  grounds,  he  was  ultimately  deposed ; 
but  the  ferment  of  heresy  was  great.     And  while  the  Franciscans 
are  commonly  reputed  to  have  been  led  by  small-minded  generals, 
their  order,  as  Renan  notes,*  not  only  never  lost  the  stamp  of  its 
popular  and  irregular  origin,  but  was  always  less  orthodox  in  general 
than  the  Dominican.     But  its  deviations  were  rather  ultra-religious 
than   rational ;  and  some  of   its  heresies  have  become  orthodoxy. 
Thus  it  was  the  Franciscans,  notably  Duns  Scotus,  who  carried  the 
doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Virgin  against  the 
Dominicans,  who  held  by  the  teaching  of  Thomas  Aquinas  that  she 
was  conceived  "in  sin."'     Mary  was   thus   deified   on   a   popular 
impulse,  dating  from  paganism,  at  the  expense  of  Christism ;  and. 
considering  that  both  Thomas  and  St.  Bernard  had  flatly  rejected 
the   Immaculate   Conception,  its   ultimate   adoption   as   dogma   is 

highly  significant.®  ^^ 

In  the  year  1260,  when,  according  to  the  Eternal  Gospel,  the 
new  dispensation  of  the  Holy  Spirit  was  to  begin,  there  was  an 
immense  excitement  in  northern  Italy,  marked  by  the  outbreak  of 
the  order  of  Flagellants,  self-scourgers,  whose  hysteria  spread  to 
other  lands.  Gherardo  SegareUi,  a  youth  of  Parma,  came  forward 
as  a  new  Christ,  had  himself  circumcised,  swaddled,  cradled,  and 
suckled;'  and  proceeded  to  found  a  new  order  of  "Apostolicals  " 
after  the  manner  of  a  sect  of  the  previous  century,  known  by  the 
same  name,  who  professed  to  return  to  primitive  simplicity  and  to 
chastity,  and  reproduced  what  they  supposed  to  be  the  morals  of  the 
early  Church,  including  the  profession  of  ascetic  cohabitation.  Some 
of  their  missionaries  got  as  far  as  Germany  ;  but  SegareUi  was  caught, 
imprisoned,  reduced  to  the  status  of  a  bishop's  jester,  and  at  length, 

1  The  Introduction  to  the  book,  probably  written  bViL^nP^orX  w^e^e^to'be  h^^^ 
Gf  WfanPiR  thp  ftneel  of  Kev.  xiv.  6;  and  the  ministers  of  the  new  order  were  lo  "«  "J^" 
friars     Mosheim   13  cLIp^^  ii.  §§  33-36.  and  notes.    Cp.  Lea.  as  cited ;  and  Hahn 

G^ch]  d!rT}ferim  Mittelalier,  1845-50.  iii.  7'2-17^a  very  l^^^^^^^^^g  Joachims 

^^^a"  Le  Clerc,  Hist.  Litt.  de  la  France,  xx.  230 ;  Milman.  Latin  Christianity,  ix.  155. 

t  ^^'Zthe^Si.  H^nt.  pt.  ii.  ch.  iii.  §  5;  and  Burnet's  Letters,  ed.  Eotterdam.  1686. 

^' 6  Cv.Milm&n,  Latin  Christianity,  ix,  15-16.     ^^     ^      ^    ..   ^  ^^^f' IW^P^'a      a  R^rt  of 
8  Hardwick.  p.  316;  Lea,  iii.  109;  Mosheim.  13  Cent.  pt.  ii.  ch.  v.  |§  1^16.    ^  sect  oi 
Apostolici  had  existed  in  Asia  Minor  in  the  fourth  century     Kurtz  i,  242^^^^     Lea.  1. 109. 
note.    Those  of  the  twelfth  century  were  vehemently  opposed  by  bt.  Bernard. 


THOtJciaf  In  sPAiii 


ss*? 


after  saving  his  life  for  a  time  by  abjuration,  burned  at  Parma,  in  the 
year  1300. 

Despite  much  persecution  of  the  order,  one  of  its  adherents,  Fra 
Dolcino,  immediately  began  to  exploit  SegareUi's  martyrdom,  and 
renewed  the  movement  by  an  adaptation  of  the  "  Eternal  Gospel," 
announcing  that  SegareUi  had  begun  a  new  era,  to  last  till  the  Day 
of  Judgment.  Predicting  the  formation  of  native  states,  as  well  as 
the  forcible  purification  of  the  papacy,  he  ultimately  set  up  an  armed 
movement,  which  held  out  in  the  southern  Alps  for  two  years,  till 
the  Apostolicals  were  reduced  to  cannibahsm.  At  length  (1307)  they 
were  overpowered  and  massacred,  and  Dolcino  was  captured,  with 
his  beautiful  and  devoted  companion,  Margherita  di  Trank.  She  was 
slowly  burned  to  death  before  his  eyes,  refusing  to  abjure ;  and  he  in 
turn  was  gradually  tortured  to  death,  uttering  no  cry. 

The  order  subsisted  for  a  time  in  secret,  numbers  cherishing 
Dolcino's  memory,  and  practising  a  priestless  and  riteless  religion, 
prohibiting  oaths,  and  wholly  repudiating  every  claim  of  the  Church. 
Yet  another  sect,  called  by  the  name  of  "  The  Spirit  of  Liberty  " 
— probably  the  origin  of  the  name  libertini,  later  applied  to  free- 
thinkers in  France — was  linked  on  the  one  hand  to  the  ApostoHcals 
and  on  the  other  to  the  German  Brethren  of  the  Free  Spirit,  as  well 
as  to  the  Franciscan  Fraticelli.  This  sect  is  heard  of  as  late  as 
1344,  when  one  of  its  members  was  burned.^  And  there  were  yet 
others  ;  till  it  seemed  as  if  the  Latin  Church  were  to  be  resolved 
into  an  endless  series  of  schisms.  But  organization,  as  of  old, 
prevailed ;  the  cohesive  and  aggressive  force  of  the  central  system, 
with  the  natural  strifes  of  the  new  movements,  whether  within  or 
without'  the  Church,  sufficed  to  bring  about  their  absorption  or  their 
destruction.  It  needed  a  special  concurrence  of  economic,  poHtical, 
and  culture  forces  to  disrupt  the  fabric  of  the  papacy. 


§  9.  Thought  in  Spain 

Of  all  the  chapters  in  the  history  of  the  Inquisition,  the  most 
tragical  is  the  record  of  its  work  in  Spain,  for  there  a  whole  nation's 
faculty  of  freethought  was  by  its  ministry  strangled  for  a  whole  era. 
There  is  a  prevalent  notion  that  in  Spain  fanaticism  had  mastered 


*  Lea.  iii.  10&-19.  ,    ,       ^„  _     .      .    ■•  „i,  „  « ii 
2  Lea.  p.  121 ;  Kurtz,  i.  437 ;  Hardwick.  p.  315,  note;  Mosheim.  13  Cent.  pt.  ii,  ch.  v.  §  14, 

and  note.    See  Dante.  Inferno,  xxviii.  55-60.  as  to  Dolcino. 
^  Lea  p.  125. 

*  As  to  the  external  movements  connected  with  Joachim's  Go.^pel  see  Mosheim.  13  Cent, 
pt.  ii.ch.  V.  §§  13-15.  They  were  put  down  by  sheer  bloodshed.  Cp.  Ueberweg,  i,  431 ;  Lea, 
pp.  25-26.  86. 


338  CHKISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

the  national  life  from  the  period  of  the  overthrow  of  Arianism  under 
the  later  Visigothic  kings ;  and  that  there  the  extirpation  of  heresy 
was  the  spontaneous  and  congenial  work  of  the  bulk  of  the  nation, 
giving  vent  to  the  spirit  of  intolerance  ingrained  in  it  in  the  long  war 
with  the  Moors.  "  Spain,"  says  Michelet,  "  has  always  felt  herself 
more  Catholic  than  Kome."^  But  this  is  a  serious  misconception. 
Wars  associated  with  a  religious  cause  are  usually  followed  rather 
by  indifference  than  by  increased  faith  ;  and  the  long  wars  of  the 
Moors  and  the  Christians  in  Spain  had  some  such  sequel,  as  had 
the  Crusades,  and  the  later  wars  of  religion  in  France  and  Germany. 
It  is  true  that  for  a  century  after  the  (political)  conversion  of  the 
Visigothic  king  Eecared  (587)  from  Arianism  to  Catholicism— an  age 
of  complete  decadence-the  policy  of  the  Spanish  Church  was 
extremely  intolerant,  as  might  have  been  expected.  The  Jews,  in 
particular,  were  repeatedly  and  murderously  persecuted ;  but  after 
the  fall  of  the  Visigoths  before  the  invading  Moors,  the  treatment 
of  all  forms  of  heresy  in  the  Christian  parts  of  the  Peninsula,  down 
to  the  establishment  of  the  second  or  New  Inquisition  under 
Torquemada.  was  in  general  rather  less  severe  than  elsewhere. 

An  exception  is  to  be  noted  in  the  case  of  the  edicts  of  1194 
and  1197,  by  Alfonso  II  and  Pedro  II  ("the  Catholic")  of  Aragon, 
against  the  Waldenses.'  The  policy  in  the  first  case  was  that  of 
wholesale  expulsion  of  the  heretics  anathematized  by  the  Church  ; 
and,  as  this  laid  the  victims  open  to  plunder  all  round,  there  is  a 
presumption  that  cupidity  was  a  main  part  of  the  motive.  Peter 
the  Catholic,  in  turn,  who  decreed  the  stake  for  the  heretics  that 
remained,  made  a  signally  complete  capitulation  to  the  Holy  See ; 
but  the  nation  did  not  support  him  ;  and  the  tribute  he  promised 
to  pay  to  the  Pope  was  never  paid.'  In  the  thirteenth  century, 
when  the  Moors  had  been  driven  out  of  Castile,  rationalistic  heresy 
seems  to  have  been  as  common  in  Spain  as  in  Italy.  Already  Arab 
culture  had  spread.  Archbishop  Kaymond  of  Toledo  (1130-50)  having 
caused  many  books  to  be  translated  from  Arabic  into  Latin  ;  and 
inasmuch  as  racial  warfare  had  always  involved  some  intercourse 
between  Christians  and  Moors.«  the  Averroist  influence  which  so 
speedily  reached  Sicily  from  Toledo  through  Michael  Scot  must 
have  counted  for  something  in  Spain.  About  1260  Alfonso  X,  the 
Wise  "  king  of  Castile,  describes  the  heresies  of  his  kingdom  under 

1  Hist,  de  France,  vohx;  J^«  ^^/o^"^- «'^  l??.*' P'lSL)  iqo4  nn  539  547 

2  See  tbe  author's  notes  to  Ins  ed.  of  Buckle  (RouJ}e?t^e).  1904.  pp.  biJ,  ^l. 
8  U.K.  Burke.  Hisfon/o/ Spain.  Himie  8  ed.  1.109-10.  .     ,   jj     .^g 
*  McCrie,  Reformation  in  Spain,  ed.  1856.  p.  41 .  Burke,  as  citea.  u  55  oo. 
5  Lea,  Hist,  of  the  Inquisitimi,  i.  81.    .  g  M  U  58 
7  Haur^au,  Hist,  de  la  philos.  scolastiam,  U,  64-65.  -*«•  "•  ^' 


THOUGHT  IN  SPAIN 


339 


two  main  divisions,  of  which  the  worse  is  the  denial  of  a  future 
state  of  rewards  and  punishments.^  This  heresy,  further,  is  pro- 
ceeded against  by  the  Council  of  Tarragona  in  1291.  And  though 
Alfonso  was  orthodox,  and  in  his  legislation  a  persecutor,^  his  own 
astronomic  and  mathematical  science,  so  famous  in  the  after  times, 
came  to  him  from  the  Arabs  and  the  Jews  whom  he  actually  called 
in  to  assist  him  in  preparing  his  astronomic  tables.^  Such  science 
was  itself  a  species  of  heresy  in  that  age ;  and  to  it  the  orthodox 
king  owes  his  Catholic  reputation  as  a  blasphemer,  as  Antichrist,^ 
and  as  one  of  the  countless  authors  of  the  fabulous  treatise  on  the 
"  Three  Impostors."  He  would  further  rank  as  a  bad  Churchman, 
inasmuch  as  his  very  laws  against  heresy  took  no  account  of  the 
Koman  Inquisition  (though  it  was  nominally  established  by  a  papal 
rescript  in  1235),*  but  provided  independently  for  the  treatment  of 
offenders.  Needless  to  say,  they  had  due  regard  to  finance,  non- 
believers  who  listened  to  heresy  being  fined  ten  pounds  weight  of 
gold,  with  the  alternative  of  fifty  lashes  in  public ;  while  the 
property  of  lay  heretics  without  kin  went  to  the  fisc.^  The  law 
condemning  to  the  stake  those  Christians  who  apostatized  to  Islam 
or  Judaism^  had  also  a  financial  motive. 

Such  laws,  however,  left  to  unsystematic  application,  were  but 
slightly  operative ;  and  the  people  fiercely  resisted  what  attempts 
were  made  to  enforce  them.^  At  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century 
the  heresies  of  the  French  Beguines  and  the  Franciscan  "  Spirituals  " 
spread  in  Aragon,  both  by  way  of  books  and  of  preaching,  and  even 
entered  Portugal.  Against  these,  in  the  years  1314-1335,  the 
Inquisitors  maintained  a  persecution.^  But  it  has  been  put  on 
record  by  the  famous  Arnaldo  of  Villanueva — astronomer,  scholar, 
alchemist,  reformer,  and  occultist ^*^  (d.  1314) — whose  books  were  at 
that  period  condemned  by  a  council  of  friars  because  of  his 
championship  of  the  Spirituals,  that  King  Frederick  II  of  Aragon 
had  confessed  to  him  his  doubts  as  to  the  truth  of  the  Christian 
religion — doubts  set  up  by  the  misconduct  of  priests,  abbots,  and 
bishops  ;  the  malignities  of  the  heads  of  the  friar  orders  ;  and  the 
worldHness  and  political  intrigues  of  the  Holy  See.^^  Such  a  king 
was  not  likely  to  be  a  zealous  inquisitor ;  and  the  famous  Joachite 
Franciscan  Juan  de  Pera-Tallada  (Jean  de  la  Kochetaillade), 
imprisoned  at  Avignon    for  his    apocalytic    teachings    about   1349, 


*  Lea,  iii,  560.  2  Personally  he  discouraged  heresy-hunting.    Burke,  ii,  66. 

*  Burke,  i.  268-73 ;  Dunham.  Hist,  of  Spain  and  Portugal,  1832,  iv.  260. 

<  Lea.  iii.  24.        a  Burke,  ii.  65.        6  Lea,  ii.  183.        ?  Id.  i.  221.        8  Burke,  ii.  66-67. 
8  Lea.  iii.  85-86.  ^o  j^.  pp.  52-53  ;  McCrie.  Reformation  in  Spain,  p.  20. 

11  Bonet-Maury,  Les  Pricurseurs  de  la  Riforme,  1904,  pp.  114-19. 


340  CHRISTENDOM  iH  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

seems  to  have  died  in  peace  in  Spain  long  afterwards.'  It  cannot 
even  be  said  that  the  ordinary  motive  of  rapacity  worked  strongly 
against  heresy  in  Spain  in  the  Middle  Ages,  since  there  the  Templars, 
condemned  and  plundered  everywhere  else,  were  acquitted  ;  and  their 
final  spoliation  was  the  work  of  the  papacy,  the  Spanish  authorities 
resisting.'  We  shall  find,  further,  the  orthodox  Spanish  king  of 
Naples  in  the  fifteenth  century  protecting  anti-papal  scholarship. 
And  though  Dominic,  the  primary  type  of  the  Inquisitor,  had  been 
a  Castilian,  no  Spaniard  was  Pope  from  the  fourth  to  the  fourteenth 
century,  and  very  few  were  cardinals.^ 

As  late  as  the  latter  half  of  the  fifteenth  century,  within  a 
generation  of  the  setting-up  of  the  murderous  New  Inquisition, 
Spain  seems  to  have  been  on  the  whole  as  much  given  to  free- 
thinking  as  France,  and  much  more  so  than  England.  On  the  one 
hand,  Averroism  tinged  somewhat  the  intellectual  life  through  the 
Moorish  environment,  so  that  in  1464  we  find  revolted  nobles 
complaining  that  King  Enrique  IV  is  suspected  of  being  unsound 
in  the  faith  because  he  has  about  him  both  enemies  of  CathoHcism 
and  nominal  Christians  who  avow  their  disbelief  in  a  future  state.* 
On  the  other  hand,  it  had  been  noted  that  many  were  beginning  to 
deny  the  need  or  efficacy  of  priestly  confession;  and  about  1478 
a  Professor  at  Salamanca,  Pedro  de  Osma,  actually  printed  an 
argument  to  that  effect,  further  challenging  the  power  of  the  Pope. 
So  slight  was  then  the  machinery  of  inquisition  that  he  had  to  be 
publicly  tried  by  a  council,  which  merely  ordered  him  to  recant  in 
public  ;  and  he  died  peacefully  in  1480.'^ 

It  was  immediately  after  this,  in  the  reign  of  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella,  that  the  Inquisition  was  newly  and  effectively  established 
in  Spain ;  and  the  determining  motive  was  the  avarice  of  the  king 
and  queen,  not  the  Catholic  zeal  of  the  people.  The  Inquisitor- 
General  of  Messina  came  to  Madrid  in  1477  in  order  to  obtain 
confirmation  of  a  forged  privilege,  pretended  to  have  been  granted 
to  the  Dominicans  in  Sicily  by  Frederick  II  in  1233— that  of 
receiving  one-third  of  the  property  of  every  heretic  they  condemned. 
To  such  a  ruler  as  Ferdinand,  such  a  system  readily  appealed  ;  and 
as  soon  as  possible  a  new  Inquisition  was  established  in  Spain, 
Isabella  consenting.^  From  the  first  it  was  a  system  of  plunder. 
"  Men  long  dead,  if  they  were  represented  by  rich  descendants, 
were  cited  before  the  tribunal,  judged,  and  condemned;  and  the 
lands  and  goods  that  had  descended  to  their  heirs  passed  into  the 


1  Lea,  iii,  86. 
*  Lea,  iii,  564. 


a  Burke,  ii.  57. 
6  Id.  ii.  187-88. 


8  Id.  ii.  62-63. 

fi  Lea,  a.  m ;  Burke,  ii,  67-69. 


THOUGHT  IN  SPAIN 


341 


coffers  of  the  Catholic  kings."*  The  solemn  assertion  by  Queen 
Isabella,  that  she  had  never  applied  such  money  to  the  purposes  of 
the  crown,  has  been  proved  from  State  papers  to  be  "a  most 
deliberate  and  daring  falsehood."'^  The  revenue  thus  iniquitously 
obtained  was  enormous ;  and  it  is  inferrible  that  the  pecuniary 
motive  underlay  the  later  expulsion  of  the  Jews  and  the  Moriscoes 
as  weU  as  the  average  practice  of  the  Inquisition. 

The  error  as  to  the  original  or  anciently  ingrained  fanaticism 
of  the  Spanish  people,  first  made  current  by  Ticknor  {Hist. 
Spanish  Lit.  6th  ed.  i,  505),  has  been  to  some  extent  diffused  by 
Buckle,  who  at  this  point  of  his  inquiry  reasoned  k  priori 
instead  of  inductively  as  his  own  principles  prescribed.  See 
the  notes  to  the  present  writer's  edition  of  his  Introduction 
(Koutledge,  1904),  pp.  107,  534-50.  The  special  atrocity  of  the 
Inquisition  in  Spain  was  not  even  due  directly  to  the  papacy 
(cp.  Burke,  ii,  78) :  it  was  the  result  first  of  the  rapacity  of 
Ferdinand,  utilizing  a  papal  institution ;  and  later  of  the 
political  fanaticisms  of  Charles  V  and  Philip  II,  both  of 
Teutonic  as  well  as  Spanish  descent.  Philip  alleged  that  the 
Inquisition  in  the  Netherlands  was  more  severe  than  in  Spain 
(ed.  of  Buckle  cited,  p.  107,  note).  In  the  words  of  Bishop 
Stubbs  :  **  To  a  German  race  of  sovereigns  Spain  finally  owed 
the  subversion  of  her  national  system  and  ancient  freedom  " 
[id.  p.  550,  note). 

Such  a  process,  however,  would  not  have  been  possible  in  any 
country,  at  any  stage  of  the  world's  history,  without  the  initiative 
and  the  support  of  some  such  sacrosanct  organization  as  the 
Catholic  Church,  wielding  a  spell  over  the  minds  even  of  those  who, 
in  terror  and  despair,  fought  against  it.  As  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  so  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth,^  the  Inquisition  in  Spain  was 
spasmodically  resisted  in  Aragon  and  Castile,  in  Catalonia,  and  in 
Valencia ;  the  first  Inquisitor-General  in  Aragon  being  actually 
slain  in  the  cathedral  of  Saragossa  in  1487,  despite  his  precaution  of 
wearing  a  steel  cap  and  coat  of  mail.*  Vigorous  protests  from  the 
Cortes  even  forced  some  restraint  upon  the  entire  machine  ;  but 
such  occasional  resistance  could  not  long  countervail  the  steady 
pressure  of  regal  and  official  avarice  and  the  systematic  fanaticism 
of  the  Dominican  order. 

It  was  thus  the  fate  of  Spain  to  illustrate  once  for  all  the  power 
of  a  dogmatic  religious  system  to  extirpate  the  spirit  of  reason  from 

>  Burke,  ii,  77,  citing  Lafuente,  ix,  233. 

2  Id.  citing  Bergenroth, Calendar. etc. i. 37.  ,  ......     ^ 

8  Even  as  late  as  1591.  in  Aragon,  when  in  a  not  agamst  the  Inquisition  the  Inquisitors 
barely  escaped  with  their  lives.    Burke,  ii,  80,  note.  *  Id.  pp.  81-82. 


342 


CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


an  entire  nation  for  a  whole  era.     There  and  there  only,  save  for  a 
time   in    Italy,    did   the   Inquisition   become   all-powerful;    and   it 
wrought  for  the  evisceration  of  the  intellectual  and  material  life  of 
Spain  with  a  demented  zeal  to  which  there  is  no  parallel  in  later 
history.      In   the   reign  of    Ferdinand   and    Isabella,    after  several 
random  massacres  and  much  persecution  of  the  "  New  Christians 
or  doubtful  converts  from  Judaism,^  the  unconverted  Jews  of  Spain 
were  in  1489  penned  into  Ghettos,  and  were  in  1492  expelled  bodily 
from  the  country,  with   every  circumstance  of   cruelty,  so  far  as 
Church  and  State  could  compass  their  plans.     By  this  measure  at 
least  160.000  subjects'*  of  more  than  average  value  were  lost  to  the 
State.     Portugal  and  other  Christian  countries  took  the  same  cruel 
step  a  few  years  later ;  but  Spain  carried  the  policy  much  further. 
From    the   year    of    its    establishment,   the  Inquisition  was  hotly 
at   work    destroying    heresy   of    every   kind ;    and   the    renowned 
Torquomada,  the   confessor   of    Isabella,    is   credited   with    having 
burned  over  ten  thousand  persons  in  his  eighteen  years  of  office  as 
Grand  Inquisitor,  besides  torturing  many  thousands.     Close  upon 
a   hundred   thousand    more  were   terrified   into   submission ;    and 
a  further  six  thousand   burned  in  effigy  in  their  absence  or  after 
death.^     The  destruction  of  books  was  proportionally  thorough  ;* 
and  when  Lutheran  Protestantism  arose  it  was  persistently  killed 
out ;  thousands  leaving  the  country  in  view  of  the  hopelessness  of 
the  cause.''     At  this  rate,  every  vestige  of  independent  thought  must 
soon  have  disappeared  from  any  nation  in  the  world.     If  she  is  to 
be  judged  by  the  number  of  her  slain  and  exiled  heretics,  Spain  must 
once   have   been  nearly  as  fecund  in  reformative   and   innovating 
thought  as  any  State  in  northern  Europe ;  but  the  fatal  conjunction 
of  the  royal  and  the  clerical  authority  sufficed  for  a  whole  era  to 
denude  her  of  every  variety  of  the  freethinking  species.® 

§  10.  Thought  in  England 
Lying  on  the  outskirts  of  the  world  of  culture,  England  in  the 
later  Middle  Ages  and  the  period  of  the  Italian  Renaissance  lived 

1  There  had  previously  been  sharp  social  persecution  by  the  Cortes,  in  148n,  on  *'  anti- 
Semitic  "grounds,  the  Jews  being  then  debarred  from  all  the  professions,  and  even  from 
commerce.  They  were  thus  driven  to  usury  by  Christians,  who  latterly  denounce  the 
race  for  usuriousness.    Cp.  Michelet,  Hist,  de  France,  x.  ed.  ISSi,  v.  15,  note. 

2  The  number  has  been  put  as  high  as  800.000.  Cp.  F.  D.  Mocatta,  The  Jews  and  the 
Inquisition,  1877.  p.  54;  E.  La  Rigaudi^re.  Hist,  des  Persic.  Belig.  en  Espague,  1860, 
pp.  11-2-14 ;  Prescott.  Hist,  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  Kirk's  ed.  1889,  p.  323;  and  refs.  in 
ed.  of  Buckle  cited,  p.  541.  .„„„..    ^,         ^  .     ^, 

8  Llorente.  Hist.  Crit.  de  Vlnquis.  en  Espagne,  ed.  1818,  i.  280.  As  to  Llorente  s  other  esti- 
mates, which  are  of  doubtful  value,  cp.  Prescotfs  note,  ed.  cited,  p.  746.  But  as  to  Llorente's 
general  credit,  see  the  vindication  of  U.  R.  Burke,  ii,  85-87. 

*  Llorente,  i,  281.  ^  McCrie,  Reformation  in  Spam,  ch.  via. 

6  Cp.  La  Rigaudi^re,  pp.  309  -14 ;  Buckle,  as  cited,  pp.  544,  570 ;  U.  R.  Burke,  i.  59,  85. 


THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND 


343 


intellectually,  even  where  ministered  to  by  the  genius  of  Chaucer, 
for  the  most  part  in  dependence  on  Continental  impulses ;  yet  not 
without  notable  outcrops  of  native  energy.  There  is  indeed  no  more 
remarkable  figure  in  the  Middle  Ages  than  EOGER  BACON  (?  1214- 
1294),  the  EngHsh  Franciscan  friar,  schooled  at  Paris.  His  career 
remains  still  in  parts  obscure.  Born  at  or  near  Ilchester,  in  Somer- 
setshire, he  studied  at  Oxford  under  Edmund  Kich,  Kichard  Fitzacre, 
Eobert  Grosst^te,  and  Adam  de  Marisco ;  and  later,  for  a  number  of 
years,  at  Paris,  where  he  is  supposed  to  have  held  a  chair.  On  his 
return  he  was  lionized  ;  but  a  few  years  afterwards,  in  1257,  we 
find  him  again  in  Paris,  banished  thither  by  his  Order. ^  He  was 
not  absolutely  imprisoned,  but  ordered  to  live  under  official  surveil- 
lance in  a  dwelling  where  he  was  forbidden  to  write,  to  speak  to 
novices,  or  observe  the  stars — rules  which,  it  is  pretty  clear,  he 
broke,  one  and  all.^  After  some  eight  years  of  this  durance.  Cardinal 
Guide  Falcodi  (otherwise  Guy  Foucaud  or  De  Foulques),  who  while 
acting  as  papal  legate  in  England  at  the  time  of  the  rising  of  Simon 
de  Montfort  may  have  known  or  heard  of  Bacon,  became  interested 
in  him  through  his  chaplain,  Kaymond  of  Laon,  who  spoke  (in 
error)  of  the  imprisoned  friar  as  having  written  much  on  science. 
The  cardinal  accordingly  wrote  asking  to  see  the  writings  in  question. 
Bacon  sent  by  a  friend  an  explanation  to  the  effect  that  he  had 
written  little,  and  that  he  could  not  devote  himself  to  composition 
without  a  written  mandate  and  a  papal  dispensation.  About  this 
time  the  Cardinal  was  elevated  to  the  papacy  as  Clement  IV  ;  and 
in  that  capacity,  a  year  later  (1266),  he  wrote  to  Bacon  authorizing 
him  to  disobey  his  superior,  but  exhorting  him  to  do  it  secretly. 
Bacon,  by  his  own  account,  had  already  spent  in  forty  years  of 
study  2,000  libri^  in  addition  to  purchases  of  books  and  instruments 
and  teacher's  fees  ;  and  it  is  not  known  whether  the  Pope  furnished 
the  supplies  he  declared  he  needed.'*  To  work,  however,  he  went 
with  an  astonishing  industry,  and  in  the  course  of  less  than  eighteen 
months' he  had  produced  his  chief  treatise,  the  Opus  Majus ;  the 
Opus  Minus,  designed  as  a  summary  or  sample  of  the  former ;  and 
the  later  Opus  Tertium,  planned  to  serve  as  a  preamble  to  the  two 

others.® 

Through  all  three  documents  there  runs  the  same  inspiration, 
the  Opus  Tertium  and  the  Majus  constituting  a  complete  treatise, 

1  Cp.  Emile  Charles,  iloflfer  JBacon,  Paris,  1861,  p.  23. 

2  Cp.  Haur6au,  Hist,  de  la  philos.  scolastique,  Ptie.  ii,  1880,  vol.  u,  p.  79.  , 

8  This  sum  of  libri  has  been  taken  by  English  writers  to  stand  for  English    pounds. 
It  may  however  have  represented  Parisian  iivres. 

*  Prof.  Brewer.  Introd.  to  Opera  Inedita  of  Roger  Bacon,  1859.  pp.  xiv-xxiii. 
6  Id.  p.  xlvi.  6  jd.  p.  XXX.  sq. 


344  CHEISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

which  gives  at  once  the  most  vivid  idea  of  the  state  of  culture  at 
the  time,  and  the  most  intimate  presentment  of  a  student's  mind, 
that  survive  from  the  thirteenth  century.  It  was  nothing  less  than 
a  demand,  such  as  was  made  by  Francis  Bacon  three  hundred  and 
fifty  years  later,  and  by  Auguste  Comte  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
for  a  reconstruction  of  all  studies  and  all  tuition.  Neither  pope  nor 
emperor  could  have  met  it ;  but  Clement  gave  Eoger  his  freedom, 
and  he  returned  to  Oxford,  papally  protected,  at  the  end  of  1267. 
Four  years  later  Clement  died,  and  was  succeeded  by  Gregory  X, 

a  Franciscan. 

At  this  stage  of  his  life  Bacon  revealed  that,  whatever  were  his 
wrongs,  he  was  inclined  to  go  halfway  to  meet  them.  In  a  new 
writing  of  similar  purport  with  the  others,  the  Compendium  Philo- 
sophicB,  written  in  1271/  he  not  only  attacked  in  detail  the  eccle- 
siastical system,'  but  argued  that  the  Christians  were  incomparably 
inferior  to  pagans  in  morals,  and  therefore  in  science  ;'  that^  there 
was  more  truth  in  Aristotle's  few  chapters  on  laws  than  in  the 
whole  corpus  juris/  that  the  Christian  religion,  as  commonly 
taught,  was  not  free  of  errors ;  and  that  philosophy  truly  taught, 
and  not  as  in  the  schools,  was  perhaps  the  surer  way  to  attain  both 
truth  and  salvation.* 

Again  he  was  prosecuted ;  and  this  time,  after  much  delay,  it 
was  decided  that  the  entire  Order  should  deal  with  the  case.  Not 
till  1277  did  the  trial  come  off,  under  the  presidency  of  the  chief  of 
the  Order,  Jerome  of  Ascoli.  Bacon  was  bracketed  with  another 
insubordinate  brother,  Jean  d'Olive ;  and  both  were  condemned. 
In  Bacon's  case  his  doctrine  was  specified  as  continentem  aliquas 
novitates  suspectas,  propter  qiias  fuit  idem  Rogerius  carceri  condemp- 
natus.^  This  time  Bacon  seems  to  have  undergone  a  real  imprison- 
ment, which  lasted  fourteen  years.  During  that  time  four  more 
popes  held  office,  the  last  of  them  being  the  said  Jerome,  elevated 
to  the  papal  chair  as  Nicholas  IV.  Not  till  his  death  in  1292  was 
Bacon  released— to  die  two  years  later. 

He  was  in  fact,  with  all  his  dogmatic  orthodoxy,  too  essentially 
in  advance  of  his  age  to  be  otherwise  than  suspect  to  the  typical 

^  Compendium  PMlosophiiB,c&vi.i^  Op.  Ined.  pp.  d^rAOl.  .,    ^r  ^ 

8  Id  D  ^    Cp.  p.  412  as  to  the  multitude  of  theologians  at  Paris  banished  for  sodomy. 

*  Id  d'  422  ^  ^^'  cc.  ii-v.  pp.  404-32.    ^    ^      .  ^     . 

6  Brewer,  p.  xciii,  note,  cites  this  in  an  extract  from  the  Chronicle  of  Antoninus,  Arch- 
bishop of  Florence,  a  late  writer  of  the  fifteenth  century,  who  gives  no  authority  for  his 
statement."  Dr.  Bridges,  however,  was  enabled  by  M.  Sabatier  to  trace  the  passage  back 
to  the  MS.  Chronica  xziv  Generalium  Ordinis  Minornm,  which  belongs  to  the  first  half  of 
the  fourteenth  century;  and  the  passage,  as  M.  Sabatier  remarks,  has  all,,the  appeaTance 
of  being  an  extract  from  the  official  journal  of  this  Order.  (Bridges.  Tft^  OpusMa^m  of 
Boger  Bacon,  Suppl.  vol.  1900,  p.  158.) 


THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND 


345 


ecclesiastics  of  any  time.  The  marvel  is  that  with  his  radical 
skepticism  as  to  all  forms  of  human  knowledge ;  his  intense  percep- 
tion of  the  fatality  of  alternate  credulity  and  indifference  which 
kept  most  men  in  a  state  of  positive  or  negative  error  on  every 
theme;  his  insatiable  thirst  for  knowledge;  his  invincible  repug- 
nance to  all  acknowledgment  of  authority,^  and  his  insistence  on  an 
ethical  end,  he  should  have  been  able  to  rest  as  he  did  in  the 
assumption  of  a  divine  infallibiUty  vested  in  what  he  knew  to  be 
a  corruptible  text.  It  was  doubtless  defect  of  strictly  philosophic 
thought,  as  distinguished  from  practical  critical  faculty,  that  enabled 
him  to  remain  orthodox  in  theology  while  anti- authoritarian  in 
everything  else.  As  it  was,  his  recalcitrance  to  authority  in  such 
an  age  sufficed  to  make  his  life  a  warfare  upon  earth.  And  it  is 
not  surprising  that,  even  as  his  Franciscan  predecessor  Robert 
Grosst^te,  bishop  of  Lincoln,  came  to  be  reputed  a  sorcerer  on  the 
strength  of  having  written  many  treatises  on  scientific  questions — 
as  well  as  on  witchcraft — Roger  Bacon  became  a  wizard  in  popular 
legend,  and  a  scandal  in  the  eyes  of  his  immediate  superiors,  for 
a  zest  of  secular  curiosity  no  less  uncommon  and  unpriestlike.^  "  It 
is  sometimes  impossible  to  avoid  smiling,"  says  one  philosophic 
historian  of  him,  "  when  one  sees  how  artfully  this  personified 
thirst  for  knowledge  seeks  to  persuade  himself,  or  his  readers,  that 
knowledge  interests  him  only  for  ecclesiastical  ends.     No  one  has 

believed    it:    neither    posterity nor    his    contemporaries,    who 

distrusted  him  as  worldly-minded."  ^ 

Worldly-minded  he  was  in  a  noble  sense,  as  seeking  to  know  the 
world  of  Nature  ;  and  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  proof  of  his 
originahty  on  this  side  is  his  acceptance  of  the  theory  of  the  earth's 
sphericity.  Peter  de  Alliaco,  whose  Mago  Mtiiidi  was  compiled  in 
1410,  transcribed  from  Roger  Bacon's  Opus  Majus  almost  literally, 
but  without  acknowledgment,  a  passage  containing  quotations  from 
Aristotle,  PHny,  and  Seneca,  all  arguing  for  the  possibility  of  reaching 
India  by  sailing  westward.  Columbus,  it  is  known,  was  familiar 
with  the  Imago  Mmidi ;  and  this  passage  seems  greatly  to  have 
inspired  him  in  his  task.*     This  alone  was  sufficient  practical  heresy 


1  "  II  etait  n6  rebelle."    "  Le  m^pris  systematique  de  l'autorit6,  voili  vraiment  ce  qu'il 

professe."    (Haureau,  Ptie.  II.  ii.  76,  85.)  ,,    ,t^ -^     ^  t.t  *   t>i  -i^n  icoa  r.r^  inn  io. 

2  See  the  sympathetic  accounts  of  Baden  Powell,  Hist,  of  Nat.  Fhtlos.  1834,  pp.  109-12 , 
White,  Warfare  of  Scieiice  with  TheologvA,  319-91. 

8  Erdmann.  History  of  Philosophy,  Eng.  tr.  3rd  ed.  i,  476.  ,„„„„„.  ^,  „«  .  ., 
*  Humboldt,  Examen  Crit.  de  Vhist.  de  la  Giographie,  1836-39,  i,  64-70,  gives  the 
passages  in  the  Opus  Majus  and  the  Imago  Mundi,  and  paraphrase  of  the  latter  m 
Columbus's  letter  to  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  from  Jamaica  (given  also  in  P.  Ii.  Ford  a 
Writings  of  Christopher  Columbus,  1892,  p.  199  sg.).  Cp.  Ellis  s  note  to  Francis  Bacon  s 
TempoHs  Partus  Masculus,  in  Ellis  and  Spedding's  ed.  of  Bacons  Tforfrs,  in,  534.    It 


346  CHEISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

to  put  Bacon  in  danger ;  and  yet  his  real  orthodoxy  can  hardly  be 
doubted/  He  always  protested  against  the  scholastic  doctrine  of  a 
"  twofold  truth."  insisting  that  revelation  and  philosophy  were  at 
one.  but  that  the  latter  also  was  divine.'  It  probably  mattered  little 
to  his  superiors,  however,  what  view  he  took  of  the  abstract  question  : 
it  was  his  zeal  for  concrete  knowledge  that  they  detested.  His  works 
remain  to  show  the  scientific  reach  of  which  his  age  was  capable, 
when  helped  by  the  lore  of  the  Arabs ;  for  he  seems  to  have  drawn 
from  Averroes  some  of  his  inspiration  to  research;'  but  m  the 
England  of  that  day  his  ideals  of  research  were  as  unattainable  as 
his  wrath  against  clerical  obstruction  was  powerless  ;'  and  Averroism 
in  England  made  Httle  for  innovation.''  The  EngUsh  Benaissance 
properly  sets-in  in  the  latter  half  of  the  sixteenth  century,  when  the 
glory  of  that  of  Italy  is  passing  away. 

In  the  fourteenth  century,  indeed,  a  remarkable  new  life  is  seen 
arising  in  England  in  the  poetry  and  prose  of  Chaucer,  from  contact 
with  the  literature  of  Italy  and  France  ;  but  while  Chaucer  reflects 
the  spontaneous  medieval  hostiUty  to  the  self-seeking  and  fraudulent 
clergy,  and  writes  of  deity  with  quite  medieval  irreverence,'  he  tells 
little  of  the  Kenaissance  spirit  of  critical  unbelief,  save  when  he  notes 
the  proverbial  irreUgion  of  the  physicians,'  or  smiles  significantly  over 
the  problem  of  the  potency  of  clerical  cursing  and  absolution,^  or 
shrugs  his  shoulders  over  the  question  of  a  future  state.'  In  such 
matters  he  is  noticeably  undevout ;  and  though  it  is  impossible  to 
found  on  such  passages  a  confident  assertion  that  Chaucer  had  no 
beHef  in  immortality,  it  is  equaUy  impossible  in  view  of  them  to 
claim  that  he  was  a  warm  beHever. 

Prof.  Lounsbury,  who  has  gone  closely  and  critically  into  the 
whole  question  of  Chaucer's  reUgious  opinions,  asks  concerning 
the  Hues  in  the  Knight's  Tale  on  the  passing  of  Arcite :  Can 
modern  agnosticism  point  to  a  denial  more  emphatic  than  that 
made  in  the  fourteenth  century  of  the  belief  that  there  exists  for 

should  be  remembered  in  this  connection  that  Columbna  found  believers,  in  the  early 
|?age  of  his  Srtaking.  only  in  two  friars,  one  a  Franciscan  and  one  a  Dommican.    See 

^^'i^'niiaurtau^Ue'T'iFi^"  ^  Opus  Majus,  Pars  ii.  cap.  5.  . 

3  nlkfn  Averroes  V  k^^^  Bacon  mentions  Averroes  in  the  Opus  Majus  T A,  cc  6. 15  ; 
P  ii  c  l^'ed  BrTdg^s  iimOOO),  14  m  the  passage  last  cited. he  cals  him    homo 

Tolidae  sipientiae  corrigens  multa  priorum  et  addens  multa.  quamvis  corngendus  sit  in 

""'ri^e^^^: iL?ful' noUcTbTp"-;:  Adamson  in  Di^  of  Nat. Bio,.    Cp.  Milman,  Latin 

^^^^^*r&^iimtf  ^he^^^^^^^  Ibn'orBac^nthorpe  (d.  1316)  and  W>lter  Burleigh 

weLamonf  the  orthodox  Averroista ;  the  latter  figuring  as  a  Realist  against  William  of 

'^^a^Legend  of  Good  Women.  11. 1039-43 :  Parliament  of  Fowls,  11. 199-200. 
^  Prologue  to  the  Canterbury  Tales,  438  U40). 

8  Id.  653-61  (655-63).    Cp.  TaleoftheW%fe  of  ^ath;  1-25.  /9«yj_,4  ^f  MS  croun  A) 

9  Legend  of  Good  Womm,  prol.  U.  1-9 ;  Kntght's  rai6.U.1951-^  12809-H  Ol  Mb.  group  A  J. 


THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND 


347 


us  any  assurance  of  the  life  that  is  lived  beyond  the  grave  ?  " 
{Studies  in  Chaucer,  1892,  ii,  514-15).  Prof.  Skeat,  again, 
affirms  (Notes  to  the  Tales,  Clar.  Press  Compl.  Chaucer,  v,  92) 
that  "the  real  reason  why  Chaucer  could  not  here  describe  the 
passage  of  Arcite's  soul  to  heaven  is  because  he  had  already 
copied  Boccaccio's  description,  and  had  used  it  with  respect  to 
the  death  of  Troilus  "  (see  Troil  v,  1807-27  ;  stanzas  7,  8,  9  from 
the  end).  This  evades  the  question  as  to  the  poet's  faith.  In 
point  of  fact,  the  passage  in  Troilus  aiid  Criseyde  is  purely 
pagan,  and  tells  of  no  Christian  bilief,  though  that  poem, 
written  before  the  Tales,  seems  to  parade  a  Christian  contempt 
for  pagan  lore.     (Cp.  Lounsbury,  as  cited,  p.  512.) 

The  ascription  of  unbelief  seems  a  straining  of  the  evidence ; 
but  it  would  be  difficult  to  gainsay  the  critic's  summing-up: 
"The  general  view  of  all  his  [Chaucer's]  production  leaves 
upon  the  mind  the  impression  that  his  personal  religious 
history  was  marked  by  the  dwindling  devoutness  which  makes 
up  the  experience  of  so  many  lives — the  fallings  from  us,  the 
vanishings,  we  know  not  how  or  when,  of  beliefs  in  which  we 
have  been  bred.  One  characteristic  which  not  unusually 
accompanies  the  decline  of  faith  in  the  individual  is  in  him 
very  conspicuous.  This  is  the  prominence  given  to  the  falsity 
and  fraud  of  those  who  have  professedly  devoted  themselves  to 

the   advancement   of   the   cause   of    Christianity Much   of 

Chaucer's   late   work,  so   far   as   we   know  it   to   be   late,   is 

distinctly  hostile  to  the  Church It  is,  moreover,  hostile  in 

a  way  that  implies  an  utter  disbelief  in  certain  of  its  tenets, 
and  even  a  disposition  to  regard  them  as  full  of  menace  to  the 
future  of  civilization  "  (Lounsbury,  vol.  cited,  pp.  519-20). 

Against  this  general  view  is  to  be  set  that  which  proceeds  on 
an  unquestioning  acceptance  of  the  "Eetractation"  or  confession 
at  the  close  of  the  Canterbury  Tales,  as  to  the  vexed  question 
of  the  genuineness  of  which  see  the  same  critic,  work  cited,  i, 
412-15 ;  iii,  40.  The  fact  that  the  document  is  appended  to 
the  concluding  "  Parson's  Tale  "  (also  challenged  as  to  authen- 
ticity), which  is  not  a  tale  at  all,  and  to  which  the  confession 
refers  as  *'  this  little  treatise  or  rede,"  suggests  strongly  a  clerical 
influence  brought  to  bear  upon  the  aging  poet. 

To  infer  real  devotion  on  his  part  from  his  sympathetic  account 
of  the  good  parson,  or  from  the  dubious  Ketractation  appended  to 
the  Tales,  is  as  unwarrantable  as  is  the  notion,  dating  from  the 
Keformation  period,  that  he  was  a  Wicliffite.'  Even  if  the 
Ketractation  be  of  his  writing,  under  pressure  in  old  age,  it  points 
to  a  previous  indifferentism ;  and  from  the  great  mass  of  his  work 

1  The  notion  connects  with  the  spurious  Ploughman's  Tale  and  Pilgrim's  Tale,  as  to 
which  see  Lounsbury,  as  cited,  i,  460-73 ;  ii,  460-69. 


348 


CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


THoiJGHT  tN  England 


349 


there  can  be  drawn  only  the  inference  that  he  is  essentially  non- 
religious  in  temper  and  habit  of  mind.  But  he  is  no  disputant,  no 
propagandist,  whether  on  ecclesiastical  or  on  intellectual  grounds ; 
and  after  his  day  there  is  social  retrogression  and  literary  relapse 
in  England  for  two  centuries.  That  there  was  some  practical 
rationalism  in  his  day,  however,  we  gather  from  the  VisioJi  of  Piers 
Ploughman,  by  the  contemporary  poet  Langland  (fl.  1360-90),  where 
there  is  a  vivid  account  of  the  habit  among  anti-clerical  laymen  of 
arguing  against  the  doctrine  of  original  sin  and  the  entailment  of 
Adam's  offence  on  the  whole  human  race.^  To  this  way  of  thinking 
Chaucer  probably  gave  a  stimulus  by  his  translation  of  the  De 
Consolatione  Philosophiae  of  Boethius,  where  is  cited  the  "  not 
unskilful  *'  dilemma  :  "  If  God  is,  whence  come  wicked  things  ? 
And  if  God  is  not,  whence  come  good  things  ?  "  '^  The  stress  of  the 
problem  is  hard  upon  theism  ;  and  to  ponder  it  was  to  resent  the 
doctrine  of  inherited  guilt.  The  Church  had,  in  fact,  visibly  turned 
this  dogma  to  its  own  ends,  insisting  on  the  universal  need  of  ghostly 
help  even  as  it  repelled  the  doctrine  of  unalterable  predestination. 
In  both  cases,  of  course,  the  matter  was  settled  by  Scripture  and 
authority;  and  Langland's  reply  to  the  heretics  is  mere  angry 
dogmatism. 

There  flourished,  further,  a  remarkable  amount  of  heresy  of  the 
species  seen  in  Provence  and  Northern  Italy  in  the  eleventh  and 
twelfth  centuries,  such  sectaries  being  known  in  England  under  the 
generic  name  of  "  Lollards,"  derived  from  the  Flemish,  in  which 
it  seems  to  have  signified  singers  of  hymns.'  Lollards  or  "  Beghards," 
starting  from  the  southern  point  of  propagation,  spread  all  over 
civilized  Northern  Europe,  meeting  everywhere  persecution  alike 
from  the  parish  priests  and  the  mendicant  monks ;  and  in  England 
as  elsewhere  their  anti-clericalism  and  their  heresy  were  correlative. 
In  the  formal  Lollard  petition  to  Parliament  in  1395,  however,  there 
is  evident  an  amount  of  innovating  opinion  which  implies  more 
than  the  mere  stimulus  of  financial  pressure.  Not  only  the  papal 
authority,  monasteries,  clerical  celibacy,  nuns'  vows,  transubstan- 
tiation,  exorcisms,  bought  blessings,  pilgrimages,  prayers  for  the 
dead,  offerings  to  images,  confessions  and  absolutions,  but  war  and 
capital  punishment  and  "  unnecessary  trades,"  such  as  those  of 
goldsmiths  and  armourers,  are  condemned  by  those  early  Utopists.^ 

1  Vision  cf  Piers  Plouohman,  11.  5809  sq.    Wright's  ed.  i.  179-80. 

2  Chaucer's  Boece,  B.  I,  Prose  iv,  11.  223-26,  in  Skeaf  8  Shident's  Chaucer. 

8  Mosheim,  14  Cent.  Pt.  ii.  ch.  ii.  §  36,  and  note.    Cp.  Green,  Short  History  of  the 
English  People,  ch.  v.  §  3,  ed.  1881,  p.  235. 

*  Cp.  Green.  Short  Mist.  ch.  v.  §  5  ;  Massingberd,  The  English  Reformation,  p,  171. 


In  what  proportion  they  really  thought  out  the  issues  they  dealt 
with  we  can  hardly  ascertain  ;  but  a  chronicler  of  Wiclif's  time, 
living  at  Leicester,  testifies  that  you  could  not  meet  two  men  in 
the  street  but  one  was  a  Lollard.^  The  movement  substantially 
came  to  nothing,  suffering  murderous  persecution  in  the  person  of 
Oldcastle  (Lord  Cobham)  and  others,  and  disappearing  in  the 
fifteenth  century  in  the  demoralization  of  conquest  and  the  ruin 
of  the  civil  wars ;  but  apart  from  Chaucer's  poetry  it  is  more 
significant  of  foreign  influences  in  England  than  almost  any  other 
phenomenon  down  to  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII. 

It  is  still  doubtful,  indeed,  whence  the  powerful  Wiclif  derived 
his  marked  Protestantism  as  to  some  Catholic  dogmas  ;  but  it 
would  seem  that  he  too  may  have  been  reached  by  the  older 
Paulician  or  other  southern  heresy.^  As  early  as  1286  a  form  of 
heresy  approaching  the  Albigensian  and  the  Waldensian  is  found 
in  the  province  of  Canterbury,  certain  persons  there  maintaining 
that  Christians  were  not  bound  by  the  authority  of  the  Pope  and 
the  Fathers,  but  solely  by  that  of  the  Bible  and  "  necessary  reason."  ® 
It  is  true  that  Wiclif  never  refers  to  the  Waldenses  or  Albigenses, 
or  any  of  the  continental  reformers  of  his  day,  though  he  often 
cites  his  Enghsh  predecessor,  Bishop  Grosst^te  ;*  but  this  may  have 
been  on  grounds  of  policy.  To  cite  heretics  could  do  no  good ;  to 
cite  a  bishop  was  helpful.  The  main  reason  for  doubting  a  foreign 
influence  in  his  case  is  that  to  the  last  he  held  by  purgatory  and 
absolute  predestination.^  In  any  case,  Wiclif's  practical  and  moral 
resentment  of  ecclesiastical  abuses  was  the  mainspring  of  his 
doctrine  ;  and  his  heresies  as  to  transubstantiation  and  other 
articles  of  faith  can  be  seen  to  connect  with  his  anti-priestly 
attitude.  He,  however,  was  morally  disinterested  as  compared 
with  the  would-be  plunderers  who  formed  the  bulk  of  the  anti- 
Church  party  of  John  of  Gaunt ;  and  his  failure  to  effect  any 
reformation  was  due  to  the  fact  that  on  one  hand  there  was  not 
intelligence  enough  in  the  nation  to  respond  to  his  doctrinal 
common  sense,  while  on  the  other  he  could  not  so  separate 
ecclesiastical  from  feudal  tyranny  and  extortion  as  to  set  up  a 
pohtical  movement  which  should  strike  at  clerical  evils  without 
inciting  some  to  impeach   the   nobility  who   held   the   balance  of 

»  Cited  by  Lechler,  Wy cliffs  and  his  English  Precursors,  Eng.  tr.  l-vol.  ed.  p.  440.     . 

2  Cp.  Prof.  Montagu  Burrows.  Wiclif  s  Place  in  History,  1884,  p.  49.  M&itl&nd  {Eight 
Essays.  1852)  suggested  derivation  from  the  movement  of  Abbot  Joachim  and  otners  oi 
that  period.  8  wilkins' Co?iciWa,  ii,  124.    ^,.^^,     ^  ^„ 

*  Cp.  Vaughan.  as  cited  by  Hardwick,  Church  History :  Middle  Age,  p.  403. 

s  Hardwick.  pp.  417,  418.  The  doctrine  of  purgatory  was.  however,  soon  renounced  by 
the  Lollards  {id.  p.  420). 


350 


CflElSTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


THOUGHT  IN  FKANCE 


361 


political  power.  Charged  with  setting  vassals  against  tyrant  lords, 
he  was  forced  to  plead  that  he  taught  the  reverse,  though  he 
justified  the  withholding  of  tithes  from  bad  curates.'  The  revolt 
led  by  John  Ball  in  1381,  which  was  in  no  way  promoted  by 
Wiclif,'  showed  that  the  country  people  suffered  as  much  from  lay 
as  from  clerical  oppression. 

The  time,  in  short,  was  one  of  common  ferment,  and  not  only 
were  there  other  reformers  who  went  much  farther  than  Wiclif  in 
the  matter  of  social  reconstruction,^  but  we  know  from  his  writings 
that  there  were  heretics  who  carried  their  criticism  as  far  as  to 
challenge  the  authority  and  credibility  of  the  Scriptures.  Against 
these  accusatores  and  inimici  Seripturae  he  repeatedly  speaks  in  his 
treatise  De  veritate  Seripturae  Sacrae,^  which  is  thus  one  of  the 
very  earliest  works  in  defence  of  Christianity  against  modern 
criticism.^  His  position,  however,  is  almost  wholly  medieval.  One 
quaUfication  should  perhaps  be  made,  in  respect  of  his  occasional 
resort  to  reason  where  it  was  least  to  be  expected,  as  on  the 
question  of  restrictions  on  marriage.^  But  on  such  points  he 
wavered  ;  and  otherwise  he  is  merely  scripturalist.  The  infinite 
superiority  of  Christ  to  all  other  men,  and  Christ's  virtual  author- 
ship of  the  entire  Scriptures,  are  his  premisses— a  way  of  begging 
the  question  so  simple-minded  that  it  is  clear  the  other  side  was  not 
heard  in  reply,  though  these  arguments  had  formed  part  of  his 
theological  lectures,'  and  so  pre-supposed  a  real  opposition.  Wiclif 
was  in  short  a  typical  Protestant  in  his  unquestioning  acceptance 
of  the  Bible  as  a  supernatural  authority ;  and  when  his  demand  for 
the  publication  of  the  Bible  in  English  was  met  by  "worldly 
clerks"  with  the  cry  that  it  would  "set  Christians  in  debate,  and 
subjects  to  rebel  against  their  sovereigns,"  he  could  only  protest 
that  they  "  openly  slander  God,  the  author  of  peace,  and  his  holy 
law."  Later  English  history  proved  that  the  worldly  clerks  were 
perfectly  right,  and  WicHf  the  erring  optimist  of  faith.  For  the 
rest,  his  essentially  dogmatic  view  of  religion  did  nothing  to 
counteract  the  spirit  of  persecution  ;  and  the  passing  of  the  Statute 
for  the  Burning  of  Heretics  in  1401,  with  the  ready  consent  of  both 

1  See  the  passages  cited  in  Lewis's  Life  of  Wiclif,  ed.  1820.  pp.  224-25.  Cp.  Burrows,  as 
cited,  p.  19 ;  Le  Bas.  Life  of  Wiclif,  1832.  pp.  357-59.  ^    .  , 

'i  Lechler.  Wycliffe  and  his  Eng.  Precursors,  pp.  371-76 ;  Hardwick,  p.  412. 

8  Cp.  Green.  Short  History,  eh.  v,  §  4. 

<  Lechler.  p.  236.    It  forms  bk.  vi  of  Wiclif 's  theological  Summa.  ,  .     i,. 

«  Baxter,  in  his  address  "To  the  doubting  and  unbelieving  readers"  prefixed  to  bis 
Reasmis  of  the  Christiaji  Religion,  1667.  names  Savonarola.  Campanella.  Ficmus.  Vives. 
Mornay.  Grotius,  Cameron,  and  Micraelius  as  defenders  of  the  faith,  but  no  writer  of  tbe 

fourteenth  century.  ,  „.  .      ,,.j  j,    ^  A^n 

6  Cp.  Le  Bas,  pp.  342-43 ;  and  Hardwick.  Church  Mt»L;  Middle  Age,  p.  415. 

7  Lechler.  p.  236. 


Houses  of  Parliament,  constituted  the  due  dogmatic  answer  to 
dogmatic  criticism.  Yet  within  a  few  years  the  Commons  were 
proposing  to  confiscate  the  revenues  of  the  higher  clergy:^  so  far 
was  anti-clericalism  from  implying  heterodoxy. 

§  11.  Thought  in  France 

As  regards  France,  the  record  of  intellectual  history  between  the 
thirteenth  and  the  sixteenth  centuries  is  hardly  less  scanty  than  as 
regards  England.  In  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  the 
intellectual  life  of  the  French  philosophic  schools,  as  we  saw,  was 
more  vigorous  and  expansive  than  that  of  any  other  country  ;  so 
that,  looking  further  to  the  Provengal  literature  and  to  the  French 
beginnings  of  Gothic  architecture,  France  might  even  be  said  to 
prepare  the  Kenaissance.^  Outside  of  the  schools,  too,  there  was  in 
the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  a  notable  dissemination  of 
partially  philosophical  thought  among  the  middle-class  laity.  At 
that  period  the  anti-clerical  tendency  was  strongest  in  France,  where 
in  the  thirteenth  century  lay  scholarship  stood  highest.  In  the  reign 
of  Philippe  le  Bel  (end  of  thirteenth  century)  was  composed  the 
poem  Fauvel,  by  Fran9ois  de  Rues,  which  is  a  direct  attack  on  pope 
and  clergy ;  ^  and  in  the  famous  Roman  de  la  Bose,  as  developed  by 
Jean  le  Clopinel  (  =  the  Limper)  of  Meung-sur-Loire,  there  enters, 
without  any  criticism  of  the  Christian  creed,  an  element  of  all-round 
Naturalism  which  indirectly  must  have  made  for  reason.  Begun  by 
Guillaume  de  Lorris  in  the  time  of  St.  Louis  in  a  key  of  sentiment 
and  lyricism,  the  poem  is  carried  on  by  Jean  de  Meung  under 
Philippe  le  Bel  in  a  spirit  of  criticism,  cynicism,  science,  and  satire, 
which  tells  of  many  developments  in  forty  years.  The  continua- 
tion can  hardly  have  been  written,  as  some  literary  historians 
assume,  about  its  author's  twenty-fifth  year ;  but  it  may  be  dated 
with  some  certainty  between  1270  and  1285.  To  the  work  of  his 
predecessor,  amounting  to  less  than  5,000  lines,  he  added  18,000, 
pouring  forth  a  medley  of  scholarship,  pedantry,  philosophic  reflec- 
tion, speculation  on  the  process  of  nature  and  the  structure  and  ills 
of  society,  on  property,  morals,  marriage,  witchcraft,  the  characters 
of  women,  monks,  friars,  aristocrats— the  whole  pageant  of  medieval 
knowledge  and  fancy. 

»  Blunt.  Beformation  of  the  Church  of  England,  1892.  i.  284,  and  refs. 

2  It  is  noteworthy  that  French  culture  affected  the  very  vocabulary  of  Dante,  as  it  dia 
that  of  his  teacher.  Brunette  Latini.  Cp.  Littrd.  Etudes  sur  les  barbares  e_t  le  moyen  age 
3e  6dit.  pp.  399-400.  The  influence  of  French  literature  is  further  seen  m  Boccaccio,  and 
in  Italian  literature  in  general  from  the  thirteenth  to  the  fifteenth  century.  Gebhart, 
pp.  209-21. 

»  Saintsbury.  Short  Hist,  of  French  Lit.  1882.  p.  57. 


35^ 


CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


The  literary  power  of  the  whole  is  great,  and  may  be  recommended 
to  the  general  reader  as  comparing  often  with  that  shown  in  the 
satirical  and  social-didactic  poems  of  Burns,  though  without  much 
of  the  breath  of  poetry.  Particularly  noteworthy,  in  the  historic 
retrospect,  is  the  assimilization  of  the  ancient  Stoic  philosophy  of 
"  living  according  to  Nature,"  set  forth  in  the  name  of  a  '*  Reason  " 
who  is  notably  free  from  theological  prepossessions.  It  is  from  this 
standpoint  that  Jean  de  Meung  assails  the  mendicant  friars  and  the 
monks  in  general :  he  would  have  men  recognize  the  natural  laws  of 
life  ;  and  he  carries  the  principle  to  the  length  of  insisting  on  the 
artificial  nature  of  aristocracy  and  monarchy,  which  are  justifiable 
only  as  far  as  they  subserve  the  common  good.  Thus  he  rises  above 
the  medieval  literary  prejudice  against  the  common  people,  whose 
merit  he  recognizes  as  Montaigne  did  later.  On  the  side  of  science, 
he  expressly  denies  *  that  comets  carry  any  such  message  as  was 
commonly  ascribed  to  them  alike  by  popular  superstition  and  by 
theology — a  stretch  of  freethinking  perhaps  traceable  to  Seneca,  but 
nonetheless  centuries  in  advance  of  the  Christendom  of  the  time. 
On  the  side  of  religion,  again,  he  is  one  of  the  first  to  vindicate  the 
lay  conception  of  Christian  excellence  as  against  the  ecclesiastical. 
His  Naturalism,  so  far,  worked  consistently  in  making  him  at  once 
anti-ascetic  and  anti-supernaturalist. 

It  is  not  to   be   inferred,  however,  that   Jean   de   Meung   had 

learned  to  doubt  the  validity  of  the  Christian  creed.     His  long  poem, 

one  of  the  most  popular  books  in  Europe  for  two  hundred  years, 

could  never  have  had  its  vogue  if  its  readers  could  have  suspected 

it  to  be  even  indirectly  anti-Christian.     He  can  hardly  have  held, 

as  some  historians  believe,*  the  status  of  a  preaching  friar ;  but  he 

claims  that  he  neither  blames  nor  defames  religion,^  respecting  it  in 

all  forms,  provided  it  be  "humble  and  loyal."     He  was  in  fact  a 

man  of  some  wealth,  much  culture,  and  orderly  in  life,  thus  standing 

out  from  the  earlier  "Goliard"  type.     When,  then,  he  pronounces 

Nature  "the  minister  of  this  earthly  state,"  "vicar  and  constable 

of  the  eternal  emperor,"  he  has  no  thought  of  dethroning  Deity,  or 

even  of  setting  aside  the  Christian  faith.     In  his  rhymed  Testame^it 

he  expresses  himself  quite  piously,  and  lectures  monks  and  women 

in  an  edifying  fashion. 

To  say  therefore  that  Jean  de  Meung's  part  of  the  Roman  de 
la  Bose  is   a  "popular   satire  on  the  beliefs  of   Romanism" 

1  Passage  not  translated  in  the  old  Eng.  version. 
^  Cp.  Lenient,  pp.  159-60. 

8  Lenient,  p.  169.  ,   •. »-,  ,      „         •      „  v.   *. 

*  This  declaration,  as  it  happens,  is  put   in   the   mouth   of     False-Seeming,    but 
apparently  with  no  ironical  intention. 


THOUGHT  IN  FRANCE 


353 


(Owen,  Skeptics  of  Ital.  Benais.  p.  44)  is  to  misstate  the  case. 
His  doctrine  is  rather  an  intellectual  expression  of  the  literary 
reaction  against  asceticism  (cp.  Bartoli,  Storia  della  letteratura 
italiana,  i,  319,  quoting  Lenient)  which  had  been  spontaneously 
begun  by  the  Goliards  and  Troubadours.  At  the  same  time  the 
poem  does  stand  for  the  new  secular  spirit  alike  in  "  its  ingrained 
religion  and  its  nascent  freethought "  (Saintsbury,  p.  87);  and 
with  the  Beynard  epic  it  may  be  taken  as  representing  the 
beginning  of  "  a  whole  revolution,  the  resurgence  and  affirmation 
of  the  laity,  the  new  force  which  is  to  transform  the  world, 
against  the  Church  "  (Bartoli,  Storia,  i,  308 ;  cp.  Demogeot, 
Hist,  de  la  litt.  fr.  5e  6d.  pp.  130-31. 157  ;  Lanson,  pp.  132-36). 
The  frequent  flings  at  the  clergy  (cp.  the  partly  Chaucerian 
English  version,  Skeat's  ed.  of  Chaucer's  Works,  i,  234  ;  Bell's 
ed.  iv,  230)  were  sufficient  to  draw  upon  this  as  upon  other 
medieval  poems  of  much  secular  vogue  the  anger  of  the 
Church"  (Sismondi,  Lit.  of  South.  Europe,  i,  216)  ;  but^they 
were  none  the  less  relished  by  believing  readers.  *  The 
Church  "  was  in  fact  not  an  entity  of  one  mind  ;  and  some  of 
its  sections  enjoyed  satire  directed  against  the  others. 

When,  then,  we  speak  of  the  anti-clerical  character  of  rnuch 
medieval  poetry,  we  must  guard  against  exaggerated  implications. 
It  is  somewhat  of  a  straining  of  the  facts,  for  instance,  to  say 
of  the  humorous  tale  of  Beynard  the  Fox,  so  widely  popular  in 
the  thirteenth  century,  that  it  is  essentially  anti-clerical  to  the 
extent  that  "  Reynard  is  laic  :  Isengrim  [the  wolf]  is  clerical " 
(Bartoli,  Storia  della  letteratura  italiaiia,  i,  307 ;  cp.  Owen, 
Skeptics  of  the  Italian  Benaissa7ice,  p.  44).  The  Beynard  epic, 
in  origin  a  simple  humorous  animal-story,  had  various  later 
forms.  Some  of  these,  as  the  Latin  poem,  and  especially  the 
version  attributed  to  Peter  of  St.  Cloud,  were  markedly  anti- 
clerical, the  latter  exhibiting  a  spirit  of  all-round  profanity 
hardly  compatible  with  belief  (cp.  Gervinus,  Geschichte  der 
deutschen  Dichtung,  5te  Ausg.  i,  227-28  ;  Gebhart,  Les  Origijies 
de  la  Benais.  en  Italic,  1874,  p.  39) ;  but  the  version  current  in 
the  Netherlands,  which  was  later  rendered  into  English  prose 
by  Caxton,  is  of  a  very  different  character  (Gervinus,  p.  229  sq). 
In  Caxton's  version  it  is  impossible  to  regard  Reynard  as  laic 
and  Isengrim  as  clerical ;  though  in  the  Latin  and  other  versions 
the  wolf  figures  as  monk  or  abbot.  (See  also  the  various 
shorter  satires  published  by  Grimm  in  his  Beinhart  Fuchs, 
1834.)  Often  the  authorship  is  itself  clerical,  one  party  or 
order  satirizing  another;  sometimes  the  spirit  is  religious, 
sometimes  markedly  irreverent.  (Gervinus,  pp.  214-21).  La 
plupart  de  ces  satires  sont  I'oeuvre  des  moines  et  des  abb^s  " 
(Lenient,  La  Satire  en  France  au  ynoyen  age,  1859,  pr6f.  p.  4) ; 
and  to  say  that  these  men  were  often  irreligious  is  not  to  say 
that   they   were   rationalists.     It   is   to   be  remembered  that 

2a 


354 


CHKISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


nascent  Protestantism  in  England  under  Henry  VIII  resorted 
to  the  weapons  of  obscene  parody  (Blunt,  Bef.  of  Ch.  of  Engltmd, 
ed.  1892.  i,  273,  note). 

"  In  fine,"  we  may  say  with  a  judicious  French  historian,  **  one 
cannot  get  out  of  his  time,  and  the  time  was  not  come  to  be  non- 
Christian.  Jean  de  Meung  did  not  perceive  that  his  thought  put 
him  outside  the  Church,  and  upset  her  foundations.     He  is  beheving 

and  pious,  like  Eutebeuf The  Gospel  is  his  rule  :  he  holds  it ;  he 

defends  it ;  he  disputes  with  those  who  seem  to  him  to  depart  from 
it;    he  makes  himself   the  champion  of  the  old  faith  against  the 

novelties  of  the  Eternal  Gospel His  situation  is  that  of  the  first 

reformers  of  the  sixteenth  century,  who  believed  themselves  to  serve 
Jesus  Christ  in  using  their  reason,  and  who  very  sincerely,  very 
piously,  hoped  for  the  reform  of  the  Church  through  the  progress  of 
philosophy."*  "Nevertheless,"  adds  the  same  historian,  "one 
cannot  exaggerate  the  real  weight  of  the  work.  By  his  philosophy, 
which  consists  essentially  in  the  identity,  the  sovereignty,  of  Nature 
and  Eeason,  he  is  the  first  link  in  the  chain  which  connects  Eabelais, 
Montaigne,  Moli^re ;  to  which  Voltaire  also  links  himself,  and  even 
in  certain  regards  Boileau."  * 

Men  could  not  then  see  whither  the  principle  of  "  Nature  "  and 
Eeason  was  to  lead,  yet  even  in  the  age  of  Jean  de  Meung  the  philo- 
sophic heads  went  far,  and  he  can  hardly  have  missed  knowing  as 
much,  if,  as  is  supposed,  he  studied  at  Paris,  as  he  certainly  lived 
and  died  there.  In  the  latter  part  of  the  thirteenth  century,  as 
before  noted,  rationalism  at  the  Paris  university  was  frequently 
carried  in  private  to  a  rejection  of  all  the  dogmas  peculiar  to 
Christianity.  At  that  great  school  Eoger  Bacon  seems  to  have 
acquired  his  encyclopaBdic  learning  and  his  critical  habit ;  and  there 
it  was  that  in  the  first  half  of  the  fourteenth  century  William  of 
Occam  nourished  his  remarkable  philosophic  faculty.  From  about 
the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century,  however,  there  is  a  relative 
arrest  of  French  progress  for  some  two  centuries.*  Three  main 
conditions  served  to  check  intellectual  advance :  the  civil  wars 
which  involved  the  loss  of  the  communal  liberties  which  had  been 
established  in  France  between  the  eleventh  and  thirteenth 
centuries;*  the  exhaustion  of  the  nation  by  the  English  invasion 
under  Edward  III ;  the  repressive  power  of  the  Church ;  and  the 

1  Lanson,  Hist,  de  la  litt.  franfaise,  p.  133.  ^  Id.  p.  135. 

8  Duruy.  Hist,  de  France,  ed,  1880.  i,  440-41 ;  Gebhart,  Orig.  de  la  Renais.  pp.  2, 19. 24-29. 
3*2-35,  41-50 ;  Le  Clerc  and  Renan.  Hist.  Litt.  de  la  France  au  XlVe  Sii^cle,  i,  4 ;  ii.  123 ; 
Littr6.  Etudes,  as  cited,  pp.  424-29. 

*  Duruy.  i.  409  sq.,  449;  Gebhart.  pp.  35-41;  Morin.  Origines  de  la  Dimocratie:  La 
France  au  moyen  dge,  3e  6dit.  1865,  p.  304  sq. 


THOUGHT  IN  FEANCE 


355 


general  devotion  of  the  national  energies  to  war.  After  the  partial 
recovery  from  the  ruinous  English  invasion  under  Edward  III,  civil 
strifes  and  feudal  tyranny  wrought  new  impoverishment,  making 
possible  the  still  more  destructive  invasion  under  Henry  V ;  so  that 
in  the  first  half  of  the  fifteenth  century  France  was  hardly  more 
civilized  than  England.^  It  is  from  the  French  invasion  of  Italy 
under  Charles  VIII  that  the  enduring  renascence  in  France  broadly 
dates.  Earlier  impulses  had  likewise  come  from  Italy  :  Lanfranc, 
Anselm,  Peter  Lombard,  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  others  of  lesser 
note,'*  had  gone  from  Italy  to  teach  in  France  or  England ;  but  it 
needed  the  full  contact  of  Italian  civilization  to  raise  monarchic 
France  to  the  stage  of  general  and  independent  intellectual  life. 

During  the  period  in  question,  there  had  been  established 
the  following  universities  :  Paris,  1200  ;  Toulouse,  1220  ; 
Montpellier,  1289 ;  Avignon,  1303 ;  Orleans,  1312 ;  Cahors, 
1332 ;  Angers,  1337 ;  Orange,  1367 ;  Ddle,  1422 ;  Poitiers, 
1431 ;  Caen,  1436 ;  Valence,  1454  ;  Nantes,  1460  ;  Bourges, 
1463 ;  Bordeaux,  1472  (Desmaze,  U  University  de  Paris,  1876, 
p.  2.  Other  dates  for  some  of  these  are  given  on  p.  31).  But 
the  militarist  conditions  prevented  any  sufificient  development 
of^  such  opportunities,     In  the  fourteenth  century,  says  Littr6 

{Etudes  sur  les  barbares,  p.  419),  "the  university  of  Paris 

was  more  powerful  than  at  any  other  epoch Never  did  she 

exercise  such  a  power  over  men's  minds."  But  he  also  decides 
that  in  that  epoch  the  first  florescence  of  French  literature 
withered  away  (p.  387).  The  long  location  of  the  anti-papacy 
at  Avignon  (1305-1376)  doubtless  counted  for  something  in 
French  culture  (V.  Le  Clerc,  Hist.  Litt.  de  la  France  au  XlVe 
sidcle,  i,  37  ;  Gebhart,  pp.  221-26) ;  but  the  devastation  wrought 
by  the  English  invasion  was  sufficient  to  countervail  that  and 
more.  See  the  account  of  it  by  Petrarch  (letter  of  the  year 
1360)  cited  by  Littr6,  Etudes,  pp.  416-17 ;  and  by  Hallam, 
Middle  Ages,  i,  59,  note.  Cp.  Michelet,  Hist,  de  France,  vi, 
ch.  iii  ;  Dunton,  England  in  the  Fifteenth  Century,  1888, 
pp.  79-84.  As  to  the  consequences  of  the  English  invasion  of 
the  fifteenth  century  see  Martin,  Hist,  de  France,  4e  6dit.  vi, 
132-33  ;  Sismondi,  Hist,  des  Franqais,  1831,  xii,  582  ;  Hallam, 
Middle  Ages,  i,  83-87. 

In  northern  France  of  the  fourteenth  century,  as  in  Provence 
and  Italy  and  England,  there  was  a  manifold  stir  of  innovation  and 
heresy  :  there  as  elsewhere  the  insubordinate  Franciscans,  with  their 
Eternal  Gospel,  the  Paterini,  the  Beghards,  fought  their  way  against 

*  Cp.  Michelet,  Hist,  de  France,  vii,  Renaissance,  Introd.  §  ii.    Between  the  thirteenth 
and  the  fifteenth  centuries,  he  insists,  "le  jour  baisse  horriblement." 
2  Ozanam,  Dante,  6e  6dit.  pp.  47,  78, 108-10. 


356 


CHKISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


the  Dominican  Inquisition.  But  the  Inquisitors  burned  books  as 
well  as  men  ;  and  much  anti-ecclesiastical  poetry,  some  dating  even 
from  the  Carlovingian  era,  shared  the  fate  of  many  copies  of  the 
Talmud,  translations  of  the  Bible,  and,  k  fortiori,  every  species  of 
heretical  writing.  In  effect,  the  Inquisition  for  the  time  "extin- 
guished freethought  "  ^  in  France.  As  in  England,  the  ferment  of 
heresy  was  mixed  with  one  of  democracy;  and  in  the  French 
popular  poetry  of  the  time  there  are  direct  parallels  to  the  con- 
temporary EngHsh  couplet,  "  When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span. 
Where  was  then  the  gentleman?"^  Such  a  spirit  could  no  more 
prosper  in  feudal  France  tlian  in  feudal  England ;  and  when  France 
emerged  from  her  mortal  struggle  with  the  English,  to  be  effectively 
solidified  by  Louis  XI,  there  was  left  in  her  life  little  of  the  spirit 
of  free  inquiry.  It  has  been  noted  that  whereas  the  chronicler 
Joinville,  in  the  thirteenth  century,  is  full  of  religious  feeling, 
Froissart,  in  the  fourteenth,  priest  as  he  is,  exhibits  hardly  any ; 
and  again  Comines,  in  the  fifteenth,  reverts  to  the  orthodoxy  of  the 
twelfth  and  thirteenth.'  The  middle  period  was  one  of  indifference, 
following  on  the  killing  out  of  heresy:*  the  fifteenth  century  is  a 
resumption  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  Comines  has  the  medieval  cast 
of  mind,''  although  of  a  superior  order.  There  seems  to  be  no 
community  of  thought  between  him  and  his  younger  Italian  con- 
temporaries, Machiavelli  and  Guicciardini ;  though,  "even  while 
Comines  was  writing,  there  were  unequivocal  symptoms  of  a  great 
and  decisive  change."  ° 

The  special  development  in  France  of  the  spirit  of  "  chivalry  " 
had  joined  the  normal  uncivilizing  influence  of  militarism  with  that 
of  clericalism ;  the  various  knightly  orders,  as  well  as  knighthood 
pure  and  simple,  being  all  under  ecclesiastical  sanctions,  and  more 
or  less  strictly  vowed  to  "defend  the  church,"''  while  supremely 
incompetent  to  form  an  intelligent  opinion.  It  is  the  more  remark- 
able that  in  the  case  of  one  of  the  crusading  orders  heresy  of  the 
most  blasphemous  kind  was  finally  charged  against  the  entire 
organization,  and  that  it  was  on  that  ground  annihilated  (1311). 

1  Littr6,  ttudes,  as  cited,  pp.  411-13. 

2  Le  Clerc,  as  cited,  p.  259 ;  Gebhart,  pp.  48-49. 

8  Sir  James  F.  Stephen,  HorcB  Sabbaticce,  1892,  i.  42. 

*  The  Italians  said  of  the  French  Pope  Clement  VI  (1342-52)  that  he  had  small  religion. 
M.  ViUani,  Croiiica,  iii,  43  (ed.  1554).  ,      ,    . 

8  Cp.  Dr.  T.  Arnold.  Led.  on  Mod.  Hist  4tli  ed.  pp.  111-18;  Buckle,  3  vol.  ed.  i.  326-27 
(1-vol.  ed.  p.  185)  •.  Stephen,  as  cited,  i.  121.  "  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  Cominee's 
whole  mind  was  haunted  at  all  times  and  at  every  point  by  a  belief  in  an  invisible  and 
immensely  powei-ful  and  artful  man  whom  he  called  God"  (last  cited), 

6  Buckle,  i,  329  (1-vol.  ed.  p.  186).  .  ^  ,,  , 

7  Buckle,  ii,  133  (1-vol.  ed.  p.  361) ;  Hallam,  Middle  Jflrcs, iii. 395-96.  Belfgious  ceremonies 
were  attached  to  the  initiation  of  knights  in  the  13th  century.  Seignobos,  Hist,  de  la 
Civilisation,  ii,  15. 


THOUGHT  IN  FKANCE 


357 


It  remains  incredible,  however,  that  the  order  of  the  Templars  can 
have  systematically  practised  the  extravagances  or  held  the  tenets 
laid  to  their  charge.  They  had  of  course  abused  their  power  and 
departed  from  their  principles  like  every  other  religious  order  enabled 
to  amass  wealth  ;  and  the  hostiUty  theirs  aroused  is  perfectly 
intelKgible  from  what  is  known  of  the  arrogance  of  its  members 
and  the  general  ruffianism  of  the  Crusaders.  Their  wealth  alone 
goes  far  to  explain  the  success  of  their  enemies  against  them  ;  for, 
though  the  numbers  of  the  order  were  much  smaller  than  tradition 
gives  out,  its  possessions  were  considerable.  These  were  the  true 
ground  of  the  French  king's  attack.^  But  that  its  members  were  as 
a  rule  either  Cathari  or  anti-Christians,  either  disguised  Moslems  or 
deists,  or  that  they  practised  obscenity  by  rule,  there  is  no  reason 
to  beHeve.  What  seems  to  have  happened  was  a  resort  by  some 
unbelieving  members  to  more  or  less  gross  burlesque  of  the  mysteries 
of  initiation — a  phenomenon  paralleled  in  ancient  Greece  and  in  the 
modern  Catholic  world,  and  implying  rather  hardy  irreligion  than 
any  reasoned  heresy  whatever. 

The  long-continued  dispute  as  to  the  guilt  of  the  Knights 
Templars  is  still  chronically  re-opened.  Hallam,  after  long 
hesitation,  came  finally  to  believe  them  guilty,  partly  on  the 
strength  of  the  admissions  made  by  Michelet  in  defending 
them  {Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  11th  ed.  i.  138-42— wo^e 
of  1848).  He  attaches,  however,  a  surprising  weight  to  the 
obviously  weak  "  architectural  evidence  "  cited  by  Hammer- 
Purgstall.  Heeren  (Essai  sur  Vinfluence  des  croisades,  1808, 
pp.  221-22)  takes  a  more  judicial  view.  The  excellent 
summing-up  of  Lea  {Hist,  of  the  Inquis.  bk.  iii,  ch.  v, 
pp.  263-76)  perhaps  gives  too  Httle  weight  to  the  mass  of 
curious  confirmatory  evidence  cited  by  writers  on  the  other 
side  {e.g.,  F.  Nicolai,  Versuch  ilher  die  Beschuldigungen  welche 
dem  Tempelherrenorden  gemacht  tvorden,  1782) ;  but  his  con- 
clusion as  to  the  falsity  of  the  charges  against  the  order  as  a 
whole  seems  irresistible. 

The  solution  that  offensive  practices  occurred  irregularly 
(Lea,  pp.  276-77)  is  pointed  to  even  by  the  earlier  hostile  writers 
(Nicolai,  p.  17).  It  seems  to  be  certain  that  the  initiatory  rites 
included  the  act  of  spitting  on  the  crucifix— presumptively  a 
symbolic  display  of  absolute  obedience  to  the  orders  of  those  in 
command  (Jolly,  Philippe  le  Bel,  pp.  264-68).  That  there  was 
no  Catharism  in  the  order  seems  certain  (Lea,  p.  249).     The 

1  Duruy,  i,  368,  373-74.  Cp.  J.  Jolly.  Philippe  le  Bel,  1869. 1.  ill,  ch.  iv,  p.  249.  It  is  to  be 
remembered  that  Philippe  had  for  years  been  sorely  pressed  for  money  to  retrieve  ms 
military  disasters.  See  H.  Hervieu,  RechercJies  sur  les  premiers  etats  gener(uix,  i«/y. 
pp.  b9  sa.,  99  sq.  He  used  his  ill-gotten  gains  to  restore  the  currency,  which  he  had 
debased.    Id.  pp.  101-102. 


358 


CHKISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


suggestion  that  the  offensive  and  burlesque  practices  were  due 
to  the  lower  grade  of  **  serving  brethren,"  who  were  contemned 
by  the  higher,  seems,  however,  without  firm  foundation.  The 
courage  for  such  freaks,  and  the  disposition  to  commit  them, 
were  rather  more  likely  to  arise  among  the  crusaders  of  the 
upper  class,  who  could  come  in  contact  with  Moslem-Christian 
unbelief  through  those  of  Sicily. 

For  the  further  theory  that  the  "  Freemasons "  (at  that 
period  really  cosmopolitan  guilds  of  masons)  were  already  given 
to  freethinking,  there  is  again  no  evidence.  That  they  at  times 
deliberately  introduced  obscene  symbols  into  church  architec- 
ture is  no  proof  that  they  were  collectively  unbelievers  in  the 
Church's  doctrines  ;  though  it  is  likely  enough  that  some  of 
them  were.  Obscenity  is  the  expression  not  of  an  intellectual 
but  of  a  physical  and  unreasoning  bias,  and  can  perfectly  well 
concur  with  religious  feeling.  The  fact  that  the  medieval 
masons  did  not  confine  obscene  symbols  to  the  churches  they 
built  for  the  Templars  (Hallam,  as  cited,  pp.  140-41)  should 
serve  to  discredit  alike  the  theory  that  the  Templars  were 
systematically  anti-Christian,  and  the  theory  that  the  Free- 
masons were  so.  That  for  centuries  the  builders  of  the  Christian 
churches  throughout  Europe  formed  an  anti-Christian  organiza- 
tion is  a  grotesque  hypothesis.  At  most  they  indulged  in  freaks 
of  artistic  satire  on  the  lines  of  contemporary  satirical  literature, 
expressing  an  anti-clerical  bias,  with  perhaps  occasional  elements 
of  blasphemy.  (See  Menzel,  Gesch.  der  Deutschen,  Cap.  252, 
note.)  It  could  well  be  that  there  survived  among  the  Free- 
masons various  Gnostic  ideas  ;  since  the  architectural  art  itself 
came  in  a  direct  line  from  antiquity.  Such  heresy,  too,  might 
conceivably  be  winked  at  by  the  Church,  which  depended  so 
much  on  the  heretics'  services.  But  their  obscenities  were  the 
mere  expression  of  the  animal  imagination  and  normal  salacity 
of  all  ages.  Only  in  modern  times,  and  that  only  in  Catholic 
countries,  has  the  derivative  organization  of  Freemasonry  been 
identified  with  freethought  propaganda.  In  England  in  the 
seventeenth  century  the  Freemasonic  clubs — no  longer  con- 
nected with  any  trade — were  thoroughly  royalist  and  orthodox 
(Nicolai,  pp.  196-98),  as  they  have  always  remained. 

Some  remarkable  intellectual  phenomena,  however,  do  connect 
with  the  French  university  life  of  the  first  half  of  the  fourteenth 
century.  WiLLlAM  OF  OCCAM  (d.  1347),  the  English  Franciscan, 
who  taught  at  Paris,  is  on  the  whole  the  most  rationalistic  of 
medieval  philosophers.  Though  a  pupil  of  the  Kealist  Duns  Scotus, 
he  became  the  renewer  of  Nominalism,  which  is  the  specifically 
rationalistic  as  opposed  to  the  religious  mode  of  metaphysic  ;  and 
his  anti-clerical  bias  was  such  that  he  had  to  fly  from  France  to 


THOUGHT  IN  FRANCE 


359 


Bavaria  for  protection  from  the  priesthood.  His  Disputatio  super 
potestate  ecclesiastica,  and  his  Defensorium  directed  against  Pope 
John  XXII  (or  XXI),  were  so  uncompromising  that  in  1323  the 
Pope  gave  directions  for  his  prosecution.  What  came  of  the  step  is 
not  known ;  but  in  1328  we  find  him  actually  imprisoned  with  two 
Italian  comrades  in  the  papal  palace  at  Avignon.  Thence  they 
made  their  escape  to  Bavaria.^  To  the  same  refuge  fled  Marsiglio  of 
Padua,  author  (with  John  of  Jandun)  of  the  Defensor  Pacis  (1324), 
"  the  greatest  and  most  original  political  treatise  of  the  Middle 
Ages,"^  in  which  it  is  taught  that,  though  monarchy  may  be 
expedient,  the  sovereignty  of  the  State  rests  with  the  people,  and 
the  hereditary  principle  is  flatly  rejected ;  while  it  is  insisted  that 
the  Church  properly  consists  of  all  Christians,  and  that  the  clergy's 
authority  is  restricted  to  spiritual  affairs  and  moral  suasion.^  Of  all 
medieval  writers  on  politics  before  Machiavelli  he  is  the  most 
modern. 

Only  less  original  is  Occam,  who  at  Paris  came  much  under 
MarsigUo's  influence.  His  philosophic  doctrines  apparently  derive 
from  Pierre  Aureol  (Petrus  Aureolus,  d.  1321),  who  with 
remarkable  clearness  and  emphasis  rejected  both  Eealism  and  the 
doctrine  that  what  the  mind  perceives  are  not  realities,  but  forma 
specular es.  Pierre  it  was  who  first  enounced  the  Law  of  Parsimony 
in  philosophy  and  science — that  causes  are  not  to  be  multiplied 
beyond  mental  necessity — which  is  specially  associated  with  the 
name  of  Occam. ^  Both  anticipated  modern  criticism®  alike  of  the 
Platonic  and  the  Aristotelian  philosophy ;  and  Occam  in  particular 
drew  so  decided  a  line  between  the  province  of  reason  and  that  of 
faith  that  there  can  be  little  doubt  on  which  side  his  allegiance  lay.^ 
His  dialectic  is  for  its  time  as  remarkable  as  is  that  of  Hume,  four 
centuries  later.  The  most  eminent  orthodox  thinker  of  the  preceding 
century  had  been  the  Franciscan  John  Duns  Scotus  (1265  or  1274- 
1308),  who,  after  teaching  great  crowds  of  students  at  Oxford,  was 
transferred  in  1304  to  Paris,  and  in  1308  to  Cologne,  where  he  died. 
A  Kealist  in  his  philosophy,  Duns  Scotus  opposed  the  AristoteHan 
scholasticism,  and  in  particular  criticized  Thomas  Aquinas  as  having 
unduly  subordinated  faith  and  practice  to  speculation  and  theory. 
The  number  of   matters  of   faith  which  Thomas  had   held  to  be 

1  Haur^au,  Hist,  de  la  philos.  scolastique,  Ptie  II,  vol.  ii,  35&-60.    ^^    ^  .      ^,.    ..    ^^  ^^ 

2  Poole.  Illustrations,  p.  265.    Cp.  Villari,  Life  and  Times  of  Machiavelli,  ii.  64-67; 
Tullo  Massarani,  Studii  di  politica  e  di  storia,  2a  ed.  1899.  pp.  112-13;  Neander.  Cn.  Hist. 

^"^8  Poole,  pp!^266-76.  Cp.  Hardwick,  Cliurch  History,  Middle  Age,  1853,  pp.  346-47. 
*  Ueberweg,  i,  461-62.  .      ,   ,      ..    /,,.,  -^    ±-    r^-,    ■  ±- 

5  "  His  (Occam's)  philosophy  is  that  of  centuries  later."    (Milman,  Latin  Christianity, 

ix.  148.    Cp.  pp.  150-51.)  6  Cp.  Hardwick,  p.  377,  and  Eettberg,  as  there  cited. 


360 


CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


demonstrable  by  reason,  accordingly,  was  by  Duns  Scotus  much 
reduced  ;  and,  applying  his  anti-rationalism  to  current  belief,  he 
fought  zealously  for  the  dogma  that  Mary,  like  Jesus,  was  immacu- 
lately conceived.'  But  Occam,  turning  his  predecessor's  tactic  to  a 
contrary  purpose,  denied  that  any  matter  of  faith  was  demonstrable 
by  reason  at  all.  He  granted  that  on  rational  grounds  the  existence 
of  a  God  was  probable,  but  denied  that  it  was  strictly  demonstrable, 
and  rejected  the  ontological  argument  of  Anselm.  As  to  matters 
of  faith,  he  significantly  observed  that  the  will  to  believe  the 
indemonstrable  is  meritorious.^ 

It  is  difficult  now  to  recover  a  living  sense  of  the  issues  at  stake 
in  the  battle  between  Nominalism  and  Realism,  and  of  the  social 
atmosphere  in  which  the  battle  was  carried  on.  Broadly  speaking,  the 
NominaHsts  were  the  more  enlightened  school,  the  Realists  standing 
for  tradition  and  authority;  and  it  has  been  alleged  that  "the  books  of 
the  NominaHsts,  though  the  art  of  printing  tended  strongly  to  preserve 
them,  were  suppressed  and  destroyed  to  such  a  degree  that  it  is  now 
exceedingly  difficult  to  collect  them,  and  not  easy  to  obtain  copies 
even  of  the  most  remarkable."  ^  On  the  other  hand,  while  we  have 
seen  Occam  a  fugitive  before  clerical  enmity,  we  shall  see  NominaHsts 
agreeing  to  persecute  a  Realist  to  the  death  in  the  person  of  Huss  in 
the  following  century.  So  little  was  there  to  choose  between  the 
camps  in  the  matter  of  sound  civics;  and  so  easily  could  the 
hierarchy  wear  the  colours  of  any  philosophical  system. 

Contemporary  with  Occam  was  Durand  do  St.  Pour^ain,  who 
became  a  bishop  (d.  1332),  and,  after  ranking  as  of  the  school  of 
Thomas  Aquinas,  rejected  and  opposed  its  doctrine.  With  all  this 
heresy  in  the  air,  the  principle  of  "  double  truth,"  originally  put  in 
currency  by  Averroism,  came  to  be  held  in  France  as  in  Italy,  in 
a  sense  which  implied  the  consciousness  that  theological  truth  is 
not  truth  at  aU.*  Occam's  pupil,  Buridan,  rector  of  the  University 
of  Paris  (fl.  1340),  substantiaHy  avoided  theology,  and  dealt  with 
moral  and  intehectual  problems  on  their  own  merits.''  It  is  recorded 
by  Albert  of  Saxony,  who  studied  at  Paris  in  the  first  half  of  the 
century,  that  one  of  his  teachers  held  by  the  theory  of  the  motion 
of  the  earth.^     Even  a  defender  of  Church  doctrines,  Pierre  d'Ailly, 

1  Milman.  Latin  Christianity,  ix.  75-76;  Mosheim.  14  C.  pt.  ii,  ch.  iil,  S  5.  As  to  his 
religious  bigotry,  see  Milman.  p.  142,  notes. 

2  Ueberweg,  i,  460-61;  cp.  Poole.  lifustrafions,  pp.  275-81.  „.«•„.«., 
8  James  Mill.  Analysis  of  the  Phenomena  of  the  Human  Mtnd,  ed.  1869.^^1.  250-51. 

4  Cp.  Ueberweg,  p.  464.  Mr.  Poole's  judgment  (p.  280)  that  Occam  starts  from  the 
point  of  view  of  a  theologian"  hardly  does  justice  to  his  attitude  towards  theology. 
Occam  had  indeed  to  profess  acceptance  of  theology ;  but  he  could  not  well  have  made 
less  account  of  its  claims. 

6  Ueberweg.  pp.  465-66.  •  Id.  p.  466. 


THOUGHT  IN  THE  TEUTONIC  COUNTEIES        361 

accepted  Occam's  view  of  theism,^  and  it  appears  to  be  broadly  true 
that  Occam  had  at  Paris  an  unbroken  line  of  successors  down  to  the 
Eeformation.^  In  a  world  in  which  the  doctrine  of  a  two-fold  truth 
provided  a  safety-valve  for  heresy,  such  a  philosophical  doctrine  as 
his  could  not  greatly  affect  lay  thought ;  but  at  Paris  University  in 
the  year  1376  there  was  a  startling  display  of  freethinking  by  the 
philosophical  students,  not  a  little  suggestive  of  a  parody  of  the 
Averroist  propositions  denounced  by  the  Bishop  of  Paris  exactly 
a  century  before.  Under  cover  of  the  doctrine  of  two-fold  truth 
they  propounded  a  list  of  219  theses,  in  which  they  (l)  denied  the 
Trinity,  the  divinity  of  Jesus,  the  resurrection,  and  the  immortality 
of  the  soul :  (2)  affirmed  the  eternity  of  matter  and  the  uselessness 
of  prayer,  but  also  posited  the  principles  of  astrology ;  (3)  argued 
that  the  higher  powers  of  the  soul  are  incapable  of  sin,  and  that 
voluntary  sexual  intercourse  between  the  unmarried  is  not  sinful ; 
and  (4)  suggested  that  there  are  fables  and  falsehoods  in  the  gospels 
as  in  other  books.^  The  element  of  youthful  gasconnade  in  the 
performance  is  obvious,  and  the  Archbishop  sharply  scolded  the 
students  ;  but  there  must  have  been  much  free  discussion  before 
such  a  manifesto  could  have  been  produced.  Nevertheless,  untoward 
political  conditions  prevented  any  dissemination  of  the  freethinking 
spirit  in  France ;  and  not  for  some  two  centuries  was  there  such 
another  growth  of  it.  The  remarkable  case  of  Nicolaus  of  Autricuria, 
who  in  1348  was  forced  to  recant  his  teaching  of  the  atomistic 
doctrine,^  illustrates  at  once  the  persistence  of  the  spirit  of  reason 
in  times  of  darkness,  and  the  impossibility  of  its  triumphing  in  the 
wrong  conditions. 

§  12.  Thought  in  the  Teutonic  Countries 

The  life  of  the  rest  of  Europe  in  the  later  medieval  period  has 
little  special  significance  in  the  history  of  freethought.  France  and 
Italy,  by  German  admission,  were  the  lands  of  the  medieval 
Aufkldrung.^  The  poetry  of  the  German  Minnesingers,  a  growth 
from  that  of  the  Troubadours,  presented  the  same  anti-clerical 
features  ;^  and  the  story  of  Beynard  the  Fox  was  turned  to  anti- 

1  Id.  ib.  2  Poole,  p.  281. 

8  Ullmann,  Beformers  before  the  Beformation,  i,  37.  citing  John  of  Goch,  De  libertate 
Christia7ia,  lib.  i.  cc.  17,  18.  Compare  the  Averroist  propositions  of  1269-1277,  given 
above,  pp.  310-20. 

*  Lange.  Gesch,  des  Materialismus,  i,  187-88  (Eng.  tr.  i,  225-26). 

'^  Renter,  Qesch.  der  religiosen  Aitfkldrung  im  Mittelalter,  i,  164. 

6  Gervinus,  Gesch.  der  deutschen  Dichtung,  5te  Ausg.  i,  489-99.  Even  in  the  period 
before  the  Minnesingers  the  clerical  poetry  had  its  anti-clerical  side.  Id.  p.  194.  Towards 
the  end  of  the  12th  century  Nigellus  Wireker  satirized  the  monks  in  his  Brunellus,  sen 
speculum  stultorum.  Menze],  Gesch.  der  Deutschen,  C&p.  252.  See  Menzel's  note,  before 
cited,  for  a  remarkable  outbreak  of  anti-clerical  if  not  anti-Christian  satire,  in  the  form 
of  sculpture  in  an  ancient  carving  in  the  Strasburg  Cathedral. 


I 


362 


CHEISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


ecclesiastical  purpose  in  Germany  as  in  France.  The  relative 
freethinking  set  up  by  the  crusaders'  contact  with  the  Saracens 
seems  to  be  the  source  of  doubt  of  the  Minnesinger  Freidank 
concerning  the  doom  of  hell-fire  on  heretics  and  heathens,  the 
opinion  of  Walter  der  Vogelweide  that  Christians,  Jews,  and 
Moslems  all  serve  the  same  God/  and  still  more  mordant  heresy. 
But  such  bold  freethinking  did  not  spread.  Material  prosperity 
rather  than  culture  was  the  main  feature  of  German  progress  in 
the  Middle  Ages ;  architecture  being  the  only  art  greatly  developed. 
Heresy  of  the  anti-ecclesiastical  order  indeed  abounded,  and  was 
duly  persecuted ;  but  the  higher  freethinking  developments  were  in 
the  theosophic  rather  than  the  rationalistic  direction.  Albert  the 
Great  (fl.  1260).  "  the  universal  Doctor,"  the  chief  German  teacher 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  was  of  unimpeached  orthodoxy.^ 

The  principal  German  figure  of  the  period  is  Master  Eckhart 
(d.  1329),  who,  finding  religious  beliefs  excluded  from  the  sphere  of 
reason  by  the  freer  philosophy  of  his  day,  undertook  to  show  that 
they  were  all  matters  of  reason.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  mystically 
reasoning  preacher,  and  he  taught  in  the  interests  of  popular 
religion.  Naturally,  as  he  philosophized  on  old  bases,  he  did  not 
really  subject  his  beliefs  to  any  skeptical  scrutiny,  but  took  them 
for  granted  and  proceeded  speculatively  upon  them.  This  sufficed 
to  bring  him  before  the  Inquisition  at  Cologne,  where  he  recanted 
conditionally  on  an  appeal  to  the  Pope.  Dying  soon  after,  he 
escaped  the  papal  bull  condemning  twenty-eight  of  his  doctrines. 
His  school  later  divided  into  a  heretical  and  a  Church  party,  of 
which  the  former,  called  the  "  false  free  spirits,"  seems  to  have 
either  joined  or  resembled  the  antinomian  Brethren  of  the  Free 
Spirit,  then  numerous  in  Germany.  The  other  section  became 
known  as  the  "Friends  of  God,"  a  species  of  mystics  who  were 
"faithful  to  the  whole  medieval  imaginative  creed,  Transubstan- 
tiation,  worship  of  the  Virgin  and  Saints,  Purgatory." '  Through 
Tauler  and  others,  Eckhart's  pietistic  doctrine  gave  a  lead  to  later 
Protestant  evangelicalism ;  but  the  system  as  a  whole  can  never 
have  been  held  by  any  popular  body.* 

1  Reuter.  Gesch.  derrelig.  4 u/fcMr una.  ii,  62-63;  Gervinus.  i.  523 :  ii,  69;  Kurtz,  Gesch. 
der  deutscheii  Litteratur,  lH53,i>  ^28,  col.  2.  .  ,       ..  .  ,  i..  i, 

3  Milmaa,  Latin  Chr.  ix.  125.     Albert  was  an  Aristotelian-a  circumstance  which 
makes  sad  havoc  of  Menzel'a  proposition  (Geschichte,  Cap.  251)  that  the    German  spirit 
did  not  take  naturally  to  Aristotle.    Menzel  puts  the  fact  and  the  theory  on  opposite 

»  Milman.  Latin  Christianity,  ix.  258.    Cp.  p.  261.  ^       v,  /«  ,rw:\ ;« 

4  For  a  full  account  of  Eckhart's  teaching  see  Dr.  A.  Lasson  a  monograph  (§  106)  in 
Ueberweg'a  Hist,  of  Philos.  i.  467-84;  also  Ullmann,  Beformers  before  the  ij^.  ii,  23-31. 
Cp  Lea  Htsf.o/Iuauis.ii,  354-59,  362-69.  as  to  the  sects.  As  to  Tauler.  see  Mihnan,  ix. 
255^56     He  opposed  the  more  advanced  pantheism  of  the  Beghards.    Id.  p.  2b2. 


THOUGHT  IN  THE  TEUTONIC  COUNTKIES         363 

Dr.  Lasson  pronounces  (Ueberweg,  i,  483)  that  the  type  of 
Eckhart's  character  and  teaching  "  was  derived  from  the  inner- 
most essence  of  the  German  national  character."  At  the  same 
time  he  admits  that  all  the  offshoots  of  the  school  departed 
more  or  less  widely  from  Eckhart's  type — that  is,  from  the 
innermost  essence  of  their  own  national  character.  It  would 
be  as  plausible  to  say  that  the  later  mysticism  of  F^nelon 
derived  from  the  innermost  essence  of  the  French  character. 
The  Imitatio  Christi  has  been  similarly  described  as  expressing 
the  German  character,  on  the  assumption  that  it  was  written 
by  Thomas  k  Kempis.  Many  have  held  that  the  author  was 
the  Frenchman  Gerson  (Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe^  ed.  1872,  i, 
139-40).  It  was  in  all  probability,  as  was  held  by  Suarez,  the 
work  of  several  hands,  one  a  monk  of  the  twelfth  century, 
another  a  monk  of  the  thirteenth,  and  the  third  a  theologian  of 
the  fifteenth ;  neither  Gerson  nor  Thomas  k  Kempis  being  con- 
corned  (Le  Clerc,  Hist.  Litt.  du  XlVe  Sidcle,  2e  6dit.  pp.  384-85  ; 
cp.  Neale's  Hist,  of  the  so-called  Jansenist  Church  of  Holland, 
1858,  pp.  97-98). 

The  Imitatio  Christi  (1471),  the  most  popular  Christian  work  of 
devotion  ever  pubhshed,^  tells  all  the  while  of  the  obscure  persistence 
of  the  search  for  knowledge  and  for  rational  satisfactions.  What- 
ever be  the  truth  as  to  its  authorship,  it  belongs  to  all  Christendom 
in  respect  of  its  querulous  strain  of  protest  against  all  manner  of 
intellectual  curiosity.  After  the  first  note  of  world-renunciation, 
the  call  to  absorption  in  the  inner  religious  life,  there  comes  the 
sharp  protest  against  the  "  desire  to  know."  *'  Surely  an  humble 
husbandman  that  serveth  God  is  better  than  a  proud  philosopher 
who,  neglecting  himself,  laboureth  to  understand  the  course  of  the 

heavens Cease  from   an   inordinate   desire   of  knowing."       No 

sooner  is  the  reader  warned  to  consider  himself  the  frailest  of  all 
men  than  he  is  encouraged  to  look  down  on  all  reasoners.  "  What 
availeth  it  to  cavil  and  dispute  much  about  dark  and  hidden  things, 
when  for  being  ignorant  of  them  we  shall  not  be  so  much  as  reproved 
at  the  day  of  judgment  ?  It  is  a  great  folly  to  neglect  the  things 
that  are  profitable  and  necessary,  and  give  our  minds  to  that  which 

is  curious  and  hurtful And  what  have  we  to  do  with  genus  and 

species,  the  dry  notions  of  logicians?"^  The  homily  swings  to 
and  fro  between  occasional  admissions  that  "  learning  is  not  to  be 
blamed,"  perhaps  interpolated  by  one  who  feared  to  have  religion 
figure  as  opposed  to  knowledge,  and  recurrent  flings — perhaps  also 

1  In  the  400  years  following  its  publication  there  were  published  over  6,000  separate 
editions. 

2  Bk.  i.  ch.  ii.  1.  2.  «  Bk.  i.  ch.  iii,  1.  2. 


If 


364 


CHRISTENDOM  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 


interpolated — at  all  who  seek  book-lore  or  physical  science  ;  but  the 
note  of  distrust  of  reason  prevails.  "  Where  are  all  those  Doctors 
and  Masters  whom  thou  didst  well  know  whilst  they  lived  and 
flourished  in  learning  ?  Now  others  have  their  livings,  and  perchance 
scarce  ever  think  of  them.  While  they  lived  they  seemed  some- 
thing, but  now  they  are  not  spoken  of."  ^  It  belongs  to  the  whole 
conception  of  retreat  and  aloofness  that  the  devout  man  should 
**  meddle  not  with  curiosities,  but  read  such  things  as  may  rather 
yield  compunction  to  his  heart  than  occupation  to  his  head";  and 
the  last  chapter  of  the  last  book  closes  on  the  note  of  the  abnegation 
of  reason.  **  Human  reason  is  feeble  and  may  be  deceived,  but  true 
faith  cannot  be  deceived.     All  reason  and  natural  search  ought  to 

follow  faith,  not  to  go  before  it,  nor  to  break  in  upon  it If  the 

works  of  God  were  such  that  they  might  be  easily  comprehended  by 
human  reason,  they  could  not  be  justly  called  marvellous  or  unspeak- 
able." Thus  the  very  inculcation  of  humility,  by  its  constant 
direction  against  all  intellectual  exercise,  becomes  an  incitement  to 
a  spiritual  arrogance  ;  and  all  manner  of  science  finds  in  the  current 
ideal  of  piety  its  pre-ordained  antagonist. 


1  Id.  §  5. 


Chapter  X 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  RENAISSANCE 


§  1.  The  Italiaji  Evolution 

What  is  called  the  Renaissance  was,  broadly  speaking,  an  evolution 
of  the  culture  forces  seen  at  work  in  the  later  "  Middle  Ages,"  newly 
fertilized  by  the  recovery  of  classic  literature ;  and  we  shall  have  to 
revert  at  several  points  of  our  survey  to  what  we  have  been  consider- 
ing as  "  medieval "  in  order  to  perceive  the  "  new  birth."  The  term 
is  inconveniently  vague,  and  is  made  to  cover  different  periods, 
sometimes  extending  from  the  thirteenth  to  the  sixteenth  century, 
sometimes  signifying  only  the  fifteenth.  It  seems  reasonable  to 
apply  it,  as  regards  Italy,  to  the  period  in  which  southern  culture 
began  to  outgo  that  of  France,  and  kept  its  lead — that  is,  from  the 
end  of  the  fourteenth  century^  to  the  time  of  the  Counter-Reforma- 
tion.    That  is  a  comparatively  distinct  sociological  era. 

Renascent  Italy  is,  after  ancient  Greece,  the  great  historical 
illustration  of  the  sociological  law  that  the  higher  civilizations  arise 
through  the  passing-on  of  seeds  of  culture  from  older  to  newer 
societies,  under  conditions  that  specially  foster  them  and  give  them 
freer  growth.  The  straitened  and  archaic  pictorial  art  of  Byzantium, 
unprogressive  in  the  hidebound  life  of  the  Eastern  Empire,  developed 
in  the  free  and  striving  Italian  communities  till  it  paralleled  the 
sculpture  of  ancient  Greece;  and  it  is  to  be  said  for  the  Church 
that,  however  she  might  stifle  rational  thought,  she  economically 
eHcited  the  arts  of  painting  and  architecture  (statuary  being  tabooed 
as  too  much  associated  with  pagan  worships),  even  as  Greek  religion 
had  promoted  architecture  and  sculpture.  By  force,  however,  of 
the  tendency  of  the  arts  to  keep  religion  anthropomorphic  where 
deeper  culture  is  lacking,  popular  belief  in  Renaissance  Italy  was 
substantially  on  a  par  with  that  of  polytheistic  Greece. 

Before  the  general  recovery  of  ancient  literature,  the  main 
motives  to  rationalism,  apart  from  the  tendency  of  the  Aristotelian 

1  J.  A.  Symonds  writes  that  in  the  age  of  Dante,  Petrarch,  and  Boccaccio  "  what  we 
caU  the  Renaissance  had  not  yet  arrived"  {Benuissaiice  in  Itcdy  ;  Age  of  the  Despots,  ed. 
1897,  p.  9). 

365 


366 


FBEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  EENAISSANCE 


philosophy  to  set  up  doubts  about  creation  and  Providence  and  a 
future  state,  were  (l)  the  spectacle  of  the  competing  creed  of  Islam, 
made  known  to  the  Italians  first  by  intercourse  with  the  Moors, 
later  by  the  Crusades  ;  and  further  and  more  fully  by  the  Saracenized 
culture  of  Sicily  and  commercial  intercourse  with  the  east ;  (2)  the 
spectacle  of  the  strife  of  creeds  within  Christendom;'*  and  (3)  the 
spectacle  of  the  worldliness  and  moral  insincerity  of  the  bulk  of  the 
clergy.  It  is  in  that  atmosphere  that  the  Kenaissance  begins ;  and 
it  may  be  said  that  freethought  stood  veiled  beside  its  cradle. 

In  such  an  atmosphere,  even  on  the  ecclesiastical  side,  demand 
for  "  reforms  "  naturally  made  headway;  and  the  Council  of  Con- 
stance (1414-1418)  was  convened  to  enact  many  besides  the  ending 
of  the  schism.®  But  the  Council  itself  was  followed  by  seven 
hundred  prostitutes  ;*  and  its  relation  to  the  intellectual  life  was 
defined  by  its  bringing  about,  on  a  charge  of  heresy,  the  burning  of 
John  Huss,  who  had  come  under  a  letter  of  safe-conduct  from  the 
emperor.  The  baseness  of  the  act  was  an  enduring  blot  on  the 
Church ;  and  a  hundred  years  later,  in  a  Germany  with  small  good- 
will to  Bohemia,  Luther  made  it  one  of  his  foremost  indictments  of 
the  hierarchy.  But  in  the  interim  the  spirit  of  reform  had  come  to 
nothing.  Cut  off  from  much  of  the  force  that  was  needed  to  effect 
any  great  moral  revolution  in  the  Church,  the  reforming  movement 
soon  fell  away,*  and  the  Church  was  left  to  ripen  for  later  and  more 
drastic  treatment. 

How  far,  nevertheless,  anti-clericalism  could  go  among  the 
scholarly  class  even  in  Italy  is  seen  in  the  career  of  one  of  the 
leading  humanists  of  the  Renaissance,  LORENZO  VALLA  (1406-1457). 
In  the  work  of  his  youth,  De  Vohcptate  et  Vero  Bono,  a  hardy 
vindication  of  aggressive  Epicureanism — at  a  time  when  the  title  of 
Epicurean  stood  for  freethinker*' — he  plainly  sets  up  a  rationalist 
standard,  affirming  that  science  is  founded  on  reason  and  Nature, 
and  that  Nature  is  God.  Not  content  with  a  theoretic  defiance  of 
the  faith,  he  violently  attacked  the  Church.  It  was  probably  to  the 
protection  of  Alfonso  of  Aragon,  king  of  Naples,  who  though  pious 
was  not  pro-clerical,^  that  Valla  was  able  to  do  what  he  did,  above 


»  Cp.Een&n,Av€rrok8,Se  Mit.  pp.  280-82,  295;  Lewes.  Hist,  of  Philos.  4th  ed.  ii,  67; 
Eeuter.  Oesch.  der  relig.  Aufkianing  im  Mittelalter,  i.  139-41.  It  is  noteworthy  that  the 
troubadour.  Austore  d'Orlac,  in  cursing  the  crusades  and  the  clergy  who  promoted  them. 
Buggests  that  the  Christians  should  turn  Moslems,  seeing  that  God  is  on  the  side  of  the 
unbelievers  (Gieseler,  Per.  III.  Div.  Ill,  §  58,  TWte  1). 

2  Cp.  Burckhardt.  Civ.  o/  the  Rmais.  in  Italy,  Eng.  tr.  ed.  1892.  pp.  490.  492. 

8  Id.  p.  333.  ^  Hardwick,  p.  354,  note. 

6  Cp.  Hardwick,  p.  361 ;  "Janus,"  The  Tope  and  the  Council,  p.  308. 
*  Burckhardt,  p.  497,  note. 

7  Villari.  Life  and  Times  of  MachiavelU,  Eng.  tr.  3rd  ed.  vol.  i.  introd.  p.  115.  Cp. 
Burckhardt,  pp.  35.  226. 


THE  ITALIAN  EVOLUTION 


367 


all  to  write  his  famous  treatise,  De  falso  credita  et  ementita  Con- 
stantini  donatione,  wherein  he  definitely  proved  once  for  all  that 
the  "  donation  "  in  question  was  a  fiction.^  Such  an  opinion  had 
been  earlier  maintained  at  the  Council  of  Basle  by  ^neas  Sylvius, 
afterwards  Pope  Pius  II,  and  before  him  by  the  remarkable  Nicolaus 
of  Cusa;^  but  when  the  existence  of  Valla's  work  was  known  he 
had  to  fly  from  Eome  afresh  (1443)  to  Naples,  where  he  had  pre- 
viously been  protected  for  seven  years.  Applying  the  same  critical 
spirit  to  more  sacrosanct  literature,  he  impugned  the  authenticity  of 
the  Apostles'  Creed,  and  of  the  letter  of  Abgarus  to  Jesus  Christ, 
given  by  Eusebius ;  proceeding  further  to  challenge  many  of  the 
mistranslations  in  the  Vulgate.^  For  his  untiring  propaganda  he 
was  summoned  before  the  Inquisition  at  Naples,  but  as  usual  was 
protected  by  the  king,  whom  he  satisfied  by  professing  faith  in  the 
dogmas  of  the  Church,  as  distinguished  from  ecclesiastical  history 
and  philology. 

It  was  characteristic  of  the  life  of  Italy,  hopelessly  committed  on 
economic  grounds  to  the  Church,  that  Valla  finally  sought  and  found 
reconciliation  with  the  papacy.  He  knew  that  his  safety  at  Naples 
depended  on  the  continued  anti-papalism  of  the  throne ;  he  yearned 
for  the  society  of  Eome ;  and  his  heart  was  all  the  while  with  the 
cause  of  Latin  scholarship  rather  than  with  that  of  a  visionary 
reformation.  In  his  as  in  so  many  cases,  accordingly,  intellectual 
rectitude  gave  way  to  lower  interests  ;  and  he  made  unblushing 
offers  of  retractation  to  cardinals  and  pope.  In  view  of  the  extreme 
violence  of  his  former  attacks,*  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  reigning 
Pope,  Eugenius  IV,  refused  to  be  appeased ;  but  on  the  election  of 
Nicholas  V  (1447)  he  was  sent  for ;  and  he  died  secretary  to  the 
Curia  and  Canon  of  St.  John  Lateran.*^ 

Where  so  much  of  anti-clericalism  could  find  harbourage  within 
the  Church,  there  was  naturally  no  lack  of  it  without ;  and  from  the 
period  of  Boccaccio  till  the  Catholic  reaction  after  the  Reformation 
a  large  measure  of  anti-clerical  feeling  is  a  constant  feature  in 
Italian  life.  It  was  so  ingrained  that  the  Church  had  on  the  whole 
to  leave  it  alone.  From  pope  to  monk  the  mass  of  the  clergy  had 
forfeited  respect ;  and  gibes  at  their  expense  were  household  words,® 

»  As  to  its  history  see  "Janus,"  The  Pope  and  the  Council,  p.  131  sq. 

2  Villari,  as  last  cited,  pp.  98, 108.  ,      ^  ^.,       i.  j     t         it- 

8  It  is  noteworthy,  however,  that  he  did  not  detect,  or  at  least  did  not  declare,  the 
Bpuriousness  of  the  text  of  the  three  witnesses  (Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  iii.  58,  note).  Here 
the  piety  of  Alfonso,  who  knew  his  Bible  by  heart,  may  have  restrained  him. 

<  See  the  passages  transcribed  by  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  i,  148. 

*  Villari,  as  last  cited,  pp.  98-101.  ,,       ,^  .^o  „,     -r        xr    ..     * 

'  6  Cp,  Gebhart.  Benaissance  en  Italic,  pp.  72-73 ;  Burckhardt,  pp.  458-65  ;  Lea,  Uist.  of 
the  Inquisition,  i,  5-4.  "  The  authors  of  the  most  scandalous  satires  were  themselves 
mostly  monks  or  benflced  priests."    (Burckhardt,  p.  465.) 


368  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  RENAISSANCE 

and  the  basis  of  popular  songs.     Tommaso  Guardati  of  Salerno, 
better  known   as   Masuccio,    attacks   all   orders   of    clergy   m   his 
collection  of  tales  with  such  fury  that  only  the  protection  of  the 
court  of  Naples  could  well  have  saved  him ;  and  yet  he  was  a  good 
CathoHc/     The  popular  poetic  Hterature.  with  certain  precautions, 
carried  the  anti-clerical  spirit  as  far  as  to  parade  a  humorous  non- 
literary   skepticism,   putting   in    the   mouths   of    the   questionable 
characters   in   its  romances  all  manner  of   anti-reUgious  opinions 
which  it  would  be  unsafe  to  print  as  one's  own,  but  which  in  this 
way  reached  appreciative  readers  who  were  more  or  less  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  author's  sentiments  and  stratagems.     The  Morgante 
Maggiore  of  PULCI  (1488)  is  the  great  type  of  such  early  Voltairean 
humour :'  it  revives  the  spirit  of  the  Goliards,  and  passes  unscathed 
in  the  new  Renaissance  world,  where  the  earUer  Proven(jal  impiety 
had  gone  the  way  of  the  Inquisition  bonfire,  books  and  men  alike. 
Beneath  its  mockery  there  is  a  constant  play  of  rational  thought, 
and  every  phase  of  contemporary  culture  is  glanced  at  in  the  spirit 
of   always  unembittered  humour  which   makes   Pulci  "the   most 
lovable  among  the  great  poets  of  the  Renaissance."'     It  is  note- 
worthy that  Pulci  is  found  affirming  the  doctrine  of  an  Antipodes 
with  absolute  openness,  and  with  impunity,  over  a  hundred  years 
before  GaHleo.     This  survival  of  ancient  pagan  science  seems  to 
have  been  obscurely  preserved  all  through  the  Middle  Ages.     In  the 
eighth  century,  as  we  have  seen,  the  priest  Feargal  or  Vergilius,  of 
Bavaria,  was  deposed  from  his  office  by  the  Pope,  on  the  urging  of 
St.  Boniface,  for   maintaining   it;    but   he  was  reinstated,  died  a 
bishop,  and  became  a  saint ;  and  not  only  that  doctrine,  but  that 
of  the  two-fold  motion  of  the  earth,  was  affirmed  with  impunity 
before  Pulci  by  Nicolaus  of  Cusa*  (d.  1464)  ;  though  in  the  four- 
teenth century  Nicolaus  of  Autricuria  had  to  recant  his  teaching  of 
the  atomistic  theory.'     As  Pulci  had  specially  satirized  the  clergy 
and  ecclesiastical  miracles,  his  body  was  refused  burial  in  consecrated 
ground ;  but  the  general  temper  was  such  as  to  save  him  from  clerical 
enmity  up  to  that  point. 

The  Inquisition  too  was  now  greatly  enfeebled  throughout 
central  and  northern  as  well  as  southern  Italy.  In  1440^  the 
materialist,  mathematician,  and    astrologer  Amadeo  de'  Landi,  of 

1  Burckhardt.  pp.  451-61 ;  J.  A.  Symonds.  Benaisaance  in  Italy :  The  Age  of  the  Despots, 
ed.  1897.  p.  359;  Villari,  I/</ec/Mac/iiawiit.  i,  153.  ir,.^^^^    i    iqq 

a  See  it  well  analysed  by  Owen.  pp.  147-60.  Cp.  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe  i.  199. 
M.  Perrens  describes  Pulci  as  "emancipated  from  all  belief  ":  but  holds  that  he  .  bantered 
the  faith  without  the  least  design  of  attacking  religion  "  (La  Civthsatton  floraitme,  p.  151). 
But  CP.  Villari,  Life  of  Machiavelli,  i,  159-60.  _  ^^   ^ .  ,^  -i.  ^  , 

8  Owen,  p.  160.    So  also  Hunt,  and  the  editor  of  the  Parnaso  Itahano,  there  cited. 

*  Below.  §  4.  6  Above,  p.  361. 


THE  ITALIAN  EVOLUTION 


369 


Milan,  was  accused  of  heresy  by  the  orthodox  Franciscans.  Not 
only  was  he  acquitted,  but  his  chief  accuser  was  condemned  in  turn 
to  make  public  retractation,  which  he  however  declined  to  do.^ 
Fifty  years  later  the  Inquisition  was  still  nearly  powerless.  In 
1497  we  find  a  freethinking  physician  at  Bologna,  Gabriele  de  Sal6, 
protected  by  his  patrons  against  its  wrath,  although  he  "was  in  the 
habit  of  maintaining  that  Christ  was  not  God,  but  the  son  of  Joseph 

and   Mary ;    that  by  his  cunning  he  had  deceived  the  world; 

that  he  may  have  died  on  the  cross  on  account  of  crimes  which  he 
had  committed,"^  and  so  forth.  Nineteen  years  before,  Galeotto 
Marcio  had  come  near  being  burned  for  writing  that  any  man  who 
lived  uprightly  according  to  his  own  conscience  would  go  to  heaven, 
whatever  his  faith  ;  and  it  needed  the  Pope,  Sixtus  IV,  his  former 
pupil,  to  save  him  from  the  Inquisition.^  Others,  who  went  further, 
ran  similar  risks  ;  and  in  1500  Giorgio  da  Novara  was  burned  at 
Bologna,  presumptively  for  denying  the  divinity  of  Jesus.*  A  bishop 
of  Aranda,  however,  is  said  to  have  done  the  same  with  impunity, 
in  the  same  year,**  besides  rejecting  hell  and  purgatory,  and 
denouncing  indulgences  as  a  device  of  the  popes  to  fill  their 
pockets. 

During  this  period  too  the  philosophy  of  Averroes,  as  set  forth 
in  his  "  Great  Commentary  "  on  Aristotle,  was  taught  in  North 
Italy  with  an  outspokenness  not  before  known.  Gaetano  of  Siena 
began  to  lecture  on  the  Commentary  at  Padua  in  1436  ;  it  was  in 
part  printed  there  in  1472 ;  and  from  1471  to  1499  Nicoletto 
Vernias  seems  to  have  taught,  in  the  Paduan  chair  of  philosophy, 
the  Averroist  doctrine  of  the  world-soul,  thus  virtually  denying  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  immortality.  Violent  opposition  was  raised 
when  his  pupil  Niphus  (Nifo)  printed  similar  doctrine  in  a  treatise 
De  Intellectu  et  DcBynonihus  (1492) ;  but  the  professors  when  neces- 
sary disclaimed  the  more  dangerous  tenets  of  Averroism.^  Nifo  it 
was  who  put  into  print  the  maxim  of  his  tribe  :  Loquendum  est  ut 
2)lures,  sententiendum  ut  pauci — **  think  with  the  few ;  speak  with 
the  majority."' 

As  in  ancient  Greece,  humorous  blasphemy  seems  to  have  fared 
better   than   serious   unbelief.®     As   is   remarked    by   Hallam,   the 


1  Lea.  ii,  271-72.    Cp.  pp.  282-84.  2  Burckhardt,  p.  502. 

8  Id.  p.  500.  *  Id.  p.  502.  «  Id.  p.  503,  note. 

6  Cp.  R.  C.  Christie's  essay,  "  Pomponatius— a  Skeptic,"  in  his  Selected  Essays  and 
Pavers,  1902,  pp.  131-32 ;  Renan,  Averroes,  pp.  345-352. 

^  Comm.  in  Aristot.  de  Gen.  et  Corr.  lib,  i,  fol.  29  G.  cited  by  Ellis  in  note  on  Bacon, 
who  quotes  a  version  of  the  phrase  in  the  De  Augrnentis,  B.  v,  ejid.  As  to  Nifo  see 
Nourrisson,  Machiavel,  1875.  ch.  xii. 

8  As  to  ribald  blasphemies  by  the  Roman  clergy  see  Erasmus,  Epist.  xxvi,  34  (ed.  le 
Clerc),  cited  by  Hardwick,  Church  History :  Middle  Age,  p.  378,  note. 

2b 


370 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  KENAISSANCE 


THE  ITALIAN  EVOLUTION 


371 


number  of  vindications  of  Christianity  produced  in  Italy  in  the 
fifteenth  century  proves  the  existence  of  much  unbelief ;  ^  and  it  is 
clear  that,  apart  from  academic  doubt,  there  was  abundant  free- 
thinking  among  men  of  the  world.^  Erasmus  was  astonished  at  the 
unbelief  he  found  in  high  quarters  in  Kome.  One  ecclesiastic  under- 
took to  prove  to  him  from  Pliny  that  there  is  no  future  state  ;  others 
openly  derided  Christ  and  the  apostles  ;  and  many  avowed  to  him 
that  they  had  heard  eminent  papal  functionaries  blaspheming  the 
Mass."  The  biographer  of  Pope  Paul  II  has  recorded  how  that 
pontiff  found  in  his  own  court,  among  certain  young  men,  the 
opinion  that  faith  rested  rather  on  trickeries  of  the  saints  {sanctorum 
astutiis)  than  on  evidence;  which  opinion  the  Pope  eradicated/ 
But  in  the  career  of  Perugino  (1446-1524),  who  from  being 
a  sincerely  religious  painter  became  a  skeptic  in  his  wrath  against 
the  Church  which  slew  Savonarola,''  we  have  evidence  of  a  move- 
ment of  things  which  no  papal  fiat  could  arrest. 

As  to  the  beliefs  of  the  great  artists  in  general  we  have  little 
information.  Employed  as  they  so  often  were  in  painting  religious 
subjects  for  the  churches,  they  must  as  a  rule  have  conformed 
outwardly;  and  the  artistic  temper  is  more  commonly  credent  than 
skeptical.  But  in  the  case  of  one  of  the  greatest,  LEONARDO  DA 
Vinci  (1452-1519),  we  have  evidence  of  a  continual  play  of  critical 
scrutiny  on  the  world,  and  a  continual  revolt  against  mere  authority, 
which  seem  incompatible  with  any  acceptance  of  Christian  dogma. 
In  his  many  notes,  unpublished  till  modern  times,  his  universal 
genius  plays  so  freely  upon  so  many  problems  that  he  cannot  be 
supposed  to  have  ignored  those  of  religion.  His  stern  appraisement 
of  the  mass  of  men  ^  carries  with  it  no  evangelical  qualifications ;  his 
passion  for  knowledge  is  not  Christian  ;'^  and  his  reiterated  rejection 
of  the  principle  of  authority  in  science  ^  and  in  literature  ^  tells  of 
a  spirit  which,  howsoever  it  might  practise  reticence,  cannot  have 

1  Lit.  Hist,  of  Europe,  i,  142.  FoUowing  Eichhorn.  Hallam  notes  vindications  by 
Marsilio  Ficino.  Alfonso  de  Spina  (a  converted  Jew),  ^neas  Sylvius,  and  Tico  di 
Mirandola;  observing  that  the  work  of  the  first-named  differs  little  from  modern 
apologies  of  the  same  class." 

i  Cp.  Ranke.  History  of  the  Popes.  Bohn  tr.  ed.  1908,  i.  58. 

8  Epist.  above  cited  ;  Burigni.  Vie  d'Eras^ne,  1757,  i,  148-49. 

4  Paul  Canensius,  cited  by  Ranke.  iu-n«««.,t 

8  This  view  seems  to  solve  the  mystery  as  to  Perugino  s  creed.  Vasari  (ed.  Miianesi, 
iii. 589)  calls  him  "  persona  di  assai  poca  religione."  Mezzanotte  (Delia  vita  dx  F.Vanucct, 
etc  1836.  p.  172  8Q.)  indignantly  rejects  the  statement,  but  notes  that  in  Ciatti  s  MS.  annals 
of  Perugia,  ad  ann.  15^4,  the  mind  of  the  painter  is  said  to  have  been  come  una  tavola 
rasa  in  religious  matters.  Mezzanotte  holds  that  Pietro  has  been  there  confounded  with 
a  later  Perugian  painter.  „,       ^  .    ^  ,^.  t^     t-.j         ^^ 

6  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  Frammenti  letterari  e  filosofict,  trascelti  par  Dr.  Edmondo 
Solmi.    Firenze,  1900.    Fensieri  sulla  scienza,  19,  20. 

7  lb  14  22  23  24  92.  "  H).  36-38,  41. 

»  So'me'of  the  humanists  called  him  unlettered  (o/rw  seiiza  lettere),  &nd  be  calls  them 
gente  stolta,  a  foolish  tribe. 


been  inwardly  docile  to  either  priesthood  or  tradition.  In  all  his 
reflections  upon  philosophic  and  scientific  themes  he  is,  in  the 
scientific  sense,  materialistic — that  is,  inductive,  studious  of  experi- 
ment, insistent  upon  tangible  data.^  "  Wisdom  is  daughter  of 
experience  ";^  "  truth  is  the  daughter  of  time  ";*  "  there  is  no  effect 
in  Nature  without  a  reason";*  "all  our  knowledge  originates  in 
sensations  "* — such  are  the  dicta  he  accumulates  in  an  age  of  super- 
stition heightened  by  the  mutability  of  life,  of  ecclesiastical  tyranny 
tempered  only  by  indifferentism,  of  faith  in  astrology  and  amulets, 
of  benumbing  tradition  in  science  and  philosophy.  On  the  problem 
of  the  phenomena  of  fossil  shells  he  pronounces  with  a  searching 
sagacity  of  inference®  that  seems  to  reveal  at  once  the  extent  to 
which  the  advance  of  science  has  been  blocked  by  pious  obscurantism."^ 
In  all  directions  we  see  the  great  artist,  a  century  before  Bacon, 
anticipating  Bacon's  protests  and  questionings,  and  this  with  no 
such  primary  bias  to  religion  as  Bacon  had  acquired  at  his  mother's 
knee.  When  he  turns  to  the  problems  of  body  and  spirit  he  is  as 
dispassionate,  as  keenly  speculative,  as  over  those  of  external 
nature.^  Of  magic  he  is  entirely  contemptuous,  not  in  the  least  on 
religious  grounds,  though  he  glances  at  these,  but  simply  for  the 
folly  of  it.^  All  that  tells  of  religious  feeling  in  him  is  summed  up 
in  a  few  utterances  expressive  of  a  vague  theism  ;^°  while  he  has 
straight  thrusts  at  religious  fraud  and  absurdity.^^  It  is  indeed 
improbable  that  a  mind  so  necessitated  to  discourse  of  its  thought, 
however  gifted  for  prudent  silence,  can  have  subsisted  without 
private  sympathy  from  kindred  souls.  Skepticism  was  admittedly 
abundant ;  and  Leonardo  of  all  men  can  least  have  failed  to  reckon 
with  its  motives. 

Perhaps  the  most  fashionable  form  of  quasi-freethinking  in  the 
Italy  of  the  fifteenth  century  was  that  which  prevailed  in  the 
Platonic  Academy  of  Florence  in  the  period,  though  the  chief 
founder  of  the  Academy,  Marsilio  Ficino,  wrote  a  defence  of 
Christianity,  and  his  most  famous  adherent,  Giovanni  Pico  della 
Mirandola,  planned  another.  Kenaissance  Platonism  began  with 
the  Greek  Georgios  Gemistos,  surnamed  Plethon  because  of  his 
devotion  to  Plato,  which  was  such  as  to  scandalize  common 
Christians  and  exasperate  Aristotelians.     The  former  had  the  real 

»  lb.  44.  46,  47,  48.  58.  60,  63.  etc.  2  jb,  45.  »  lb.  30.  *  lb.  57. 

5  lb.  66.    Cp.  67-69.  ^  Id.  Fensieri  sulla  natura,  80-86. 

7  Shortly  after  Leonardo  we  find  Girolamo  Fracastorio  (1483-1563)  developing  the 
criticism  further,  and  in  particular  disposing  of  the  futile  formula,  resorted  to  by  the 
scientific  apriorists  of  the  time,  that  the  "  plastic  force  of  nature "  created  fossils  like 
other  things.  ,_  _ 

8  Id.  Fensieri  sulla  morale,  passim.  "  lb.  7.  ^o  lb.  44.  45.  "  10.  46,  47. 


I 


372 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  RENAISSANCE 


grievance  that  his  system  ostensibly  embodied  polytheism  and 
logically  involved  pantheism  ;^  and  one  of  his  antagonists,  Gennadios 
Georgios  Scolarios,  who  became  patriarch  of  Constantinople,  caused 
his  book  On  Laws  to  be  burned  \'^  but  the  allegation  of  his  Aris- 
toteUan  enemy  and  countryman,  Georgios  Trapezuntios,  that  he 
prayed  to  the  sun  as  creator  of  the  world,"  is  only  one  of  the 
polemical  amenities  of  the  period.  Ostensibly  he  was  a  beUeving 
Christian,  stretching  Christian  love  to  accommodate  the  beUefs  of 
Plato ;  but  it  was  not  zeal  for  orthodoxy  that  moved  Cosimo  dei 
Medici,  at  Florence,  to  embrace  the  new  Platonism,  and  train  up 
Marsilio  Ficino  to  be  its  prophet.  The  furor  allegoricus  which 
inspired  the  whole  school*  was  much  more  akin  to  ancient 
Gnosticism  than  to  orthodox  Christianity,  and  constantly  points  to 
pantheism"  as  the  one  philosophic  solution  of  its  ostensible  poly- 
theism. When,  too,  Ficino  undertakes  to  vindicate  Christianity 
against  the  unbelievers  in  his  Delia  Beligione  Cristiana,  '*  the  most 
solid  arguments  that  he  can  find  in  its  favour  are  the  answers  of 
the  Sibyls,  and  the  prophecies  of  the  coming  of  Jesus  Christ  to  be 
found  in  Virgil,  Plato,  Plotinus,  and  Porphyry."® 

How  far  such  a  spirit  of  expatiation  and  speculation,  however 
visionary  and  confused,  tended  to  foster  heresy  is  seen  in  the  brief 
career  of  the  once  famous  young  Pico  della  Mirandola,  Ficino's 
wealthy  pupil.  Parading  a  portentous  knowledge  of  tongues'  and 
topics  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  he  undertook  (1486)  to  maintain 
a  list  of  nine  hundred  Conclusiones  or  propositions  at  Rome  against 
all  comers,  and  to  pay  their  expenses.  Though  he  had  obtained  the 
permission  of  the  Pope,  Innocent  VIII,  the  challenge  speedily  ehcited 
angry  charges  of  heresy  against  certain  of  the  theses,  and  the  Pope 
had  to  stop  the  proceedings  and  issue  an  ecclesiastical  commission 
of  inquiry.  Some  of  the  propositions  were  certainly  ill  adjusted  to 
Catholic  ideas,  in  particular  the  sayings  that  *' neither  the  cross  of 
Christ  nor  any  image  is  to  be  adored  adoratione  latrice" — with 
worship ;  that  no  one  believes  what  he  believes  merely  because  ho 
wishes  to;  and  that  Jesus  did  not  physically  descend  into  hell,® 

1  Cp.  Burckhardt.  pp.  524,  541,  notes ;  Villari,  Life  of  Macliiavelli.  i.  124.  "  It  was  easy  to 
see  by  his  words  that  he  hoped  for  the  restoration  of  the  pagan  religion "  (Id.  Life  of 
Savonarola,  Eng.  tr.  p.  51).  ,     , 

'^  Only  a  few  fragments  of  it  survive.    Villari.  Life  of  Savonarola,  p.  51. 

8  Carriere.  Philos.  Weltanschauung  der  Beformationazeit,  1847.  p.  13. 

4  Cp.  Villari.  Life  of  Machiavelli,  i,  128-34. 

8  Cp.  Perrens.  Hist,  de  Flormice  (1434-1531).  i.  258. 

6  Id.  p.  257.    Cp.  Villari.  Machiavelli,  i.  132 ;  Savonarola,  p.  60. 

7  "Of  the  majority  of  the  twenty-two  languages  he  was  supposed  to  have  studied,  he 
knew  little  more  than  the  alphabet  and  the  elements  of  grammar"  (Villari,  Machiavelli, 
i,  135).  As  to  Pico's  character,  which  was  not  saintly,  see  Perrens,  Histoire  as  cited, 
i,  561-62. 

«  Cp.  Greswell,  Memoirs  of  PoUHanus,  Picus,  etc.  2nd  ed.  1805,  235  ;  McCrie,  The 
Meformation  in  Italy,  ed.  1856.  p.  33,  note. 


THE  ITALIAN  EVOLUTION 


373 


Pico,  retiring  to  Florence,  defended  himself  in  an  ^IpoZogza,  which 
provoked  fresh  outcry ;  whereupon  he  was  summoned  to  proceed  to 
Eome ;  and  though  the  powerful  friendship  of  Lorenzo  dei  Medici 
procured  a  countermand  of  the  order,  it  was  not  till  1496  that  he 
received,  from  Alexander  VI,  a  full  papal  remission. 

Among  the  unachieved  projects  of  his  later  life,  which  ended  at 
the  age  of  thirty-one,  was  that  of  a  treatise  Adversus  Hostes  EcclesicB, 
to  be  divided  into  seven  sections,  the  first  dealing  with  '*  The  avowed 
and  open  enemies  of  Christianity,"  and  the  second  wdth  "  Atheists 
and  those  who  reject  every  religious  system  upon  their  own 
reasoning";  and  the  others  with  Jews,  Moslems,  idolaters,  heretics, 
and  unrighteous  believers.^  The  vogue  of  unbelief  thus  signified 
was  probably  increased  by  the  whole  speculative  habit  of  Pico's 
own  school,'^  which  tended  only  less  than  Averroism  to  a  pantheism 
subversive  of  the  Christian  creed.  It  is  noteworthy  that,  while 
Ficino  believed  devoutly  in  astrology,^  Pico  rejected  it,  and  left 
among  his  confused  papers  a  treatise  against  it  which  his  nephew 
contrived  to  transcribe  and  publish  ;  ^  but  it  does  not  appear  that 
this  served  either  the  cause  of  religion  or  that  of  science.  The 
educated  Italian  world,  while  political  independence  lasted,  remained 
in  various  degrees  freethinking,  pantheistic,  and  given  to  astrology, 
no  school  or  teacher  combining  rationalism  in  philosophy  with  sound 
scientific  methods. 

One  of  the  great  literary  figures  of  the  later  Eenaissance, 
Niccol6  Machiavelli  (1469-1527),  is  the  standing  proof  of  the 
divorce  of  the  higher  intelligence  of  Italy  from  the  faith  as  well  as 
the  cause  of  the  Church  before  the  Reformation.  With  this  divorce 
he  expressly  charges  the  Church  itself,  giving  as  the  first  proof  of  its 
malfeasance  that  the  peoples  nearest  Eome  were  the  least  religious.* 
To  him  the  Church  was  the  supreme  evil  in  Italian  politics,®  the 
"  stone  in  the  wound."  In  a  famous  passage  he  gives  his  opinion 
that  "  our  rehgion,  having  shown  us  the  truth  and  the  true  way, 
makes  us  esteem  less  political  honour  {Vonore  del  nwndo)'';  and  that 
whereas  the  pagan  religion  canonized  only  men  crowned  with  public 
honour,  as  generals  and  statesmen,  "  our  religion  has  glorified  rather 
the  humble  and  contemplative  men  than  the  active,"  placing  the 
highest  good  in  humility  and  abjection,  teaching  rather  to  suffer 
than  to  do,  and  so  making  the  world  debile  and  ready  to  be  a  prey 


1  Greswell,  pp.  330-31.  _   _.„     .   „    ,.      „.  .      „ 

2  Cp.  K.  M.  Sauer,  Gesch.  deritalien.  Litteratur,  1883,  p.  109;  Villari,  Machmvelh,  i,  138. 
8  Villari.  Machiavelli,  i,  133.  *  Greswell,  pp,  331-32. 

5  Discorsi  sopra  Tito  Livio,  i,  12.  ^  Istorie  fiorentine,  liv.  i ;  Discorsi,  i,  12. 


374 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  EENAISSANCE 


THE  ITALIAN  EVOLUTION 


375 


to  scoundrels.*  The  passage  which  follows,  putting  the  blame  on 
men  for  thus  misreading  their  religion,  is  a  fair  sample  of  the  grave 
mockery  with  which  the  men  of  that  age  veiled  their  unfaith. 
Machiavelli  was  reputed  in  his  own  world  an  atheist;*  and  he 
certainly  was  no  religionist.  He  indeed  never  avows  atheism,  but 
neither  did  any  other  writer  of  the  epoch  ;*  and  the  whole  tenour  of 
his  writings  is  that  of  a  man  who  had  at  least  put  aside  the  belief  in 
a  prayer-answering  deity  ;^  though,  with  the  intellectual  arbitrariness 
which  still  affected  all  the  thought  of  his  age,  he  avows  a  belief  that 
all  great  political  changes  are  heralded  by  prodigies,  celestial  signs, 
prophecies,  or  revelations^ — here  conforming  to  the  ordinary  super- 
stition of  his  troublous  time. 

It  belongs,  further,  to  the  manifold  self-contradiction  of  the 
Eenaissance  that,  holding  none  of  the  orthodox  religious  beliefs, 
he  argues  insistently  and  at  length  for  the  value  and  importance  of 
religion,  however  untrue,  as  a  means  to  political  strength.  Through 
five  successive  chapters  of  his  Discourses  on  Livy  he  presses  and 
illustrates  his  thesis,  praising  Numa  as  a  sagacious  framer  of  useful 
fictions,  and  as  setting  up  new  and  false  behefs  which  made  for  the 
unification  and  control  of  the  Koman  people.  The  argument  evolved 
with  such  strange  candour  is,  of  course,  of  the  nature  of  so  much 
Eenaissance  science,  an  k  priori  error :  there  was  no  lack  of  religious 
faith  and  fear  in  primitive  Kome  before  the  age  of  Numa ;  and  the 
legend  concerning  him  is  a  product  of  the  very  primordial  mytho- 
poiesis  which  Machiavelli  supposes  him  to  have  set  on  foot.  It  is 
in  the  spirit  of  that  fallacious  theory  of  a  special  superinduced 
religiosity  in  Eomans"^  that  the  great  Florentine  proceeds  to  charge 
the  Church  with  having  made  the  Italians  religionless  and  vicious 
{senza  religione  e  cattivi).  Had  he  lived  a  century  or  two  later  he 
might  have  seen  in  the  case  of  zealously  believing  Spain  a  completer 
political  and  social  prostration  than  had  fallen  in  his  day  on  Italy, 

1  Discorsi,  ii,  2.  ^  For  another  point  of  view  see  Owen,  as  cited,  p.  167. 

»  In  the  Italian  translation  of  Bacon's  essays,  made  for  Bacon  in  1618  by  an  English 
hand.  Machiavelli  is  branded  in  one  passage  as  an  impio,  and  in  another  his  name  is 
dropped.  See  Routledge  ed.  of  Bacon's  TFor^.i.  pp.  749,  751.  The  admiring  Paolo  Giovio 
called  him  irrisor  et  atheoa;  and  Cardinal  Pole  said  the  Prince  was  so  full  of  every  kind 
of  irreligion  that  it  might  have  been  written  by  the  hand  of  Satan  (Nourrisson,  Machiavel, 

1875,  p.  4).  .         .  .,  ,     X     ,  * 

<  Burckhardt.  pp.  499-500.  Cp.  Owen,  pp.  165-68.  It  is  thus  impossible  to  be  sure  of 
the  truth  of  the  statement  of  Gregorovius  {Lucrezia  Borgia,  Eng.  tr.  1904,  p.  25)  that 
"  There  were  no  women  skeptics  or  freethinkers  ;  they  would  have  been  impossible  in  the 
society  of  that  day."  Where  dissimulation  of  unbelief  was  necessarily  habitual,  there 
may  liave  been  some  women  unbelievers  as  well  as  many  men.  ^ 

5  Owen's  characterization  of  Machiavelli's  Asino  d' oro  as  a  '  satire  on  the  freethought 
of  his  age  "  (p.  177)  will  not  stand  investigation.    See  his  own  note,  p.  178. 

6  Discorsi,  i,  56.  .  .  .  ,      ,.,-  „ 

7  As  we  saw,  Polybius  in  his  day  took  a  similar  view,  coming  as  he  did  from  Greece, 
where  military  failure  had  followed  on  a  certain  growth  of  unbelief.  Machiavelli  was 
much  influenced  by  Polybius.    Villari.  ii,  9. 


I 


and  this  alongside  of  regeneration  in  an  unbelieving  France.  But 
indeed  it  was  the  bitterness  of  spirit  of  a  suffering  patriot  looking 
back  yearningly  to  an  idealized  Eome,  rather  than  the  insight  of  the 
author  of  The  Prince,^  that  inspired  his  reasoning  on  the  political 
uses  of  religion ;  for  at  the  height  of  his  exposition  he  notes,  with 
his  keen  eye  for  fact,  how  the  most  strenuous  use  of  religious 
motive  had  failed  to  support  the  Samnites  against  the  cool  courage 
of  Eomans  led  by  a  rationalizing  general  i'^  and  he  notes,  too,  with 
a  sardonic  touch  of  hopefulness,  how  Savonarola  had  contrived  to 
persuade  the  people  of  contemporary  Florence  that  he  had  inter- 
course with  deity.*     Italy  then  had  faith  enough  and  to  spare. 

Such  argument,  in  any  case,  even  if  untouched  by  the  irony 
which  tinges  Machiavelli's,  could  never  avail  to  restore  faith ;  men 
cannot  become  believers  on  the  motive  of  mere  belief  in  the  value  of 
belief ;  and  the  total  effect  of  Machiavelli's  manifold  reasoning  on 
human  affairs,  with  its  startling  lucidity,  its  constant  insistence  on 
causation,  its  tacit  negation  of  every  notion  of  Providence,  must  have 
been,  in  Italy  as  elsewhere,  rather  to  prepare  the  way  for  inductive 
science  than  to  rehabilitate  supernaturalism,  even  among  those  who 
assented  to  his  theory  of  Eoman  development.  In  his  hands  the 
method  of  science  begins  to  emerge,  turned  to  the  most  difi&cult  of 
its  tasks,  before  Copernicus  had  applied  it  to  the  simpler  problem  of 
the  motion  of  the  solar  system.  After  centuries  in  which  the  name 
of  Aristotle  had  been  constantly  invoked  to  small  scientific  purpose, 
this  man  of  the  world,  who  knew  little  or  nothing  of  Aristotle's 
Politics,^  exhibits  the  spirit  of  the  true  Aristotle  for  the  first  time  in 
the  history  of  Christendom ;  and  it  is  in  his  land  after  two  centuries 
of  his  influence  that  modern  sociology  begins  its  next  great  stride  in 
the  work  of  Vico. 

He  is  to  be  understood,  of  course,  as  the  product  of  the  moral 
and  intellectual  experience  of  the  Eenaissance,  which  prepared  his 
audience  for  him.  Guicciardini,  his  contemporary,  who  in  com- 
parison was  unblamed  for  irreligion,  though  an  even  warmer  hater 
of  the  papacy,  has  left  in  writing  the  most  explicit  avowals  of 
incredulity  as  to  the  current  conceptions  of  the  supernatural,  and 
declares  concerning  miracles  that  as  they  occur  in  every  religion 
they  prove  none.^  At  the  same  time  he  professes  firm  faith  in 
Christianity  ;^  and  others  who  would  not  have  joined  him  there 
were  often  as  inconsistent  in  the  ready  belief  they  gave  to  magic 

1  Cp.  Tullo  Massarani,  Studii  di  letteratura  e  d'arte,  1899,  p.  96. 

a  Discorsi,  i,  15.  ^  Id.  i,  11,  end. 

*  Villari,  ii,  93-94.  ^  Burckhardt,  p.  464;  Owen,  p.  180,  and  refs. 

s  Owen,  p.  181.    See  the  whole  account  of  Guicciardini's  rather  confused  opinions. 


376 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  KENAISSANCE 


THE  ITALIAN  EVOLUTION 


377 


and  astrology.  The  time  was,  after  all,  one  of  artistic  splendour 
and  scientific  and  critical  ignorance;'  and  its  freethought  had  the 
inevitable  defects  that  ignorance  entails.  Thus  the  belief  in  the 
reality  of  witchcraft,  sometimes  discarded  by  churchmen,'^  is  some- 
times maintained  by  heretics.  Eejected  by  John  of  SaHsbury  in  the 
twelfth  century,  and  by  the  freethinking  Pietro  of  Abano  in  1303, 
it  was  affirmed  and  estaWished  by  Thomas  Aquinas,  asserted  by 
Gregory  IX,  and  made  a  motive  for  uncounted  slaughters  by  the 
Inquisition.  In  1460  a  theologian  had  been  forced  to  retract,  and 
still  punished,  for  expressing  doubt  on  the  subject ;  and  in  1471 
Pope  Sixtus  VI  reserved  to  the  papacy  the  privilege  of  making  and 
selling  the  waxen  models  of  limbs  used  as  preservatives  against 
enchantments.  In  the  sixteenth  century  a  whole  series  of  books 
directed  against  the  belief  were  put  on  the  Index,  and  a  Jesuit 
handbook  codified  the  creed.  Yet  a  Minorite  friar,  Alfonso  Spina, 
pronounced  it  a  heretical  delusion,  and  taught  that  those  burned 
suffered  not  for  witchcraft  but  for  heresy ,*  and  on  the  other  hand 
some  men  of  a  freethinking  turn  held  it.  Thus  the  progress  of 
rational  thought  was  utterly  precarious. 

Of  the  literary  freethinking  of  the  later  Kenaissance  the  most 
famous  representative  is  POMPONAZZI,  or  Pomponatius  (1462-1525), 
for  whom  it  has  been  claimed  that  he  "  really  initiated  the  philo- 
sophy of  the  Italian  Eenaissance." '  The  Italian  Kenaissance, 
however,  w^as  in  reality  near  its  turning-point  when  Pomponazzi's 
treatise  on  the  Immortality  of  the  Soul  appeared  (1516)  ;  and  that 
topic  was  the  commonest  in  the  schools  and  controversies  of  that 
day.*  He  has  been  at  times  spoken  of  as  an  Averroist,  on  the 
ground  that  he  denied  immortahty  ;  but  he  did  so  in  reaUty  as 
a  disciple  of  Alexander  of  Aphrodisias,  a  rival  commentator  to 
Averroes.  What  is  remarkable  in  his  case  is  not  the  denial  of 
immortality,  which  we  have  seen  to  be  frequent  in  Dante's  time, 
and  more  or  less  implicit  in  Averroism,  but  his  contention  that 
ethics  could  do  very  well  without  the  belief  ®— a  thing  that  it  still 
took  some  courage  to  affirm,  though  the  spectacle  of  the  hfe  of  the 
faithful  might  have  been  supposed  sufficient  to  win  it  a  ready 
hearing.     Presumably  his  rationalism,  which  made  him  challenge 

1  Though  Italy  had  most  of  what  scientific  knowledge  existed.    Burckhardt,  p.  292. 

2  "A  man  might  at  the  same  time  be  condemned  as  a  heretic  in  Spam  for  amrming, 
and  in  Italy  for  denying,  the  reality  of  the  witches'  nightly  rides"  (The  Fope  and  the 

8  The  Fope  'and  the  Council,  pp.  249-61.  It  was  another  Spina  who  wrote  on  the 
other  side  *  F.  Fiorentino.  Pietro  Pompoiiazzt,  1868.  p.  30. 

fi  Owen.  pp.  197-98 ;  Renan.  Averroes.  pp.  353-62;  Christie,  as  cited,  p.  133. 

8  Cp.  Owen.  pp.  201.  218 ;  Lange.  i.  183-87  (tr.  i.  220-25).  He.  however,  granted  "i at  the 
mass  of  mankind,  "  brutish  and  materialized."  needed  the  belief  m  heaven  and  hell  to 
moralize  them  (Christie,  pp.  140-41). 


y 


the  then  canonical  authority  of  the  scholasticized  Aristotle,  went 
further  than  his  avowed  doubts  as  to  a  future  state  ;  since  his 
profession  of  obedience  to  the  Church's  teaching,  and  his  reiteration 
of  the  old  academic  doctrine  of  two-fold  truth — one  truth  for  science 
and  philosophy,  and  another  for  theology^ — are  as  dubious  as  any  in 
philosophic  history.'*  Of  him,  or  of  Lorenzo  Valla,  more  justly  than 
of  Petrarch,  might  it  be  said  that  he  is  the  father  of  modern 
criticism,  since  Valla  sets  on  foot  at  once  historical  and  textual 
analysis,  while  Pomponazzi  anticipates  the  treatment  given  to 
Biblical  miracles  by  the  rationalizing  German  theologians  of  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century.**  He  too  was  a  fixed  enemy  of  the 
clergy ;  and  it  was  not  for  lack  of  will  that  they  failed  to  destroy 
him.  He  happened  to  be  a  personal  favourite  of  Leo  X,  who  saw 
to  it  that  the  storm  of  opposition  to  Pomponazzi — a  storm  as  much 
of  anger  on  behalf  of  Aristotle,  who  had  been  shown  by  him  to 
doubt  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  as  on  behalf  of  Christianity — 
should  end  in  an  official  farce  of  reconciliation.*  He  was  however 
not  free  to  publish  his  treatises,  De  Incantationihus  and  De  Fato, 
Libero  Arhitrio,  ct  PrcBdestinatione.  These,  completed  in  1520, 
were  not  printed  till  after  his  death,  in  1556  and  1557  ;*  and  by 
reason  of  their  greater  simplicity,  as  well  as  of  their  less  dangerous 
form  of  heresy,  were  much  more  widely  read  than  the  earlier 
treatise,  thus  contributing  much  to  the  spread  of  sane  thought  on 
the  subjects  of  witchcraft,  miracles,  and  special  providences. 

"Whether  his  metaphysic  on  the  subject  of  the  immortality  of 
the  soul  had  much  effect  on  popular  thought  may  be  doubted. 
What  the  Kenaissance  most  needed  in  both  its  philosophic  and  its 
practical  thought  was  a  scientific  foundation  ;  and  science,  from 
first  to  last,  was  more  hindered  than  helped  by  the  environment. 
In  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries,  charges  of  necromancy 
against  physicians  and  experimenters  were  frequently  joined  with 
imputations  of  heresy,  and  on  such  charges  not  a  few  were  burned.* 
The  economic  conditions  too  were  all  unfavourable  to  solid  research. 

When  Gahleo  in  1589  was  made  Professor  of  Mathematics 
at  Pisa,  his  salary  was  only  60  scudi  (=  dollars),  while  the 

1  This  principle,  though  deriving  from  Averroism.  and  condemned,  as  we  have  seen, 
by  Pope  John  XXI,  had  been  aflBrmed  by  so  high  an  orthodox  authority  as  Albertus 
Magnus.  Cp.  Owen,  pp.  211-12,  note.  While  thus  officially  recognized,  it  was  of  course 
denounced  by  the  devout  when  they  saw  how  it  availed  to  save  heretics  from  harm. 
Mr.  Owen  has  well  pointed  out  (p.  238)  the  inconsistency  of  the  believers  who  maintain 
that  faith  is  independent  of  reason,  and  yet  denounce  as  blasphemous  the  profession  to 
believe  by  faith  what  is  not  intelligible  by  philosophy. 

-i  Owen.  p.  209.  note.  "  Son  6cole  est  une  ecole  de  laiques.  de  medecms,  d'esprits  forts, 
de  libres  penseurs"  (Bouillier.  Hist,  de  laphUos.  cartisienne,  1854.  i,  3). 

3  Owen.  p.  210;  Christie,  p.  151.  *  Christie,  pp.  141-47. 

5  Id.  p.  149.  ^  Burckhardt,  p.  291. 


378 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  KENAISSANCE 


Professor  of  Medicine  got  2,000.  (Karl  von  Gebler,  Galileo 
Galilei,  Eng  tr.  1879.  p.  9.)  At  Padua,  later,  Galileo  had 
520  florins,  with  a  prospect  of  rising  to  as  many  scudi. 
(Letter  given  in  The  Private  Life  of  Galileo,  Boston,  1870, 
p.  61.)  The  Grand  Duke  finally  gave  him  a  pension  of  1,000 
scudi  at  Florence.  {Id.  p.  64.)  This  squares  with  Bacon's 
complaint  (Advancement  of  Learning,  bk.  ii  ;  De  Augnientis, 
bk.  ii,  ch.  i— Works,  Routledge  ed.  pp.  76,  422-23)  that, 
especially  in  England,  the  salaries  of  lecturers  in  arts  and 
professions  were  injuriously  small,  and  that,  further,  "among 

so  many  noble  foundations  of  colleges  in  Europe they  are 

all  dedicated  to  professions,  and  none  left  free  to  the  study  of 
arts  and  sciences  at  large."  In  Italy,  however,  philosophy  was 
fairly  well  endowed.  Pomponazzi  received  a  salary  of  900 
Bolognese  lire  when  he  obtained  the  chair  of  Philosophy  at 
Bologna  in  1509.     (Christie,  essay  cited,  p.  138.) 

Medicine  was  nearly  as  dogmatic  as  theology.  Even  philosophy 
was  in  large  part  shouldered  aside  by  the  financial  motives  which 
led  men  to  study  law  in  preference;^  and  when  the  revival  of 
ancient  literature  gained  ground  it  absorbed  energy  to  the  detriment 
of  scientific  study,^  the  wealthy  amateurs  being  ready  to  pay  high 
prices  for  manuscripts  of  classics,  and  for  classical  teaching  ;  but 
not  for  patient  investigation  of  natural  fact.  The  humanists, 
so-called,  were  often  forces  of  enlightenment  and  reform  ;  witness 
such  a  type  as  the  high-minded  POMPONIO  Leto  (Pomponius 
Laetus),  pupil  and  successor  of  Lorenzo  Valla,  and  one  of  the 
many  "  pagan "  scholars  of  the  later  Renaissance  ;^  but  the 
discipline  of  mere  classical  culture  was  insufficient  to  make  them, 
as  a  body,  qualified  leaders  either  of  thought  or  action,*  in  such 
a  society  as  that  of  decaying  Italy.  Only  after  the  fall  of  Itahan 
liberties,  the  decay  of  the  Church's  wealth  and  power,  the  loss  of 
commerce,  and  the  consequent  decline  of  the  arts,  did  men  turn 
to  truly  scientific  pursuits.  From  Italy,  indeed,  long  after  the 
Reformation,  came  a  new  stimulus  to  freethought  which  aftected 
all  the  higher  civilization  of  northern  Europe.  But  the  failure  to 
solve  the  political  problem,  a  failure  which  led  to  the  Spanish 
tyranny,  meant  the  establishment  of  bad  conditions  for  the  intel- 
lectual as  for  the  social  life ;  and  an  arrest  of  freethought  in  Italy 
was  a  necessary  accompaniment  of  the  arrest  of  the  higher 
literature.  What  remained  was  the  afterglow  of  a  great  and 
energetic  period  rather  than  a  spirit  of  inquiry ;  and  we  find  the 

1  Gebhart.  pp.  59-63;  Burckhardt.  p.  211.  2  Cp.  Burckhardt.  p.  291. 

8  Burckhardt,  pp.  279-80 ;  Villari,  Life  of  Machiavelli,  pp.  10&-107. 
*  Burckiiaxdt.  pt.  iii.  ch.  xi. 


THE  FRENCH  EVOLUTION 


379 


II 


Ii 


old  Averro'ist  scholasticism,  in  its  most  pedantic  form,  lasting  at 
the  university  of  Padua  till  far  into  the  seventeenth  century. 
A  philosophy,"  remarks  in  this  connection  an  esteemed  historian, 
a  mode  of  thought,  a  habit  of  mind,  may  live  on  in  the  lecture- 
rooms  of  Professors  for  a  century  after  it  has  been  abandoned  by 
the  thinkers,  the  men  of  letters,  and  the  men  of  the  world."  ^  The 
avowal  has  its  bearings  nearer  home  than  Padua. 

While  it  lasted,  the  light  of  Italy  had  shone  upon  all  the  thought 
of  Europe.  Not  only  the  other  nations  but  the  scholars  of  the 
Jewish  race  reflected  it ;  for  to  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth 
century  belongs  the  Jew  Menahem  Asariah  de  Rossi,  whose  work, 
Meor  Enayim,  "  Light  of  the  Eyes,"  is  "  the  first  attempt  by  a 
Jew  to  submit  the  statements  of  the  Talmud  to  a  critical  examina- 
tion, and  to  question  the  value  of  tradition  in  its  historical  records." 
And  he  did  not  stand  alone  among  the  Jews  of  Italy ;  for,  while 
Elijah  Delmedigo,  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  was  in  a 
didactic  Maimonist  fashion  doubtful  of  literary  tradition,  his 
grandson,  Joseph  Solomon  Delmedigo,  flourishing  early  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  "  wrote  various  pamphlets  of  a  deeply 
skeptical  character."'*  That  this  movement  of  Jewish  rationalism 
should  be  mainly  limited  to  the  south  was  inevitable,  since  there 
only  were  Jewish  scholars  in  an  intellectual  environment.  There 
could  be  no  better  testimony  to  the  higher  influence  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance. 


§  2.  The  French  Evolution 

In  the  other  countries  influenced  by  ItaHan  culture  in  the 
sixteenth  century  the  rationaHst  spirit  had  various  fortune.  France, 
as  we  saw,  had  substantially  retrograded  at  the  time  of  the  Italian 
new-birth,  her  revived  mihtarism  no  less  than  her  depression  by  the 
English  conquests  having  deeply  impaired  her  intellectual  life  in  the 
fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries.  Thus  the  true  renascence  of 
letters  in  France  began  late,  and  went  on  during  the  Reformation 
period  ;  and  all  along  it  showed  a  tincture  of  freethought.  From 
the  midst  of  the  group  who  laid  the  foundations  of  French  Pro- 
testantism by  translations  of  the  Bible  there  comes  forth  the  most 
articulate  freethinker  of  that  age,  BONAVENTUKE  Desperiers, 
author  of  the  Cyvihalum  Mundi  (1537).  Early  associated  with 
Calvin  and  Olivetan  in  revising  the  translation  of   the   Bible   by 

1  Dr.  Rashdall,  The  Universities  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  1895,  i,  265.    Cp.  Renan, 
Averrols,  Avert. 

3  Schechter,  Studies  in  Judaism,  pp.  213,  420-21. 


380 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  EENAISSANCE 


Lef6vre  d'Etaples  (rev.  1535),  Desperiers  turned  away  from  the 
Protestant  movement,  as  did  Kabelais  and  Etienne  Dolet,  caring  as 
little  for  the  new  presbyter  as  for  the  old  priest ;  and  all  three  were 
duly  accused  by  the  Protestants  of  atheism  and  lihertinage}  In 
the  same  year  Desperiers  aided  Dolet,  scholar  and  printer,  to  produce 
his  much-praised  Co^mnentarii  Ungues  latince ;  and  within  two  years 
he  had  printed  his  own  satire,  Cymhalum  Mundi^  wherein,  by  way 
of  pagan  dialogues,  are  allegorically  ridiculed  the  Christian  scheme, 
its  miracles,  Bible  contradictions,  and  the  spirit  of  persecution,  then 
in  full  fire  in  France  against  the  Protestants.  In  the  first  dialogue 
Mercury  is  sent  to  Athens  by  Zeus  the  Father  to  have  the  "  Book 
of  the  Destinies  "  rebound — an  adaptation  of  an  ancient  sarcasm 
against  the  Christians  by  Celsus.**  He,  robbing  others,  is  robbed 
of  the  book,  and  another  (  =  the  New  Testament)  is  put  in  its  place. 
In  the  second  dialogue  figure  Ehetulus  (  =  Lutherus)  and  Cubercus 
(  =  Bucerus  ?),  who  suppose  they  have  found  the  main  pieces  of  the 
philosopher's  stone,  which  Mercury  had  broken  and  scattered  in  the 
sand  of  the  theatre  arena.  Protestants  and  CathoHcs  are  thus  alike 
ridiculed.  The  allegory  is  not  always  clear  to  modern  eyes  ;  but 
there  was  no  question  then  about  its  general  bearing  ;  and  Desperiers, 
though  groom  of  the  chamber  (after  Clement  Marot)  to  Marguerite 
of  France  (later  of  Navarre),  had  to  fly  for  his  life,  as  Marot  did 
before  him.  The  first  edition  of  his  book,  secretly  printed  at  Paris, 
was  seized  and  destroyed ;  and  the  second  (1538),  printed  for  him 
at  Lyons,  whither  he  had  taken  his  flight,  seems  to  have  had  a 
similar  fate.  From  that  time  he  disappears,  probably  dying,  whether 
or  not  by  suicide  is  doubtful,*  before  1544,  when  his  miscellaneous 
works  were  published.  They  include  his  CEuvres  Diverses — many 
of  them  graceful  poems  addressed  to  his  royal  mistress,  Marguerite 
— which,  with  his  verse  translation  of  the  Aiidria  of  Terence  and 
his  Discours  non  plus  Melaucoliques  que  Divers,  make  up  his  small 
body  of  work.  In  the  Discours  may  be  seen  applied  to  matters  of 
history  and  scholarship  the  same  critical  spirit  that  utters  itself  in 
the  Cymhalum,  and  the  same  literary  gift ;  but  for  orthodoxy  his 

1  Notice  of  Bonaventure  Desperiers.  by  Bibliophile  Jacob  [i.e.  Lacroix],  in  1841  ed.  of 

Cymhalum  Mundi,  etc.  .,     ^.  ,.„,.,  t,  •       ^      x  ^ 

2  For  a  solution  of  the  enigma  of  the  title  see  the  Cl^  of  Eloi  Johanneau  m  ed.  cited, 
p  83.  Cymhalum  mwidi  was  a  nickname  given  in  antiquity  to  (among  others)  an 
Alexandrian  grammarian  called  Didynnis— the  name  of  doubting  Thomas  in  the  gospel. 
The  book  is  dedicated  by  Thomas  Du  Cievier  d  son  ami  Pierre  Tyrocan,  which  is  found 
to  be,  with  one  letter  altered  (perhaps  by  a  printer's  error),  an  anagram  for  Thomas 
Incridule  d  son  ami  Fierre  Croyant,  "  Unbelieving  Thomas  to  his  friend  Believing  Peter." 

Clef  cited,  pp.  80-85. 

»  Origen,  Against  Celsrcs.vi.  18. 

*  The  readiness  of  piety  in  all  ages  to  invent  frightful  deaths  for  unbelievers  must  be 
remembered  in  connection  with  this  and  other  records.  Cp.  Notice  cited,  p.  xx,  and  note. 
The  authority  for  this  is  Henri  Estienne,  Apologie  pour  Herodote,  liv.  i,  chs.  18,  end.  and  26. 


THE  FEENCH  EVOLUTION 


381 


name  became  a  hissing  and  a  byword,  and  it  is  only  in  modern 
times  that  French  scholarship  has  recognized  in  Desperiers  the 
true  literary  comrade  and  potential  equal  of  Eabelais  and  Marot.^ 
The  age  of  Francis  was  too  inclement  for  such  literature  as  his 
Cymhalum;  and  it  was  much  that  it  spared  Gringoire  (d.  1544), 
who,  without  touching  doctrine,  satirized  in  his  verse  both  priests 
and  Protestants. 

It  is  something  of  a  marvel,  further,  that  it  spared  EABELAIS 
(?  1493-1553),  whose  enormous  raillery  so  nearly  fills  up  the 
literary  vista  of  the  age  for  modern  retrospect.  It  has  been  said 
by  a  careful  student  that  "the  free  and  universal  inquiry,  the 
philosophic  doubt,  which  were  later  to  work  the  glory  of  Descartes, 
proceed  from  Eabelais  ";^  and  it  is  indeed  an  impression  of  bound- 
less intellectual  curiosity  and  wholly  unfettered  thinking  that  is  set 
up  by  his  entire  career.  Sent  first  to  the  convent  school  of  La 
Baumette,  near  Angers,  he  had  there  as  a  schoolfellow  Geoffrey 
d'Estissac,  afterwards  his  patron  as  Bishop  of  Maillezais.  Sent 
later  to  the  convent  school  of  Fontenay-le-Comte,  he  had  the  luck 
to  have  for  schoolfellows  there  the  four  famous  brothers  Du  Bellay, 
so  well  able  to  protect  him  in  later  life ;  and,  forced  to  spend  fifteen 
years  of  his  young  life  (1509-24)  at  Fontenay  as  a  Franciscan  monk, 
he  turned  the  time  to  account  by  acquiring  an  immense  erudition, 
including  a  knowledge  of  Greek,  then  rare.^  Naturally  the  book- 
lover  was  not  popular  among  his  fellow-monks  ;  and  his  Greek  books 
were  actually  confiscated  by  the  chapter,  who  found  in  his  cell 
certain  writings  of  Erasmus,*  to  whom  as  a  scholar  he  afterwards 
expressed  the  deepest  intellectual  obligations.  Thereafter,  by  the  help 
of  his  friend  d'Estissac,  now  bishop  of  the  diocese,  Eabelais  received 
papal  permission  to  join  the  order  of  the  Benedictines  and  to  enter 
the  Abbey  of  Maillezais  as  a  canon  regular  (1524) ;  but  soon  after, 
though  he  was  thus  a  fully-ordained  priest,  we  find  him  broken  loose, 
and  living  for  some  six  years  a  life  of  wandering  freedom  as  a  secular 
priest,  sometimes  with  his  friend  the  bishop,  winning  friends  in  high 
places  by  his  learning  and  his  gaiety,  everywhere  studying  and 
observing.  At  the  bishop's  priory  of  Ligug6  he  seems  to  have 
studied  hard  and  widely.  In  1530  he  is  found  at  Montpellier, 
extending  his  studies  in  medicine,  in  which  he  speedily  won  distinc- 

1  So  Charles  Nodier,  cited  in  the  Notice  by  Bibliophile  Jacob,  pp.  xxiii-xxiv.    The 
English  translator  of  1723  professed  to  see  no  unbelief  in  the  book. 

2  Perrens,  Les  Libertins  en  France  au  XVIIe  sihcle,  1896.  p.  41.  „*.     *  «     -d^^.t^,-., 
»  Notice  historique  in  Bibliophile  Jacob's  ed.  of  Rabelais,  1841 ;   Stapfer,   Bahelais, 

pp.  6,  10:  W.  F.  Smitk,  biog.  not.  to  his  trans,  of  Rabelais,  1893,  i,  p.  xxii. 

4  Rathery,  notice  biog.  to  ed.  of  Burgaud  des  Marets.  i,  12.     Jacob  s  account  of  his 
relations  with  his  friends  Bud6  and  Amy  at  this  stage  is  erroneous.    See  Rathery,  p.  14. 


382 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  KENAISSANCE 


tion,  becoming  B.M.  on  December  1,  and  a  lecturer  in  the  following 
year.  He  was  later  esteemed  one  of  the  chief  anatomists  of  his  day, 
being  one  of  the  first  to  dissect  the  human  body  and  to  insist  on  the 
need  of  such  training  for  physicians;*  and  in  1532'^  we  find  him 
characterized  as  the  "  true  great  universal  spirit  of  this  time."  In 
the  same  year  he  published  at  Lyons,  where  he  was  appointed 
physician  to  the  chief  hospital,  an  edition  of  the  Latin  letters  of  the 
Ferrarese  physician  Manardi ;  and  his  own  commentaries  on  Galen 
and  Hippocrates,  which  had  a  very  poor  sale.*  At  Lyons  he  made 
the  acquaintance  of  Dolet,  Marot,  and  Desperiers ;  and  his  letter  (of 
the  same  year)  to  Erasmus  (printed  as  addressed  to  Bernard  de 
Sahgnac  ^)  showed  afresh  how  his  intellectual  sympathies  went. 

About  1532  he  produced  his  Gargantua  and  Paritagniel,  the  first 
two  books  of  his  great  humoristic  romance  ;  and  in  1533  began  his 
series  of  almanacks,  continued  till  1550,  presumably  as  printer's 
hack-work.  From  the  fragments  which  have  been  preserved,  they 
appear  to  have  been  entirely  serious  in  tone,  one  containing  a  grave 
theistic  protest  against  all  astrological  prediction.  Along  with  the 
almanack  of  1533,  however,  he  produced  a  Pantagruelian  Prognostica- 
tion ;  and  this,  which  alone  has  been  preserved  entire,®  passes  hardy 
ridicule  on  astrology,'  one  of  the  most  popular  superstitions  of  the 
day,  among  high  and  low  alike.  Almost  immediately  the  Sorbonne 
was  on  his  track,  condemning  his  Pantagruel  in  1533.®  A  journey 
soon  afterwards  to  Kome,  in  the  company  of  his  friend  Bishop  Jean 
du  Bellay,  the  French  ambassador,  may  have  saved  him  some 
personal  experience  of  persecution.  Two  years  later,  when  the 
Bishop  went  to  Eome  to  be  made  cardinal,  Kabelais  again 
accompanied  him  ;  and  he  appears  to  have  been  a  favourite  alike 
with  Pope  Clement  VII  and  Paul  III.  At  the  end  of  1535  we  find 
him,  in  a  letter  to  his  patron,  the  bishop  of  Maillezais,  scofiQng  at 
the  astrological  leanings  of  the  new  Pope,  Paul  III.^  Nonetheless, 
upon  a  formal  Supplicatio  pro  apostasia,  he  obtained  from  the  Pope 
in  1536  an  absolution  for  his  breach  of  his  monastic  vows,  with 
permission  to  practise  medicine  in  a  Benedictine  monastery. 
Shortly  before,  his  little  son  Th6odule  had  died  ;^°  and  it  may  have 
been  grief   that  inspired   such  a  desire :    in   any  case,   the  papal 


1  Le  Double.  Rabelais  anatomiste  et  vhysiologiate,  1889.  pp.  12,  425;  and  pref.  by  Pro- 
fessor Duval,  p.  xiii  ;  Stapfer.  p.  42 ;  A.  Tilley.  Fran<;oU  Rabelais,  1907.  pp.  74-76. 

2  In  the  same  year  he  was  induced  to  publisli  what  turned  out  to  be  two  spurious 
documents  purporting  to  be  ancient  Roman  remains.  See  Heulhard.  Rabelais  Ugiste, 
and  Jacob.  Notice,  p.  xviii.  »  Rathery.  p.  23.  *  Jacob,  p.  xix. 

«  As  to  this  see  Tilley.  p.  53.  6  gee  it  at  the  end  of  the  ed.  of  Bibliophile  Jacob. 

7  Cp.  Stapfer.  pp.  24-25;  Rathery,  p.  26.  

«  Rathery.  p.  30.  ^  Cp.  Jacob»  Notice,  p.  xxxviu ;  Smith,  ii,  524. 

10  Rathery,  p.  71 ;  Stapfer,  pp.  42-43. 


THE  FKENCH  EVOLUTION 


383 


permission  to  turn  monk  again  was  never  used,^  though  the  pardon 
was  doubtless  serviceable.  Taking  his  degree  as  doctor  at 
Montpellier  in  May,  1537,  he  there  lectured  for  about  a  year  on 
anatomy  ;  and  in  the  middle  of  1538  he  recommenced  a  wandering 
life,'*  practising  in  turn  at  Narbonne,  Castres,  and  Lyons.  Then, 
after  becoming  a  Benedictine  canon  of  St.  Maur  in  1540,  we  find 
him  in  Piedmont  from  1540  to  1543,  under  the  protection  of  the 
viceroy,  Guillaume  de  Bellay.^ 

During  this  period  the  frequent  reprints  of  the  first  two  books  of 
his  main  work,  though  never  bearing  his  name,  brought  upon  him 
the  denunciations  alike  of  priests  and  Protestants.  Eamus,  perhaps 
in  revenge  for  being  caricatured  as  Kaminagrobis,  pronounced  him 
an  atheist.^  Calvin,  who  had  once  been  his  friend,  had  in  his  book 
De  Scandalis  angrily  accused  him  of  libertinage,  profanity,  and 
atheism  ;  and  henceforth,  Hke  Desperiers,  he  was  about  as  little  in 
sympathy  with  Protestantism  as  with  the  zealots  of  Kome. 

Thus  assailed,  Rabelais  had  seen  cause,  in  an  edition  of  1542,  to 
modify  a  number  of  the  hardier  utterances  in  the  original  issues  of 
the  first  two  books  of  his  Pantagruel,  notably  his  many  epithets 
aimed  at  the  Sorbonne.*  In  the  reprints  there  are  substituted  for 
BibHcal  names  some  drawn  from  heathen  mythology ;  expressions 
too  strongly  savouring  of  Calvinism  are  withdrawn;  and  dis- 
respectful allusions  to  the  kings  of  France  are  ehded.  In  his 
concern  to  keep  himself  safe  with  the  Sorbonne  he  even  made  a  rather 
unworthy  attack^  (1542)  on  his  former  friend  Etienne  Dolet  for  the 
more  oversight  of  reprinting  one.  of  his  books  without  deleting 
passages  which  Rabelais  had  expunged;^  but  no  expurgation  could 
make  his  &vangile,  as  he  called  it,'  a  Christian  treatise,  or  keep  for 
him  an  orthodox  reputation ;  and  it  was  with  much  elation  that  he 
obtained  in  1545  from  King  Francis— whose  private  reader  was  his 
friend  Duch^tel,  Bishop  of  Tulle— a  privilege  to  print  the  third  book 


1  stapfer  p  53  ^  .Jacob,  p.  xxxix. 

3  Rathery.  pp.  44-49.  The  notion  of  Lacroix.  that  Rabelais  visited  England,  has  no 
evidence  to  support  it.    Cp.  Rathery,  p.  49,  and  Smith,  p.  xxiii.  *  A^;.*^«fi«  «roa 

4  Cp.  Jacob,  p.  Ix.  Ramus  himself,  for  his  attacks  on  the  authority  of  Aristotle,  was 
called  an  atheist.    Cp.  Waddington,  Ramus,  sa  vie,  etc.,  1855,  p.  126. 

s  See  the  list  in  the  avertissement  of  M.  Burgaud  des  Marets  to  6d  Firmin  Didot.  Cp. 
Stapfer.  pp.  63,  64.  For  example,  the  "  theologian  "  who  makes  the  ludicrous  speech  in 
Liv.  i,  ch.  xix,  becomes  (chs.  18  and  20)  a  "  sophist " ;  and  the  sorbonistes  sorbomcoles,&nd 
sorbonagres  of  chs.  20  and  21  become  mc're  maistres,  magistres,  and  sophistes  Jif  ewise 

6  It  is  doubtful  whether  Rabelais  wrote  the  whole  of  the  notice  Prefixed  to  the  next 
edition,  in  which  this  attack  was  made ;  but  it  seems  clear  that  he     had  a  hand  in  it 
{Tilley,  Francois  Rabelais,  p.  81).  ,.  ■,-,  i.-   ^ ,  c^^^^^a^^rh,^amaa 

7  R.  Christie,  ^tieniw  Dolet,  pp.  369-72.  Christie,  in  his  vacillating  way.  severely  blames 
Dolet,  and  then  admits  that  the  book  may  have  been  printed  while  Dolet  was  ^  prison, 
and  that  in  any  case  there  was  no  malice  in  the  matter.  This  point,  .^i^^  the  persistent 
Catholic  calumnies  against  Dolet,  are  examined  by  the  author  in  art.  The  Tiuth  about 
Etienne  Dolet."  in  National  Reformer,  June  2  and  9, 1889. 

^  Epistre,  pref.  to  Liv.  iv.    Ed.  Jacob,  p.  318. 


384 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  EENAISSANCE 


of  Pantagruel,  which  he  issued  in  1546,  signed  for  the  first  time  with 
his  name,  and  prefaced  by  a  cry  of  jovial  defiance  to  the  "  petticoated 
devils  "  of  the  Sorbonne.  They  at  once  sought  to  convict  him  of 
fresh  blasphemies ;  but  even  the  thrice-repeated  substitution  of  an 
n  for  an  m  in  dme,  making  "  ass  "  out  of  **  soul,"  was  carried  off,  by 
help  of  Bishop  Duchatel,  as  a  printer's  error  ;  and  the  king,  having 
laughed  like  other  readers,  maintained  the  imprimatur.  But 
although  it  gave  Rabelais  formal  leave  to  reprint  the  first  and  second 
books,  he  was  careful  for  the  time  not  to  do  so,  leaving  the 
increasing  risk  to  be  run  by  whoso  would. 

It  was  on  the  death  of  Francis  in  1547  that  Eabelais  ran  his 
greatest  danger,  having  to  fly  to  Metz,  where  for  a  time  he  acted  as 
salaried  physician  of  the  city.  About  this  time  he  seems  to  have 
written  the  fourth  and  fifth  books  of  Pantagruel;  and  to  the 
treatment  he  had  suffered  at  Catholic  hands  has  been  ascribed 
the  reversion  to  Calvinistic  ideas  noted  in  the  fifth  book.^  In  1549, 
however,  on  the  birth  of  a  son  to  Henri  II,  his  friend  Cardinal 
Bellay  returned  to  power,  and  Eabelais  to  court  favour  with  him. 
The  derider  of  astrology  did  not  scruple  to  cast  a  prosperous 
horoscope  for  the  infant  prince — justifying  by  strictly  false  pre- 
dictions his  own  estimate  of  the  art,  since  the  child  died  in  the 
cradle.  There  was  now  effected  the  dramatic  scandal  of  the 
appointment  of  Eabelais  in  1550  to  two  parish  cures,  one  of 
which,  Meudon,  has  given  him  his  most  familiar  sobriquet.  He 
seems  to  have  left  both  to  be  served  by  vicars  ;^  but  the  wrath  of 
the  Church  was  so  great  that  early  in  1552  he  resigned  them  ;** 
proceeding  immediately  afterwards  to  publish  the  fourth  book  of 
Pantagniel,  for  which  he  had  duly  obtained  official  privilege.  As 
usual,  the  Sorbonne  rushed  to  the  pursuit ;  and  the  Parlement  of 
Paris  forbade  the  sale  of  the  book  despite  the  royal  permission. 
That  permission,  however,  was  reaffirmed ;  and  this,  the  most 
audacious  of  all  the  writings  of  Eabelais,  went  forth  freely  through- 
out France,  carrying  the  war  into  the  enemies'  camp,  and  assailing 
ahke  Protestants  and  churchmen.  In  the  following  year,  his  work 
done,  he  died. 

It  is  difficult  to  estimate  the  intellectual  effect  of  his  per- 
formance, which  was  probably  much  greater  at  the  end  of  the 
century   than   during   his  life.     Patericke,  the  English   translator 


1  Cp.  W.  F.  Smith's  trans,  of  Rabelais,  1898.  ii.  p.  x.     In  this  book,  however,  other 
hands  have  certainly  been  at  work.    Rabelais  left  it  unfinished. 

2  Jacob,  Notice,  p.  Ixiii ;  Stapfer,  p.  76. 

8  So  Ratbery.  p.  60;  and  Stapfer.  p,  78.    Jacob,  p.  Ixii,  says  he  resigned  only  one. 
Rathery  makes  the  point  clear  by  giving  a  copy  of  the  act  of  resignation  as  to  Meudon. 


THE  FEENCH  EVOLUTION 


385 


of  Gentillet's  famous  Discours  against  Machiavelli  (1576),  points 
to  Eabelais  among  the  French  and  Agrippa  (an  odd  parallel)  among 
the  Germans  as  the  standard-bearers  of  the  whole  train  of  atheists 
and  scoffers.  "  Little  by  little,  that  which  was  taken  in  the 
beginning  for  jests  turned  to  earnest,  and  words  into  deeds."* 
Eabelais's  vast  innuendoes  by  way  of  jests  about  the  people  of 
Buach  (the  Spirit)  who  lived  solely  on  wind;'^  his  quips  about 
the  "  reverend  fathers  in  devil,"  of  the  "  diabological  faculty";®  his 
narratives  about  the  Papefigues  and  Papimanes ;  *  and  his  gibes  at 
the  Decretals,*  were  doubtless  enjoyed  by  many  good  Catholics  other- 
wise placated  by  his  attacks  on  the  "  demoniacal  Calvins,  impostors 
of  Geneva";^  and  so  careful  was  he  on  matters  of  dogma  that  it 
remains  impossible  to  say  with  confidence  whether  or  not  he  finally 
believed  in  a  future  state.'  That  he  was  a  deist  or  Unitarian  seems 
the  reasonable  inference  as  to  his  general  creed ;  ^  but  there  also  he 
throws  out  no  negations — even  indicates  a  genial  contempt  for  the 
philosophe  ephectique  et  pyrrhonien^  who  opposes  a  halting  doubt  to 
two  contrary  doctrines.  In  any  case,  he  was  anathema  to  the 
heresy-hunters  of  the  Sorbonne,  and  only  powerful  protection  could 
have  saved  him. 

Dolet  (1508-1546)  was  certainly  much  less  of  an  unbeliever*^ 
than  Eabelais ; "  but  where  Eabelais  could  with  ultimate  impunity 
ridicule  the  whole  machinery  of  the  Church,*^  Dolet,  after  several 
iniquitous  prosecutions,  in  which  his  jealous  rivals  in  the  printing 
business  took  part,  was  finally  done  to  death  in  priestly  revenge**  for 
his  youthful  attack  on  the  religion  of  inquisitorial  Toulouse,  where 
gross  pagan  superstition  and  gross  orthodoxy  went  hand  in  hand.*^ 
He  certainly  "  lived  a  life  of  sturt  and  strife."  Born  at  Orleans,  he 
studied  in  his  boyhood  at  Paris ;  later  at  Padua,  under  Simon 
Villanovanus,  whom  he  heard  converse  with  Sir  Thomas  More ; 
then,  at  21,  for  a  year  at  Venice,  where  he  was  secretary  to 
Langeac,  the   French   Bishop  of  Limoges.     It  was   at  Toulouse, 


*  A  Discourse againnt  Nicholaft  Machiavel,  Eng.  tr.  (1577),  ed.  1608,  Epist.  ded.  p,  2. 

2  Liv.  iv,  ch.  xliii.  ^  Liv.  iii,  ch.  xxiii. 

*  Liv.  iv,  ch.  xlv-xlviii.  5  Liv.  iv,  ch.  xlix  sq.  ^  Liv.  iv,  ch.  xxxii. 

7  Prof.  Stapfer,  Bnbelais,  sa  persoiive.  so?i  genie,  son  oeuvre,  1889,  pp.  365-68.  Cp.  the 
Notice  of  Bibliophile  Jacob,  ed.  1841  of  Rabelais,  pp.  Ivii-lviii;  and  Terxens,  Les  Libertins, 
p.  ^9.    In  his  youth  he  aflarmed  the  doctrine.    Stapfer,  p.  23. 

^  Cp.  Rene  Millet,  Rabelais,  1892,  pp.  17-2-80.  ^  Liv.  iii,  ch.  xxxvi. 

10  The  description  of  him  by  one  French  biographer,  M.  Boulmier  (Estienne  Dolet,  1857), 
as  "le  Christ  de  la  pens6e  libre"  is  a  gross  extravagance.  Dolet  was  substantially 
orthodox,  and  even  anti-Protestant,  though  he  denounced  the  cruel  usage  of  Protestants. 

^'  Wallace  (Antitrinitarian  Biography,  IWO.ii,^,)  asserts  that  Dolet  " not  only  became 
a  convert  to  the  opinions  of  Servetus.  but  a  zealous  propagator  of  them."  For  this  there  is 
not  a  shadow  of  evidence. 

^"^  Cp.  Voltaire,  Lettres  stir  Rabelais,  etc.  i. 

*3  Cp.  author's^  art.  above  cited ;  R.  C.  Christie,   Etienne  Dolet,  2nd  ed.  1899,  p.  100 
Octave  Galtier,  Eti-nne  Dolet  (n.d  ),  pp.  66.  94.  etc. 

**  Christie,  as  cited,  pp.  50-58, 105-106  ;  Galtier,  p.  26  sq. 

2c 


386 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  RENAISSANCE 


where  he  went  in  1532  to  study  law,  that  he  began  his  quarrels 
and  his  troubles.  In  that  year,  and  in  that  town,  the  young  Jean 
de  Caturce,  a  lecturer  in  the  school  of  law,  was  burned  alive  on  a 
trivial  charge  of  heresy;  and  Dolet  witnessed  the  tragedy.'  Pre- 
viously there  had  been  a  wholesale  arrest  of  suspected  Lutherans— 
"  advocates,  procureurs,  ecclesiastics  of  all  sorts,  monks,  friars,  and 
cur^s."'^  Thirty- two  saved  themselves  by  flight;  but  among  those 
arrested  was  Jean  de  Boysonne,  the  most  learned  and  the  ablest 
professor  in  the  university,  much  admired  by  Rabelais,^  and  after- 
wards the  most  intimate  friend  of  Dolet.  It  was  his  sheer  love 
of  letters  that  brought  upon  him  the  charge  of  heresy  ;*  but  he  was 
forced  publicly  to  abjure  ten  Lutheran  heresies  charged  upon  him. 
The  students  of  the  time  were  divided  in  the  old  fashion  into 
"nations,"  and  formed  societies  as  such;  and  Dolet,  chosen  in 
1534  as  "orator"  of  the  "French"  group,  as  distinct  from  the 
Gascons  and  the  Tolosans,  in  the  course  of  a  quarrel  of  the 
societies  delivered  two  Latin  orations,  in  one  of  which  he 
vilipended  alike  the  cruelty  and  the  superstitions  of  Toulouse. 
A  number  of  the  leading  bigots  of  the  place  were  attacked ;  and 
Dolet  was  after  an  interval  of  some  months  thrown  into  prison, 
charged  with  exciting  a  riot  and  with  contempt  of  the  Parlement 
of  Toulouse.  His  incarceration  did  not  last  long  ;  but  never  there- 
after was  he  safe  ;  and  in  the  remaining  thirteen  years  of  his  life  he 
was  five  more  times  in  prison,  for  nearly  five  years  in  all.* 

After  he  had  settled  at  Lyons,  and  produced  his  Commentaries, 
he  had  the  bad  fortune  to  kill  an  enemy  who  drew  sword  upon  him ; 
and  the  pardon  he  obtained  from  the  king  through  the  influence  of 
Marguerite  of  Navarre  remained  technically  unratified  for  six  years, 
during  which  time  he  was  only  provisionally  at  liberty,  being 
actually  in  prison  for  a  short  time  in  1537.  Apart  from  this 
episode  he  showed  himself  both  quarrelsome  and  vainglorious, 
alienating  friends  who  had  done  much  for  him  ;  but  his  enemies 
were  worse  spirits  than  he.  The  power  of  the  man  drove  him  to 
perpetual  production  no  less  than  to  strife ;  and  his  mere  activity 
as  a  printer  went  far  to  destroy  him. 

"  No  calling  was  more  hateful  to  the  friends  of  bigotry  and 
superstition  than  that  of  a  printer"  (Christie,  as  cited,  p.  387). 
Nearly  all  the  leading  printers  of  France  and  Germany  were 
either  avowedly  in  sympathy  with  Protestant  heresy  or  sus- 

1  It  is  to  this  that  Rabelais  alludes  (ii.  5)  when  he  tells  how  at  Toulouse  they  "stuck 
not  to  burn  their  regents  alive  like  red  herrings." 

2  Christie,  p.  80.  ^  Liv.  m,  ch.  xxix.  *  ^"r^^^Ji®:  P:  **"• 
«  One  of  his  enemies  wrote  of  him  that  prison  was  bis  country— potna  D(HeU. 


THE  FRENCH  EVOLUTION 


387 


pected  of  being  so  (id.  p.  388) ;  and  the  issue  of  an  edict  by 
King  Francis  in  1535  for  the  suppression  of  printing  was  at  the 
instance  of  the  Sorbonne.  We  shall  see  that  in  Germany  the 
support  of  the  printers,  and  their  hostility  to  the  priests  and 
monks,  contributed  greatly  to  the  success  of  Lutheranism. 

In  1542  he  was  indicted  as  a  heretic,  but  really  for  publishing 
Protestant  books  of  devotion  and  French  translations  of  the  Bible. 
Among  the  formal  oifences  charged  were :  (l)  his  having  in  his  Cato 
Christiamcs  cited  as  the  second  commandment  the  condemnation  of 
all  images ;  (2)  his  use  of  the  term  "  fate  "  in  the  sense  of  predestina- 
tion ;  (3)  his  substitution  of  habeo  fidem  for  credo ;  (4)  the  eating  of 
flesh  in  Lent ;  and  (5)  the  act  of  taking  a  walk  during  the  perform- 
ance of  mass.^  On  this  indictment  the  two  inquisitors  Orry  and  Faye 
delivered  him  over  to  the  secular  arm  for  execution.  Again  he 
secured  the  King's  pardon  (1543),  through  the  mediation  of  Pierre 
Duchatel,  the  good  Bishop  of  Tulle;  but  the  ecclesiastical  resistance 
was  such  that,  despite  Dolet's  formal  recantation,  it  required  a  more 
plenary  pardon,  the  express  orders  of  the  King,  and  three  official 
letters  to  secure  his  release  after  a  year's  detention.^ 

That  was,  however,  swiftly  followed  by  a  final  and  successful 
prosecution.  By  a  base  device  two  parcels  were  made  of  prohibited 
books  printed  by  Dolet  and  of  Protestant  books  issued  at  Geneva ; 
and  these,  bearing  his  name  in  large,  were  forwarded  to  Paris.  The 
parcels  were  seized,  and  he  was  again  arrested,  early  in  January, 
1544.  He  contrived  to  escape  to  Piedmont ;  but,  returning  secretly 
after  six  months  to  print  documents  of  defence,  he  was  discovered 
and  sent  to  prison  in  Paris.  The  last  pardon  having  covered  all 
previous  writings,  the  prosecutors  sought  in  his  translation  of  the 
pseudo-Platonic  dialogues  Axiochus  and  Hipparckus,  printed  with 
his  last  vindication ;  and,  finding  a  slight  over-emphasis  of  Sokrates's 
phrase  describing  the  death  of  the  body  ("  thou  shalt  no  longer  be," 
rendered  by  "thou  shalt  no  longer  bo  anything  at  all"),  pronounced 
this  a  wilful  propounding  of  a  heresy,  though  in  fact  there  had  been 
no  denial  of  the  doctrine  of  immortality.®  This  time  the  prey  was 
held.  After  Dolet  had  been  in  prison  for  twenty  months  the  Parle- 
ment of  Paris  ratified  the  sentence  of  death  ;  and  he  was  burned 
alive  on  August  3,  1546.  The  utter  wickedness  of  the  whole 
process*  at  least  serves  to  relieve  by  neighbourhood  the  darkness  of 
the  stains  cast  on  Protestantism  by  the  crimes  of  Calvin. 

I  Proc^8  d'Estienne  Dolet,  Paris,  1836,  p.  H  ;  Galtier.  pp.  65-70 :  Christie,  pp.  389-90. 
^  ProciH,  p.  viii. ;  Galtier,  p.  78.  »  Galtier,  p.  101  sq.;  Christie,  p.  461. 

A. jnodern  French  judge,  the  President  Baudrier,  was  found  to  affirm  that  the  laws, 
rh^  t-     ""^"^^^  severe."  were  "neither  unduly  nor  unfairly  pressed"  against   Dolet! 


388  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  RENAISSANCE 

The  whole  of  the  clerical  opposition  to  the  new  learning  at  this 
period  is  not  unjustly  to  be  characterized  as  a  malignant  cabal  of 
ignorance    against    knowledge.      In   Germany    as   in   France    real 
learning  was  substantially  on  the  side  of  the  persecuted  writers. 
When  in  March  of  1537.  Dolet  was  entertained  at  a  banquet  to 
celebrate  the  pardon  granted  to  him  by  the  king  for  his  homicide 
at  Lyons  on  the  last  day  of  the  previous  year,  there  came  to  it,  by 
Dolet's  own  account,  the  chief  lights  of  learning  in  France— Bud6, 
the  chief  Greek  scholar  of  his  time  ;  Berauld,  his  nearest  compeer ; ' 
Dan^s  and  Toussain.  both  pupils  of  Bud6  and  the  first  royal  pro- 
fessors  of  Greek  at  Paris  ;  Marot,  "  the  French  Maro  ";  Rabelais, 
then  regarded  as  a  great  new  light  in  medicine  ;  Voult6,'  and  others. 
The  men   of    enlightenment   at   first   instinctively   drew   together, 
recognizing   that   on   all   hands   they   were    surrounded   by   rabid 
enemies,   who   were   the   enemies   of    knowledge.      But   soon    the 
stresses  of  the  time  drove  them  asunder.     Voult6.  who  in  this  year 
was  praising  Rabelais  in  Latin  epigrams,  was  attacking  him  in  the 
next  as  an  impious  disciple  of  Lucian  ;'  and,  after  having  warmly 
befriended  Dolet,  was  impeaching  him.  not  without  cause,  as  an 
ingrate.     It  was  an  age  of  passion  and  violence ;  and  Voult6  was 
himself  assassinated  in  1542  "by  a  man  who  had  been  unsuccessful 
in  a  law-suit  against  him." 

Infamous  as  was  the  cruelty  with  which  Dolet  was  persecuted 
to  the  death,  his  execution  was  but  a  drop  in  the  sea  of  blood  then 
being  shed  in  France  by  the  Church.  The  king,  sinking  under  his 
maladies,  had  become  the  creature  of  the  priests,  who  in  defiance 
of  the  Chancellor  obtained  his  signature  (1545)  to  a  decree  for  a 
renewed  persecution  of  the  heretics  of  the  Vaudois  ;  and  an  army, 
followed  by  a  Catholic  mob  and  accompanied  by  the  papal  vice- 
legate  of  Avignon,  burst  upon  the  doomed  territory  and  commenced 
to  burn  and  slay.  Women  captured  were  violated  and  then  thrown 
over  precipices  ;  and  twice  over,  when  a  multitude  of  fugitives  in  a 
fortified  place  surrendered  on  the  assurance  that  their  lives  and 
property  would  be  spared,  the  commander  ordered  that  all  should 
be  put  to  death.  When  old  soldiers  refused  to  enact  such  an 
infamy,  others  joyfully  obeyed,  the  mob  aiding;  and  among  the 
women  were  committed,  as  usual,  "  aU  the  crimes  of  which  hell 
could  dream."  Three  towns  were  destroyed,  3,000  persons  mas- 
sacred, 256  executed,  six  or  seven  hundred  more  sent  to  the  galleys, 


1  Concerning  whom  see  Christie,  as  cited,  pp.  29 

2  Tilley.  as  last  cited,  p.  69. 


01. 


»  Christie,  p.  317. 


THE  FRENCH  EVOLUTION 


389 


and  many  children  sold  as  slaves.*    Thus  was  the  faith  vindicated 
and  safeguarded. 

Of  the  freethought  of  such  an  age  there  could  be  no  adequate 
record.  Its  tempestuous  energy,  however,  implies  not  a  little  of 
private  unbelief ;  and  at  a  time  when  in  England,  two  generations 
behind  France  in  point  of  literary  evolution,  there  was,  as  we  shall 
see,  a  measure  of  rationalism  among  religionists,  there  must  have 
been  at  least  as  much  in  the  land  of  Rabelais  and  Desperiers.  The 
work  of  Guillaume  Postell,  De  causis  seic  principiis  et  originihiLS 
NaturcB  contra  AtJieos,  published  in  1552,  testifies  to  kinds  of 
unbelief  that  outwent  the  doubt  of  Rabelais;  though  Postell's 
general  extravagance  discounts  all  of  his  utterances.  It  is  said  of 
Guillaume  Pellicier  (1527-1568),  Bishop  of  Montpellier,  who  first 
turned  Protestant  and  afterwards,  according  to  Gui  Patin,  atheist, 
that  he  would  have  been  burned  but  for  the  fact  of  his  consecration. 
And  the  English  chroniclers  preserve  a  scandal  concerning  an 
anonymous  atheist,  worded  as  follows :  "  1539.  This  yeare,  in 
October,  died  in  the  Universitie  of  Parris,  in  France,  a  great  doctor, 
which  said  their  was  no  God,  and  had  bene  of  that  opinion  synce 
he  was  twentie  yeares  old,  and  was  above  fouerscore  yeares  olde 
when  he  died.  And  all  that  tyme  had  kept  his  error  secrett,  and 
was  esteamed  for  one  of  the  greatest  clarkes  in  all  the  Universitie 
of  Parris,  and  his  sentence  was  taken  and  holden  among  the  said 
studentes  as  firme  as  scripture,  which  shewed,  when  he  was  asked 
why  he  had  not  shewed  his  opinion  till  his  death,  he  answered 
that  for  feare  of  death  he  durst  not,  but  when  he  knew  that  he 
should  die  he  said  their  was  no  lief  to  come  after  this  lief,  and  so 
died  miserably  to  his  great  damnation."  ® 

Among  the  eminent  ones  then  surmised  to  lean  somewhat  to 
unbelief  was  the  sister  of  King  Francis,  Marguerite  of  Navarre, 
whom  we  have  noted  as  a  protectress  of  the  pantheistic  Libertini, 
denounced  by  Calvin.  She  is  held  to  have  been  substantially 
skeptical  until  her  forty-fifth  year;'  though  her  final  religiousness 
seems  also  beyond  doubt.*  In  her  youth  she  bravely  protected  the 
Protestants  from  the  first  persecution  of  1523  onwards  ;  and  the 
strongly  Protestant  drift  of  her  Miroir  de  Vdim  pdcheresse  exas- 
perated the  Catholic  theologians ;  but  after  the  Protestant  violences 
of  1546  she  seems   to   have   sided  with   her  brother   against  the 

*  Christie,  as  cited,  pp.  465-67 :  Lutteroth,  La  Reformation  en  France  pendant  sa 
premUre  p^riode,  1859.  pp.  39-40;  Prof.  H.  M.  Baird,  Bise  of  the  Huguenots,  1880,  i,  240  «a. 

2  Perrens.  Les  Lihertins,  p.  43  ;  Patin.  Lettres,  ed.  Reveill6-Parise,  1846,  i.  210. 

3  Wriothesley'8  Chronicle  (Camden  Society,  1875).  pp.  107-108. 

*  Nodier.  quoted  by  Bibliophile  Jacob  in  ed.  of  Cymbalum  Mundi,  as  cited,  p.  xviii. 
s  Cp.  Brantome,  Dea  dames  illustres.    CEuvres,  ed.  1838.  ii,  166. 


390 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  RENAISSANCE 


Reform/  The  strange  taste  of  the  Heptameron,  of  which  again  her 
part-authorship  seems  certain,^  constitutes  a  moral  paradox  not  to 
be  solved  save  by  recognizing  in  her  a  woman  of  genius,  whose 
alternate  mysticism  and  bohemianism  expressed  a  very  ancient 
duality  in  human  nature. 

A  similar  mixture  will  explain  the  intellectual  life  of  the  poet 
Ronsard.  A  persecutor  of  the  Huguenots,*  he  was  denounced  as  an 
atheist  by  two  of  their  ministers  ;  *  and  the  pagan  fashion  in  which 
he  handled  Christian  things  scandalized  his  own  side,  albeit  he  was 
hostile  to  Rabelais.  But  though  the  spirit  of  the  French  Renais- 
sance, so  eagerly  expressed  in  the  Dtfense  et  Illustration  de  la 
langue  frangoise  of  Joachim  du  Bellay  (1549),  is  at  its  outset  as 
emancipated  as  that  of  the  Italian,  we  find  Ronsard  in  his  latter 
years  edifying  the  pious.*  Any  ripe  and  consistent  rationalism, 
indeed,  was  then  impossible.  One  of  the  most  powerful  minds  of 
the  age  was  BODIN  (1530-1596),  whose  Edpiiblique  is  one  of  the 
most  scientific  treatises  on  government  between  Aristotle  and  our 
own  age,  and  whose  Colloquium  Heptaplo^neres^  is  no  less  original 
an  outline  of  a  naturalist"^  philosophy.  It  consists  of  six  dialogues, 
in  which  seven  men  take  part,  setting  forth  the  different  religious 
standpoints  of  Jew,  Christian,  pagan,  Lutheran,  Calvinist,  and 
Catholic,  the  whole  leading  up  to  a  doctrine  of  tolerance  and 
universalism.  Bodin  was  repeatedly  and  emphatically  accused  of 
unbelief  by  friends  and  foes;*^  and  his  rationalism  on  some  heads 
is  beyond  doubt ;  yet  he  not  only  held  by  the  belief  in  witchcraft, 
but  wrote  a  furious  treatise  in  support  of  it  ;*  and  he  dismissed  the 
system  of  Copernicus  as  too  absurd  for  discussion.***  He  also  formally 
vetoes  all  discussion  on  faith,  declaring  it  to  be  dangerous  to  religion  ;" 
and  by  these  conformities  he  probably  saved  himself  from  eccle- 


\  g*J'|6'  Dictionnaire,  art.  Marguebite  de  Navabbe  (the  First),  notes  F  and  G. 

^  Bayie,  note  N.    Cp.  Nodier,  as  cited,  p.  xix.  as  to  the  collaboration  of  Desperiers 
and  others. 

8  Bayle,  art.  Ronbabd,  note  D. 

<  Garasse,  La  Doctrine  Curieufte  des  Beaux  EspritB  de  ce  Temps,  1623,  pp.  126-27. 
Ronsard  replied  to  the  charge  in  his  poem.  Des  mis^res  du  temps. 

«  Bayle.  art.  Ronsabd,  note  O.    Cp.  Perrens.  Les  Libertins.  p.  43. 

6  MS.  1588.    First  printed  in  1811  by  Guhrauer.  again  in  1857  by  L.  Noack. 

,  As  before  noted,  he  was  one  of  the  first  to  use  the  word.    Cp.  Lechler.  Geschichte  des 
enoltschen  Deismus,  pp.  31.  455.  notes. 

8  Bayle,  art.  Bodin,  note  O.  Cp.  Renan.  Averroi«.  de  ^dit.  p.  424;  and  the  Lettres  de 
Gut  Pattn,  iii.  679  (letter  of  27  juillet,  1668).  cited  by  Perrens.  Les  Libertins,  p.  43.  Leibnitz, 
in  an  early  letter  to  Jac.  Thomasius.  speaks  of  the  MS.  of  the  Colloquium,  then  in  circula- 
tion, as  proving  its  writer  to  be  "  the  professed  enemy  of  the  Christian  religion,"  adding  : 
Vanini's  dialogues  are  a  trifle  in  comparison."  iPhilosophische  Schriften,  ed.  Gerhardt. 
1,36:  Martineau.  Study  of  Spinoza,  p.  77.)  Carriere,  however,  notes  {Weltanschauung, 
p.  317)  that  in  later  years  Leibnitz  learned  to  prize  Bodin's  treatise  highly. 

«  Cp.  Lecky.  Rationalism  in  Europe,  i,  66,  87-91.     In  the  Eipublique   too  he  has  a 
chapter  on  astrology,  to  which  he  leans  somewhat. 

'0  Bepublique,  Liv.  iv,  ch.  ii. 
J\  -f*^- Liv.  iv,  ch.  vii,    "Bodin  in  this  sophistry  was  undoubtedly  insincere"  (Hallam, 
Lit.  oj  Europe,  u,  159). 


THE  FKENCH  EVOLUTION 


391 


siastical  attack.*  Nonetheless,  he  essentially  stood  for  religious 
toleration :  the  new  principle  that  was  to  change  the  face  of  intel- 
lectual life.  A  few  liberal  Catholics  shared  it  with  him  to  some 
extent^  long  before  St.  Bartholomew's  Day  ;  eminent  among  them 
being  L'Hopital,^  whose  humanity,  tolerance,  and  concern  for 
practical  morality  and  the  reform  of  the  Church  brought  upon  him 
the  charge  of  atheism.  He  was,  however,  a  believing  Catholic* 
Deprived  of  power,  his  edict  of  tolerance  repealed,  he  saw  the  long 
and  ferocious  struggle  of  Catholics  and  Huguenots  renewed,  and 
crowned  by  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew's  Day  (1572).  Broken- 
hearted, and  haunted  by  that  monstrous  memory,  he  died  within 
six  months. 

Two  years  later  there  was  put  to  death  at  Paris,  by  hanging  and 
burning,  on  the  charge  of  atheism,  Geoffroi  Vallee,  a  man  of  good 
family  in  Orleans.  Long  before,  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  he  had 
written  a  freethinking  treatise  entitled  La  B6atittcde  des  ChrUiens, 
ou  le  fleau  de  la  foy—a,  discussion  between  a  Huguenot,  a  Catholic, 
a  libertin,  an  Anabaptist  and  an  atheist.  He  had  been  the  associate 
of  Ronsard,  who  renounced  him,  and  helped,  it  is  said,  to  bring  him 
to  execution.'^  It  is  not  unlikely  that  a  similar  fate  would  have 
overtaken  the  famous  Protestant  scholar  and  lexicographer,  Henri 
Estienne  (1532-1598),  had  he  not  died  unexpectedly.  His  false 
repute  of  being  "the  prince  of  atheists  "%nd  the  "  Pantagruel  of 
Geneva  "  was  probably  due  in  large  part  to  his  sufficiently  audacious 
Apologie  pour  Herodote''  (1566)  and  to  his  having  translated  into 
Latin  (1562)  the  Hypotyposes  of  Sextus  Empiricus,  a  work  which 
must  have  made  for  freethinking.  But  he  was  rather  a  Protestant 
than  a  rationalist.  In  the  former  book  he  had  spoken,  either 
sincerely  or  ironically,  of  the  "  detestable  book  "  of  Bonaventure 
Desperiers,  calling  him  a  mocker  of  God ;  and  impeached  Rabelais 
as  a  modern  Lucian,  believing  neither  in  God  nor  immortality  ;'  yet 
his  own  performance  was  fully  as  well  fitted  as  theirs   to  cause 

*  Cp.  Perrens.  JDes  Ltberftns.  p.  43.       ,  ^   ,,-,  .  .        ^  -.cac  ««  oancQ  aoq 

9  Cp.  Villemain.  Vie  de  L'Hopital,  in  EtiuUs  de  Vlnst.  nwderne,  1S46.  pp.  363-68,  428. 
3  Buckle  (3- vol.  ed.  ii,  10;  1-vol.  ed.  p.  291)  errs  m  representing  L  HoP^tal  as  the  only 
statesman  of  the  time  who  dreamt  of  toleration.  It  is  to  be  noted,  on  the  other  band, 
that  the  Huguenots  themselves  protested  againstany  toleration  of  atheists  or  Anabaptists  . 
and  even  the  reputed  freethinker  Gabriel  xNdude,  writing  his  Science  ^f^-^^*"^"' f '  .{^«''* 
siderations  politiques  sur  les  Coups  d'etat,  in  1639.  defended  the  massacre  on  potcal 
grounds  (Owen,  Skeptics  of  the  French  Ilenaissa7ice,  p.  470.  note).  Bodm  implicitly 
execrated  it.    Cp.  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  li,  162. 

5  oirl^o^^Doctrine  Curieuse,  pp.  125-126;  Me  moire  s  de  Garasse,  ed.  Ch.  Nisard,  1860, 

pp.  77-78  :  Perrens,  p.  43.  , ,     ,    ,^       .„ 

6  Bibliophile  Jacob.  Introd.  to  Beroalde  de  Verville.  „«..„.•  ;7— 

7  Estienne's  full  title  is:  L' Introduction  au  tratte  de  la   conformtte des  mervetlles, 
ancieiines  avec  les  modenies :  ou,  Traite  pr^parattf  a  I  Apologie  pour  Herodote.  „  ^,. , . 

^Apologie  pour  Herodote,  ed.  1607.  pp.  97. 249  (liv.  i.  chs.  xiv,  xvm.    Cymbalum  Mundt, 
ed.  Bibliophile  Jacob,  pp.  xx,  13. 


392 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  EENAISSANCB 


scandal.     It  is  in  fact  one  of  the  richest  repertories  ever  formed  of 
scandalous  stories  against  priests,  monks,  nuns,  and  popes.* 

One  literary  movement  towards  better  things  had  begun  before 
the  crowning  infamy  of  the  Massacre  appalled  men  into  questioning 
the  creed  of  intolerance.  Castalio,  whom  we  shall  see  driven  from 
Geneva  by  Calvin  in  1544  for  repugning  to  the  doctrine  of  pre- 
destination, published  pseudonymously,  in  1554,  in  reply  to  Calvin's 
vindication  of  the  slaying  of  Servetus,  a  tract,  De  Haereticis  qtvomodo 
cum  iis  agendum  sit  variorum  Sententice,  in  which  he  contrived  to 
collect  some  passage  from  the  Fathers  and  from  modern  writers  in 
favour  of  toleration.  To  these  he  prefaced,  by  way  of  a  letter  to 
the  Duke  of  Wirtemberg,  an  argument  of  his  own,  the  starting- 
point  of  much  subsequent  propaganda.^  Aconzio,  another  Italian, 
followed  in  his  steps  ;  and  later  came  Mino  Celso  of  Siena,  with  his 
*'long  and  elaborate  argument  against  persecution,"  De  Haereticis 
capitali  supplicio  Twn  afficiendis  (1584).^  Withal,  Castalio  died  in 
beggary,  ostracized  alike  by  Protestants  and  Catholics,  and  befriended 
only  by  the  Sozzini,  whose  sect  was  the  first  to  earn  collectively  the 
praise  of  condemning  persecution.*  But  in  the  next  generation  there 
came  to  reinforce  the  cause  of  humanity  a  more  puissant  pen  than 
any  of  these ;  while  at  the  same  time  the  recoil  from  religious 
cruelty  was  setting  many  men  secretly  at  utter  variance  with  faith. 

In  France  in  particular  a  generation  of  insane  civil  war  for 
religion's  sake  must  have  gone  far  to  build  up  unbelief.  Even 
among  many  who  did  not  renounce  the  faith,  there  went  on  an 
open  evolution  of  stoicism,  generated  through  resort  to  the  teaching 
of  Epictetus.  The  atrocities  of  Christian  civil  war  and  Christian 
savagery  were  such  that  Christian  faith  could  give  small  sustenance 
to  the  more  thoughtful  and  sensitive  men  who  had  to  face  them  and 
carry  on  the  tasks  of  public  life  the  while.  The  needed  strength 
was  given  by  the  masculine  discipline  which  pagan  thought  had 
provided  for  an  age  of  oppression  and  decadence,  and  which  had 
carried  so  much  of  healing  even  for  the  Christians  who  saw 
decadence  carried  yet  further,  that  in  the  fifth  century  the 
Enchiridion  of   Epictetus   had   been    turned   by  St.  Nilus   into  a 

1  The  index  was  specially  framed  to  call  attention  to  these  items.  The  entry,  *'  Fables 
des  dieux  des  payens  cousines  germaines  des  legendes  des  saints."  is  typical. 

2  Bayle,  Dictvmnaire,  art.  Castalion  ;  Hallam.  Lit.  of  Europe,  ii,  81  ;  Lecky. 
Rationalism  in  Europe,  ii,  46-49.  Hallam  finds  Castalio's  letter  to  the  Duke  of 
Wirtemberg  "cautious";  but  Lecky  quotes  some  strong  expressions  from  what  he 
describes  as  the  preface  of  Martin  Bellius  (Castalio's  pseudonym)  to  Gluten's  De 
Haereticis  perseque}idis,  ed.  1610.  Castalio  died  in  1563.  As  to  his  translations  from 
the  Bible,  see  Bayle's  note. 

3  Hallam.  ii.  83 ;  McCrie.  Refortnation  in  Italy,  ed.  1856.  p.  231. 

<  Even  Stfthelin  (Johannes  Calvin,  ii.  303)  condemns  Calvin's  action  and  tone  towards 
Castalio,  though  he  makes  the  significant  remark  that  the  latter  "treated  the  Bible 
pretty  much  as  any  other  book." 


THE  ENGLISH  EVOLUTION 


393 


monastic  manual,  even  as  Ambrose  manipulated  the  borrowed 
Stoicism  of  Cicero.*  With  its  devout  theism,  the  book  had  appealed 
to  those  northern  scholars  who  had  mastered  Greak  in  the  early 
years  of  the  sixteenth  century,  when  the  refugees  of  Constantinople 
had  set  up  Platonic  studies  in  Italy.  After  1520,  Italian  Hellenism 
rapidly  decayed  ;^  but  in  the  north  it  never  passed  away;  and  from 
the  stronger  men  of  the  new  learning  in  Germany  the  taste  for 
Epictetus  passed  into  France.  In  1558  the  semi-Protestant  legist 
Coras— later  slain  in  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew— published 
at  Toulouse  a  translation  of  the  apocryphal  dialogue  of  Epictetus 
and  Hadrian;  in  1566  the  Protestant  poet  Rivaudeau  translated 
the  Enchiridion,  which  thenceforth  became  a  culture  force  in 
France.^ 

The  influence  appears  in  Montaigne,  in  whose  essays  it  is 
pervasive ;  but  more  directly  and  formally  in  the  book  of  Justus 
Lipsius,  De  Constantia  (1584),  and  the  same  scholar's  posthumous 
dialogues  entitled  Mandiccatio  ad  philosophiam  stotcam  and  Physio- 
logia  sto'icorum  (1604),  which  influenced  all  scholarly  Europe.  Thus 
far  the  Stoic  ethic  had  been  handled  with  Christian  bias  and 
application  ;  and  Guillaume  Du  Vair,  who  embodied  it  in  his  work 
La  Sainte  Philosophic  (1588),  was  not  known  as  a  heretic  ;  but  in 
his  hands  it  receives  no  Christian  colouring,  and  might  pass  for  the 
work  of  a  deist.*  And  its  popularity  is  to  be  inferred  from  his 
further  production  of  a  fresh  translation  of  the  Enchiridion  and  a 
Traits  de  la  philosophic  morale  des  sto'iques.  Under  Henri  IV  he 
rose  to  high  power ;  and  his  public  credit  recommended  his  doctrine. 

Such  were  the  more  visible  fruits  of  the  late  spread  of  the 
Renaissance  ferment  in  France  while,  torn  by  the  frantic  passions 
of  her  pious  Catholics,  she  passed  from  the  plane  of  the  Renaissance 
to  that  of  the  new  Europe,  in  which  the  intellectual  centre  of  gravity 
was  to  be  shifted  from  the  south  to  the  north,  albeit  Italy  was  still 
to  lead  the  way,  in  Galileo,  for  the  science  of  the  modern  world. 

§  3.  The  English  Evolution 

In  England  as  in  France  the  intellectual  life  undergoes  visible 
retrogression   in   the   fifteenth   century,   while   in   Italy,   with   the 


J  Hatch,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  169.  2  Burckhai'dt,  p.  105. 

f  Prof.  Fortunat  Strowski,  Histoire  du  nentiment  religieux  en  France  au  17e  siicle, 
Ptie  i.  De  Montaigne  a  Pascal,  1907,  pp.  19-23. 

*  Du  Vair  ne  songe  pas  au  Mediateur ;  s'il  y  a  dans  son  traite  des  allusions  a  Notre 
Seigneur,  le  nom  de  J^sus-Christ  ne  s'y  trouve.  je  crois  bien,  pas  une  fois.  H  songe  encore 
moins  aux  pieux  adjuvants  qui  excitent  I'imagination ;  pas  un  mot  de  I'invocation  des 
samts,  pas  un  mot  des  sacrements"  (Strowski,  as  cited,  p.  78). 


394 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  RENAISSANCE 


political  problem  rapidly  developing  towards  catastrophe,  it  flourished 
almost  riotously.  From  the  age  of  Chaucer,  considered  on  its  intel- 
lectual side  and  as  represented  mainly  by  him,  there  is  a  steep  fall  to 
almost  the  time  of  Sir  Thomas  More,  around  whom  we  see  as  it  were 
the  sudden  inrush  of  the  Renaissance  upon  England.  The  conquest 
of  France  by  Henry  V  and  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  between  them, 
brought  England  to  the  nadir  of  mental  and  moral  life.  But  in  the 
long  and  ruinous  storm  the  Middle  Ages,  of  which  WicUf  is  the  last 
powerful  representative,  were  left  behind,  and  a  new  age  begins  to  be 
prepared. 

Of  a  very  different  type  from  Wiclif  is  the  remarkable  personality 
of  the  Welshman  REGINALD  (or  Reynold)  Pecock  (1395  ?-1460  ?), 
who  seems  divided  from  Wiclif  by  a  whole  era  of  intellectual  develop- 
ment, though  born  within  about  ten  years  of  his  death.     It  is  a 
singular  fact  that  one  of  the  most  rationalistic  minds  among  the 
serious  writers  of  the  fifteenth  century  should  be  an  English  bishop, 
and  an  Ultramontane  at  that.     Pecock  was  an  opponent  at  once  of 
popular  BibHolatry  and  of  priestly  persecution,  declaring  that     the 
clergy  would  be  condemned  at  the  last  day  if  they  did  not  draw  men 
into  consent  to  the  true  faith  otherwise  than  by  fire  and  sword  and 
hanging."^     It  was  as  the  rational  and  temperate  defender  of  the 
Church  against  the  attacks  of  the  Lollards  in  general  that  he  formu- 
lated the  principle  of  natural  reason  as  against  scripturalism.     This 
attitude  it  is  that  makes  his  treatise,  the  Repressor  of  Overmtich 
Blaming  of  the  Clergy,  the  most  modem  of  theoretic  books  before 
More  and  Hooker  and  Bacon.     That  he  was  led  to  this  measure  of 
rationalism    rather    by  the   exigencies   of    his   papalism   than  by 
a  spontaneous  skepticism  is  suggested  by  the  fact  that  he  stands  for 
the  acceptance  of  miraculous  images,  shrines,  and  relics,  when  the 
Lollards  are  attacking  them.'     On  the  other  hand,  it  is  hard  to  be 
certain  that  his  belief   in  the  shrines  was  genuine,  so  ill  does  it 
consist  with  his  attitude  to  BibHolatry.     In  a  series  of   serenely 
argued  points  he  urges  his  thesis  that  the  Bible  is  not  the  basis  of 
the  moral  law,  but  merely  an  illustration   thereof,  and  that  the 
natural  reason  is  obviously  presupposed  in  the  bulk  of  its  teachmg. 
He  starts  from  the  formulas  of  Thomas  Aquinas,  but  reaches  a  higher 
ground.     It  is  the  position  of   Hooker,  anticipated  by  a  hundred 
years;  and  this  in  an  age  of  such  intellectual  backwardness  and 


»  Cp.  Prof.  Thorold  Rogers,  Eco)iomic  Interpretatim  of  HUtorv.v.SS.       ^^^^.^^  .„ 
2  In  1387  the  Lollards  were  denounced  under  that  name  by  the  Bishop  of  Worcester  as 
eternally  damned  sons  of  Antichrist."  „  „    ^     .      ,ocr»  o-^tn 

8  See  the  Bepretsor,  Babington's  ed.  in  the  Rolls  Series,  1860.  Part  il. 


THE  ENGLISH  EVOLUTION 


395 


literary  decadence  that  the  earlier  man  must  be  pronounced  by  far 
the  more  remarkable  figure.  In  such  a  case  the  full  influence  of  the 
Renaissance  seems  to  be  at  work ;  though  in  the  obscurity  of  the 
records  we  can  do  no  more  than  conjecture  that  the  new  contacts 
with  French  culture  between  the  invasion  of  France  by  Henry  V  in 
1415  and  the  expulsion  of  the  English  in  1451  may  have  introduced 
forces  of  thought  unknown  or  little  known  before.  If  indeed  there 
were  English  opponents  of  scripture  in  Wiclif's  day,  the  idea  must 
have  ripened  somewhat  in  Pecock's.  Whether,  however,  the 
victories  of  Jeanne  D'Arc  made  some  unbelievers  as  well  as  many 
dastards  among  the  English  is  a  problem  that  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  investigated. 

Pecock's  reply  to  the  Lollards  creates  the  curious  situation  of 
a  churchman  rebutting  heretics  by  being  more  profoundly  heretical 
than  they.  In  his  system,  the  Scriptures  **  reveal "  only  super- 
natural truths  not  otherwise  attainable,  a  way  of  safeguarding  dogma 
not  likely  to  reassure  believers.  There  is  reason,  indeed,  to  suspect 
that  Pecock  held  no  dogma  with  much  zeal ;  and  when  in  his  well- 
named  treatise  (now  lost),  The  Provoker^  he  denied  the  authenticity 
of  the  Apostles'  Creed,  "  he  alienated  every  section  of  theological 
opinion  in  England." 

See  Miss  A.  M.  Cooke's  art.  Reginald  Pecock  in  Diet,  of 
Nat.  Biog.  This  valuable  notice  is  the  best  short  account  of 
Pecock ;  though  the  nature  of  his  case  is  most  fully  made  out 
by  Hook,  as  cited  below.  It  is  characteristic  of  the  restricted 
fashion  in  which  history  is  still  treated  that  neither  in  the 
Student's  History  of  Professor  Gardiner  nor  in  the  Short  History 
of  Green  is  Pecock  mentioned.  Earlier  ideas  concerning  him 
were  far  astray.  The  notion  of  Foxe,  the  martyrologist,  that 
Pecock  was  an  early  Protestant,  is  a  gross  error.  He  held  not 
a  single  Protestant  tenet,  being  a  rationalizing  papist.  A 
German  ecclesiastical  historian  of  the  eighteenth  century 
(Werner,  Kirchengeschichte  des  18ten  Jahrhunderts,  1756,  cited 
by  Lechler)  calls  Pecock  the  first  English  deist.  See  a  general 
view  of  his  opinions  in  Lewis's  Life  of  Dr.  Beynold  Pecock  (rep. 
1820),  ch.  V.  The  heresies  charged  on  him  are  given  on  p.  160  ; 
also  in  the  R.  T.  S.  Writings  and  Examinations,  1831,  pp. 
200-201.  While  rejecting  BibHolatry,  he  yet  argued  that  Popes 
and  Councils  could  make  no  change  in  the  current  creed ;  and 
he  thus  offended  the  High  Churchmen.  Cp.  Massingberd,  The 
English  Beformation,  4th  ed.  pp.  206-209. 

The  main  causes  of  the  hostility  he  met  from  the  English 
hierarchy  and  Government  appear  to  have  been,  on  the  one  hand, 


396  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  RENAISSANCE 

his  change  of  political  party,  which  put  him  in  opposition  to  Arch- 
bishop  Bourchier,  and  on  the  other  his  zealous  championship  of  the 
authority  of   the  papacy  as   against  that  of   the  Councils  of  the 
Church.     It  was  expressly  on  the  score  of  his  denunciation  of  the 
Councils  that  he  was  tried  and  condemned/     Thus  the  reward  of 
his  effort  to  reason  down  the  menacing  Lollards  and  rebut  Wiclif 
was  his  formal  disgrace  and  virtual  imprisonment.      Had  he  not 
recanted,  he  would  have  been  burned :  as  it  was,  his  books  were ; 
and  it  is  on  record  that  they  consisted  of  eleven  quartos  and  three 
folios  of  manuscript.     Either  because  of  his  papalism  or  as  a  result 
of  official  intrigue,  Church  and  lords  and  commons  were  of  one  mind 
against  him ;  and  the  mob  would  fain  have  burned  him  with  his 
books.'     In  that  age  of  brutal  strife,  when  *'  neither  the  Church  nor 
the  opponents  of  the  Church  had  any  longer  a  sway  over  men's 
hearts,"*  he  figures  beside  the  mindless  prelates  and  their  lay  peers 
somewhat  as  does  More  later  beside  Henry  VIII,  as  Reason  vers7is 
the  Beast ;  and  it  was  illustrative  of  his  entire  lack  of  fanaticism 
that   he   made   the   demanded   retractations— avowing    his   sin   in 
"trusting  to    natural   reason"  rather  than   to   Scripture  and  the 
authority  of  the  Church— and  went  his  way  in  silence  to  solitude 
and  death.     The  ruling  powers  disposed  of  Lollardism  in  their  own 
way;  and  in  the  Wars   of   the  Roses  every  species   of   heretical 
thought  seems  to  disappear.     The  bribe  held  out  to  the  nation  by 
the  invasion  of   France  had   been  fatally  effectual  to  corrupt  the 
spirit  of  moral  criticism  which  inspired  the  Lollard  movement  at  its 
best ;  and  the  subsequent  period  of  rapine  and  strife  reduced  thought 
and  culture  to  the  levels  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

A  hint  of  what  was  possible  in  the  direction  of  freethought  in 
the  England  of  Henry  V  and  Henry  VI  emerges  in  some  of  the 
records  concerning  Duke  Humphrey  of  Gloucester,  the  youngest  son 
of  Henry  IV.  Gifted  but  ill-balanced,  Humphrey  was  the  chief 
patron  of  learning  in  England  in  his  day ;  and  he  drank  deeply  of 
the  spirit  of  Renaissance  scholarship.'  Sir  Thomas  More  preserves 
the  story— reproduced  also  in  the  old  play.  The  First  Part  of  the 
Contentio7i  of  the  two  Famous  Houses  of  York  and  Lancaster— oi 
how  he  exposed  the  fraud  of  a  begging  impostor  who  pretended  to 
have  recovered  his  sight  through  the  virtue  of  a  saint's  relics  ;  and 

»  Hook,  Lives  of  the  Archhishovs  (Life  of  Bourchier).  1867,  v.  294-m  -.^^.^^^  u:. 

2  He  repels,  e.g.,  Wiclif  s  argument  that  a  priest's  misconduct  sufficed  to  destroy  his 
right  to  his  endowments.    Bevresmr,  Babington's  ed.  as  cited,  u.  4W. 

*  Hook,  as  cited,  v.  309.  ^      „  ,.      •    t  i    o    ««    ncv    qts:.  QfnHhq 

<  Gardiner,  Student's  History,  p.  330.     Cp.  Green,  ch.  vi.  §  i.  2.  pp.  267.  275,  StubDs 

Ca»i»t.  Htsf.iii.  631-33.  ,  _        .^     „      ^t  j^  .    _„„  ,»„  nio  oa 

5  Cp.  Pauli,  Pictures  of  Old  England,  Eng.  tr.  Routledge  s  rep.  pp.  332-36. 


THE  ENGLISH  EVOLUTION 


397 


a  modern  pietistic  historian  decides  that  the  Duke  "  had  long  ceased 
to  believe  in  miracles  and  relics."  *  But  if  this  be  true,  it  is  the 
whole  truth  as  to  Humphrey's  freethinking.  It  was  the  highest 
flight  of  rationalism  permissible  in  his  day  and  sphere. 

On  the  view  that  Humphrey  was  a  freethinker,  the  pious 
PauH,  who  says  (as  cited,  p.  337)  of  the  Renaissance  of  letters, 
"  The  weak  and  evil  side  of  this  revived  form  of  literature  is 
that  its  disciples  should  have  elevated  the  morality,  or  rather 
the  immorality,  of  classical  antiquity  above  Christian  discipline 
and  virtue,"  sees  fit  further  to  pronounce  that  the  bad  account 
of  Gloucester's  condition  of  body  drawn  up  eleven  years  before 
his  death  by  the  physician  Kymer  is  a  proof  of  the  "wild 
unbridled  passions  by  which  the  duke  was  swayed,"  and  throws 
a  lurid  light  upon  "  the  tendencies  and  disposition  of  his  mind." 
Humphrey  lived  till  55,  and  died  suddenly,  under  circumstances 
highly  suggestive  of  poisoning  by  his  enemies.  His  brothers 
Henry  and  John  died  much  younger  than  he  ;  but  in  their  case 
the  rehgious  historian  sees  no  ground  for  imputation.  But  the 
historian's  inference  is  overstrained.  In  reality  Humphrey 
never  indicated  any  lack  of  theological  faith.  The  poet 
Lydgate,  no  unbeliever,  described  him  as  **  Chose  of  God 
to  be  his  owne  knyghte,"  and  so  rigorous  "  that  heretike 
dar  not  comen  in  his  sihte  "  (verses  transcribed  in  Furnivall's 
Early  English  Meals  and  Manners,  1868,  pp.  Ixxxv-vi). 

His  most  comprehensive  biographer  decides  that  he  was 
"  essentially  orthodox,"  despite  his  uncanonical  marriage  with 
his  second  wife  and  his  general  reputation  for  sexual  laxity. 
"  He  was  punctilious  in  the  performance  of  his  religious  duties  " 
and  "a  stern  opponent  of  the  Lollards";  he  "countenanced 
the  extinction  of  heresy  by  being  present  at  the  burning  at 
Smithfield  of  an  old  priest  who  denied  the  vaUdity  of  the 
sacraments  of  the  Church";  and  an  Archbishop  of  Milan 
pronounced  him  to  be  "known  everywhere  as  the  chief  est 
friend  and  preserver  of  Holy  Church"  (K.  H.  Vickers, 
Humphrey,  Duke  of  Gloucester :  A  Biography,  1907,  pp.  223, 
321-23).  Of  such  a  personage  no  exegesis  can  make  a 
rationalist. 

Of  other  traces  of  critical  thinking  in  England  in  that  age  there 
is  little  to  be  said,  so  little  literature  is  there  to  convey  them.  But 
there  are  signs  of  the  influence  of  the  "pagan"  thought  of  the 
Renaissance  in  rehgious  books.  The  old  Bevelation  of  the  Monk  of 
Evesham,  ostensibly  dating  from  1196,  was  first  printed  about  1482,^ 
with  a  "  prologe  "  explaining  that  it  "  was  not  shewed  to  hym  only 
for  hym  butte  also  for  the  confort  and  profetyng  of   all    cristyn 


»  Pauli.  p.  333. 


3  See  Arber's  reprint. 


398 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  RENAISSANCE 


pepulle  that  none  man  shuld  dowte  or  mystruste  of  anothir  life  and 
world  ";  "  and  as  for  the  trowthe  of  this  reuelacyon  no  man  nother 
woman  ought  to  dowte  in  any  wise,"  seeing  it  is  thus  miraculously 
provided  that  "alle  resons  and  mocyons  of  infydelite  the  which 
risith  often  tymes  of  man's  sensualite  shall  utwardly  be  excluded 
and  quenched."  Evidently  the  old  problem  of  immortality  had  been 
agitated. 

§  4.  The  Remaifiing  European  Coicntries 

Not  till  late  in  the  fifteenth  century  is  the  intellectual  side  of  the 
Renaissance  influence  to  be  seen  bearing  fruit  in  Germany,  of  which 
the  turbulent  and  semi-barbaric  life  in  the  medieval  period  was  little 
favourable  to  mental  progress.  Of  political  hostility  to  the  Church 
there  was  indeed  an  abundance,  long  before  Luther ;  ^  but  amid  the 
many  traces  of  "irrehgion"  there  is  practically  none  of  rational 
freethinking.  What  reasoned  thought  there  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
turned  to  Christian  mysticism  of  a  pantheistic  cast,  as  in  the 
teaching  of  Tauler  and  Eckhart.'* 

Another  and  a  deeper  current  of  thought  is  seen  in  the 
remarkable  philosophic  work  of  Bishop  Nicolaus  of  Kues  or  Cusa 
(1401-1464),  who,  professedly  by  an  independent  movement  of 
reflection,  but  really  as  a  result  of  study  of  Greek  philosophy, 
reached  a  larger  pantheism  than  had  been  formulated  by  any 
Churchman  since  the  time  of  John  the  Scot.^  There  is  little  or 
no  trace,  however,  of  any  influence  attained  by  his  teaching,  which 
indeed  could  appeal  only  to  a  very  few  minds  of  that  day.  Less 
remarkable  than  the  metaphysic  of  Nicolaus,  though  also  note- 
worthy in  its  way,  is  his  Dialogue  "  On  Peace,  or  Concordance  of 
Faith,"  in  which,  somewhat  in  the  spirit  of  Boccaccio's  tale  of  the 
Three  Rings,  he  aims  at  a  reconciliation  of  all  religions,  albeit  by 
way  of  proving  the  Christian  creed  to  be  the  true  one. 

In  the  Netherlands  and  other  parts  of  western  Europe  the 
popular  anti-ecclesiastical  heresy  of  the  thirteenth  century  spread 
in  various  degrees ;  but  there  is  only  exceptional  trace  of  literate 
or  properly  rationalistic  freethinking.  Among  the  most  notable 
developments  was  the  movement  in  Holland  early  in  the  fourteenth 
century,  which  compares  closely  with  that  of  the  higher  Paulicians 
and  mystics  of  the  two  previous  centuries,  its  chief  traits  being 

1  Cp.  Souchay,  Gesch.  dea  deutscheii  Mmarchie,  1861-62.  iii.  230-31. 

2  On  this  cp.  Souchay,  pp.  234-39. 

8  See  a  good  synopsis  in  PUnjer's  History  of  the  Christian  Philosophy  of  Religion, 
Eng.  tr.  pp.  68-89 :  and  another  in  Moritz  Carriere's  Die  vhilosophische  Weltanschauuno 
der  B^omuitumszeit,  1847.  pp.  16-25.  which,  however,  is  open  to  PUnjer's  criticism  that  it 
IS  coloured  by  modern  Hegelianism. 


OTHER  EUROPEAN  COUNTRIES 


399 


It 


a  general  pantheism,  a  denial  of  the  efficacy  of  the  sacrament  of 
the  altar,  an  insistence  that  all  men  are  sons  of  God,  and  a  general 
declaration  for  "natural  light."*  But  this  did  not  progressively 
develop.  Lack  of  leisured  culture  in  the  Low  Countries,  and  the 
terrorism  of  the  Inquisition,  would  sufficiently  account  for  the 
absence  of  avowed  unbelief,  though  everywhere,  probably,  some 
was  set  up  by  the  contact  of  travellers  with  the  culture  of  Italy. 
It  is  fairly  to  be  inferred  that  in  a  number  of  cases  the  murderous 
crusade  against  witchcraft  which  was  carried  on  in  the  fifteenth 
century  served  as  a  means  of  suppressing  heresy,  rationalistic  or 
other.  At  Arras,  for  instance,  in  1460,  the  execution  of  a  number 
of  leading  citizens  on  a  charge  of  sorcery  seems  to  have  been  a  blow 
at  free  discussion  in  the  "chambers  of  rhetoric."^  And  that 
rationalism,  despite  such  frightful  catastrophes,  obscurely  persisted, 
is  to  be  gathered  from  the  long  vogue  of  the  work  of  the  Spanish 
physician  Raymund  of  Sebonde,^  who,  having  taught  philosophy  at 
Toulouse,  undertook  (about  1435)  to  establish  Christianity  on  a 
rational  foundation^  in  his  Theologia  Naturalis,  made  famous  later 
by  Montaigne. 

To  what  length  the  suppressed  rationalism  of  the  age  could  on 
occasion  go  is  dramatically  revealed  in  the  case  of  Hermann  van 
Ryswyck,  a  Dutch  priest,  burned  for  heresy  at  the  Hague  in  1512. 
He  was  not  only  a  priest  in  holy  orders,  but  one  of  the  order  of 
Inquisitors  ;  and  he  put  forth  the  most  impassioned  denial  and 
defiance  of  the  Christian  creed  of  which  there  is  any  record  down 
to  modern  times.  Tried  before  the  inquisitors  in  1502,  he  declared 
"with  his  own  mouth  and  with  sane  mind"  that  the  world  is 
eternal,  and  was  not  created  as  was  alleged  by  "  the  fool  Moses  " 
that  there  is  no  hell,  and  no  future  life ;  that  Christ,  whose  whole 
career  was  flatly  contrary  to  human  welfare  and  reason,  was  not 
the  son  of  Omnipotent  God,  but  a  fool,  a  dreamer,  and  a  seducer  of 
ignorant  men,  of  whom  untold  numbers  had  been  slain  on  account 
of  him  and  his  absurd  evangel;  that  Moses  had  not  physically 
received  the  law  from  God ;  and  that  "  our"  faith  was  shown  to  be 
fabulous  by  its  fatuous  Scripture,  fictitious  Bible,  and  crazy  Gospel. 
And  to  this  exasperated  testimony  he  added:  "  I  was  born  a  Chris- 
tian, but  am  no  longer  one  :  they  are  the  chief  fools."     Sentenced  in 

1  Dr.  Paul  Fr6d6ricq.  Geschiedenis  der  Inquisitie  in  de  Nederlanden,  1025-1520,  Gent, 
1892-1897,  ii.  4-9. 

2  Michelet.  Hist,  de  France,  vii— 6d.  1857,  pp.  125. 172.  .    ^^ 

8  This  name  has  many  forms ;  and  it  is  contended  that  Sabieude  is  the  correct  one. 
See  Owen,  Eoeiiings  with  the  Skeptics,  1881,  ii,  423.  ,..,,* 

*  Cp.  Hallam,  Introd.  to  Lit.  of  Europe,  ed.  1872,  i,  142-44,  and  the  analysis  in  Prof. 
Dowden'B  Montaigne,  1905,  p.  127  sq. 


400 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  KENAISSx\NCE 


1502  to  perpetual  imprisonment,  he  was  again  brought  forward  ten 
years  later,  and,  being  found  unbroken  by  that  long  durance,  was 
as  an  unrepentant  heretic  sentenced  to  be  burned  on  December  14, 
1512,  the  doom  being  carried  out  on  the  same  day.  The  source  of 
his  conviction  can  be  gathered  from  his  declaration  that  "  the  most 
learned  Aristotle  and  his  commentator  Averroes  were  nearest  the 
truth";  but  his  wild  sincerity  and  unyielding  courage  were  all  his 
own.  "  Nimis  infelix  quidam  "  is  the  estimate  of  an  inquisitor  of 
that  day.'  Not  so,  unless  they  are  most  unhappy  who  die  in  battle, 
fighting  for  the  truth  they  prize.  But  it  has  always  been  the 
Christian  way  to  contemn  all  save  Christian  martyrs. 

There  is  a  tolerably  full  account  of  Kyswyck's  case  in  a 
nearly  contemporary  document,  which  evidently  copies  the 
official  record.  Kyswyck  is  described  as  **  sacre  theologie 
professorem  ordinis  predicatorum  et  inquisitorum " ;  and  his 
declaration  runs  :  "  Quod  mundum  fuit  ab  eterna  et  non 
incipit    per   creationem    fabricatum    a    stulto    Mose,    ut   dicit 

BibHa    indistincta Nee    est    infernus,   ut    nostri   estimant. 

Item    post    banc   vitam    nulla   erit   vita   particularis Item 

doctissimus  Aristoteles  et  ejus  commentator  Auerrois  fuerunt 
veritati  propinquissimi.     Item  Christum  fuit  stultus  et  simplex 

fantasticus   et   seductor    simpHcium    hominum Quot   enim 

homines  interfecti  sunt  propter  ipsum  et  suum  Euangelium 
fatuum  !  Item  quod  omnia  que  Christus  gessit,  humano  generi 
et  rationi  recte  sunt  contraria.  Item  Christum  filium  Dei 
omnipotentem  aperte  nego.  Et  Mosen  legem  a  Deo  visibiliter 
et  facialiter  suscepisse  recuso.  Item  fides  nostra  fabulosa  est, 
ut  probat  nostra  fatua  Scriptura  et  ficta  BibUa  et  Euangelium 

delirum Omnes  istos  articulos  et  consimilos  confessus  est 

proprio   ore   et   sana   mente   coram   inquisitore   et  notario  et 
testibus,  addens:  Ego   Christianus   natus,    sed   iam   non   sum 
Christianus,  quoniam   illi   stultissimi    sunt."     Paul  Fr6d6ricq, 
Corpus  documentoruvi  Inquisitionis  haereticae  pravitatis  Neer- 
landicae,  Gent,  1889,  i,  494,  501-502. 
Thus  the  Kenaissance  passed  on  to  the  age  of  the  Reformation 
the  seeds  of  a  rationalism  which  struck  far  deeper  than  the  doctrine 
of  Luther,  but  at  the  same  time  left  a  social  soil  in  which  such 
seeds  could  ill  grow.     Its  own  defeat,  social  and  intellectual,  may 
be  best  realized  in  terms  of  its  failure  to  reach  either  political  or 
physical  science.     Lack  of  the  former  meant  political  retrogression 
and  bondage ;  and  lack  of  the  latter  a  renewed  dominion  of  super- 
stition  and    Bibliolatry— two    sets  of    conditions  of  which   each 
facilitated  the  other. 

i  Van  Hoogstratflii,  in  Fr^^ricf.  M  cited  below. 


OTHER  EUROPEAN  COUNTRIES 


401 


Nothing  is  more  significant  of  the  intellectual  climate  of  the 
Renaissance  than  the  persistence  at  all  its  stages  of  the  belief  in 
astrology,  of  which  we  find  some  dregs  even  in  Bacon.  That 
pseudo-science  indeed  stands,  after  all,  for  the  spirit  of  science,  and 
is  not  to  be  diagnosed  as  mere  superstition ;  being  really  an  a  priori 
fallacy  fallen  into  in  the  deliberate  search  for  some  principle  of 
coordination  in  human  affairs.  Though  adhered  to  by  many  pro- 
minent Catholics,  including  Charles  V,  and  by  many  Protestants, 
including  Melanchthon,  it  is  logically  anti-Christian,  inasmuch  as 
it  presupposes  in  the  moral  world  a  reign  of  natural  law,  independent 
of  the  will  or  caprice  of  any  personal  power.  Herein  it  differs 
deeply  from  magic ;  ^  though  in  the  Renaissance  the  return  to  the 
lore  of  antiquity  often  involved  an  indiscriminate  acceptance  and 
blending  of  both  sorts  of  occult  pagan  lore.^  Magic  subordinates 
Nature  to  Will :  astrology,  as  apart  from  angelology,  subordinates 
Will  to  Cosmic  Law.  For  many  perplexed  and  thoughtful  men, 
accordingly,  it  was  a  substitute,  more  or  less  satisfying,  for  the 
theory,  grown  to  them  untenable,  of  a  moral  government  of  the 
universe.  It  was  in  fact  a  primary  form  of  sociology  proper,  as  it 
had  been  the  primary  form  of  astronomy ;  to  which  latter  science, 
even  in  the  Renaissance,  it  was  still  for  many  the  introduction. 

It  flourished,  above  all  things,  on  the  insecurity  inseparable 
from  the  turbulent  Italian  life  of  the  Renaissance,  even  as  it  had 
flourished  on  the  appalling  vicissitude  of  the  drama  of  imperial 
Rome;  and  it  is  conceivable  that  the  inchnation  to  true  science 
which  is  seen  in  such  men  as  Galileo,  after  the  period  of  Italian 
independence,  was  nourished  by  the  greater  stability  attained  for 
a  time  under  absolutist  rule.  And  though  Protestantism,  on  the 
other  hand,  adhered  in  the  main  unreasoningly  to  the  theory  of 
a  moral  control,  that  dogma  at  least  served  to  countervail  the 
dominion  of  astrology,  which  was  only  a  dogmatism  with  a 
difference,  and  as  such  inevitably  hindered  true  science.^  On  the 
whole,  Protestantism  tended  to  make  more  effectual  that  veto  on 
pagan  occultism  which  had  been  ineffectually  passed  from  time  to 
time  by  the  Catholic  Church ;  albeit  the  motive  was  stress  of 
Christian  superstition,  and  the  veto  was  aimed  almost  as  readily  at 

,  1  Dr.  Frazer's  assumption  (Golden  Bough,  3rd  ed.  pt.  i,  i,  224)  that  magic  assumes  an 
invariable  order  of  nature,  is  unsubstantiated  even  by  bis  vast  anthropological  erudition. 
Magic  varies  arbitrarily,  and  the  idea  of  a  fixed  "order"  does  not  belong  to  the  magician's 
plane  of  thought. 

I  ^l&ury.  La  Magieet  I Astrologie,4eed.  pp.  2U-ie.  ^        ^.  .      „  ,„     . 

*    Judicial  astrology which  supplanted  and  degraded  the  art  of  medicine    (Frof. 

Clifford  Allbutt.  Harveian  Oration  on  Science  and  Medieval  Thought,  1901,  App.  p.  113). 
There  is  a  startling  survival  of  it  in  the  physiology  of  Harvey.    Id.  p.  45. 

2d 


}    !?« 


402 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  RENAISSANCE 


inductive  and  true  science  as  at  the  deductive  and  false.  We  shall 
find  the  craze  of  vt^itchcraft,  in  turn,  dominating  Protestant  countries 
at  a  time  when  freethinkers  and  liberal  Catholics  elsewhere  were 
setting  it  at  naught. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that,  broadly  speaHng,  the  new  interest 
in  Scripture  study  and  ecclesiastical  history  told  against  the  free 
play  of  thought  on  scientific  and  scholarly  problems  ;  we  shall  find 
Bacon  realizing  the  fact  a  hundred  years  after  Luther's  start ;  and 
the  influence  has  operated  down  to  our  own  day.  In  this  resistance 
Catholics  played  their  part.  The  famous  Cornelius  Agrippa*  (1486- 
1535)  never  ceased  to  profess  himself  a  Catholic,  and  had  small 
sympathy  with  the  Reformers,  though  always  at  odds  with  the 
monks ;  and  his  long  popular  treatise  De  iticertitudine  et  vanitatc 
scientiarum  et  artium,  atqiie  excellentia  verbi  Dei  declamatio  (1531) 
is  a  mere  polemic  for  scripturalism  against  alike  false  science  and 
true,  monkish  superstition  and  reason.  Vilified  as  a  magician  by 
the  monks,  and  as  an  atheist  and  a  scoffer  by  angry  humanists,^  he 
did  but  set  error  against  error,  being  himself  a  believer  in  witchcraft, 
a  hater  of  anatomy,  and  as  confident  in  his  contempt  of  astronomy 
as  of  astrology.  And  his  was  a  common  frame  of  mind  for 
centuries. 

Still,  the  new  order  contained  certain  elements  of  help  for  a  new 
life,  as  against  its  own  inclement  principles  of  authority  and  dogma ; 
and  the  political  heterogeneity  of  Europe,  seconded  by  economic 
pressures  and  by  new  geographic  discovery,  sufficed  further  to 
prevent  any  far-reaching  organization  of  tyranny.  Under  these 
conditions,  new  knowledge  could  incubate  new  criticism.  But  it 
would  be  an  error-breeding  oversight  to  forget  that  in  the  many- 
coloured  world  before  the  Reformation  there  was  not  only  a  certain 
artistic  and  imaginative  sunlight  which  the  Reformation  long 
darkened,  but  even,  athwart  the  mortal  rigours  of  papal  rule, 
a  certain  fitful  play  of  intellectual  insight  to  which  the  peoples  of 
the  Reformation  became  for  a  time  estranged. 


*  Heinrich  Cornelius  Agrippa  von  Nettesheim. 


■■'  Above,  p.  385. 


Chaptek  XI 
THE  REFORMATION,  POLITICALLY  CONSIDERED 

§  1.  The  German  Cojiditmis 

In  a  vague  and  general  sense  the  ecclesiastical  revolution  known  as 
the  Reformation  was  a  phenomenon  of  freethought.  To  be  so 
understood,  indeed,  it  must  be  regarded  in  contrast  to  the  dominion 
of  the  Catholic  Church,  not  to  the  movement  which  we  call  the 
Renaissance.  That  movement  it  was  that  made  the  Reformation 
possible ;  and  if  we  have  regard  to  the  reign  of  Bibliolatry  which 
Protestantism  set  up,  we  seem  to  be  contemplating  rather  a  super- 
imposing of  Semitic  darkness  upon  Hellenic  light  than  an  intel- 
lectual emancipation.  Emancipation  of  another  kind  the  Reforma- 
tion doubtless  brought  about.  In  particular  it  involved,  to  an 
extent  not  generally  realized,  a  secularization  of  life,  through  the 
sheer  curtailment,  in  most  Protestant  countries,  of  the  personnel 
and  apparatus  of  clericalism,  and  the  new  disrepute  into  which,  for 
a  time,  these  fell.  Alike  in  Germany  and  in  England  there  was 
a  breaking- up  of  habits  of  reverence  and  of  self -prostration  before 
creed  and  dogma  and  ritual.  But  this  liberation  was  rather  social 
than  intellectual,  and  the  product  was  rather  licence  and  irreverence 
than  ordered  freethought.  On  the  other  hand,  when  the  first 
unsettlement  was  over,  the  new  growth  of  Bibliolatry  tended  rather 
to  deepen  the  religious  way  of  feeling  and  make  more  definite  the 
religious  attitude.  Tolerance  did  not  emerge  until  after  a  whole 
era  of  embittered  strife.  The  Reformation,  in  fact,  was  much  more 
akin  to  a  revolt  against  a  hereditary  king  than  to  the  process  of 
self-examination  and  logical  scrutiny  by  which  men  pass  from  belief 
to  disbelief  in  a  theory  of  things,  a  dogma,  or  a  document. 

The  beginning  of  such  a  process  had  indeed  taken  place  in 
Germany  before  Luther,  insofar  as  the  New  Learning  represented 
by  such  humanists  as  Erasmus,  such  scholars  as  Reuchlin,^  and 
such  satirists  as  Ulrich  von  Hutten,  set  up  a  current  of  educated 
hostility  to  the  ignorance  and  the  grosser   superstitions   of   the 

*  Who.  however,  was  no  rationalist,  but  an  orientalizing  mystic.    Cp.  Carriere,  Dte 
Vh%lo8.  Weltanschauuno  der  Beformationszeit,  1846,  pp.  36-38. 

403 


404     THE  EEFOEMATION,  POLITICALLY  CONSIDEBED 

churchmen.  For  Germany,  as  for  England,  this  movement  was 
a  contagion  from  the  new  scholarship  and  Platonism  of  Italy  ; '  and 
the  better  minds  in  the  four  universities  founded  in  the  pre-Lutheran 
generation  (Tiibingen,  1477;  Mayence.  1482;  Frankfort-on-the- 
Oder,  1506 ;  Wittemberg,  1502)  necessarily  owed  much  to  Itahan 
impulses,  which  they  carried  on,  though  the  universities  as  a  whole 
were  bitterly  hostile  to  the  new  learning.'  The  Dutch  freethinker 
Kyswyck,  as  we  saw,  was  fundamentally  an  Averroist ;  and  Italy 
was  the  stronghold  of  Averroism,  of  which  the  monistic  bias  pro- 
bably  fostered  the  Unitarianism  of  the  sixteenth  century.  But  it 
was  not  this  literary  and  scholarly  movement  that  effected  the 
Reformation  so-called,  which  was  rather  an  economic  and  political 
than  a  mental  revolution. 

The  persistence  of  Protestant  writers  in  discussing  the  early 
history  of  the  Reformation  without  a  glance  at  the  economic 
causation  is  one  of  the  great  hindrances  to  historic  science. 
From  such  popular  works  as  those  of  D'Aubign6  and  Hausser 
it  is  practically  impossible  to  learn  what  socially  took  place  in 
Germany  ;  and  the  general  Protestant  reader  can  learn  it  only 
—and  imperfectly— from  the  works  on  the  Catholic  side,  as 
Audin's  Histoire  de  la  vie  dc  Luther  (Eng.  tr.  1853)  and 
Dollinger's  Die  Befoiination,  and  the  more  scientific  Protestant 
studies,  such  as  those  of  Ranke  and  Rezold  (even  there  not  at 
any  great  length),  to  neither  of  which  classes  of  history  will 
he  resort.  In  England  the  facts  are  partially  reahzed,  in  the 
light  of  an  ecclesiastical  predilection,  through  High  Church 
histories  such  as  that  of  Blunt,  which  proceed  upon  a  Catholic 
leaning.  Cobbett's  intemperate  exposure  of  the  economic 
causation  has  found  an  audience  chiefly  among  Cathohcs. 

Bezold  admits  that  "  with  perfect  justice  have  recent  his- 
torians commented  on  the  former  underrating  of  an  economic 
force  which  certainly  played  its  part  in  the  spread  and  estab- 
lishment of  the  Reformation  "  {Gcsch.  der  deutschen  Refonm- 
tion,  1890.  p.  563).  The  broad  fact  is  that  in  not  a  single 
country  could  the  Reformation  have  been  accomplished  without 
enlisting  the  powerful  classes  or  corporations,  or  alternatively 
the  de  facto  governments,  by  proffering  the  plunder  of  tlic 
Church.  Only  in  a  few  Swiss  cantons,  and  in  Holland,  does 
the  confiscation  seem  to  have  been  made  to  the  common  good 
(cp.  the  present  writer's   Evolution  of  States,  pp.  311,  343j. 

1  Cp  Ranke,  Hist,  of  the  Bef.  in  Germany,  bk.  li.  cb.  i  (Eng.  tr.  Ro»"e^f  ^. Ji;;?^,  ®je 
1906  p  iS)  The  point  is  fairly  put  by  Audin  in  the  introduction  to  ^^^^^'^^^''J.J^l 
iid).?r  Compare  Green  :  "  The  awakening  of  a  rational  Christianity,  ^^^ether  in  Engla"';! 
or  in  the  "iSnic  world  at  large,  begins  with  the  Florentine  studies  of  Sir  John  Colet 
Short  Hist.  ch.  vi,  §  iv).  Colet.  however,  was  strictly  orthodox.  Ulrich  von  Hutwn 
Bpentfiveof  the  formative  years  of  his  life  m  Italy.  ,qco  „  nm 

*  Hamilton,  Diacussims  on  Philosophy  and  Literature,  1853.  p.  Mb. 


THE  GERMAN  CONDITIONS 


405 


But  even  in  Holland  needy  nobles  had  finally  turned  Pro- 
testant in  the  hope  of  getting  Church  lands.  (See  Motley, 
Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  ed.  1863,  p.  131.)  Elsewhere 
appropriation  of  Church  lands  by  princes  and  nobles  was  the 
general  rule. 

Even  as  to  Germany,  it  is  impossible  to  accept  Michelet's 
indulgent  statement  that  most  of  the  confiscated  Church  pro- 
perty "returned  to  its  true  destination,  to  the  schools,  the 
hospitals,  the  communes  ;  to  its  true  proprietors,  the  aged,  the 
child,  the  toiling  family"  {Hist,  de  France,  x,  333;  see  the 
same  assertion  in  Henderson,  Short  History  of  Germany,  1902, 
i,  344).  Plans  to  that  effect  were  drawn  up  ;  but,  as  the  princes 
were  left  to  carry  out  the  arrangement,  they  took  the  lion's 
share.  Ranke  {Hist,  of  the  Ref.  bk.  iv,  ch.  v ;  Eng.  tr.  1-vol. 
ed.  1905,  pp.  466-67)  admits  much  grabbing  of  Church  lands  as 
early  as  1526  ;  merely  contending,  with  Luther,  that  papist 
nobles  had  begun  the  spoliation.  (Cp.  Bezold,  pp.  564-65  ; 
Menzel,  Gesch.  der  Deutschen,  cap.  393.)  In  Saxony,  when 
monks  broke  away  from  their  monasteries,  the  nobles  at  once 
appropriated  the  lands  and  buildings  (Ranke,  p.  467).  Luther 
made  a  warm  appeal  to  the  Elector  against  the  nobles  in 
general  (Ranke,  p.  467  ;  Luther's  letter,  Nov.  22,  1526,  in 
Werke,  ed.  De  Wette,  iii,  137;  letter  to  Spalatin,  Jan.  1, 
1527,  id.  p.  147;  also  p.  153).  See  too  his  indignant  protests 
against  the  rapine  of  the  princes  and  nobles  and  the  starvation 
of  the  ministers  in  the  Table  Talk,  chs.  22,  60.  Even  Philip  of 
Hesse  did  not  adhere  to  his  early  and  disinterested  plans  of 
appropriation  (Ranke.  pp.  468-69,  711-12).  All  that  Ranke 
can  claim  is  that  ''some  great  institutions  were  really  founded  " 
— to  wit,  two  homes  for  "  young  ladies  of  noble  birth,"  four 
hospitals,  and  the  theological  school  of  Marburg.  And  this  was 
in  the  most  hopeful  region. 

There  is  positive  evidence,  further,  that  not  only  ecclesiastical 
but  purely  charitable  foundations  were  plundered  by  the  Pro- 
testants (Witzel,  cited  by  Dollinger,  Die  Refornuition,  ihre 
innere  Entwickelung  und  ihre  Wirkungen,  1846,  i,  46,  47,  51, 
62) ;  and,  as  school  foundations  were  confiscated  equally  with 
ecclesiastical  in  England,  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  the  state- 
ment. Practically  the  same  process  took  place  in  Scotland, 
where  the  share  of  Church  property  proposed  to  be  allotted  to 
the  Protestant  ministers  was  never  given,  and  their  protests 
were  treated  with  contempt  (Burton,  History  of  Scotland,  iv, 
37-41).  Knox's  comments  were  similar  to  Luther's  {Works, 
Laing's  ed.  ii,  310-12). 

Dr.  Gardiner,  a  fairly  impartial  historian,  sums  up  that, 
after  the  German  settlement  of  1552,  "The  princes  claimed 
the  right  of  continuing  to  secularize  Church  lands  within  their 
territories  as  inseparable  from  their  general  right  of  providing 


406    THE  REFORMATION,  POLITICALLY  CONSIDERED 


ITALY.  SPAIN.  AND  THE  NETHERLANDS 


407 


for  the  religion  of  their  subjects About  a  hundred  monasteries 

are  said  to  have  fallen  victims  in  the  Palatinate  alone  ;  and  an 
almost  equal  number,  the  gleanings  of  a  richer  harvest  which 
had  been  reaped  before  the  Convention  of  Passau,  were  taken 
possession  of  in  Northern  Germany  "  (The  Thirty  Years'  War, 
8th  ed.  p.  11). 

The  credit  of  bringing  the  various  forces  to  a  head,  doubtless, 
remains  with  Luther,  though  ground  was  further  prepared  by  literary 
predecessors  such  as  John  of  Wesel  and  John  Wessel,  Erasmus, 
Reuchlin,  and  Ulrich  von  Hutten.  But  even  the  signal  courage  of 
Luther  could  not  have  availed  to  fire  an  effectual  train  of  action 
unless  a  certain  number  of  nobles  had  been  ready  to  support  him 
for  economic  reasons.  Even  the  shameless  sale  of  indulgences  by 
Tetzel  was  resented  most  keenly  on  the  score  that  it  was  draining 
Germany  of  money  ;  *  and  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  Luther 
began  his  battle  not  as  a  heretic  but  as  an  orthodox  Catholic 
Reformer,  desiring  to  propitiate  and  not  to  defy  the  papacy. 
Economic  forces  were  the  determinants.  This  becomes  the  more 
clear  when  we  note  that  the  Reformation  was  only  the  culmination 
or  explosion  of  certain  intellectual,  social,  and  political  forces  seen 
at  work  throughout  Christendom  for  centuries  before.  In  point  of 
mere  doctrine,  the  Protestants  of  the  sixteenth  century  had  been 
preceded  and  even  distanced  by  heretics  of  the  eleventh,  and  by 
teachers  of  the  ninth.  The  absurdity  of  relic-worship,  the  folly  of 
pilgrimages  and  fastings,  the  falsehood  of  the  doctrine  of  transub- 
stantiation,  the  heresy  of  prayers  to  the  saints,  the  unscripturalness 
of  the  hierarchy — these  and  a  dozen  other  points  of  protest  had 
been  raised  by  Paulicians,  by  Paterini,  by  Beghards,  by  Apostolicals, 
by  Lollards,  long  before  the  time  of  Luther.  As  regards  his  nearer 
predecessors,  indeed,  this  is  now  a  matter  of  accepted  Protestant 
history.*  What  is  not  properly  realized  is  that  the  conditions  which 
wrought  political  success  where  before  there  had  been  political 
failure  were  special  political  conditions;  and  that  to  these,  and  not 
to  supposed  differences  in  national  character,  is  due  the  geographical 
course  of  the  Reformation. 


»  As  to  the  general  resentment  of  the  money  drain  cp.  Strauss.  Ge»prdche  van  Ulrich 
von  Hutten.  1860.  Vorrede.  p.  xiv.  and  the  dialogues,  pp.  159.  363.  Cp.  Ranke.  bk.  ii.  ch.  i 
(Eng.  tr.  as  cited,  pp.  123-26). 

2  See  Ullmann,  Beformera  before  the  Reformation,  passim.  Even  the  Peasants'  Rising 
was  adumbrated  in  the  movement  of  Hans  Boheim  of  Nikleshausen  (fl.  1476).  whose 
doctrine  was  both  democratic  and  anti-clerical.  (Work cited, ii.  380-81 ;  cp.  Bezold,  Geach. 
der  deutschen  Reform.  1890.  ch.  vli.) 


§  2.  The  Problem  in  Italy,  Spain,  and  the  Netherlands 

We  have  seen  that  the  spirit  of  reform  was  strong  in  Italy  three 
hundred  years  before  Luther  ;  and  that  some  of  the  strongest  move- 
ments within  the  Church  were  strictly  reformatory,  and  originally  dis- 
interested in  a  high  degree.     In  less  religious  forms  the  same  spirit 
abounded  throughout  the  Renaissance ;  and  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century    Savonarola  was   preaching   reform   religiously  enough   at 
Florence.     His  death,  however,  was  substantially  due  to  the  percep- 
tion that  ecclesiastical  reform,  as  conducted  by  him,  was  a  socio- 
political process,^  whence  the  reformer  was  a  socio-political  disturber. 
Intellectually  he  was  no  innovator ;  on  the  contrary,  he  was  a  hater 
of  literary  enlightenment,  and  he  was  as  ready  to  burn  astrologers 
as  were  his  enemies  to  burn  him.'^    His  claim,  in  his  Triumph  of  the 
Cross,  to  combat  unbelievers  by  means  of  sheer  natural  reason, 
indicates   only  his  inability  to  realize   any  rationalist  position — 
a  failure  to  be  expected  in  his  age,  when  rationalism  was  denied 
argumentative    utterance,  and  when    the    problems   of    Christian 
evidences  were  only  being  broached.     The  very  form  of  the  book  is 
declamatory  rather  than  ratiocinative,  and  every  question  raised  is 
begged.''    That  he  failed  in  his  crusade  of  Church  reform,  and  that 
Luther  succeeded  in  his,  was  due  to  no  difference  between  Italian 
and  German  character,  but  to  the  vast  difference  in  the  political 
potentiahties  of  the  two  cases.     The  fall  of  public  liberty  in  Florence, 
which  must  have  been  preceded  as  it  was  accompanied  by  a  relative 
decline  in  popular  culture,*  and  which  led  to  the  failure  of  Savonarola, 
may  be  in  a  sense  attributed  to  Italian  character ;  but  that  char- 
acter was  itself  the  product  of  peculiar  social  and  political  conditions, 
and  was  not  inferior  to  that  of  any  northern  population  .'^ 

The  Savonarolan  movement  had  all  the  main  features  of  the 
Puritanism  of  the  northern  "Reform."  Savonarola  sent 
organized  bodies  of  boys,  latterly  accompanied  by  bodies  of 
adults,  to  force  their  way  into  private  houses  and  confiscate 
things  thought  suitable  for  the  reformatory  bonfire.  Burck- 
hardt,  p.  477 ;  Perrons,  Jerome  Savonarole,  2e  6dit.  pp.  140-41. 
The  things  burned  included  pictures  and  busts  of  inestimable 
artistic  value,  and  manuscripts  of  exquisite  beauty.  Perrons, 
p.  229.     Compare  Villari,  as  cited ;  George  Eliot's  Bonwla,  bk.  iii, 

»  See  Guicciardini's  analysis  of  the  parties,  cited  by  E.  Armstrong  in  the  "Cambridge 
Modern  History,"  vol.  i,  The  Renaissance,  p.  170. 

iB\xrc]iha.rdt,  Civilizatioti  of  the  Renaissance  in  Italy, 'EIlg.ir.vp'^^o-rl.  „   ^    . 

8  See  the  sympathetic  analysis  of  the  book  by  Villari.  Life  of  Savonarola,  Eng.  tr. 

pp.  582-94,  where  it  is  much  overrated.  ,    .    ^,     -       *.       a.-, 4..,„..  ^„ 

«  As  to  the  education  of  the  Florentine  common  people  in  the  fourteenth  century  cp. 

Burckhardt.  pp.  203-204 ;  Symonds.  Age  of  the  Despots,  p.  202. 
0  Cp.  Armstrong,  as  cited,  pp.  150-51. 


408    THE  REFORMATION,  POLITICALLY  CONSIDERED 

ch.  xlix ;  and  Merejkowski's  The  Forerunner  (Eng.  tr.),  bk.  vii. 
Previous  reformers  had  set  up  **  bonfires  of  false  hair  and  books 
against  the  faith  "  (Armstrong,  as  cited,  p.  167) ;  and  Savona- 
rola's bands  of  urchins  were  developments  from  previous 
organizations,  bent  chiefly  on  blackmail.  {Id)  But  he  carried 
the  tyranny  furthest,  and  actually  proposed  to  put  obstinate 
gamblers  to  the  torture.  Perrens,  p.  132.  Villari  in  his  senti- 
mental commemoration  lecture  on  Savonarola  {Studies  Historical 
a7id  Critical,  Eng.  tr.  1907)  ignores  these  facts. 

When,  a  generation  later,  the  propaganda  of  the  Lutheran 
movement  reached  Italy,  it  was  more  eagerly  welcomed  than  in  any 
of  the  Teutonic  countries  outside  of  the  first  Lutheran  circle,  though 
a  vigilant  system  was  at  once  set  on  foot  for  the  destruction  of  the 
imported  books.*  It  had  made  much  headway  at  Milan  and  Florence 
in  1525  ;^  and  we  have  the  testimony  of  Pope  Clement  VII  himself 
that  before  1530  the  Lutheran  heresy  was  widely  spread  not  only 
among  the  laity  but  among  priests  and  friars,  both  mendicant  and 
non-mendicant,  many  of  whom  propagated  it  by  their  sermons.^ 
The  ruffianism  and  buffoonery  of  the  German  Lutheran  soldiers  in 
the  army  of  Charles  V  at  the  sack  of  Rome  in  1529  was  hardly 
hkely  to  win  adherents  to  their  sect  ;*  yet  the  number  increased  all 
over  Italy.  In  1541-45  they  were  numerous  and  audacious  at 
Bologna,*  where  in  1537  a  commission  of  cardinals  and  prelates, 
appointed  by  Pope  Paul  III,  had  reported  strongly  on  the  need  for 
reformation  in  the  Church.  In  1542  they  were  so  strong  at  Venice 
as  to  contemplate  holding  public  assemblies  ;  in  the  neighbouring 
towns  of  Vicentino,  Vicenza,  and  Trevisano  they  seem  to  have  been 
still  more  numerous;^  and  Cardinal  Caraffa  reported  to  the  Pope 
that  all  Italy  was  infected  with  the  heresy.' 

Now  began  the  check.  Among  the  Protestants  themselves 
there  had  gone  on  the  inevitable  strifes  over  the  questions  of  the 
Trinity  and  the  Eucharist ;  the  more  rational  views  of  Zwingli 
and  Servetus  were  in  notable  favour  ;^  and  the  Catholic  reaction, 

1  McCrie.  Reformation  in  Italy,  ed.  1856.  pp.  2a-30.  41.  «  Id.  pp.  54.  68. 

3  Id.  p.  45.  citing  Reynald's  Annates,  ad.  ann.  1530 ;  Trechsel,  Lelio  Sozzini  und  die 
Anti-trinitarier  seiner  Zeit,  1844.  pp.  19-35. 

*  McCrie  reasons  otherwise,  from  the  fact  that  the  sack  of  Rome  was  by  many  Cathohcs 
regarded  as  a  divine  judgment  on  the  papacy;  but  he  omits  to  mention  the  pestilence 
which  followed  and  destroyed  the  bulk  of  the  conquering  army  (Menzel,  Gesch.  der 
Deutschen,  Cap.  390). 

5  McCrie.  pp.  .5&-60.  «  Id.  p.  66.  7  Id.  pp.  113,  115. 

8  Id.  pp.  89.  98,  215.  McCrie  thinks  it  useful  to  suggest  (p.  95)  that  anti-trinitarianism 
seems  to  have  begun  at  Siena.  "  whose  inhabitants  were  proverbial  among  their  country- 
men for  levity  and  inconstancy  of  mind  "—citing  Dante,  Inferno,  canto  xxix.  121-23.  Thus 
does  theology  illumine  sociology.  In  a  note  on  the  same  page  the  historian  cites  the 
testimony  of  Melanchthon  {Epist.  coll.  a52.  941)  as  to  the  commonness  of  "Platonic  and 
skeptical  theories"  among  his  Italian  correspondents  in  general ;  and  quotes  further  the 
words  of  Calvin,  who  for  once  rises  above  invective  to  explain  as  to  heresy  {Opera,  viii. 
510)  that "  In  Italis,  propter  rarum  acumen,  magis  eminet."  The  historian  omits,  further, 
to  trace  German  Unitarianism  to  the  levity  of  a  particular  community  in  Germany. 


ITALY,  SPAIN,  AND  THE  NETHERLANDS 


409 


fanned  by  Caraffa,  was  the  more  facile.  Measures  were  first  taken 
against  heretical  priests  and  monks  ;  Ochino  and  Peter  Martyr  had 
to  fly;  and  many  monks  in  the  monastery  of  the  latter  were 
imprisoned.  At  Rome  was  founded,  in  1543,  the  Congregation  of 
the  Holy  Office,  a  new  Inquisition,  on  the  deadly  model  of  that  of 
Spain ;  and  thenceforth  the  history  of  Protestantism  in  Italy  is  but 
one  of  suppression.  The  hostile  force  was  all-pervading,  organized, 
and  usually  armed  with  the  whole  secular  power;  and  though  in 
Naples  the  old  detestation  of  the  Inquisition  broke  out  anew  so 
strongly  that  even  the  Spanish  tyranny  could  not  establish  it,^  the 
papacy  elsewhere  carried  its  point  by  explaining  how  much  more 
lenient  was  the  Italian  than  the  Spanish  Inquisition.  Such 
a  pressure,  kept  up  by  the  strongest  economic  interest  in  Italy,  no 
movement  could  resist ;  and  it  would  have  suppressed  the  Reforma- 
tion in  any  country  or  any  race,  as  a  similar  pressure  did  in  Spain. 

Prof.  Gebhart  {Orig.  de  la  Benais.  en  Italic,  p.  68)  writes 
that  *  Italy  has  known  no  great  national  heresies  :  one  sees 
there  no  uprising  of  minds  which  resembles  the  profound 
popular  movements  provoked  by  Waldo,  Wiclif,  John  Huss, 
or  Luther."  The  decisive  answer  to  this  is  soon  given  by 
the  author  himself  (p.  74) :  "If  the  Order  of  Franciscans 
has  had  in  the  peninsula  an  astonishing  popularity ;  if  it  has, 
so  to  speak,  formed  a  Church  within  the  Church,  it  is  that  it 
responded  to  the  profound  aspirations  of  an  entire  people." 
(Cp.  p.  77.)  Yet  again,  after  telling  how  the  Franciscan  heresy 
of  the  Eternal  Gospel  so  long  prevailed,  M.  Gebhart  speaks 
(p.  78)  of  the  Italians  as  a  people  whom  "  formal  heresy  has 
never  seduced."  These  inconsistencies  derive  from  the  old 
fallacy  of  attributing  the  course  of  the  Reformation  to  national 
character.  (See  it  discussed  in  the  present  writer's  Evolution 
of  States,  pp.  237-38,  302-307,  341-44.)  Burckhardt,  while 
recognizing — as  against  the  theory  of  **  something  lacking  in 
the  Italian  mind " — that  the  Italian  movements  of  Church 
reformation  "failed  to  achieve  success  only  because  circum- 
stances were  against  them,"  goes  on  to  object  that  the  course 
of  "  mighty  events  like  the  Reformation eludes  the  deduc- 
tions of  the  philosophers,"  and  falls  back  on  "  mystery." 
{Benaissance  in  Italy,  Eng.  tr.  p.  457.)  There  is  really  much 
less  "  mystery  "  about  such  movements  than  about  small  ones  ; 
and  the  causes  of  the  Reformation  are  in  large  part  obvious  and 


>  A.  von  Reumont,  The  Carafas  of  Maddaloni,  Eng.  tr.  1854.  pp.  33-37 ;  McCrie.  p.  122. 
It  was  not  Protestantism  that  made  the  revolt.  The  contemporary  historian  Porzios 
states  that  the  Lutherans  were  so  few  that  they  could  easily  be  counted.  Von  Reumont, 
as  cited,  p.  33.  It  was  not  heresy  that  moved  the  Neapolitans,  but  the  knowledge  that 
perjurers  could  be  found  in  Naples  to  swear  to  anything,  and  that  the  machine  would  thus 
be  made  one  of  pecuniary  extortion. 


■■*«P' 


410    THE  KEFORMATION.  POLITICALLY  CONSIDERED 

simple.  Baur,  even  in  the  act  of  claiming  special  credit  for  the 
personality  of  Luther  as  the  great  factor  in  the  Reformation, 
admits  that  only  in  the  peculiar  political  conditions  in  which  he 
found  himself  could  he  have  succeeded.  {Kircheyigeschichte  der 
neueren  Zeit,  1863,  p.  23.) 

The  broad  explanation  of  the  Italian  failure  is  that  m  Italy 
reform  could  not  for  a  moment  be  dreamt  of  save  as  within  the 
Church,  where  there  was  no  economic  leverage  such  as  effected 
the  Reformation  from  the  outside  elsewhere.  It  was  a  relatively 
easy  matter  in  Germany  and  England  to  renounce  the  Pope's 
control  and  make  the  Churches  national  or  autonomous.  To 
attempt  that  in  Italy  would  have  meant  creating  a  state  of 
universal  and  insoluble  strife.  (Symonds,  Benaissance  %n 
Italy,  vol.  i.  ed.  1897,  p.  369.  Symonds.  however,  omits  to 
note  the  financial  dependence  of  Italian  society  on  the  papal 
system  ;  and  his  verdict  that  Ltither  and  the  nations  of  the  north 
saw  clearly  "what  the  Italians  could  not  see"  is  simply  the 
racial  fallacy  over  again.) 

Apart  from  that,  the  Italians,  as  we  have  seen,  were  as  much 
bent  on  reformation  as  any  other  people  in  mass  ;^  and  the 
earlier  Franciscan  movement  was  obviously  more  disinterested 
than  either  the  later  German  or  the  English,  in  both  of  which 
plunder  was  the  inducement  to  the  leading  adherents,  as  it  was 
also  in  Switzerland.     There  the  wholesale  bestowal  of  Church 
livings  on  Italians  was  the  strongest  motive  to  ecclesiastical 
revolution;    and   in    Zurich,   the   first   canton   which    adopted 
the   Reformation,  the   process  was   made   easy  by  the   State 
guaranteeing  posts  and  pensions  for  life  to  the  whole  twenty- 
four  canons  of  the  chapter.    (Vieusseux,  His ^ori/  of  Switzerland, 
1840,  pp.  120,  128 ;  cp.  Zschokke.  Schweizerland' s  Geschichte, 
9te    Ausg.   ch.    32,    and   Jackson,   Huldreich    Zwingli,    1901, 
pp.  222-25,  295-96.)     The  Protestants  had  further  the  support 
of  the  unbelieving  soldiery,  made  anti-religious  in  the  Italian 
wars,  who  rejoiced  in  the  process  of  priest-baiting  and  plunder 
(Yieusseux,  p.  180). 

The  process  of  suppression  in  Italy  was  prolonged  through  sixty 
years.  In  1543  numbers  of  Protestants  began  to  fly  ;  hundreds  more 
were  cast  into  prison ;  and,  save  in  a  few  places,  public  profession 
of  the  heresy  was  suppressed.  In  1546  the  papacy  persuaded  the 
Venetian  senate  to  put  down  the  Protestant  communities  in  their 
dominions,  and  in  1548  there  began  in  Venice  a  persecution  in 
which  many  were  sent  to  the  galleys.  To  reach  secret  Pro- 
testantism, the  papacy  dispersed  spies  throughout  Italy,  Ferrara 
being  particularly  attended  to,  as  a  known  hotbed.'     After  the  death 

I  McCrie,  Beformatimi  in  Italy,  p.  131. 


ITALY,  SPAIN.  AND  THE  NETHERLANDS 


411 


of  the  comparatively  merciful  Paul  III  (1550),  Julius  III  authorized 
new  severities.  A  Ferr arose  preacher  was  put  to  death ;  and  the 
Duchess  Ren^e,  the  daughter  of  Louis  XII.  who  had  notoriously 
favoured  the  heretics,  was  made  virtually  a  prisoner  in  her  own 
palace,  secluded  from  her  children.  At  Faenza,  a  nobleman  died 
under  torture  at  the  hands  of  the  inquisitors,  and  a  mob  in  turn 
killed  some  of  these ; '  but  the  main  process  went  on  throughout  the 
country.  An  old  Waldensian  community  in  Calabria  having  reverted 
to  its  former  opinions  under  the  new  stimulus,  it  was  warred  upon 
by  the  inquisitors,  who  employed  for  the  purpose  outlaws ;  and 
multitudes  of  victims,  including  sixty  women,  were  put  to  the 
torture.'  At  Montalto,  in  1560,  another  Waldensian  community 
were  taken  captive;  eighty-eight  men  were  slaughtered,  their 
throats  being  cut  one  by  one ;  many  more  were  tortured ;  the 
majority  of  the  men  were  sent  to  the  Spanish  galleys ;  and  the 
women  and  children  were  sold  into  slavery.^  In  Venice  many  were 
put  to  death  by  drowning.* 

Of  individual  executions  there  were  many.  In  a  documented  list 
of  seventy-eight  persons  burned  alive  or  hanged  and  burned  at  Rome 
from  1553  to  1600,*  only  a  minority  are  known  to  have  been 
Lutherans,  the  official  records  being  kept  on  such  varying  principles 
that  it  is  impossible  to  tell  how  many  of  the  victims  were  Catholic 
criminals  ;*  while  some  heretics  are  represented — it  would  seem 
falsely — as  having  died  in  the  communion  of  the  Church.  But 
probably  more  than  half  were  Lutherans  or  Calvinists.  The  first 
in  the  list  (1553)  are  Giovanni  MoUio,^  a  Minorite  friar  of 
Montalcino,  who  had  been  a  professor  at  Brescia  and  Bologna, 
and  Giovanni  Teodori®  of  Perugia;  and  the  former  is  stated  in 
the  official  record  to  have  recommended  his  soul  to  God,  the 
Virgin  Mary,  St.  Francis,  and  St.  Anthony  of  Padua,  though  he 
had  been  condemned  as  an  obstinate  Lutheran.  The  next  victims 
(1556)  are  the  Milanese  friar  Ambrogio  de  Cavoli.  who  dies  "  firm  in 
his  false  opinion,"  and  Pomponio  Angerio  or  Algieri  of  Nola,  a 
student  aged  twenty-four,  who,  "  as  being  obstinate,  was  burned 

»  McCrie.  pp.  143-44.  ^  Id.  pp.  158-61. 

^  Id.  pp.  161-63.  This  seems  to  have  been  one  of  the  latest  instances  of  enslavement  in 
Italy.  As  to  the  selling  of  many  Capuan  women  in  Rome  after  the  capture  of  Capua  in 
1501.  see  Burckhardt.  p.  279.  note.  *  McCrie,  pp.  140-43. 

*  Domenico  Orano.  Liheri  Pensatori  bruciati  t«  Boma  dal  XVI al  XVIII  Secolo,  Roma, 
1904.  Giordano  Bruno  is  77th  in  the  list;  and  there  are  only  eight  more.  The  85th  case 
was  in  1642 ;  and  the  last— the  burning  of  a  dead  body— in  1761. 

fi  Orano,  p.  13. 

7  Signor  Orano  gives  the  name  as  Buzio.  citing  the  1835  Italian  translation  of  McCrie, 
and  pronouncing  CantCi  (ii.  338)  wrong  in  making  it  Mollio.  But  in  the  1856  ed.  of  McCrie's 
work  the  name  is  given  (pp.  57-58, 168-69)  as  John  Mollio.  Cantu  then  appears  to  have 
been  right ;  but  the  date  he  gives.  1533.  seems  to  be  a  blunder. 

^  McCrie  £ives  this  name  as  Tisserano. 


412    THE  EEFOBMATION.  POLITICALLY  CONSIDEEED 

alive  "  '  These  were  the  first  victims  of  Caraffa  after  his  elevation 
to  the  papal  chair  as  Paul  IV.  Under  Pius  IV  three  were  burned 
in  1560 ;  under  Pius  V  two  in  1566.  six  in  1567.  six  in  1568.  and  so 
on  Francesco  Cellario.  an  ex-Franciscan  friar,  living  as  a  refugee 
and  Protestant  preacher  in  the  Orisons,  was  kidnapped,  taken  to 
Rome,  and  burned^  (1569).  A  Neapolitan  nobleman.  Pompeo  de 
Monti,  caught  in  Rome,  was  officially  declared  to  have  renounced 
head  by  head  all  the  errors  he  had  held."  and  accordingly  was 
benignantly  beheaded.^  Quite  a  number,  including  the  learned 
protonotary  Carnesecchi  (1567),  are  alleged  to  have  died  in^  the 
bosom  of  the  Church.'* '  On  the  other  hand,  some  of  the  inqmsitors 
themselves  came  under  the  charge  of  heresy,  two  cardmals  and 
a  bishop  being  actually  prosecuted *-whet her  for  Lutheranism  or 
for  other  forms  of  private  judgment  does  not  appear. 

Simple  Lutheranism.  however,  seems  to  have  been  the  usual 
limit  of  heresy  among  those  burned.  Aonio  Paleario  (originally 
Antonio  della  Pagha  or  de'  Pagliaricci)  of  Veroli'— poet  and 
professor  of  rhetoric  at  Milan,  hanged  in  1570  (in  his  seventieth 
year)  either  for  denouncing  the  Inquisition  or  for  Lutheranism-- 
was  an  extreme  heretic  from  the  Catholic  point  of  view.  His 
Actio  in  Rovimios  Pontificos  et  eorum  asseclas  is  still  denounced 
by  the  Church.'  If.  however,  he  was  the  author  of  the  Trattato 
utilissivio  del  heneficio  di  Giesu  Crocifisso  verso  I  Christiani,  he  was 
simply  an  evangelical  of  the  school  of  Luther,  exalting  faith  and 
making  light  of  works  ;  and  its  '*  remedies  against  the  temptation 
of  doubt"  deal  solely  with  theological  difficulties,  not  with  critical 
unbelief.'  This  treatise,  immensely  popular  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
was  so  zealously  destroyed  by  the  Church  that  when  Ranke  wrote 
no  copy  was  known  to  exist.'  The  Trattato  was  placed  on  the 
first  papal  Index  Expitrgatorius  in  1549 ;  and  the  nearly  complete 
extinction  of  the  book  is  an  important  illustration  of  the  Church's 
faculty  of  suppressing  literature. 

The  hidex,  anticipated  by  Charles  V  in  the  Netherlands  several 
years  earlier,  was  established  especially  to  resist  the  Reformation  ; 
and  its  third  class  contained  a  prohibition  of  all  anonymous  books 

,  «  ^    iLf^n^;^  TM^  iAa-7n  2  McCrie,  p.  212;  Orano,  p.  33. 

I  8™no:  ?p'iwf  McS?ie.t  IM.  say.  he  was  strangled  ■  bat  tSe  official  record  is    lu 

"^Tor^no^T^.    As  to  Carnesecchi's  career  see  McCrie,  pp.  173-79;  and  Babinston's  ed. 
facsimile  reprint,  with  old  French  and  English  versions. 


ITALY,  SPAIN,  AND  THE  NETHERLANDS 


413 


published  since  1519.  The  destruction  of  books  in  Italy  in  the 
first  twenty  years  of  the  work  of  the  Congregation  of  the  Index 
was  enormous,  nearly  every  library  being  decimated,  and  many 
annihilated.  All  editions  of  the  classics,  and  even  of  the  Fathers, 
annotated  by  Protestants,  or  by  Erasmus,  were  destroyed ;  the 
library  of  the  Medicean  College  at  Florence,  despite  the  appeals 
of  Duke  Cosmo,  was  denuded  of  many  works  of  past  generations, 
now  pronounced  heretical ;  and  many  dead  writers  who  had  passed 
for  good  Catholics  were  put  on  the  Lidex.  Booksellers,  plundered 
of  their  stocks,  were  fain  to  seek  another  calling;  and  printers, 
seeing  that  any  one  of  them  who  printed  a  condemned  work  had 
every  book  printed  by  him  put  on  the  Index,  were  driven  to  refuse 
all  save  works  officially  accredited.  It  was  considered  a  merciful 
relaxation  of  the  procedure  when,  after  the  death  of  Paul  IV  (1555), 
certain  books,  such  as  Erasmus's  editions  of  the  Fathers,  were 
allowed  to  be  merely  mutilated.*  The  effect  of  the  whole  machinery 
in  making  Italy  in  the  seventeenth  century  relatively  unlearned  and 
illiterate  cannot  easily  be  overstated. 

In  fine,  the  Reformation  failed  in  Italy  because  of  the  ecomonic 
and  political  conditions,  as  it  failed  in  Spain ;  as  it  failed  in  a  large 
part  of  Germany ;  as  it  would  have  failed  in  Holland  had  Philip  II 
made  his  capital  there  (in  which  case  Spain  might  very  well  have 
become  Protestant);  and  as  it  would  have  failed  in  England  had 
EHzabeth  been  a  CathoHc,  like  her  sister.  During  the  sixty  years 
from  1520  to  1580,  thousands  of  Italian  Protestants  left  Italy,  as 
thousands  of  Spanish  Protestants  fled  from  Spain,  and  thousands  of 
English  Protestants  from  England  in  the  reign  of  Mary.^  To  make 
the  outcome  in  Italy  and  Spain  a  basis  for  a  theory  of  racial  tendency 
in  religion,  or  racial  defect  of  "  public  spirit,"  is  to  explain  history  in 
a  fashion  which,  in  physical  science,  has  long  been  discredited  as  an 
argument  in  a  circle. 

McCrie,  at  the  old  standpoint,  says  of  the  Inquisition  that 
"this  iniquitous  and  bloody  tribunal  could  never  obtain  a 
footing  either  in  France  or  in  Germany";  that  "the  attempt 
to  introduce  it  in  the  Netherlands  was  resisted  by  the  adherents 
of  the  old  as  well  as  the  disciples  of  the  new  rehgion ;  and  it 

kindled  a  civil  war  which issued  in  estabHshing  civil  and 

religious  liberty";  and  that  "the  ease  with  which  it  was 
introduced  into  Italy  showed  that,  whatever  illumination  there 
was  among  the  Italians they  were  destitute  of  that  public 

'  Cp.  McCrie,  pp.  114-17.  ,     .      „     .        ,       ...      ^^  cj..,.*    irv..* 

2  Cp.  McCrie,  Bef.  in  Italy,  oh.  v;   B<if.  m   Spam,  ch.  viu ;   Greeu,   Shoit  Hist. 

pp.  358,  362. 


414    THE  EEFOBMATION.  POLITTOALLY  OONSIDEKED 

spirit  and  energy  of  principle  which  were  requisite  to^  sha^e 
off  the  degrading  yoke  by  which  they  were  oppressed.  ine 
ethical  attitude  of  the  Christian  historian  is  noteworthy ;  but 
we  are  here  concerned  with  his  historiography.  A  httle 
reflection  will  make  it  clear  that  the  non-estabhshment  of 
the  Inquisition  in  France  and  Germany  was  due  precisely 
to  the  fact  that  the  papacy  was  not  in  these  countries  as  it 
was    in    Italy,   and    that   the   native   Governments  resented 

external  influence.  .        .  ,     -,.       •     i-i. 

As  to  the  Netherlands,  the  statement  is  misleading  m  the 
extreme.     The  Inquisition  set  up  by  Charles  V  was  long  and 
fully  established  in  the  Low  Countries  ;  and  Motley  recognizes 
that  it  was  there  more  severe  even  than  in  Spain.     It  was 
Charles  V  who,  in  1546.  gave  orders  for  the  establishment  of  the 
Inquisition  in  Naples,  when  the  people  so  effectually  resisted. 
The  view,  finally,  that  the  attempt  to  suppress  heresy  caused 
the  Dutch   revolt   is   merely   part   of   the   mythology   of   the 
Keformation.     Charles  V,  at  the  outset  of  his  reign,  stood  to 
Spain  in  the  relation  of  a  foreign  king  who,  with  his  Flemish 
courtiers,  exploited  Spanish  revenues.     Only  by  making  Madrid 
his  capital  and  turning  semi-Spanish  did  he  at  all  reverse  that 
relation  between  the  two  parts  of  his  dominions.     So  late  ^  as 
1550  he  set  up  an  exceptionally  merciless  form  of  the  Inquisi- 
tion in  the  Low  Countries,  and  this  without  losing  any  of  the 
loyalty  of  the  middle  and  upper  classes,  Protestantism  having 
made  its  converts  only  among  the  poor.     In  1546  too  he  had 
set  up  an  iTidex  Expurgatorius  with  the  assistance  of  the  theo- 
logical faculty  at  Louvain  ;  and  there  was  actually  a  Flemish 
Index  in  print  before  the  papal  one  (McCrie.  Ref,  m  Italy, 
p.  184  ;  Ticknor,  Hist,  of  Spanish  Lit,  6th  ed.  i.  493).  ^ 

What  set  up  the  breach  between  the  Netherlands  and  Spain 
was  the  failure  of  PhiUp  II  to  adjust  himself  to  Dutch  interests 
as  his  father  had  adjusted  himself  to  Spanish.  The  sunderance 
was  on  lines  of  economic  interest  and  racial  jealousy;  and 
Dutch  Protestantism  was  not  the  cause  but  the  effect.  In  the 
war,  indeed,  multitudes  of  Dutch  Catholics  held  persistently  with 
their  Protestant  fellow-countrymen  against  Spain,  as  many 
English  Catholics  fought  against  the  Armada.  As  late  as  1600 
the  majority  of  the  people  of  Groningen  were  still  Catholics,  as 
the  great  majority  are  now  in  North  Brabant  and  Limburg ; 
and  in  1900  the  Catholics  in  the  Netherlands  were  nearly 
a  third  of  the  whole.  From  first  to  last  too  the  Dutch 
Protestant  creed  and  polity  were  those  set  up  by  Calvin,  a 
Frenchman. 

To  those  accustomed  to  the  conventional  view,  the  case  may  become 
clearer  on  a  survey  of  the  course  of  anti-papalism  in  other  countries 
than  those  mentioned.     The  political  determination  of  the  process  in 


THE  HUSSITE  FAILUEE  IN  BOHEMIA 


415 


the  sixteenth  century,  indeed,  cannot  be  properly  realized  save  in 
the  light  of  kindred  movements  of  earlier  date,  when  the  **  Teutonic 
conscience  "  made,  not  for  reform,  but  for  fixation. 


§  3.  The  Htissite  Failure  in  Bohemia 

That  the  causal  forces  in  the  Reformation  were  neither  racial 
religious  bias  nor  special  gift  on  the  part  of  any  religious  teachers  is 
made  tolerably  clear  by  the  pre- Lutheran  episode  of  the  Hussites  in 
Bohemia  a  century  before  the  German  movement.  In  Bohemia  as 
elsewhere  clerical  avarice,  worldliness,  and  misconduct  had  long  kept 
up  anti-clerical  feeling;  and  the  adoption  of  Wiclif's  teaching  by 
Huss  at  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century  was  the  result,  and  not  the 
cause,  of  Bohemian  anti-papalism.^  The  Waldensians,  whose  doctrines 
were  closely  akin  to  those  of  Huss,  were  represented  in  Bohemia 
as  early  as  the  twelfth  century  ;  and  so  late  as  1330  their  community 
was  a  teaching  centre,  able  to  send  money  help  to  the  Waldensians 
of  Italy.  So  apparent  was  the  heredity  that  iEneas  Sylvius,  after- 
wards Pope  Pius  II,  maintained  that  the  Hussites  were  a  branch  of 
the  Waldenses." 

Before  Huss  too  a  whole  series  of  native  reformers,  beginning 
with  the  Moravian  Militz,  Archdeacon  of  Prague,  had  set  up  a  partly 
anti-clerical  propaganda.  Militz,  who  gave  up  his  emoluments 
(1363)  to  become  a  wandering  preacher,  actually  wrote  a  Libellus  de 
Anti-christo,  affirming  that  the  Church  was  already  in  Anti-christ's 
power,  or  nearly  so.*  It  was  written  while  he  was  imprisoned  by 
the  Inquisition  at  Rome  at  the  instance  of  the  mendicant  orders, 
whom  he  censured.  As.  however,  the  later  hostility  he  incurred,  up 
to  his  death,  was  on  the  score  of  his  influence  with  the  people,  the 
treatise  cannot  well  have  been  current  in  his  lifetime.  A  contem- 
porary, Conrad  of  Waldhausen,  holding  similar  views,  joined  Militz 
in  opposing  the  mendicant  friars  as  Wiclif  was  doing  at  the  same 
period ;  and  the  King  of  Bohemia  (the  emperor  Charles  IV)  gave 
zealous  countenance  to  both.  A  follower  of  Mihtz,  Matthias  of 
Janow.  a  prebendary  of  Prague,  holding  the  same  views  as  to  Anti- 
christ, wrote  a  book  on  The  Abomination  of  Desolation  of  Priests 
and  Monks,  and  yet  another  to  similar  effect. 

There  was  thus  a  considerable   movement  in  the  direction  of 

frh\  S"/^'  ^°  ^^?  youth  at  first  turned  from  Wiclif's  writings  with  horror.    Bonnechose, 
2  he  IWormers  before  the  Reformation,  Eng.  tr.  1844,  i,  72. 

Cp.  Krasinski.  Histor.  Sketch  of  the  Beformation  in  Poland,  1838,  i,  58. 
4  gi^asinski.  Sketch  of  Relig.  Hist,  of  Slav.  Nations,  ed.  1851,  pp.  26-27. 

nf  Hf«1^°55'.*^'  ^^XT  »«•:  Hardwick,  pp.  426-27.    Militz  eflfected  a  remarkable  reformation 
oi  iiie  in  Prague.    Neander,  p.  241. 


416    THE  EEFORMATION,  POLITICALLY  CONSIDERED 

Church  reform  before  either  Huss  or  Wiclif  was  heard  in  Bohemia  ; 
and  a  Bohemian  king  had  shown  a  reforming  zeal,  apparently  not 
on  financial  motives,  before  any  other  European  potentate.  And 
whereas  racial  jealousy  of  the  dominant  Italians  was  a  main  factor 
in  the  movement  of  Luther,  the  much  more  strongly  motived 
jealousy  of  the  Czechs  against  the  Germans  who  exploited  Bohemia 
was  a  main  element  in  the  salient  movement  of  the  Hussites. 
Called  in  to  work  the  silver  mines,  and  led  further  by  the  increasing 
field  for  commerce  and  industry,^  the  more  civilized  Germans  secured 
control  of  the  Czech  church  and  monasteries,  appropriating  most  of 
the  best  livings.  As  they  greatly  predominated  also  at  the  University 
of  Prague,  Huss,  whose  inspiration  was  largely  racial  patriotism, 
wrought  with  his  colleague  Jerome  to  have  the  university  made 
strictly  national.^  When,  accordingly,  the  German  heads  of  the 
university  still  (1403  and  1408)  condemned  the  doctrines  of  Wiclif 
as  preached  by  Huss,  the  motives  of  the  censors  were  as  much  racial 
and  economic  as  theological ;  that  is  to  say,  the  "  Teutonic  con- 
science "  operated  in  its  own  interest  to  the  exaltation  of  papal  rule 
against  the  Czech  conscience. 

The  first  crisis  in  the  racial  struggle  ended  in  Huss's  obtaining 
a  royal  decree  (1409)  giving  three  votes  in  university  affairs  (wherein, 
according  to  medieval  custom,  the  voting  was  by  nations)  to  the 
Bohemians,  and  only  one  to  the  Germans,  though  the  latter  were 
the  majority.  Thereupon  a  multitude  of  the  German  students 
marched  back  to  Germany,  where  there  was  founded  for  them  the 
university  of  Leipzig;*  and  the  racial  quarrel  was  more  envenomed 

than  ever. 

At  the  same  time  the  ecclesiastical  authorities,  closely  allied  with 
the  German  interest,  took  up  the  cause  of  the  Church  against  heresy; 
and  Archbishop  Sbinko  of  Prague,  having  procured  a  papal  bull, 
caused  a  number  of  Wiclifian  and  other  manuscripts  to  be  burned'^ 
(1410),  soon  after  excommunicating  Huss,  The  now  nationalist 
university  protested,  and  the  king  sequestrated  the  estates  of  the 
archbishop  on  his  refusal  to  indemnify  the  owners  of  the  manu- 

1  See  tbe  very  intelligent  survey  of  the  situation  in  Kautsky's  Communism  in  Central 
Europe  in  the  Time  of  the  Beformation,  B^ng-  tr.  Ib97,  p.  35  sq. 

»  K  Rauiiier.  Contrib.  to  the  Hist,  of  the  German  Fniversifias,  New  York,  1850,  p.  19 ; 
Dr  Rashdall.  Universities  of  Eiir&pe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  vol.  ii,  pt.  i.  223-26  ;  Bonnechose. 
i,  78;  Mosheim.  15  Cent.  pt.  ii.  cb.  ii,  S  6;  Gieseler.  Per.  iii,  Div.  v.  S  150;  Ivrasinski,  as 

*^*^*'km8inskt"sfc«ec?j,  p.  33;  Kautsky.  p.  43;  Maclaine's  note  to  Mosheim,  as  last  cited  ; 

Rashdall,   pp.  225-26,  254.     The  exodus  has    been    much    exaggerated.     Only  602  were 

enrolled  at  Leipzig.  ,      ,  ,  ^  .  ,  ,  ,  ,,    .,. 

■'  Many  of  these  were  of  great  beauty  and  value,  and  must  have  been  owned  by  ncu 

men.    Krasinski,  Sketch,  p.  34. 


THE  HUSSITE  FAILUKE  IN  BOHEMIA 


417 


scripts.  In  1411,  further,  Huss  denounced  the  proposed  papal 
crusade  against  Naples,  and  in  1412  the  sale  of  indulgences  by 
permission  of  Pope  John  XXIII,  exactly  as  Luther  denounced 
those  of  Leo  X  a  century  later,  calling  the  Pope  Antichrist  in  the 
Lutheran  manner,  while  his  partizans  burned  the  papal  bulls. ^  For 
the  rest,  he  preached  against  image- worship,  auricular  confession,  cere- 
monialism, and  clerical  endowments.^  At  the  Council  of  Constance 
(1415),  accordingly,  there  was  arrayed  against  him  a  solid  mass  of 
German  churchmen,  including  the  ex-rector  of  Prague  University, 
now  bishop  of  Misnia.  Further,  the  Germans  were  scholastically, 
as  a  rule.  Nominalists,  and  Huss  a  Kealist ;  and  as  Gerson,  the 
most  powerful  of  the  French  prelates,  was  zealous  for  the  former 
school,  he  threw  his  influence  on  the  German  side,^  as  did  the 
Bishop  of  London  on  the  part  of  England.*  The  forty-five  Wiclifian 
heresies,  therefore,  were  re-condemned ;  Huss  was  sentenced  to 
imprisonment,  though  he  had  gone  to  the  Council  under  a  letter  of 
safe-conduct  from  the  emperor  ;*  and  on  his  refusal  to  retract  he 
was  burned  alive  (July  6,  1415).  Jerome,  taking  flight,  was 
caught,  and,  being  imprisoned,  recanted ;  but  later  revoked  the 
recantation  and  was  burned  likewise  (May  30,  1416). 

The  subsequent  fortunes  of  the  Hussite  party  were  determined 
as  usual  by  the  political  and  economic  forces.  The  King  of  Bohemia 
had  joyfully  accepted  Huss's  doctrine  that  the  tithes  were  not  the 
property  of  the  churchmen ;  and  had  locally  protected  him  as  his 
**  fowl  with  the  golden  eggs,"  proceeding  to  plunder  the  Church  as 
did  the  German  princes  in  the  next  age.^  When,  later,  the  revolu- 
tionary Hussites  began  plundering  churches  and  monasteries,  the 
Bohemian  nobles  in  their  turn  profited,^  and  became  good  Hussites 
accordingly;  while  yet  another  aristocracy  was  formed  in  Prague 
by  the  citizens  who  managed  the  confiscations  there.®  As  happened 
earlier  in  Hungary  and  later  in  Germany,  again,  there  followed  a 
revolt  of  the  peasants  against  their  extortionate  masters  ;^  and  there 
resulted  a  period  of  ferocious  civil  war  and  exacerbated  fanaticism. 
Ziska,  the  Hussite  leader,  had  been  a  strong  anti-German;^°  and 
when  the  emperor  entered  into  the  struggle  the  racial  hatred  grew 
more  intense  than  ever.     On  the  Hussite  side  the  claim  for     the 

^  Hardwick.  p.  433.  Jerome  caused  the  bull  to  be  "  fastened  to  an  immodest  woman," 
and  so  paraded  through  the  town  before  being  burnt.    Gieseler.  iv,  114,  note  15. 

2  Bonnechose,  ii,  122;  Gieseler,  as  cited.  . 

^  See  Mosheim's  very  interesting  note;  and  Gieseler,  iv.  101-105.        *  Krasinski,  p.  51. 

^  For  an  account  of  the  devices  of  Catholic  historians  to  explain  away  the  Council  s 
treachery  see  Bonnechose,  note  E.  to  vol.  i,  p.  270.  The  Council  itself  simply  declared 
that  faith  was  not  to  be  kept  with  a  heretic.    Id.  p.  271 ;  Gieseler,  p.  121. 

6  Bonnechose,  ii,  118-20.    Cp.  Krasinski,  p.  37.  '  Kautsky,  pp.  48-49. 

*  Id.  p.  61.  9  Jd.  p,  53,  ^0  Krasinski,  p.  65. 

2£ 


418    THE  EEFOEMATION.  POLITICALLY  CONSIDEEED 

cup  "  (that  is.  the  administration  of  tbe  encharist  with  wine  as  well 
as  bread,  in  the  original  manner,  departed  from  by  the  Church  m 
the  eleventh  century)  indicated  the  nature  of  the  religious  feeling 
involved.  More  memorable  was  the  communistic  zeal  of  the 
advanced  section  of  the  Taborites  (so  called  from  the  town  of 
Tabor,  their  headquarters),  who  anticipated  the  German  movement 
of  the  Anabaptists,'  a  small  minority  of  them  seeking  to  set  up  com- 
munity of  women.  For  the  rest,  all  the  other  main  features  of  later 
Protestantism  came  up  at  the  same  time— the  zealous  establish- 
ment of  schools  for  the  young;'*  the  insistence  on  the  Bible  as  the 
sole  standard  of  knowledge  and  practice;  inflexible  courage  in 
warfare  and  good  military  organization,  with  determined  denial  of 

sacerdotal  claims.^ 

The  ideal  collapsed  as  similar  ideals  did  before  and  afterwards. 
First  the  main  body  of  the  Hussites,  led  by  Ziska,  though  at  war 
with  the  Catholics  in  general  and  the  Germans  in  particular,  warred 
murderously  also  on  the  extremer  communists,  called  the  Adamites, 
and  destroyed  them   (1421).     Then,  as  the  country  became  more 
and  more  exhausted  by  the  civil  war,  the  common  people  gradually 
fell  away  from  the  Taborites,  who  were  the  prime  fanatics  of  the 
period.     The  zeal  of  the  communist  section,  too,  itself  fell  away; 
and  at  length,  in   1434,  the  Taborites,  betrayed  by  one  of  their 
generals,  were  defeated  with  great  slaughter  by  the  nobles  in  the 
battle  of  Lipan.     Meanwhile,  the  upper  aristocracy  had  reaped  the 
economic  fruits  of  the  revolution  at  the  expense  of  townsmen,  small 
proprietors,   and  peasants  ;*  and,  just   as   the  lot  of   the  German 
peasants  in  Luther's  day  was  worse   after  their  vain  revolt  than 
before,  so  the  Bohemian   peasantry  at   the  close  of   the  fifteenth 
century  had  sunk  back  to  the  condition  of  serfdom  from  which  they 
had  almost  completely  emerged  at  the  beginning.     It  is  doubtful, 
indeed,  whether  the  material  lot  of  the  poor  was  bettered  in  any 
degree  at  any  stage  of  the  Protestant  revolution,  in  any  country. 
So  little  efficacy  for  social  betterment  has  a  movement  guided  by  a 
light  set  above  reason. 

That  there  was  in  the  period  some  Christian  freethinking  of  a 
finer  sort  than  the  general  Taborite  doctrine  is  proved  by  the 
recovery  of  the  unprinted  work  of  the  Czech  Peter  Helchitsky 
(Chelcicky),  The  Net  of  Faith,  which  impeached  the  current  ortho- 
doxy and  the  ecclesiastico-political  system  on  the  lines  of  the  more 

»  See  their  principles  stated  in  Kautsky,  p.  59.  , 

a  Sneas  Sylvius  who  detested  the  Taborites.  declared  them  to  have  only  one  good 
quality,  the  love  of  letters.    Letter  to  Carvajal,  cited  by  Krasinski.  p.  93,  note. 
8  Kautsky,  pp.  59-67.  *  Id.  p.  76. 


ANTI-PAPALISM  IN  HUNGAEY 


419 


exalted  of  the  Pauliciang  and  the  Lollards,  very  much  to  the  same 
effect  as  the  modern  gospel  of  Tolstoy.  In  the  midst  of  a  party  of 
warlike  fanatics  Helchitsky  denounced  war  as  mere  wholesale 
murder,  taught  the  sinfulness  of  wealth,  declaimed  against  cities  as 
the  great  corrupters  of  life,  and  preached  a  peaceful  and  non-resistant 
anarchism,  ignoring  the  State.  But  his  party  in  turn  developed 
into  that  of  the  Bohemian  Brethren,  an  intensely  Puritan  sect, 
opposed  to  learning,  and  ashamed  of  the  memory  of  the  communism 
in  which  their  order  began.^  Of  permanent  gain  to  culture  there  is 
hardly  a  trace  in  the  entire  evolution. 

§  4.  Anti-Papalism  in  Hungary 

As  in  Bohemia,  so   in   Hungary,  there  was   a   ready   popular 
inclination  to  religious  independence  of  Eome  before  the  Lutheran 
period.     The   limited   sway  of   the   Hungarian   monarchy  left  the 
nobles  abnormally  powerful,  and  their  normal  jealousy  of  the  wealth 
of  the  Church  made  them  in  the  thirteenth  century  favourable  to 
the  Waldenses  and  recalcitrant  to  the  Inquisition.^      In  the  period 
of   the   Hussite  wars  a  similar  protection  was  long  given  to    the 
thousands  of  refugees  led  by  Ziska  from  Bohemia  into  Hungary  in 
1424.^     The  famous  king  Matthias  Corvinus,  who  put  severe  checks 
on  clerical  revenue,  had  as  his  favourite  court  poet  the  anti-papal 
bishop  of  Wardein,  John,  surnamed  Pannonicus,  who  openly  derided 
the  Papal  Jubilee  as  a  financial  contrivance."*     Under   Matthias's 
successor,  the  ill-fated  Uladislaus  II,  began  a  persecution,  pushed 
on  by  his  priest-ruled  queen   (1440),  which  drove  many  Hussites 
into  Wallachia ;  and  at  the  date  of  Luther's  movement  the  superior 
clergy  of  Hungary  were  a  powerful  body  of  feudal  nobles,  living 
mainly  as   such,   wielding   secular  power,  and   impoverishing   the 
State.*     As  the  crusade  got  up  by  the  papacy  against  the  Turks 
(1514)  drew  away  many  serfs,  and  ended  in  a  peasant  war  against 
the  nobility,  put  down  with  immense  slaughter,  and  followed  by 
oppression   both   of   peasants  and  small  landholders,  there  was  a 
ready  hearing  for  the  Lutheran  doctrines  in   Hungary.     Nowhere, 
probably,  did  so  many  join  the  Eeformation  movement  in  so  short 
a  time.      As  elsewhere,  a  number  of  the  clergy  came  forward  ;  and 
the  resistance  of  the  rest  was  proportionally  severe,  though  Queen 

'  Kautsky .  pp.  78-82     See  further  the  account  of  Helchitsky's  book  in  Tolstoy's  The 
Kingdom  of  God  is  Within  You,  ch.  i. 

J  Hist,  of  the  JProt.  Church  in  Hungary  (anon.),  Eng.  tr.  1851,  p.  17. 

°  la.  p.  19.  4  j^  pp  23  28 

*>  Id.  pp.  24,  32.  citing  the  chronicler  Thurnschwamm.  6  j^]  pp|  29-31.* 


\ 


n 


420    THE  REFORMATION,  POLITICALLY  CONSIDERED 

Mary,  the  wife  of  King  Louis  II,  was  pro-Lutheran.'  Books  were 
burned  by  cartloads ;  and  the  diet  was  induced  to  pass  a  general 
decree  for  the  burning  of  all  Lutherans.'  The  great  Turkish 
invasion  under  Soliman  (1526)  could  not  draw  the  priests  from 
their  heresy-hunt;  but  the  subsequent  division  of  sovereignty 
between  John  Zapoyla  and  Ferdinand  I,  and  above  all  the  disdainful 
tolerance  of  the  Turkish  Sultan  in  the  parts  under  his  authority, 
permitted  of  a  continuous  spread  of  the  anti-papal  doctrine.  About 
1546  four  bishops  joined  the  Lutheran  side,  one  getting  married ; 
and  in  Transylvania  in  particular  the  whole  Church  property  was 
ere  long  confiscated  to  "  the  State  ";  so  that  in  1556,  when  only 
two  monasteries  remained,  the  Bishop  withdrew.  Of  the  tithes,  it 
is  said,  the  Protestant  clergy  held  three-fourths,  and  retained  them 
till  1848*  In  1559,  according  to  the  same  authority,  only  three 
families  of  magnates  still  adhered  to  the  pope  ;  the  lesser  nobihty 
were  nearly  all  Protestant ;  and  the  Lutherans  among  the  common 

people  were  as  thirty  to  one. 

As  a  matter  of  course.  Church  property  had  been  confiscated  on 
all  hands  by  the  nobles,  Ferdinand  having  been  unable  to  hinder 
them.  Soon  after  the  battle  of  Mohacs  (1526)  the  nobles  in  diet 
decided  not  to  fill  up  the  places  of  deceased  prelates,  but  to  make 
over  the  emoluments  of  the  bishoprics  to  "  such  men  as  deserved 
well  of  their  country."  Within  a  short  time  seven  great  _  territories 
were  so  accorded  to  as  many  magnates  and  generals,  nearly  all 
of  whom  separated  from  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  ^became  steady 
supporters  of  the  Reformation."'  The  Hungarian  Reformation 
was  thus  remarkably  complete. 

Its  subsequent  decadence  is  one  of  the  proofs  that,  even  as  the 
Reformation  movement  had  succeeded  by  secular  force,  so  it  was 
only  to  be  maintained  on  the  same  footing  by  excluding  Catholic 
propaganda.  In  Hungary,  as  elsewhere,  strife  speedily  arose  among 
Reformers  on  the  two  issues  on  which  reason  could  play  within  the 
limits  of  Scripturalism— the  doctrine  of  the  eucharist  and  the  divinity 
of  Jesus.  On  the  former  question  the  majority  took  the  semi- 
rationalist  view  of  Zwingli,  making  the  eucharist  a  simple  com- 
memoration; and  a  strong  minority  in  Transylvania  became 
Socinian.  The  Italian  Unitarian  Giorgio  Biandrata  (or  Blandrata  ;, 
driven  to  Poland  from  Switzerland  for  his  anti-trinitariamsm,  and 
called  from  Poland  to  be  the  physician  of  the  Prince  of  Transylvania, 

'  Hist,  of  t}uFrot.  Church  in  BungaTy.V-U.  »  Jd.  p.  3T.  6  jf.  p.  «. 

'  Jtn"eS- maadvater  in  the  History  aTove' ilied.  wWch  i»  copied  iu  this  error  by 
Hard  wick. 


ANTI-PAPALISM  IN  HUNGAEY 


421 


organized  a  ten  days'  debate  between  Trinitarians  and  Unitarians 
at  Weissenberg  in  1568  ;  and  at  the  close  the  latter  obtained  from 
the  nobles  present  all  the  privileges  enjoyed  by  the  Lutherans,  even 
securing  control  of  the  cathedral  and  schools  of  Clausenburg.^  It  is 
remarkable  that  this,  the  most  advanced  movement  of  Protestantism, 
has  practically  held  its  ground  in  Transylvania  to  modern  times.'^ 

The  advance,  hov^ever,  meant  desperate  schism,  and  disaster  to 
the  main  Protestant  cause.  The  professors  of  Wittemberg  appealed 
to  the  orthodox  authorities  to  suppress  the  heresy,  with  no  better 
result  than  a  public  repudiation  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  at 
the  Synod  of  Wardein,^  and  an  organization  of  the  Unitarian 
Churches.  In  due  course  these  in  turn  divided.  In  1578  Bian- 
drata's  colleague,  Ferencz  Davides,  contended  for  a  cessation  of 
prayers  to  Christ,  whereupon  Biandrata  invited  Fausto  Sozzini 
from  Basel  to  confute  him  ;  and  the  confutation  finally  took  the 
shape  of  a  sentence  of  perpetual  imprisonment  on  Davides  in  1579 
by  the  Prince  of  Transylvania,  to  whom  Biandrata  and  Sozzini 
referred  the  dispute.  The  victim  died  in  a  few  days — by  one 
account,  in  a  state  of  frenzy.^  Between  the  Helvetic  and  Augsburg 
confessionalists,  meanwhile,  the  strife  was  equally  bitter ;  and  it 
needed  only  free  scope  for  the  new  organization  of  the  Jesuits  to 
secure  the  reconquest  of  the  greater  part  of  Hungary  for  the  Catholic 
Church. 

The  course  of  events  had  shown  that  the  Protestant  principle 
of  private  judgment  led  those  who  would  loyally  act  on  it  further 
and  further  from  the  historic  faith  ;  and  there  was  no  such  general 
spirit  of  freethought  in  existence  as  could  support  such  an  advance. 
In  contrast  with  the  ever-dividing  and  mutually  anathematizing 
parties  of  the  dissenters,  the  ostensible  solidity  of  the  Catholic 
Church  had  an  attraction  which  obscured  all  former  perception  of 
her  corruptions ;  and  the  fixity  of  her  dogma  reassured  those  who 
recoiled  in  horror  from  Zwinglianism  and  Socinianism,  as  the 
adherents  of  these  systems  recoiled  in  turn  from  that  of  Davides. 
Only  the  absolute  suppression  of  the  Jesuits,  as  in  Elizabethan 
England,  could  have  saved  the  situation ;  and  the  political  circum- 
stances which  had  facilitated  the  spread  of  Protestantism  were 
equally  favourable  to  the  advent  of  the  reaction.  As  the  Huguenot 
nobles  in  France  gradually  withdrew  from  their  sect  in  the  seven- 

*  Schlegel's  note  to  Mosheim,  Reid's  ed.  p.  708.  2  Cp,  Mosheim,  last  cit. 
8  Hist,  of  the  Prot.  Church  in  Hungary,  p.  86. 

*  Wallace,  Antitrinitarian  Biog.  ii.  257-60.  Schlegel,  as  cited.  Biandrata  later  gave 
tip  his  Unitarianism,  turning  either  Jesuit  or  Protestant.  He  was  murdered  by  his 
nephew  for  his  money.    Wallace,  ii,  144. 


422    THE  KEFOBMATION.  POLITICALLY  CONSIDERED 

teenth  century,  so  the  Protestant  nobles  in  Hungary  began  to  with- 
draw from  theirs  towards  the  end  of  the  sixteenth.  What  the 
Jesuits  could  not  achieve  by  propaganda  was  compassed  by  imperial 
dragonnades;  and  in  1601  only  a  few  Protestant  congregations 
remained  in  all  Styria  and  Carinthia.'  Admittedly,  however,  the 
Jesuits  wrought  much  by  sheer  polemic,  the  pungent  writings  of 
their  Cardinal  Pazmdny  having  the  effect  of  converting  a  number 
of  nobles;^  while  the  Protestants,  instead  of  answering  the  most 
effective  of  Pazmdny's  attacks,  The  Guide  to  Truth,  spent  their 
energies  in  fighting  each  other.^ 

In  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  there  ensued  enough 
of  persecution  by  the  Cathohc  rulers  to  have  roused  a  new  growth 
of  Protestantism,  if  that  could  longer  avail;  but  the  balance  of 
forces  remained  broadly  unchanged.  Orthodox  Protestantism  and 
orthodox  Unitarianism,  having  no  new  principle  of  criticism  as 
against  those  turned  upon  themselves  by  the  Jesuits,  and  no  new 
means  of  obtaining  an  economic  leverage,  have  made  latterly  no 
headway  against  CathoHcism,  which  is  to-day  professed  by  more 
than  half  the  people  of  Hungary,  while  among  the  remainder  the 
Greek  CathoHcs  and  Greek  Orientals  respectively  outnumber  the 
Helvetic  and  Lutheran  Churches.  The  future  is  to  some  more 
searching  principle  of  thought. 

§  5.  Protestantism  in  Poland 

The  chief  triumph  of  the  Jesuit  reaction  was  won  in  Poland  ; 
and  there,  perhaps,  is  to  be  found  the  best  illustration  of  the  failure 
of  mere  Protestantism,  on  the  one  hand,  to  develop  a  self-maintain- 
ing intellectual  principle,  and  the  worse  failure,  on  the  other  hand, 
of  an  organized  and  unresisted  Catholicism  to  secure  either  political 
or  intellectual  vitality. 

Opposition  to  the  papacy  on  nationahst  as  well  as  on  general 
grounds  is  nearly  as  well  marked  in  Polish  history  as  in  Bohemian, 
from  the  pagan  period  onwards,  the  first  Christian  priesthood  being 
chiefly  foreign,^  while,  as  in  Bohemia,  the  people  clung  to  vernacular 
worship.  In  1078  we  find  King  Boleslav  the  Dauntless  (otherwise 
the  Cruel)  executing  the  Bishop  of  Cracow,  taxing  the  lands  of  the 
Church,  and  vetoing  the  bestowal  of  posts  on  foreigners.*^  He  in 
turn  was  driven  into  exile  by  a  combination  of  clergy  and  nobles. 
A  century  later  a  Polish  diet  vetoes  the  confiscation  of  the  property 


1  History  cited,  p.  109.    As  to  the  persecutiona  see  pp.  108-15. 

2  Id.  pp.  128-29. 132. 

*  Krasinski.  Hist,  of  the  Reformation  in  Poland,  1838,  i.  29-30. 


8  Id.  p.  134. 
fi  Id.  pp.:30-34. 


PEOTESTANTISM  IN  POLAND 


423 


of  deceased  bishops  by  the  sovereign  princes  of  the  various  pro- 
vinces ;  and  a  generation  later  still  the  veto  is  seen  to  be  disregarded.^ 
In  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  there  are  further  violent 
quarrels  between  dukes  and  clergy  over  tithes,  the  former  success- 
fully ordering  and  the  latter  vainly  resisting  a  money  commutation  ; 
till  in  1279  Duke  Boleslav  of  Cracow  is  induced  to  grant  the  bishops 
almost  unlimited  immunities  and  powers.^    Under  Casimir  the  Great 
(1333-1370)  further  strifes  occur  on  similar  grounds  between  the 
equestrian  order  and  the  clergy,  the  king  sometimes  supporting  the 
latter  against  the  former,  as  in  the  freeing  of  serfs,  and  sometimes 
enforcing  taxation   of   Church  lands  with  violence.^     In  the  next 
reign  the  immunities  granted  by  Boleslav  in  1279  are  cancelled  by 
the  equestrian  order,  acting  in  concert.     And  while  these  strifes  had 
all  been  on  economic  grounds,  we  meet  in  1341  with  a  heretical 
movement,  set  up  by  John  Pirnensis,  who  denounced  the  pope  as 
Antichrist  in  the  fashion  of  the  Bohemian  reformers  of  the  next 
generation.     The  people  of  Breslau  seem  to  have  gone  over  bodily 
to  the  heresy;    and  when   the   Inquisition   of   Cracow  attempted 
forcible  repression  the  Chief  Inquisitor  was  murdered  in  a  riot.^ 

It  was  thus  natural  that  in  the  fourteenth  century  the  Hussite 
movement  should  spread  greatly  in  Poland,  and  the  papacy  be 
defied  in  matters  of  nomination  by  the  king.^  The  Poles  had  long 
frequented  the  university  of  Prague ;  and  Huss's  colleague  Jerome 
was  called  in  to  organize  the  university  of  Cracow  in  1413.  Against 
the  Hussite  doctrines  the  Catholic  clergy  had  to  resort  largely  to 
written  polemic,^  their  power  being  small ;  though  the  king  confirmed 
their  synodical  decree  making  heresy  high  treason.  In  1450  Poland 
obtained  its  law  of  Habeas  Corpus,'  over  two  centuries  before 
England  ;  and  under  that  safeguard  numbers  of  the  nobility  declared 
themselves  Hussites.  In  1435  some  of  the  chief  of  these  formed 
a  confederation  against  Church  and  crown ;  and  in  1439  they  pro- 
claimed an  abohtion  of  tithes,  and  demanded,  on  the  lines  of  the 
earlier  English  Lollards,  that  the  enormous  estates  of  the  clergy 
should  be  appropriated  to  pubHc  purposes.  In  the  diet  of  1459, 
again,  a  learned  noble,  John  Ostrorog,  who  had  studied  at  Padua, 
delivered  an  address,  afterwards  expanded  into  a  Latin  book, 
denouncing  the  revenue  exactions  of  the  papacy,  and  proposing  to 
confiscate  the  annates,  or  first  fruits  of  ecclesiastical  offices  so 
exacted ;  proceeding  further  to  bring  against  the  Polish  clergy  in 


1  Hist,  of  the  Iteformation  in  Poland,  p.  38. 
*  Id.  pp.  55-56.  s  Id.  pp.  47-50. 


2  Id.  i.  40-42. 
6  Id.  pp.  65-66. 


8  Id.  p.  45. 
7  Id.  p.  67. 


424    THE  KEFOEMATION.  POLITICALLY  CONSIDEBED 

general  all  the  usual  charges  of  simony,  avarice,  and  fraud,  and 
indicting  the  mendicant  orders  as  having  demoralized  the  common 

people/ 

The  Poles  having  no  such  nationalist  motive  in  their  Hussitism 

as  had  the  Bohemians,  who  were  fighting  German  domination,  there 

took  place  in  Poland  no  such  convulsions  as  followed  the  Bohemian 

movement;    but,  when   the   Lutheran   impulse   came   in   the   next 

century,  the  German  element  which  had  been  added  to  Poland  by 

the  incorporation  of  the  order  and  territory  of  the  Teutonic  knights 

in  1466  made  an  easy  way  for  the  German  heresy.      In  Dantzic 

the   Lutheran   inhabitants   in    1524   took   the   churches   from   the 

Catholics,  and,  terrorizing  the  town  council,  shut  up  and  secularized 

the  monasteries  and  convents.'     In  1526,  with  due  bloodshed,  the 

king  effected  a  counter-revolution  in  the  CathoHc  interest ;  but  still 

the  heresy  spread,  the  law  of  Habeas  Corpus  thwarting  all  clerical 

attempts  at  persecution,  and  the  king  being  at  heart  something  of 

an  indifferentist  in  reUgion.'     In  the  province  of  Great  Poland  was 

formed    (1530-40)    a   Lutheran   church,   protected    by    a   powerful 

family ;  and  in  Cracow  a  group  of  scholars  formed  a  non-sectarian 

organization  to  evangeUze  the  country.     Among  them,  about  1546, 

occurred  the  first  expression  of  PoHsh  Unitarianism,  the  innovator 

being  Adam  Pastoris,  a  Dutch  or  Belgian  priest,  who  seems  to  have 

used  at  times  the  name  of  Spiritus. 

On  lines  of  simple  Protestantism  the  movement  was  rapid,  many 
aristocrats  and  clergy  declaring  for  it ;'  aaid  in  the  Diets  of  1550 
and  1552  was  shown  an  increasingly  strong  anti-Catholic  feeling, 
which  the  Church  was  virtually  powerless  to  punish.  In  1549  a 
parish  priest  publicly  married  a  wife,  and  the  bishop  of  Cracow 
abandoned  the  attempt  to  displace  him.  The  next  bishop,  Zebrzy- 
dowski,  a  favourite  pupil  of  Erasmus,  was  said  by  a  Socinian  writer 
of  the  period  to  have  openly  expressed  disbehef  in  immortality  and 
other  dogmas;^  but  when  in  1552  a  noble  refused  to  pay  tithes,  he 
ecclesiastically  condemned  him  to  death,  and  declared  his  property 
confiscated.  The  sentence,  however,  could  not  be  put  in  force ;  and 
when  the  other  heads  of  the  Church,  seeing  their  revenues  menaced 
and  their  clergy  in  large  part  tending  to  heresy,^  attempted  a  general 
and  severe  prosecution  of  backsUding  priests,  the  resistance  of  the 
magistracy   brought    the   effort    to    nothing.'     The   Diet   of   1552 

1  Hist,  of  the  Beformation  in  Poland,  i.  91-98. 

2  ij,  pn  111-16  -''*•  P-  ^^' 

*  Id',  pp.' 139.  345.  following  Wengierski :  Wallace,  A7itilrin.  Biog.  li.  Art.  41. 

6  Krasinski,  pp.  143,  344.  note.  

6  Id.  i,  163.  '  M.  p.  173,  naU,  ^  Id.  pp.  176-77. 


PBOTESTANTISM  IN  POLAND 


425 


practically  abrogated  the  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction ;  and  despite 
much  intrigue  the  economic  interest  of  the  landowners  continued 
to  maintain  the  Protestant  movement,  which  was  rapidly  organized 
on  German  and  Swiss  models.  It  was  by  the  play  of  its  own 
elements  of  strife  that  its  ascendancy  was  undermined. 

On  the  one  hand,  an  influential  cleric,  Orzechowski,  who  had 
married  and  turned  Protestant,  reconciled  himself  to  Pvome  on  the 
death  of  his  wife,  having  already  begun  a  fierce  polemic  against  the 
Unitarian  tendencies  appearing  on  the  Protestant  side  in  the 
teaching  of  the  Italian  Stancari  fl550)  ;  on  the  other  hand,  those 
tendencies  gained  head  till  they  ruptured  the  party,  of  which  the 
Trinitarian  majority  further  quarrelled  violently  among  themselves 
till,  as  in  Hungary,  many  were  driven  back  to  the  arms  of 
Catholicism.  In  a  Synod  held  in  1556,  one  Peter  Goniondzki^ 
(Gonesius) — who  as  a  Catholic  had  violently  opposed  Stancari  in 
1550,  but  in  the  interim  had  studied  in  Switzerland  and  turned 
Protestant — took  up  a  more  anti-Trinitarian  position  than  Stancari's, 
affirming  three  Gods,  of  whom  the  Son  and  the  Spirit  were  sub- 
ordinate to  the  Father.  A  few  years  later  he  declared  against 
infant  baptism — here  giving  forth  opinions  he  had  met  with  in 
Moravia  ;  and  he  rapidly  drew  to  him  a  considerable  following  alike 
of  ministers  and  of  wealthy  laymen.^ 

It  was  thus  not  the  primary  influence  of  Lelio  Sozzini,  who  had 
visited  Poland  in  1551  and  did  not  return  till  1558,  that  set  up  the 
remarkable  growth  of  Unitarianism  in  that  country.  It  would  seem 
rather  that  in  the  country  of  Copernicus  the  relative  weakness  of  the 
Church  had  admitted  of  a  more  common  approach  to  freedom  of 
thought  than  was  seen  elsewhere;^  and  the  impunity  of  the  new 
movements  brought  many  heterodox  fugitives  (as  it  did  Jews)  from 
other  lands.  One  of  the  newcomers,  the  learned  Italian,  George 
Biandrata,  whose  Unitarianism  had  been  cautiously  veiled,  was 
made  one  of  the  superintendents  of  the  "  Helvetic  "  Church  of  Little 
Poland,  and  aimed  at  avoidance  of  dogmatic  strifes ;  but  after  his 
withdrawal  to  Transylvania  Gregorius  Pauli,  a  minister  of  Cracow, 
of  Italian  descent,  went  further  than  Gonesius  had  done,  and 
declared  Jesus  to  be  a  mere  man.*  He  further  preached  com- 
munity of  goods,  promised  a  speedy  millennium,  and  condemned 
the  bearing  of  arms.*^     After  various  attempts  at  suppression  and 


1  I.e.,  Peter  of  Goniond.  a  small  town  in  Podlachia. 

2  Krasinski,  i,  346-48 ;  Mosheim,  16  Cent.  sect.  Ill,  pt.  ii,  ch.  iv,  §  7  ;  and  Schlegel's  and 
Reid's  notes. 

^  Cp.  Mosheim,  chapter  last  cited,  §  15  SQ.  *  Krasinski,  i,  357. 

c  Wallace,  Antitrin.  Biog.  ii,  181-62. 


i 


426    THE  KEFORMATION,  POLITICALLY  CONSIDERED 

compromise  by  the  orthodox  majority,  a  group  of  Unitarian 
ministers  and  nobles  formally  renounced  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  at  the  Conference  of  Petrikov  in  1562  ;  and,  on  a  formal 
condemnation  being  passed  by  an  orthodox  majority  at  Cracow 
in  1563,  there  was  formed  a  Unitarian  Church,  with  forty-two 
subscribing  ministers,  Zwinglian  as  to  the  eucharist,  and  opposed 
to  infant  baptism.'  Ethically,  its  doctrine  was  humane  and  paci- 
ficatory, its  members  being  forbidden  to  go  to  law  or  to  take  oaths ; 
and  for  a  time  the  community  made  great  progress,  the  national 
Diet  being,  by  one  account,  "filled  with  Arians  "  for  a  time.^ 

Meantime   the   Calvinist,  Zwinglian,  and   Lutheran  Protestant 
Churches  quarrelled  as  fiercely  in  Poland  as  elsewhere,  every  com- 
promise breaking  down,  till  the  abundant  relapses  of  nobles  and 
common  people  to  Catholicism  began  to  rebuild  the  power  of  the 
old  Church,  which  found  in  "  the  Great  Cardinal,"  Hosius,  a  states- 
man and  controversialist  unequalled  on  the  Protestant  side.     Backed 
by  the  Jesuits,  he  gained  by  every  Protestant  dispute,  the  Jesuit 
order  building  itself   up  with  its  usual  skill.     And  the   course   of 
politics   told   conclusively   in   the   same   direction.     King    Stephen 
Battory  favoured  the  Jesuits  ;  and  King  Sigismund  III,  who  had 
been   educated  as  a  Catholic   by  his   mother,  systematically  gave 
effect  to  his  personal  leanings  by  the  use  of  his  peculiar  feudal 
powers.     Under  the  ancient  constitution  the  king  had  the  bestowal 
of  a  number  of  life-tenures  of  great  estates,  called  starosties  ;  and 
the  granting  of  these  Sigismund  made  conditional  on  the  acceptance 
of  Catholicism,'     Thus  the  Protestantism  of  the  nobles,  which  had 
been  in  large  part  originally  determined  by  economic  interests,  was 
dissolved  by  a  reversal  of  the  same  force,  very  much  in  the  fashion 
in  which  it  was  disintegrated  in  France  by  the  policy  of  RicheHeu 
at  the  same  period.     At  the  close  of  Sigismund's  reign  Protestantism 
was  definitively  broken  up;  and  the  Jesuit   ascendancy  permitted 
even  of  frequent  persecutions  of  heresy.     From  these  Unitarians 
could  not  escape ;  and  at  length,  in  1658,  they  were  expelled  from 
the  country,  now  completely  subject  to  Jesuitism.     In  the  country 
in  which  Protestantism  and  Unitarianism  in  turn  had  spread  most 
rapidly  under  favouring  political  and  social  conditions,  the  rise  of 
contrary  conditions   had   most   rapidly  and   decisively  overthrown 
them. 

The  record  of  the  heresy  of  Poland,  Bohemia,  and  Hungary,  in 
fine,  is  very  much  a  reduplication   of   that  of  early  Christianity. 

1  Krasinski.  pp.  357-60.  ,   „.  .     ,  1  ^'*-5'  ?^'     „  lou 

8  Krasinski.  Eaf.  in  Poland,  ii.  93-94;  Bel.  Hist,  of  Slav.  Nations,  p.  188. 


THE  STRUGGLE  IN  FRANCE 


427 


Men  presented  with  an  obscure  and  self -contradictory  '  revelation  " 
set  themselves  zealously  to  extract  from  it  a  body  of  certain  truth, 
and  in  that  hopeless  undertaking  did  but  multiply  strife,  till  the 
majority,  wearied  with  the  fruitless  quest,  resigned  themselves  like 
their  ancient  prototypes  to  a  rule  of  dogma  under  which  the  reason- 
ing faculty  became  inert.  Sane  rationalism  had  to  find  another 
path,  in  a  more  enlightened  day. 

§  6.  The  Struggle  in  Fraiice 

The  political  and  economic  conditioning  of  the  Reformation  may 
perhaps  best  be  understood  by  following  the  fortunes  of  Protestantism 
in  France.  When  Luther  began  his  schism,  France  might  reason- 
ably have  been  held  a  much  more  likely  field  for  its  extension  than 
England.  While  King  Henry  was  still  to  earn  from  the  papacy  the 
title  of  "  Defender  of  the  Faith  "  as  against  Luther,  King  Francis 
had  exacted  from  the  Pope  (1516)  a  Concordat  by  which  the  appoint- 
ment of  all  abbots  and  bishops  in  France  was  vested  in  the  crown, 
the  papacy  receiving  only  the  annates,  or  first  year's  revenue.  For 
centuries  too  the  French  throne  and  the  papacy  had  been  chroni- 
cally at  strife ;  for  seventy  years  a  French  pope,  subservient  to  the 
king,  had  sat  at  Avignon  ;  and  before  the  Concordat  the  "  Pragmatic 
Sanction,"  first  enacted  in  1268  by  the  devout  St.  Louis,  had  since 
the  reign  of  Charles  VII,  who  reinforced  it  (1438),  kept  the  Gallican 
Church  on  a  semi-independent  footing  towards  Rome.  By  the 
account  of  the  chancellor  Du  Prat  in  1517,  the  "  Pragmatic,"  then 
superseded  by  the  Concordat,  had  isolated  France  among  the 
Catholic  peoples,  causing  her  to  be  regarded  as  inclined  to  heresy.^ 
In  1512  the  Council  of  Pisa,  convoked  by  Louis  XII,  had  denounced 
Pope  Julius  II  as  a  dangerous  schismatic,  and  he  had  retaliated  by 
placing  France  under  interdict.  In  the  previous  year  the  French 
king  had  given  his  protection  to  a  famous  farce  by  Pierre  Gringoire, 
in  which,  on  Shrove  Tuesday,  the  Pope  was  openly  ridiculed.^ 
Nowhere,  in  short,  was  the  papacy  as  such  less  respected. 

The  whole  strife,  however,  between  the  French  kings  and  the 
popes  had  been  for  revenue,  not  on  any  question  of  doctrine.  In 
the  three  years  (1461-64)  during  which  Louis  XI  had  for  his  own 
purposes  suspended  the  Pragmatic  Sanction,  it  was  found  that 
2,500,000  crowns  had  gone  from  France  to  Rome  for  "  expetatives  " 
and  "  dispensations,"  besides  340,000  crowns  for  bulls  for  arch- 
ie Lutteroth,  ia  Reformation  en  France  pendant  sa  premiere  periods,  p.  2. 
2  A.  A.  TiUey,  in  vol.  ii  of  Camb.  Mod.  Hist.  The  Beformation,  ch.  ix,  p.  281. 


428    THE  EEFORMATION,  POLITICALLY  CONSIDERED 

bishoprics,  bishoprics,  abbeys,  priories,  and  deaneries.'  This  drain 
was  naturally  resisted  by  Church  and  Crown  alike.  Louis  XI 
restored  the  Pragmatic  Sanction.  Louis  XII  re-enacted  it  in  1499 
with  new  severity  ;  and  the  effect  of  the  Concordat  of  Francis  I 
was  merely  to  win  over  the  Pope  by  dividing  between  the  king  and 
him  the  power  of  plunder  by  the  sale  of  ecclesiastical  offices.''  It 
was  accordingly  much  resented  by  the  Parlement,  the  University, 
the  clergy,  and  the  people  of  Paris ;  but  the  king  overbore  all 
opposition.  Though,  therefore,  he  had  at  times  some  disposition 
to  make  a  "  reform  "  on  the  Lutheran  lines,  he  had  no  such  motive 
thereto  as  had  the  kings  and  nobles  of  the  other  northern  countries ; 
and  he  had  further  no  such  personal  motive  as  had  Henry  VIII  of 
England.  Under  the  existing  arrangement  he  was  as  well  provided 
for  as  might  be,  since  **  the  patronage  of  some  six  hundred  bishoprics 
and  abbeys  furnished  him  with  a  convenient  and  inexpensive  method 
of  providing  for  his  diplomatic  service,  and  of  rewarding  literary 
merit."  ^  The  troubles  in  Germany,  besides,  were  a  warning  against 
letting  loose  a  movement  of  popular  fanaticism.* 

When,  therefore,  Protestantism  and  Lutheranism  begun  to  show 
head  in  France,  they  had  no  friends  at  once  powerful  and  zealous. 
Before  Luther,  in  1512,  Jacques  Lef^vre  d'Etaples  laid  down  in  the 
commentary  on  his  Latin  translation  of  the  Pauline  Epistles  the 
Lutheran  doctrine  of  grace,  and  in  effect  denied  the  received  doc- 
trine of  transubstantiation.'  In  1520  his  former  pupil,  Guillaume 
Briconnet,  Bishop  of  Meaux,  invited  him  and  some  younger 
reformers,  among  them  Guillaume  Farel,  to  join  him  in  teaching 
in  his  diocese ;  and  in  1523  appeared  Lef^vre's  translation  of  and 
commentary  on  the  gospels,  which  effectually  began  the  Protestant 

a 

movement  in  France. 

Persecution  soon  began.  The  king's  adoring  sister,  Margaret, 
Duchess  of  Alen^on  (afterwards  Queen  of  Navarre),  was  the  friend 
of  Brigonnet,  but  was  powerless  to  help  at  home  even  her  own 
intimates.''  At  first  the  king  and  his  mother  encouraged  the  move- 
ment at  Meaux  while  sending  out  a  dozen  preachers  through  France 
to  combat  the  Lutheran  teaching  ;'  but  in  1524,  setting  out  on  his 
Italian  campaign,  the  king  saw  fit  to  conciliate  his  clergy,  and  his 
clerical  chancellor  Du  Prat  began  measures  of  repression,  the  queen- 
mother  assenting,  and  Bri9onnet's  own  brother  assisting.  Already, 
in  1521,  the  Sorbonne  had  condemned  Luther's  writings,  and  the 

1  Prof.  H.  M.  Baird.  Hist,  of  the  Bine  of  the  Huguenots,  1880.  i.  33. 

2  Id.  i.  35.  8  Tilley.  as  cited,  p.  281.  *  Lutteroth.  pp.  14-16. 

6  Tilley.  p.  283.   The  translation  was  notable  as  a  revision  of  the  Vulgate  version,  whicn 
was  printed  side  by  side  with  it.  , ^  «  Lutteroth,  pp.  3-4  ;  Baird ,  i.  79. 

7  Michelet,  Hist,  de  France,  torn,  x.  La  Bfiforme,  ch.  vm.  **  Lutteroth,  p.  9. 


THE  STEUGGLE  IN  FEANCE 


429 


Parlement  of  Paris  had  ordered  the  surrender  of  all  copies.  In  1523 
the  works  of  Louis  de  Berquin,  the  anti-clerical  friend  of  Erasmus, 
were  condemned,  and  himself  imprisoned  ;  and  Bri9onnet  consented 
to  issue  synodal  decrees  against  Luther's  books  and  against  certain 
Lutheran  doctrines  preached  in  his  own  diocese.  Only  by  the  king's 
intervention  was  Berquin  at  this  time  released. 

The  first  man  slain  was  Jean  Chastellain,  a  shoemaker  of  Tournay, 
burned  at  Vic  in  Lorraine  on  January  12,  1525.  The  next  was 
a  wool-carder  of  Meaux, ^  who  was  first  whipped  and  branded  for 
a  fanatical  outrage,  then  burned  to  death,  with  slow  tortures,  for 
a  further  outrage  against  an  image  of  the  Virgin  at  Metz  (July, 
1525).  Later,  an  ecclesiastic  of  the  Meaux  group,  Jacques  Banvan 
of  Picardy,  was  prosecuted  at  Paris  for  anti-Lutheran  heresy,  and 
publicly  recanted  ;  but  repented,  retracted  his  abjuration,  and  was 
burned  on  the  Place  de  Gr^ve,  in  August,  1526  ;  a  nameless  "  hermit 
of  Livry  "  suffering  the  same  death  about  the  same  time  beside  the 
cathedral  of  Notre  Dame.'^  Meantime  Lef^vre  had  taken  refuge  in 
Strasburg,  and.  despite  a  letter  of  veto  from  the  king,  now  in 
captivity  at  Madrid,  his  works  were  condemned  by  the  Sorbonne. 
When  released,  the  king  not  only  recalled  him  but  made  him  tutor 
to  his  children.  Ecclesiastical  pressures,  however,  forced  him  finally 
to  take  refuge  under  the  Queen  of  Navarre  at  N6rac,  in  Gascony, 
where  he  mourned  his  avoidance  of  martyrdom.^ 

So  determined  had  been  the  persecution  that  in  1526  Berquin 
was  a  second  time  imprisoned,  and  with  difficulty  saved  from  death 
by  the  written  command  of  the  captive  king,  sent  on  his  sister's 
appeal.'*  And  when  the  released  king,  to  secure  the  deliverance  of 
his  hostage  sons,  felt  bound  to  conciliate  the  Pope,  and  to  secure 
funds  had  to  conciliate  the  clergy.  Marguerite,  compelled  to  marry 
the  king  of  Navarre,  could  do  nothing  more  for  Protestantism,*^  being 
herself  openly  and  furiously  denounced  by  the  Catholic  clergy.^ 
Bought  by  a  clerical  subsidy,  the  king,  on  the  occasion  of  a  new 
outrage  on  a  statue  of  the  Virgin  (1528),^  associated  himself  with 
the  popular  indignation  ;  and  when  the  audacious  Berquin,  despite 
the  dissuasions  of  Erasmus,  resumed  his  anti-Catholic  polemic,  and  in 
particular  undertook  to  prove  that  B6da,  the  chief  of  the  Sorbonne, 
was  not  a  Christian,^  he  was  re-arrested,  tried,  and  condemned  to  be 

1  Michelet,  6d.  1884.  x,  308  ;  Baird.  i,  89,  note. 

2  See  Baird.  i,  91,  note,  as  to  the  dates,  which  are  usually  put  a  year  too  early. 

8  Baird,  i.  95-96.  and  fwte.  *  Id.  p.  132.  5  Michelet,  x,  314;  Baird,  i.  133-37. 

6  Lutteroth,  p.  15;  Michelet,  x,  337. 

7  other  such  outrages  followed,  and  did  much  to  intensify  persecution. 

8  Erasmus   had    said  that  one  pamphlet    of    B6da's  contained  "eighty  lies,  three 
hundred  calumnies,  and  forty-seven  blasphemies  "  (Michelet,  x.  320). 


430    THE  EEFORMATION,  POLITICALLY  CONSIDERED 

publicly  branded  and  imprisoned  for  life.  On  his  announcing  an 
appeal  to  the  absent  king,  and  to  the  pope,  a  fresh  sentence,  this 
time  of  death,  was  hurriedly  passed  ;  and  he  was  strangled  and  burned 
(1529)  within  two  hours  of  the  sentence,^  to  the  intense  joy  of  the 
ecclesiastical  multitude. 

After  various  vacillations,  the  king  in  1534  had  the  fresh  pretext 
of  Protestant  outrage — the  affixing  of  an  anti-Catholic  placard  in  all 
of  the  principal  thoroughfares  of  Paris,  and  to  the  door  of  the  king's 
own  room^ — for  permitting  a  fresh  persecution  after  he  had  refused 
the  Pope's  request  that  he  should  join  in  a  general  extermination  of 
heresy,^  and  there  began  at  Paris  a  series  of  human  sacrifices.  It 
will  have  been  observed  that  Protestant  outrages  had  provoked 
previous  executions ;  and  there  is  some  ground  for  the  view  that, 
but  for  the  new  and  exasperating  outrage  of  1534,  the  efforts  which 
were  being  officially  made  for  a  modus  vivendi  might  have  met  with 
success.^  This  hope  was  now  frustrated.  In  November,  1534, 
seven  men  were  condemned  to  be  burned  alive,  one  of  them  for 
printing  Lutheran  books.  In  December  others  followed  ;  and  in 
January,  1535,  on  the  occasion  of  a  royal  procession  "  to  appease  the 
wrath  of  God,"  six  Lutherans  (by  one  account,  three  by  another) 
were  burned  alive  by  slow  fires,  one  of  the  victims  being  a  school- 
mistress.'* It  was  on  this  occasion  that  the  king,  in  a  public  speech, 
declared :  "  Were  one  of  my  arms  infected  with  this  poison,  I  would 
cut   it   off.     Were   my  own   children   tainted,  I    should  immolate 

them."' 

Under  such  circumstances  religious  zeal  naturally  went  far.  In 
six  months  there  were  passed  102  sentences  of  death,  of  which 
twenty-seven  were  executed,  the  majority  of  the  condemned  having 
escaped  by  flight.  Thereafter  the  individual  burnings  are  past 
counting.  On  an  old  demand  of  the  Sorbonne,  the  king  actually 
sent  to  the  Parlement  an  edict  abolishing  the  art  of  printing  ;^  which 
he  duly  recalled  when  the  Parlement  declined  to  register  it.  But 
the  French  Government  was  now  committed  to  persecution.  The 
Sorbonne's  declaration  against  Luther  in  1521  had  proclaimed  as  to 
the  heretics  that  "  their  impious  and  shameless  arrogance  must  be 
restrained  by  chains,  by  censures — nay,  by  fire  and  flame,  rather 
than  confuted  by  argument";^  and  in  that  spirit  the  ruling  clergy 


1  Baird,  i.  143-44 ;  Michelet,  x,  321-26.  »  Michelet.  x.  338-39. 

8  Baird,  i.  149.  *  Cp.  Tilley,  p.  285. 

6  Lutteroth,  p.  17  ;  Michelet,  x,  340  (giving  the  text  of  a  contemporary  record) ;  Baird, 
i,  173-78 — a  very  full  account. 

6  See  Baird,  i.  176.  note,  as  to  the  authenticity  of  the  utterance,  which  was  doubted  by 
Voltaire. 

7  Michelet.  x.  342 ;  Baird.  i.  169.  »  Cit.  by  Baird,  i.  24,  note. 


THE  POLITICAL  PEOCESS  IN  BKITAIN 


431 


proceeded,  the  king  abetting  them.  In  1543  he  ordained  that  heresy 
should  be  punished  as  sedition  ;^  and  in  1545  occurred  the  massacres 
of  the  Vaudois,  before  described.  The  result  of  this  and  further 
savageries  was  simply  the  wider  diffusion  of  heresy,  and  a  whole  era 
of  civil  war,  devastation,  and  demoralization. 

Meantime  Calvin  had  been  driven  abroad,  to  found  a  Protestant 
polity  at  Geneva  and  give  a  lead  to  those  of  England  and  Scotland. 
The  balance  of  political  forces  prevented  a  Protestant  polity  in 
France  ;  but  nowhere  else  in  the  sixteenth  century  did  Protestantism 
fight  so  long  and  hard  a  battle.  That  the  Keformation  was  a  product 
of  "Teutonic  conscience"  is  an  inveterate  fallacy.^  The  country  in 
which  Protestantism  was  intellectually  most  disinterested  and  morally 
most  active  was  France.  '*  The  main  battle  of  erudition  and  doctrine 
against  the  Catholic  Church,"  justly  contends  Guizot,  **  was  sustained 
by  the  French  reformers  ;  it  was  in  France  and  Holland,  and  always 
in  French,  that  most  of  the  philosophic,  historical,  and  polemic 
works  on  that  side  were  written  ;  neither  Germany  nor  England, 
certainly,  employed  in  the  cause  at  that  epoch  more  intelligence  and 
science."^  Nor  was  there  in  France — apart  from  the  provocative 
insults  to  Catholics  above  mentioned^any  such  licence  on  the 
Protestant  side  as  arose  in  Germany,  though  the  French  Protestants 
were  as  violently  intolerant  as  any.  Their  ultimate  dechne,  after  long 
and  desperate  wars  ending  in  a  political  compromise,  was  due  to  the 
play  of  socio-economic  causes  under  the  wise  and  tolerant  adminis- 
tration of  Eichelieu,  who  opened  the  royal  services  to  the  Protestant 
nobles.^  The  French  character  had  proved  as  unsubduable  in 
Protestantism  as  any  other  ;  and  the  generation  which  in  large 
part  gradually  reverted  to  Catholicism  did  but  show  that  it  had 
learned  the  lesson  of  the  strifes  which  had  followed  on  the  Eeforma- 
tion — that  Protestantism  was  no  solution  of  either  the  moral  or  the 
intellectual  problems  of  religion  and  politics. 

§  7.  The  Political  Process  in  Britain 

It  was  thus  by  no  predilection  or  faculty  of  "  race  "  that  the 
Eeformation  so-called  came  to  be  associated  historically  with  the 
northern  or  "  Teutonic  "  nations.  They  simply  succeeded  in  making 
permanent,  by  reason  of  more  propitious  political  circumstances,  a 
species  of  ecclesiastical  revolution  in  which  other  races  led  the  way. 

1  Baird,  i.  221-22. 

2  It  is  endorsed  by  Professor  Clifford,  Lectures  and  Essays,  2nd  ed.  p.  335. 
8  Hist,  de  la  Civ.  en  France,  13e  6dit.  i.  18. 

^  See  the  case  well  made  out  by  Buckle,  ch.  viii— 1-vol.  ed.  pp.  311-13. 


432    THE  EEFOKMATION,  POLITICALLY  CONSIDEEED 

As  Hussitism  failed  in  Bohemia,  Lollardism  came  to  nothing  in 
England  in  the  same  age,  after  a  period  of  great  vogue  and  activity.' 
The  designs  of  Parliament  on  the  revenues  of  the  Church  at  the 
beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century''  had  failed  by  reason  of  the 
alliance  knit  between  Church  and  Crown  in  the  times  w^hen  the 
latter  needed  backing  ;  and  at  the  accession  of  Henry  VIII  England 
was  more  orthodox  than  any  of  the  other  leading  States  of  Northern 
Europe.^  Henry  was  himself  passionately  orthodox,  and  was  much 
less  of  a  reformer  in  his  mental  attitude  than  was  Wolsey,  who  had 
far-reaching  schemes  for  de-Eomanizing  the  Church  alike  in  England 
and  France,  and  who  actually  gave  the  king  a  handle  against  him  by 
his  plans  for  turning  Church  endowments  to  educational  purposes/ 
The  personal  need  of  the  despotic  king  for  a  divorce  which  the  pope 
dared  not  give  him  was  the  first  adequate  lead  to  the  rejection  of  the 
papal  authority.  On  this  the  plunder  of  the  monasteries  followed, 
as  a  forced  measure  of  royal  finance,*  of  precaution  against  papal 
influence,  and  for  the  creation  of  a  body  of  new  interests  vitally 
hostile  to  a  papal  restoration.  The  king  and  the  mass  of  the  people 
were  ahke  Cathohcs  in  doctrine ;  the  Protestant  nobles  who  ruled 
under  Edward  VI  were  for  the  most  part  mere  cynical  plunderers, 
appropriating  alike  Ckurch  goods,  lands,  and  school  endowments 
more  shamelessly  than  even  did  the  potentates  of  Germany ;  and  on 
the  accession  of  Queen  Mary  the  nation  gladly  reverted  to  Eomish 
usages,  though  the  spoil-holders  would  not  surrender  a  yard  of 
Church  lands.®  Had  there  been  a  succession  of  CathoHc  sovereigns, 
CathoHcism  would  certainly  have  been  restored.  Protestantism  was 
only  slowly  built  up  by  the  new  clerical  and  heretical  propaganda, 
and  by  the  state  of  hostility  set  up  between  England  and  the  Catholic 
Powers.  It  was  the  episode  of  the  Spanish  Armada  that,  by  identi- 
fying Catholicism  with  the  cause  of  the  great  national  enemy,  made 
the  people  grow  definitely  anti-Catholic.  Even  in  Shakespeare's 
dramas  the  old  state  of  things  is  seen  not  yet  vibally  changed. 

1  See  above,  p.  348.  "^  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  3rd  ed.  ii.  469.  471.  510. 

8  Cp.  Froude,  Hist,  of  England,  ed.  1872.  i.  173;  Burnet.  Hist,  of  the  Reformation.  Nares 
ed  i  17-18  Henry,  says  Burnet,  "cherished  Churchmen  more  than  any  king  in  ti^ngiana 
had  ever  done."  Compare  further  Shaftesbury.  Miscellaneous  Reflections,  in  the  CJmrac- 
teHstics,  Misc.  iii.  ch.  i.  ed.  1733.  vol.  iii.  p.  151 :  Lea.  Hist,  of  the  Inquisition,  as  cited 

***4^Re?;Dr.'j.  H.  Blunt.  The  Reformation  of  the  Church  of  England,  ed.  1892.  i,  72-100. 
Wolsey  was  more  patient  with  Protestant  heresy  than  Henry  ever  was.  though  on  his 
death-bed  he  counseUed  the  king  to  put  down  the  Lutherans. 

6  Cp.  Burnet,  as  cited,  pref.  p.  xl.  and  p.  3;  Heylyn.  Hist,  of  the  R^.  pref..  Blunt,  i. 
293-94  In  1530  the  king  had  actually  repudiated  his  debts,  cancelling  borrowings  made 
under  the  Privy  Seal,  and  thus  setting  an  example  to  the  Catholic  King  Philip  II  in  a  later 

^^Tney^lyn.  as  cited,  and  i.  12a-27.  ed.  1849;  A.  P.  Leach,  English  Schools  at JiJ 
R^ormation,  1896.  pp.  6-6;  J.  E.  G.  De  Montmorency.  State  Intervention  in  Englibii 
Education,  1902,  pp.  62-65. 


THE  POLITICAL  PEOCESS  IN  BEITAIN 


433 


In  Scotland,  though  there  the  priesthood  had  fewer  friends  than 
almost  anywhere  else,  the  act  of  Keformation  was  mainly  one  of  pure 
and  simple  plunder  of  Church  property  by  the  needy  nobility,  in 
conscious  imitation  of  the  policy  of  Henry  VIII,  at  a  time  when  the 
throne  was  vacant ;  and  there  too  Protestant  doctrine  was  only 
gradually  established  by  the  new  race  of  preachers,  trained  in  the 
school  of  Calvin.  In  Ireland,  on  the  other  hand.  Protestantism 
became  identified  with  the  cause  of  the  oppressor,  just  as  for 
England  Komanism  was  the  cause  of  the  enemy-in-chief.  "  Race  " 
and  "  national  character,"  whatever  they  may  be  understood  to 
mean,  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  course  of  events,  and 
doctrinal  enlightenment  had  just  as  little.^  In  the  words  of  a 
distinguished  clerical  historian :  "No  truth  is  more  certain  than 
this,  that  the  real  motives  of  religious  action  do  not  work  on  men 
in  masses ;  and  that  the  enthusiasm  which  creates  Crusaders, 
Inquisitors,  Hussites,  Puritans,  is  not  the  result  of  conviction, 
but  of  passion  provoked  by  oppression  or  resistance,  maintained 
by  self-will,  or  stimulated  by  the  mere  desire  of  victory."  ^  To  this 
it  need  only  be  added  that  the  desire  of  gain  is  also  a  factor,  and 
that  accordingly  the  anti-papal  movement  succeeded  where  the 
balance  of  political  forces  could  be  turned  against  the  clerical 
interest,  and  failed  where  the  latter  predominated. 


*  The  subject  is  treated  at  some  length  in  The  Dynamics  of  Religion,  by  "M.  W. 
Wiseman"  (J.  M.  R.),  1897,  pp.  3-46 ;  and  in  The  Saxon  and  the  Celt,  pp.  92-97. 

'^  Bishop  Stubbs.  Const.  Hist,  of  England,  3rd  ed.  iii,  638.  Cp.  Bishop  Creighton,  The 
Age  of  Elizabeth,  p.  6 ;  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  i,  366. 


2p 


GSkmany  and  SWITZEKLAND 


435 


Chapter  XII 
THE  EEFOKMATION  AND  EEEETHOUGHT 

§  1.  Germany  and  Switzerland 

In  the  circumstances  set  forth  in  the  last  chapter,  the  Eeformation 
could  stand  for  only  the  minimum  of  freethought  needed  to  secure 
political  action.     Some  decided  unbelief  there  was  within  its  original 
sphere  ;^  the  best  known  instance  being  the  private  latitudinarianism 
of  such  humanist  teachers  as  Mutianus  (Mudt)  and  Crotus  (Jager), 
of  the  Erfurt  University,  in  the  closing  years  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
Trained  in  Italy,  Mutianus,  after  his  withdrawal  to  private  life  at 
Gotha,  in  his  private  correspondence^  avowed  the  opinion  that  the 
sacred  books  contained  many  designed  fables;  that  the  books  of 
Job  and  Jonah  were  such ;  and  that  there  was  a  secret  wisdom  in 
the  Moslem  opinion  that  Christ  himself  was  not  crucified,  his  place 
being   taken   by  someone   resembling   him.     To   his   young   friend 
Spalatin  he  propounded  the  question  :  "  If  Christ  alone  be  the  way, 
the  truth,  and  the  life,  how  went.it  with  the  men  who  lived  so 
many  centuries  before  his  birth  ?     Had  they  had  no  part  in  truth 
and  salvation?"     And  he  hints  the  answer  that  "  the  religion  of 
Christ  did  not  begin  with  his  incarnation,  but  is  as  old  as  the  world, 
as  his  birth  from  the  Father.      For  what  is  the  real  Christ,  the  only 
Son  of  God,  save,  as  Paul  says,  the  Wisdom  of  God,  with  which  he 
endowed  not  only  the  Jews  in  their  narrow  Syrian  land,  but  also  the 
Greeks,  the  Eomans,  and  the  Germans,  however  dififerent  might  be 
their  religious  usages."     Though  some  such  doctrine  could  be  found 
in  Eusebius,^  it  was  remarkable  enough  in  the  Germany  of  four 
hundred  years  ago.     But  Mutianus  went  still  further.     To  his  friend 
Heinrich   Urban  he  wrote   that  ''there  is  but  one  God  and  one 
Goddess"  under  the  many  forms  and  names  of  Jupiter,  Sol,  Apollo, 
Moses,  Christ,  Luna,  Ceres,  Proserpina,  Tellus,  Maria.     "  But,"  he 

1  Eanke.  History  of  the  Popes,  Bohn  tr.  1908,  p.  60 ;  Hardwick.  Church  History :  Befor- 

*^«  Muchof'?hiB^^never  been  published.    Most  of  it  is  i^a  .^^-.^SofJa^l'mf  In 
Library  at  Frankfurt.    Extracts  in  Tentzel's  Supple, mntiim  Htstortce  Qoaan^^^^^^^ 
iheNarratio  de  Eobano  HeMso  of  J.  Camerarius.  1553.  etc.    See  Strauss  s  Ulrtch  von  Hutten, 
2te  Aufl.  1871,  p.  32.  n.  (ed.  ia^>8.  i.  44)  et  seq. 
8  Eccles.  Hist.  bk.  i.  ch.  iv. 

434 


prudently  added,  "heed  that  you  do  not  spread  it  abroad.  One 
must  hide  it  in  silence,  like  Eleusinian  mysteries.  In  rehgious 
matters  we  must  avail  ourselves  of  the  cloak  of  fable  and  enigma. 
Thou,  with  the  grace  of  Jupiter— that  is,  the  best  and  greatest  God— 
shouldst  silently  despise  the  little  Gods.  When  I  say  Jupiter,  I 
mean  Christ  and  the  true  God.  But  enough  of  these  all  too  high 
things."  Such  language  hints  of  much  current  rationalism  that  can 
now  only  be  guessed  at,  since  it  was  unsafe  even  to  write  to  friends 
as  Mutianus  did.  On  concrete  matters  of  religion  he  is  even  more 
pronounced,  laughing  at  the  worship  of  the  coat  and  beard  and 
foreskin  of  Jesus,  calling  Lenten  food  fool's  food,  contemning  the 
begging  monks,  rejecting  confession  and  masses  for  the  dead,  and 
pronouncing  the  hours  spent  in  altar-service  lost  time.  In  his 
house  at  Gotha,  behind  the  Cathedral,  his  friend  Crotus  burlesqued 
the  Mass,  called  the  relics  of  saints  bones  from  the  gallows,  and 
otherwise  blasphemed  with  his  host.' 

But  such  esoteric  doctrine  and  indoors  unbelief  can  have  had 
no  part  in  the  main  movement ;  and  though  at  the  same  period  we 
see  among  the  common  people  the  satirist  Heinrich  Bebel,  a  Swabian 
peasant's  son,  jesting  for  them  over  the  doctrines  of  trinity  in  unity, 
the  resurrection,  doomsday,  and  the  sacraments,^  it  is  certain  that 
that  influence  counted  for  little  in  the  way  of  serious  thinking.     It 
was  only  as  separate  and  serious  heresies  that  such  doctrines  could 
long  propagate  themselves  ;  and  Luther  in  his  letter  to  the  people 
of  Antwerp^  speaks   of   one   sect   off  group   as   rejecting   baptism, 
another  the  eucharist,  another  the  divinity  of  Jesus,  and  yet  another 
affirming  a  middle  state  between  the  present  life  and  the  day  of 
judgment.     One   teacher   in  Antwerp  he  describes  as  saying  that 
every  man   has   the   Holy  Ghost,  that   being   simply   reason   and 
understanding,  that  there  is  no  hell,  and  that  doing  as  we  would  be 
done  by  is  faith ;  but  this  heretic  does  not  seem  to  have  founded 
a  sect.     The  most  extensive  wave  of  really  innovating  thought  was 
that  set  up  by  the  social  and  anti-sacerdotal  revolt  of  the  Ana- 
baptists, among  whom  occurred  also  the  first  popular  avowals  of 
Unitarianism. 

In  the  way  of  literature.  Unitarian  doctrine  came  from  John 
Campanus,  of  Jiilich ;  Ludwig  Hetzer,  a  priest  of  Zurich ;  and  (in 

1  Strauss,  Ulrich  von  Hutten,  as  cited,  pp.  33-35 ;  Bezold,  Oesch.  der  deutschen  Beforma- 
tton,  1890,  p.  226.  Bezold  describes  Mutianus  as  "  der  freigeistige  Kanonikus  zu  Gotha," 
and  points  out,  concerning  his  universalism,  that  "the  historic  Christ  thus  slips  through 
his  fingers." 

2  Bezold,  as  last  cited.  "  Here  is  the  skepticism  kept  in  the  background  by  Mutianus 
and  Celtis.  popularized  in  the  rudest  way." 

»  Briefe,  ed.  De  Wette,  iii,  60. 


m         THE  EEFORMATIOll  Alll)  fREETHOUGHT 

a  minor  degree)  Johann  Denk,  school-rector  in  Nuremberg  in  1524." 
and  afterwards  one  of  the  earlier  leaders  of  the  Anabaptist  move- 
ment All  three  were  men  of  academic  training ;  and  Hetzer,  who 
wrote  explicitly  against  the  divinity  of  Christ,  had  previously  made 
with  the  aid  of  Denk  a  German  translation,  which  was  used  by 
Luther,  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  (1527).  He  was  beheaded  at 
Constance  in  1529,  nominally  on  the  charge  of  practising  free-love. 
Campanus,  who  published  a  book  attacking  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  and  the  teaching  of  Luther,  had  to  leave  Wittemberg  in 
consequence,  and  finally  died  after  a  long  imprisonment  in  Cleve. 
Denk— an  amiable  and  estimable  man'— is  said,  on  very  scant 
grounds,  to  have  recanted  before  he  died. 

Not  only  from  such  thoroughgoing  heresy,  but  from  the  whole 
Anabaptist  secession,  and  no  less  from  the  rising  of  the  peasants, 
the  main  Lutheran  movement  kept  itself  utterly  aloof ;  and,  though 
the  Catholics  naturally  identified  the  extremer  parties  with  the 
Reformation,  its  official  or  '*  Centre "  poUty  made  little  for  mtel- 
lectual  or  political  as  distinct  from  ecclesiastical  innovation. 
Towards  the  Peasants'  Revolt,  which  at  first  he  favoured,  inas- 
much as  the  peasants,  whom  he  had  courted,  came  to  him  for 
counsel,  Luther's  final  attitude  was  so  brutal  that  it  has  to-day 
almost  no  apologist ;  and  in  this  as  in  some  of  his  other  evil 
departures  the  "mild"  Melanchthon  went  with  him.  Their 
doctrine  was  the  very  negation  of  all  democracy,  and  must  be 
interpreted  as  an  absolute  capitulation  to  the  nobles,  without  whose 
backing  they  knew  themselves  to  be  ecclesiastically  helpless.  In 
the  massacres  to  which  Luther  gave  his  eager  approval  a  hundred 
thousand  men  were  destroyed.^  "  From  this  time  onwards,  pro- 
nounces  Baur,  "  Luther  ceases  to  be  the  representative  of  the  spirit 

of  his  time;  he  represents  only  one  side  of  it Thenceforth  his 

writings  have  no  more  the  universal  bearing  they  once  had  but 

only  a  particular In  the  political  connection  we  must  date  from 

Luther's  attitude  to  the  Peasants'  War  the  Lutheran  theory  of 
unconditional  obedience.  Christianity,  as  Luther  preached  it.  has 
given  to  princes  unUmited  power  of  despotism  and  tyranny  ;  while 

I  Karl  Hagen,  DeutscManas  lU  -^J^f-J^^lft^^'^^  fl^l':^li^^'^rTelc^^^^^^ 
ii,  110 ;  letter  of  Capito  to  Zwingli.  ip.  Zxoiyigm,i,  ^^^  f-^'  %acinu8   183^-44.  i.  13-16.  33 ; 
450;  Trechsel.  Der  proto-AntitrtnitariamsmuH  vor  Faustus  Soctnus,  ittdv^*. 
Wallace   A ntitrinitarian  Biography,  1S50, 1,  a.rt.  6,  i.i).     ,     ^rn.  rrvo/.VioAi   i   n-16 

^^"^chiegers  note  to  Mosheim  ^^^^'^/^^fh^t'  Sr^s'of f/^eTe/orm^^^  204  sa. 

8  See  a  good  account  of  bim  by  Beard.  Hibbert  I^ectures  on  ^  «e  .ree/u^«  Qermariy, 

*  For  an  impartial  criticism  onheir  language  see  Henderson ^^  fnCamb    Mod.  Hist,  ii, 

i^l?rBeSr^d.rbl'er^r/^^^^^^^^  ^~^-  ''' 

fmTrklEarXe  in  the  Tijm  of  the  ^orrmUon^^ng.  tr.  18OT.  PP.  117  28. 
6  Kohlrauscb,  Hist,  of  Germany,  Eng.  tr.  p.  397. 


GEEMANY  AND  SWITZEKLAND 


437 


the  poor  man,  who,  without  right  of  protest,  must  submit  to  every- 
thing, will  be  compensated  for  his  earthly  sufferings  in  heaven."  ^ 
Naturally  the  princes  henceforth  grew  more  and  more  Lutheran. 

As  naturally  the  crushed  peasantry  turned  away  from  the 
Eeformation  in  despair.  Luther  had  in  the  first  instance  approached 
them,  not  they  him.  Before  the  revolt  the  reformers  had  made  the 
peasant  a  kind  of  hero  in  their  propaganda;^  and  when  in  the  first 
and  moderate  stage  of  the  rising  its  motives  were  set  forth  in  sixty- 
two  articles,  these  were  purely  agrarian.  "  There  is  no  trace  of 
a  religious  element  in  them,  no  indication  that  their  authors  had 
ever  heard  of  Luther  or  of  the  Gospel." '**  Then  it  was  that  Luther 
commended  them ;  and  thereafter  "  a  religious  element  began  to 
obtrude."^  When  the  overthrow  began,  doubtless  sincerely  repro- 
bating the  violences  of  the  insurgents,  he  hounded  on  the  princes 
in  their  work  of  massacre,  Melanchthon  chiming  in.  Thereafter, 
as  Melanchthon  admitted,  the  people  showed  a  detestation  of  the 
Lutheran  clergy;^  and  among  many  there  was  even  developed  a 
kind  of  "  materialistic  atheism."  ^ 

The  political  outcome,  as  aforesaid,  was  a  thoroughly  undemo- 
cratic organization  of  Protestantism  in  Germany ;  and,  though  the 
ecclesiastical  tyranny  which  resulted  from  the  more  democratic 
system  of  Calvin  was  not  more  favourable  to  progress  or  happiness, 
the  final  German  system  of  ctijiis  regio,  ejus  religio — every  district 
taking  the  religion  of  its  ruler — must  be  summed  up  as  a  mere 
negation  of  the  right  of  private  judgment.  Save  for  the  attempt 
of  a  Frenchman,  Fran9ois  Lambert  of  Avignon,  to  organize  a 
self-governing  church,  German  Protestantism  showed  almost  no 
democratic  feeling."^  The  one  poor  excuse  for  Luther  was  that  the 
peasants  had  never  recognized  the  need  or  duty  of  maintaining 
their  clergy.®  And  seeing  how  the  wealth  of  the  Church  went  to 
the  nobles  and  the  well-to-do,  and  how  downtrodden  were  the 
peasants  all  along,  it  would  be  surprising  indeed  if  they  had. 
They  were  not  the  workers  of  the  ecclesiastical  Eeformation,  and 
it  wrought  little  or  nothing  for  them. 

The  side  on  which  the  whole  movement  made  for  new  light  was 
its  promotion  of  common  schools,  which  enabled  many  of  the  people 
for  the  first  time  to  read.^  This  tendency  had  been  seen  among  the 
Waldenses,  the  Lollards,  and  the  Hussites,  and  for  the  same  reasons. 


1  To  the  same  effect  Menzel,  Gesch.  der  Beutschen,  Capp.  391,  492. 

2  Pollard,  as  cited,  p.  175.  »  Id.  p.  178. 
<  Id.  pp.  179,  193.  fi  Id.  p.  193.  ^  la.  p.  192. 
'  Ranke.  as  cited,  pp.  459-64.  ^  Id.  p.  461. 
9  Cp.  Michelet,  Uist.  de  France,  x,  La  Be^orme.  ed.  1882,  pp.  104,  332. 


438         THE  EEFOEMATION  AND  FEEETHOUGHT 

Such  movements  depended  for  their  existence  on  the  reading  of  the 
sacred  books  by  the  people  for  themselves  ;  and  to  make  readers 
was  their  first  concern.  In  this  connection,  of  course,  note  must 
be  taken  of  the  higher  educational  revival  before  the  Reformation,* 
without  which  the  ecclesiastical  revolution  could  not  have  taken 
place  even  in  Germany.  As  we  saw,  a  literary  expansion  preceded 
the  Hussite  movement  in  Bohemia ;  and  the  stir  of  concern  for 
written  knowledge,  delightedly  acclaimed  by  Ulrich  von  Hutten,  is 
recognized  by  all  thoughtful  historians  in  Germany  before  the  rise 
of  Luther.  Such  enlightenment  as  that  of  Mutianus  was  far  in 
advance  of  Luther's  own  ;  and  enlightenment  of  a  lower  degree 
cannot  have  been  lacking.  The  ability  to  read,  indeed,  must  have 
been  fairly  general  in  the  middle  class  in  Germany,  for  it  appears 
that  the  partisan  favour  shown  everywhere  to  Luther's  writings  by 
the  printers  and  booksellers  gave  him  an  immense  propagandist 
advantage  over  his  Catholic  opponents,  who  could  secure  for  their 
replies  only  careless  or  bad  workmanship,  and  were  thus  made  to 
seem  actually  illiterate  in  the  eyes  of  the  reading  public.^ 

As  regards  Switzerland,  again,  it  is  the  admitted  fact  that  "  the 
educational  movement  began  before  the  religious  revival,  and  was 
a  cause  of  the  Reformation  rather  than  a  result."  ^  So  in  Holland, 
the  Brethren  of  the  Common  Lot  {Fratres  VitcB  Communis),  a 
partially  communistic  but  orthodox  order  of  learned  and  unlearned 
laymen  which  lasted  from  the  fourteenth  to  the  sixteenth  century, 
did  much  for  the  schooling  of  the  common  people,  and  passed  on 
their  impulse  to  Germany.*  Similarly  in  Scotland  the  schools  seem 
to  have  been  fairly  numerous  even  in  the  later  Catholic  period.'' 
There,  and  in  some  other  countries,  it  was  the  main  merit  of  the 
Reformation  to  carry  on  zealously  the  work  so  begun,  setting  up 
common  schools  in  every  parish.  In  Lutheran  Germany  this  work 
was  for  a  long  period  much  more  poorly  done,  as  regarded  the 
peasantry.  These  had  been  trodden  down  after  their  revolt  into  a 
state  of  virtual  slavery.  "  The  broad  midlands  and  the  entire 
eastern  part  of  Germany  were  filled  with  slaves,  who  had  neither 
status  nor  property  nor  education";®  and  it  was  long  before  any 

1  Cp.  Burckhard.  De  UlricJd  Hutteni  Vita  ComnieniariuB,  1717.  i,  65.  For  a  general 
view  see  Banke,  pp.  126-39. 

2  Jakob  Marx.  Die  Ursachen  der  schiiellen  Verhreitiina  der  Reformation,  1847,  §  12. 

*  Prof.  J.  M.  Vincent,  in  Prof  S.  M.  Jackson's  Huldreich  Zivingli,  1901.  p.  37. 

*  Cp.  Ullmann.  Reformera  before  the  Reformation,  i.  19 ;  ii.  passim  ;  Mosheim.  15  Cent. 
Pt.  ii.  ch.  ii.  §  22  ;  and  Bonet- Maury's  thesis,  De  Opera  Scholastica  Fratrum  Vita 
Communis.  1889. 

6  Burton.  History  of  Scotland,  iii,  399-401.  But  the  end  in  view  was  probably,  as 
Burton  half  admits,  the  recruiting  of  the  Church.  Cp.  Cosmo  Innes,  Sketches  of  Early 
Scotch  History,  p.  1.^4  sq.,  and  Scottish  L^al  AntiqiUties,  pp.  129-30. 

6  Menzel,  Cap.  492. 


GERMANY  AND  SWITZERLAND 


439 


large  number  of   the  people  were  taught   to  read  and  write,*  the 
schooling  given  at  the  best  being  a  scanty  theological  drill.** 

But  indeed  for  two-thirds  of  its  adherents  everywhere  the 
Reformation  meant  no  other  reading  than  that  of  the  Bible  and 
catechisms  and  theological  treatises.  Coming  as  it  did  within  one 
or  two  generations  of  the  invention  of  printing,  it  stood  not  for 
new  ideas,  but  for  the  spread  of  old.  That  invention  had  for  a  time 
positively  checked  the  production  of  new  books,  the  multiplication 
of  the  old  having  in  a  measure  turned  attention  to  the  past;**  and 
the  diffusion  of  the  Bible  in  particular  determined  the  mental 
attitude  of  the  movement  in  mass.  The  thinking  of  its  more 
disinterested  promoters  began  and  ended  in  Bibholatry :  Luther 
and  Calvin  aUke  did  but  set  up  an  infallible  book  and  a  local 
tyranny  against  an  infallible  pope  and  a  tyranny  centring  at  Rome. 
Neither  dreamt  of  toleration  ;  and  Calvin,  the  more  competent  mind 
of  the  two,  did  but  weld  the  detached  irrationalities  of  the  current 
theology  into  a  system  which  crushed  reason  and  stultified  the 
morality  in  the  name  of  which  he  ruled  Geneva  with  a  rod  of 
iron.*  It  is  remarkable  that  both  men  reverted  to  the  narrowest 
orthodoxies  of  the  earlier  Church,  in  defiance  of  whatever  spirit  of 
reasonable  inquiry  had  been  on  the  side  of  their  movement.  '  It  is 
a  quaUty  of  faith,"  wrote  Luther,  "  that  it  wrings  the  neck  of 
reason  and  strangles  the  beast";*  and  he  repeatedly  avowed  that 
it  was  only  by  submitting  his  mind  absolutely  to  the  Scriptures  that 
he  could  retain  his  faith.^  "  He  despised  reason  as  heartily  as  any 
papal  dogmatist  could  despise  it.  He  hated  the  very  thought  of 
toleration  or  comprehension.""^  And  when  Calvin  was  combated  by 
the  Catholic  Pighius  on  the  question  of  predestination  and  freewill, 
his  defence  was  that  he  followed  Christ  and  the  Apostles,  while  his 
opponents  resorted  to  human  thoughts  and  reasonings.®  On  the 
same  principle  he  dealt  with  the  Copernican  theory.  After  once 
breaking   away   from    Rome    both    leaders    became    typical   anti- 

i  Menzel.  Cap.  4^2  (ed.  1837.  p.  762).  ,  .     .  .,  ^     x, 

2  Ranke  (p.  466)  becomes  positively  lyrical  over  the  happy  lot  of  the  peasant  who 

received  Luther's  Catechism  (1.529).    "It  contains  enduring  comfort  m  every  affliction, 

and.  under  a  slight  husk,  the  kernel  of  truths  able  to  satisfy  the  wisest  of  the  wise."    Such 

declamation  holds  the  place  that  ought  to  have  been  filled  by  an  account  of  economic 

conditions.  ,  ,         ,  ^    ■,-,    ^.-^  ^  • 

8  Bishop  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist,  of  England,  iii.  627.    The  bishop,  however,  holds  that  in 

the  time  of  Lollard  prosperity  the  ability  to  read  was  widely  diffused  in  England  (p.  628) ; 

and  it  seems  certain  that  in  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  printing  multiplied 

enormously.    Cp.  Michelet.  Hist,  de  France,  x,  ed.  1884,  p.  103  sa.    _.  ^   .       ^    ^  ,    .      . , 
■I*  Cp.  Willis,  Servetus  and  Calviyi,  1877,  bk.  ii,  ch.  i;   Audin,  Histoire  de  Calmn,M. 

abr^g.  ch.  xxiv-xxvii ;  and  essay  on  "Machiavelli  and  Calvin"  in  the  present  writers 

Essays  in  Sociology.  1903,  vol.  i. 

6  Werke,  ed.  Walch.  viii.  2043  {On  Ep.  to  Galat.),  cited  by  Beard. 

6  Id.  viii,  1181  (On  1  Cor.  xv).    Cp.  other  citations  in  Beard,  pp.  161-65. 

7  Green,  Short  History,  ch.  vi,  §  v,  p.  315. 

8  Cp.  Stahelin  Johannes  Calvin,  1863.  ii,  282-83. 


I 


440         THE  BEFOKMATION  ANT)  FEEETHOUGHT 

freethinkers,  never  even  making  Savonarola's  pretence  to  resort  to 
rationalist  methods,  though  of  com-se  not  more  anti-rationalist  than 
he.  The  more  reasonable  Zwingli,  who  tried  to  put  an  inteUigible 
aspect  on  one  or  two  of  the  mysteries  of  the  faith,  was  scouted  by 
both,  as  they  scouted  each  other. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  Zwingli,  the  most  open-minded  of  the 
Eeformers,  owed  his  relative  enlightenment  to  his  general  humanist 
culture,^  and  in  particular  to  the  influence  of  Pico  della  Mirandola 
and  of  Erasmus.  It  has  even  been  argued  that  his  whole  theological 
system  is  derived  from  Pico  ^  but  it  appears  to  have  been  from 
Erasmus  that  he  drew  his  semi-rationalistic  view  of  the  eucharist, 
a  development  of  that  of  Berengar,  representing  it  as  a  simple 
commemoration.  Such  thinking  was  far  from  the  "  spirit  of  the 
Eeformation  " ;  and  Luther,  after  the  Colloquy  of  Marburg  (1529), 
in  which  he  and  Melanchthon  debated  against  Zwingli  and  Oecolam- 
padius,  spoke  of  those  "  Sacramentarians "  as  "not  only  liars,  but 
the  very  incarnation  of  lying,  deceit,  and  hypocrisy."*  ZwingU's 
language  is  less  ferocious  ;  but  it  is  confessed  of  him  that  he  too 
practised  coercion  against  minorities  in  the  case  alike  of  the 
Anabaptists  and  of  the  monasteries  and  nunneries,  and  even  in 
the  establishment  of  his  reformed  eucharist.'*  The  expulsion  of  the 
nuns  of  St.  Katherinenthal  in  particular  was  an  act  of  sheer 
tyranny;  and  the  outcome  of  the  methods  enforced  by  him  at 
Zurich  was  the  bitter  hostility  of  the  five  Forest  Cantons,  which 
remained  Catholic.  In  war  with  them  he  lost  his  life ;  and  after 
his  death  (1531)  his  sacramental  doctrine  rapidly  disappeared  from 
Swiss  and  Continental  Protestantism,'^  even  as  it  failed  to  make 
headway  in  England."^  At  his  fall  **  the  words  of  triumph  and 
cursing  used  by  Lutherans  and  others  were  shameful  and  almost 
inhuman."  ^  In  the  sequel,  for  sheer  lack  of  a  rational  foundation, 
the  other  Protestant  sects  in  turn  fell  to  furious  dissension  and 
persecution,  some  apparently  finding  their  sole  bond  of  union  in 
hatred  of  the  rest. 

See  Menzel,  Geschichte  der  Deutschen,  3te  Aufl.  Cap.  431,  for 

1  He  was  educated  at  Basel  and  Berne  and  at  Vienna  University,  and  of  all  the  leading 
reformers  he  seems  to  have  had  most  knowledge  of  classical  literature.  Hess,  Life  of 
Zwingle,  Eng.  tr.  1812.  pp.  2-7,  following  Myconius  and  Hottinger. 

2  Chr.  Sigwart,  JJlrich  Ztoingli,  der  Ctuirakter  seiner  Theologie.  mit  hesondsrer 
BUcksicht  auf  Pico  von  Mirandula,  1855.  pp.  14-26.  Prof.  Jackson.  Uuldreich  Zwingli, 
p.  85.  note,  states  that  Sigwart  later  modified  his  views. 

3  So  states  Melanchthon,  cited  by  Jackson,  p.  85,  note.    Cp.  pp.  201.  390-92. 

*  Cited  by  Jackson,  p.  316.  «  Id.  p.  295.  8  Id.  p.  361.  7  u.  p.  361.  note. 

8  Id.  According  to  Heylyn.  the  Earl  of  Warwick  countenanced  the  Zwinglians  in  his 
intrigues  against  the  Protector  Somerset;  and  their  views  were  further  welcomed  by 
other  nobles  as  making  for  the  plundering  of  rich  altars.  Hist,  of  the  Reform,  of  the 
Ch.  of  Eng.  ed.  1849.  pref.  p.  vii.  But  Heylyn  appears  to  identify  the  Zwinglians  at  this 
stage  with  the  Calvinists.    Cp.  p.  x. 


GEEMANY  AND  SWITZEKLAND 


441 


a  sample  of  Lutheran  popery  ;  and  as  to  the  strifes  cp.  C.  Beard, 
The  Eeformation,  as  cited,  pp.  182-83  ;  Dunham,  History  of  the 
Germanic  Empire,  1835,  iii,  115-20,  153, 169  ;  Strype,  Memorials 
of  Cranmer,  ed.  1848,  iii,  155-62;  A.  F.  Pollard,  in  "The 
Cambridge  Modern  History,"  vol.  ii,  The  Reformation,  ch.  viii, 
pp.  277-79.  In  the  last-cited  compilation,  however,  the  strifes 
of  the  Protestant  sects  are  barely  indicated. 

As  to  Luther's  attitude  towards  new  science,  see  his  derision 
of  Copernicus,  on  scriptural  grounds,  in  the  Table  Talk,  ch.  Ixix, 
Of  Astronomy  and  Astrology.  (The  passage  is  omitted  from  the 
English  translation  in  the  Bohn  Library,  p.  341 ;  and  the  whole 
chapter  is  dropped  from  the  German  abridgment  pubHshed  by 
Eeclam.)  Melanchthon  was  equally  unteachable,  and  actually 
proposed  to  suppress  the  new  teachings  by  punitive  methods. 
{Initia  DoctrincB  Physicm,  cited  by  White,  Warfare  of  Science 
and  Theology,  1896,^  i,  127.)  It  has  been  loosely  claimed  for 
Luther  that  he  was  "  an  enemy  to  religious  persecution  "  (Lieber, 
Manual  of  Political  Ethics,  1839,  pt.  i,  p.  329),  when  the  only 
evidence  offered  is  {id.  p.  205)  that  he  declared  against  killing 
for  heresy,  because  innocent  men  were  likely  to  be  slain — 
"  Quare  nullo  modo  possum  admittere,  falsos  doctores  occidi."  As 
early  as  1524,  renouncing  his  previous  doctrine  of  non-coercion, 
he  invoked  the  intervention  of  the  State  to  punish  blasphemy, 
declaring  that  the  power  of  the  sword  was  given  by  God  for 
such  ends  (Bezold,  p.  563).  Melanchthon  too  declared  that 
**  Our  commands  are  mere  Platonic  laws  when  the  civil  power 
does  not  give  its  support  "  {id.  p.  565). 

A  certain  intellectual  illusion  is  set  up  even  by  Bezold  when 
he  writes  that  in  Luther's  resort  to  physical  force  "  the  hierar- 
chical principle  had  triumphed  over  one  of  the  noblest  principles 
of  the  Eeformation."  "The  Eeformation"  had  no  specific 
principles.  Among  its  promoters  were  professed  all  manner  of 
principles.  The  Eeformation  was  the  outcome  of  all  their 
activities,  and  to  make  of  it  an  entity  or  even  a  distinct  set  of 
theories  is  to  obscure  the  phenomena. 

Such  flaws  of  formulation,  however,  are  trifling  in  com- 
parison with  the  mis-statement  of  the  historic  fact  which  is  still 
normal  in  academic  as  in  popular  accounts  of  the  Eeformation. 
It  would  be  difificult,  for  instance,  to  give  seriously  a  more  mis- 
leading account  of  the  Lutheran  reformation  than  the  proposi- 
tion of  Dr.  Edward  Caird  that,  "  in  thrusting  aside  the  claim  of 
the  Church  to  place  itself  between  the  individual  and  God, 
Luther  had  proclaimed  the  emancipation  of  men  not  only  from 
the  leading  strings  of  the  Church,  but,  in  effect,  from  all 
external  authority  whatever,  and  even,  in  a  sense,  from  all 
merely  external  teaching  or  revelation  of  the  truth "  {Hegel, 
1883,  p.  18).  Luther  thrust  his  own  Church  precisely  where 
the  Catholic  Church  had  been ;  bitterly  denounced  new  heresies  ; 


442         THE  KEFOKMATION  AND  FKEETHOUGHT 

and  put  the  Bible  determinedly  "  between  the  individual  and 
God  "  In  Luther's  own  day  Sebastian  Franck  unanswerably 
accused  him  of  setting  up  a  paper  pope  in  place  of  the  human 
pope  he  had  rejected.  Luther's  declaration  was  that  the 
ungodly  papists  prefer  the  authority  of  the  Church  far  above 
God's  Word,  a  blasphemy  abominable  and  not  to  be  endured, 

wherewith they  spit  in  God's  face.     Truly  God's  patience 

is    exceeding   great,  in  that   they  be  not   destroyed      {labte 

Talk,  ch.  i).  .14. 

Another  misconception  is  set  up  by  Pattison.  who  seems  to 
have  been  much  concerned  to  shield  Calvin  from  the  criticism 
of  the  civilized  conscience  (see  below,  p.  452).     He  pronounces 
that  Calvin's  "  great  merit  lies  in  his  comparative  neglect   of 
dogma      He  seized  the  idea  of  reformation  as  a  real  renovation 
of  human  character"  {Essays,  ii,  23).     If  so,  the  reformer  can 
have   had    little   satisfaction,   for   he  never   admitted    having 
regenerated  Geneva.     But  the  claim  that  he     comparatively 
neglected  dogma  is  true  only  in  the  sense  that  ho  was  more 
inquisitorially  zealous  about  certain  forms  of  private  conduct 
than  was  Luther.     Gruet,  indeed,  he  helped  to  slay  upon  pohtical 
charges,  taking  a  savage  vengeance  upon  a  personal  opponent. 
But  even  in  Gruet's  case  he  sought   later  to  add  a  rehgious 
justification  to  his  crime.     And  it  was  in  the  name  of  dogma 
that   he   put    Servetus   to   death,  exiled  Castalio,  imprisoned 
Bolsec,    broke  with    old   friends,    and    imperilled    the    entire 
Genevan  polity.     Pattison's  praise  would  be  much  more  appro- 
priate to  Zwingli. 
Luther,  though  he  would  probably  have  been  ready  enough  to 
punish  Copernicus  as  a  heretic,  was  saved  the  evil  chance  which 
befel  Calvin  of  being  put  in  a  place  of  authority  where  he  could  in 
God's  name  commit  judicial  murder.     It  is  by  acts  so  describable 
that  the  name  of  Calvin  is  most  directly  connected  with  the  history 
of  freethought.     In  nowise  entitled  to  rank  with  its  furtherers,  he  is 
to  be  enrolled  in  the  evil  catalogue  of  its  persecutors.     In  the  case 
of  Jacques  Gruet  on  a  mixture  of  political  and  religious  charges, 
in   that   of  Michael  Servetus  on  grounds  of  dogma  pure  and 
simple,  he  cast  upon  the  record  of  Genevan  Protestantism  and  upon 
his  own  memory  an  ineffaceable  stain  of  blood.     Gruet,  an  adherent 
of  the  Perrinist  faction  of  Geneva,  a  party  opposed  to  Calvin,  on 
being  arrested  for  issuing  a  placard  against  the  clerical  junto   in 
power,  was  found,  by  the  accounts  of  the  Calvinist  historians,  to  have 
among   his   papers   some   revealing   his  disbehef   in  the  Christian 
religion.'     This,  however,  proves  to  be  a  partisan  account  of  the 

1  Henry.  Das  Lehen  Calvins    ii   Kap.  13  and  B?jlf  ^^^J^P^^^^^^  """^  ^^^"^  ^^  *^' 
English  translation) ;  Stahelin.  JohaiiTiea  Caivtn.  1863,  i.  399-400. 


GEKMANY  AND  SWITZERLAND 


443 


matter,  and  is  hardly  even  in  intention  truthful.  In  the  first  place, 
it  was  admitted  by  Calvin  that  the  placard,  affixed  by  night  to  the 
chair  of  St.  Peter  in  Geneva,  was  not  in  Gruet's  handwriting  ;  yet 
he  was  arrested,  imprisoned,  and  put  to  the  torture  with  the  avowed 
object  of  making  him  confess  "  that  he  had  acted  at  the  instigation 
of  Fran9ois  Favre,  of  the  wife  of  Perrin,  and  of  other  accomplices  of 
the  same  party  whom  he  must  have  had."  Perrin  was  the  former 
Captain-General  of  Geneva,  a  popular  personage,  opposed  to  Calvin 
and  detested  by  him.  No  match  for  the  vigilant  Beformer,  Perrin 
had  been  through  Calvin's  intrigues  deprived  of  his  post ;  and  there 
was  a  standing  feud  between  his  friends  and  the  Calvinistic  party 
in  power. 

The  main  part  of  the  charges  against  Gruet  was  political ;  and 
the  most  circumstantial  was  based  upon  a  draft,  found  among  his 
papers,  of  a  speech  which  he  had  ostensibly  proposed  to  make  in  the 
General  Council  calling  for  reform  of  abuses.  The  speech  contained 
nothing  seditious,  but  the  intention  to  deliver  it  without  official 
permission  was  described  as  Use-majest6 — a  term  now  newly 
introduced  into  Genevan  procedure.  The  other  documentary  proofs 
were  trivial.  In  one  fragment  of  a  letter  there  was  an  ironical 
mention  of  "notre  galant  Calvin";  and  in  a  note  on  a  margin  of 
Calvin's  book  against  the  Anabaptists  he  had  written  in  Latin  "  All 
trifles."  For  the  rest,  he  was  accused  of  writing  two  pages  in  Latin 
in  which  are  comprised  several  errors,"  and  of  being  "inclined 
{plutdt  enclin)  to  say,  recite  and  write  false  opinions  and  errors  as 
to  the  true  words  of  Our  Saviour."^  Concerning  his  errors  the  only 
documentary  proof  preserved  is  from  an  alleged  scrap  of  his  writing 
in  corrupt  Latin,  cited  by  Calvin  as  a  sample  of  his  inabiHty  to  write 
Latin  correctly  :  Omiies  tarn  humane  quam  divine  que  dicantur  leges 
factae  sunt  ad  placitum  hominum,  which  may  be  rendered,  **  All  so- 
called  laws,  divine  as  well  as  human,  are  made  at  the  will  of  men." 
In  the  act  of  sentence,  he  is  declared  further  to  have  written  obscene 
verses  justifying  free  love ;  to  have  striven  to  ruin  the  authority  of 
the  consistory,  menaced  the  ministers,  and  abused  Calvin ;  and  to 
have  "conspired  with  the  king  of  France  against  the  safety  of 
Calvin  and  the  State." 

To  make  out  these  charges,  for  the  last  of  which  there  seems  to 
be  no  evidence  whatever,  Gruet  was  put  to  the  torture  many  times 

,.  *  Cp.  Calvin's  letter  to  Viret.  July  2.  1547  (Letters  of  Calvin,  ed.  Bonnet.  Eng.  tr.  1857. 
n.  109).  where  it  is  alleged  that  in  the  two  pages  "  the  whole  of  Scripture  is  laughed  at, 
Christ  aspersed,  the  immortality  of  the  soul  called  a  dream  and  a  fable,  and  finally  the 
whole  of  religion  torn  in  pieces.  I  do  not  think  he  is  the  author  of  it,"  adds  Calvin ;  "  but 
as  It  IS  in  his  handwriting  he  will  be  compelled  to  appear  in  his  defence." 


444         THE  REFOKMATION  AND  FREETHOUGHT 

during  many  days  "  according  to  the  manner  of  the  time,"  says  one 
of  Calvin's  biographers/  In  reality  such  unmeasured  use  of  torture 
was  in  Geneva  a  Calvinistic  innovation.  Gruet,  refusing  under  the 
worst  stress  of  torture  to  incriminate  anyone  else,  at  length,  in  order 
to  end  it  pleaded  guilty  to  the  charges  against  him,  praying  in  his 
last  extremity  for  a  speedy  death.  On  July  26,  1547.  his  half-dead 
body  was  beheaded  on  the  scaffold,  the  torso  being  tied  and  the  feet 
nailed  thereto.  Such  were  the  judicial  methods  and  mercies  of 
a  reformed  Christianity,  guided  by  a  chief  reformer. 

The  biographer  Henry  "cannot  repress  a  sigh "  over  the 
thirty  days  of  double  torture  of  Gruet  (ii,  66).  but  goes  on  to 
make  a  most  disingenuous  defence  of  Calvin,  first  asserting  that 
he  was  not  responsible,  and  then  arguing  that  it  would  be  as 
unjust  to  try  Calvin  by  modern  standards  as  to  blame  him  for 
not  wearing  a  perruque  ^  la  Louis  XIV.  or  P^'feeding  by  the 
Code  Napoleon  !  The  same  moralist  declares  (p.  bbj  that  it 
is  really  inspiriting  to  hear  how  Calvin  stormed  in  his  sermons 
against  the  opposite  party  "  :  and  is  profoundly  impressed  by 
the  "  deep  religious  earnestness "  with  which  Calvin  in  15oU 
claimed  that  "  The  council  ought  again  to  declare  aloud  that 
this  blasphemer  has  been  justly  condemned,  that  the  wrath  ot 
God  may  be  averted  from  the  city."  Finally  (p.  69),  recording 
how  Gruet's  *'  book  "  was  burned  in  1550,  the  biographer  pro- 
nounces that  "The  Gospel  thus  gaiiied  a  victory  over  its 
enemies;  in  the  same  manner  as  in  Germany  freedom 
triumphed  when  Luther  burnt  the  pope's  bull." 

As  to  the  alleged  anti-religious  writings  of  Gruet,  they  were  not 
produced  or  even  specified  till  1550,  three  years  after  his  execution, 
when  they  were  said  to  have  been  found  partly  in  the  roof  of  what 
had  been  his  house  (now  occupied  by  the  secretary  of  the  consistory), 
partly  behind  a  chimney,  and  partly  in  a  dustbin.     Put  together, 
they  amounted   to    thirteen    leaves,  in  a   handwriting  which  was 
declared  by  Calvin  to  be  "  juridically,  by  good  examination  of  trust- 
worthy men,  recognized  to  be  that  of  Gruet."     The  time  and  the 
singular  manner  of  their  discovery  raises  the  question  whether  the 
papers  had  not  been  placed  by  the  finders.     The  execution  of  Gruet 
the  first  bloodshed  under  Calvin's  regime,  had  roused  new  hatred 
against  him  ;  the  slain  man  figured  as  a  martyr  in  the  eyes  of  the 
party  to  which  he  belonged  ;  and  it  had  become  necessary  to  discredit 
him  and  them  if  the  ascendancy  of  Calvin  was  to  be  secure.     It  is 

1  titahelin  i  400.  Henry  avows  that  Gruet  was  "  subjected  to  the  torture  morning  and 
evem^nrduring  a  whSe  month  "  (Eng.  tr.  ii.  66).  Other  biographers  dishonestly  exclude 
the  fact  from  their  narratives. 


GEKMANY  AND  SWITZEKLAND 


445 


solely  upon  Calvin's  account  that  we  have  to  depend  for  our  know- 
ledge of  Gruet's  alleged  anti-Christian  doctrine ;  for  the  document, 
after  being  described  and  condemned,  was  duly  burned  by  the 
common  hangman.  If  genuine,  it  was  a  remarkable  performance. 
According  to  the  act  of  condemnation,  which  is  in  the  handwriting 
of  Calvin,  it  derided  all  religions  alike,  blasphemed  God,  Jesus,  the 
Holy  Ghost,  the  Virgin  Mary,  Moses,  the  Patriarchs,  the  Prophets, 
the  Apostles,  the  disciples,  the  gospels,  the  Old  and  New  Testaments, 
the  gospel  miracles,  and  the  resurrection.^  Not  a  single  phrase  is 
quoted  ;  we  have  mere  general  description,  execration,  and  sentence. 
Whether  the  document  was  a  planned  forgery,  or  part  of  a  copy 
by  Gruet  of  an  anti-Christian  treatise  theretofore  secretly  circulated, 
will  never  be  known.  The  story  of  Gruet  soon  swelled  into  a  legend. 
According  to  one  narrative,  he  had  copied  with  his  own  hand  and 
circulated  in  Geneva  the  mysterious  treatise,  De  Tribiis  Impostorihus, 
the  existence  of  which,  at  that  period,  is  very  doubtful.^  On  the 
strength  of  this  and  other  cases ^  the  Libertines  have  been  some- 
times supposed  to  be  generally  unbelievers ;  but  there  is  no  more 
evidence  for  this  than  for  the  general  ascription  to  them  of  licentious 
conduct.  It  appears  certain  indeed  that  at  that  time  the  name 
Libertine  was  not  recognized  as  a  label  for  all  of  Calvin's  poHtical 
opponents,  but  was  properly  reserved  for  the  sect  so-called;  but 
even  a  vindicator  of  Calvin  admits  that  "  it  is  undeniable  that  the 
Libertines  [i.e.  the  political  opponents  of  Calvin,  so-called  by 
modern  writers]  of  1555  were  the  true  political  representatives  of  the 
patriots  of  1530." '  The  presumption  is  that  the  poUtical  opposition 
included  the  more  honest  and  courageous  men  of  liberal  and  tolerant 
tendencies,  as  Calvin's  own  following  included  men  of  "  free  "  life. 
The  really  antinomian  Libertini  of  the  period  were  to  be  found 
among  the  pantheistic-Christian  sect  or  school  so-called,  otherwise 
known   as    Spirituals,  who   seem   to   have  been   a  branch  of   the 

^  Cp.  Calvin's  letter  to  the  Seigneury  of  Geneva,  in  Letters,  ii,  254-56. 

2  Henry.  Life  of  Calvin,  Eng.  tr.  ii.  47-48.  Gruet's  fragment  can  hardly  have  been  the 
Be  Tribus  Impostoribus,  inasmuch  as  Calvin  makes  no  mention  of  any  reference  to 
Mohammed  in  his  fragment,  whereas  the  title  of  the  other  book  proceeded  on  the  speci- 
fication of  Mohammed  as  well  as  Jesus  and  Moses.  The  existing  treatise  of  that 
name,  in  any  case,  is  of  later  date.  Of  the  famous  treatise  in  question,  which  was  not 
published  till  long  afterwards.  Henry  admits  that  it  "  professes  to  show  tranquilly,  ana 
with  regret,  but  without  abuse."  the  fraudulent  character  of  the  three  revealed  religions. 
Concerning  Gruet's  essay  he  asks :  "  What  are  all  the  anti-Christian  writings  ot  tne 
French  Revolution  compared  with  the  hellish  laughter  which  seemed  to  peal  from  its 
pages  ?"    For  this  description  he  has  not  a  line  to  cite.  .  ,  .  , 

^  For  instance,  one  man  was  accused  of  having  blasphemed  against  a  storm  wnicn 
terrified  the  pious. 

*  Dandliker.  Geschichte  der  Schweiz,  1884-87,  ii.  559;  above,  p.  2. 

I  Mark  Pattison.  Essays,  1889,  ii,  37.  ^   „  .    oac    o«/i 

„  6  Dandliker.  as  cited,  endorsing  Roget.  Cp.  Hallam,  it*..o/  Europe,  i-  306.  and 
Hamilton.  Discus,  on  Philos.  and  Lit.  2nd  ed.  p.  497,  as  to  the  dissolution  of  morals'' 
in  the  Lutheran  world. 


m         THE  KSIFOEMATION  AND  FBEETHOUGflD 


Brethren  of  the  Free  Spirit,  or  fraternity  of  the  "  Spirit  of  Liberty." 
These  Calvin  denounced  in  his  manner ;  but  in  1544  he  had  also 
forced  into  exile  his  former  friend,  Sebastian  Castalio  (or  Castalion  ; 
properly  Chatillon),  master  of  the  public  school  at  Geneva,  for 
simply  rejecting  his  doctrine  of  absolute  predestination,  striving 
to  have  him  driven  in  turn  from  Basel ;  and  in  1551  he  had  caused 
to  be  imprisoned  and  banished  a  physician  and  ex-CarmeUte, 
Jerome  Bolsec,  for  publicly  denying  the  same  dogma.  Bolsec, 
being  prevented  by  Calvin's  means  from  settling  in  any  neighbourmg 
Protestant  community,  returned  to  Catholicism,'  as  did  many  others. 
After  Calvin's  death  Bolsec  took  his  revenge  in  an  attack  on  the 
reformer  in  his  pubHc  and  private  character,'  which  has  been  treated 
as  untrustworthy  by  the  more  moderate  Catholic  scholars  who  deal 
with  the  period;'  and  which,  as  regards  its  account  of  his  private 
morals,  is  probably  on  all  fours  with  Calvin's  own  unscrupulous 
charges  against  the  "  Libertines  "  and  others  who  opposed  him. 

The  tenets  of  the  Lihertini  are  somewhat  mystifying,  as 
handled  by  Calvin  and  his  biographer  Henry,  both  alike 
animated  by  the  odium  theologicum  in  the  highest  degree. 
By  Calvin's  own  account  they  were  mystical  Christians, 
speaking  of  Christ  as  "  the  spirit  which  is  in  the  world  and 
in  us  all,"  and  of  the  devil  and  his  angels  as  having  no  proper 
existence,  being  identical  with  the  world  and  sin.  Further, 
they  denied  the  eternity  of  the  human  soul  and  the  freedom 
of  the  will ;  and  Calvin  charges  them  with  subverting  ahke 
behef  in  God  and  moraUty  (Henry,  Life  of  Calvin,  Eng.  tr.  ii, 
45_4;6).  The  last  charge  could  just  as  validly  be  brought 
against  his  own  predestinarianism ;  and  as  regards  ethics  we 
find  Calvin  alternately  denouncing  the  Libertines  for  treating 
all  sin  as  unpardonable,  and  for  stating  that  in  Christ  none 
could  sin.  Apparently  he  gives  his  inferences  as  their  ^octnnes ; 
and  the  antinomianism  which,  in  the  case  of  the  trial  of  Madame 
Ameaux,  Henry  identifies  with  pantheism,  was  by  his  own 
showing  of  a  Christian  cast.  Little  credit,  accordingly,  can  be 
given  to  his  summing  up  that  among  the  Libertines  of  Geneva 
there  exhibited  itself  a  perfectly- formed  anti-Christianity, 
which  he  calls  "  a  true  offspring  of  hell "  (ii,  49).  The  residuum 
of  truth  appears  to  be  that  in  the  pantheism  of  this  sect,  as 
Neander  says  concerning  the  Brethren  of  the  Free  Spirit  among 
the  Beghards,  there  were  "  the  foretokens  of  a  thoroughly  anti- 

1  Mosheim.  14  Cent.   Bee.  iii.   Pt.  Ii.   ch.  ii.   §§  38-41 ;   Audin.   Histoire  de   Calvin, 

^^^^' ms't^^'^de  la  vie,  moeurs,  actes,  doctrine,  Constance  et  mort  de  ^«««,^«^„^*i*'/;f^^ 
minStre^Qmeue,  rlceuilly  par  M.  Hierosme  Hermes  Bolsec.  docteur  medecm  k  Lyon. 

^°  ThfVeDrint  of  BolseCa  book  prepared  by  M.  L.  F.  Chastel  (Lyon,  1875)  appears  to  be 
faitMuAbSSthe  Catholic  animus  shown  deprives  the  annotations  of  critical  value. 


GERMANY  AND  SWITZERLAND 


447 


Christian  tendency,  hostile  to  everything  supernatural,  every 
sentiment  of  a  God  above  the  world ;  a  tendency  which  con- 
tained  the  germ  of  absolute  rationalism"  [Hist,  of  the  Chr. 

Church,  Torrey's  tr.  ix,  536).  Pantheism,  logically  extended, 
obviously  reduces  the  supernatural  and  the  natural  to  unity, 
and  is  thus  atheistic.  But  that  the  pantheists  of  Geneva  in 
Calvin's  day  reached  logical  consistency  is  incredible.  The 
Libertine  sect,  in  all  likelihood,  was  only  partially  antinomian, 
and  only  in?very  small  part  consciously  anti-Christian. 

At  this  period  (1552),  on  the  same  issue  of  predestination, 
Calvin  broke  utterly  with  one  of  his  closest  friends,  Jacques  de 
Bourgogne,  Sieur  de  Falais.^  It  seemed  as  if  the  Protestant  pohty 
were  disrupting  in  a  continuous  convulsion  of  dogmatic  strife  ;  and 
Melanchthon  wrote  to  Bucer  in  despair  over  the  madness  and 
misery  of  a  time  in  which  Geneva  was  returning  to  the  fatalism  of 
the  Stoics,  and  imprisoning  whosoever  would  not  agree  with  Zeno. 
By  this  time  it  must  have  been  clear  to  some  that  behind  the  strifes 
of  raging  theologians  there  lay  a  philosophic  problem  which  they 
could  not  sound.  It  is  therefore  not  surprising  to  learn  that  already 
Basel  University,  as  fifty  years  before  at  Erfurt,  there  was  a 
latitudinarian  group  of  professors  who  aimed  at  a  universal  rehgion, 
and  came  near  "naturalism"  in  the  attempt;^  while  elsewhere  in 
Switzerland,  as  we  shall  see  later,  there  grew  up  the  still  freer  way 
of  thought  which  came  to  be  known  as  Deism. 

A  great  impulse  to  that  development,  as  well  as  to  simple 
XJnitarianism,  must  have  been  given  by  the  execution  of  Michael 
Servetus.*  That  ill-starred  heretic,  born  of  Spanish  stock  in  France, 
brought  to  the  propaganda  of  XJnitarianism,  of  which  he  may  be 
reckoned  the  inaugurator,  a  determination  as  strong  as  Calvin's 
own.  Sent  by  his  father  to  study  civil  law  at  Toulouse,  he  began 
there  to  study  the  Bible,  doubtless  under  the  stimulus  of  the  early 
Protestant  discussions  of  the  time.  The  result  was  a  prompt 
advance  beyond  the  Protestant  standpoint.  Leaving  Toulouse  after 
two  or  three  years'  residence,  he  visited  Bologna  and  Augsburg  in 
the  train  of  the  confessor  of  Charles  V.  Thereafter  he  visited 
Lyons  and  Geneva,  and  had  some  intercourse  with  Oecolampadius 


1  St&helin,  ii,  293-301. 

2  Stahelin.  ii,  293.  Arminius  pointed  to  this  letter  as  a  proof  that  Melanchthon  had 
abandoned  his  early  predestinarianism  (Declaratio  of  1608.  xx,  2 ;  Works  of  Arminius, 
ed.  Nichols,  i.  578).  But  of  course  Melanchthon  had  previously  guarded  himself  in  his 
Loci  Communes  (1545)  and  elsewhere.    Hd.  pp.  597-98.)  ^  Stahelin.  ii,  304. 

*  Latinized  name  of  Miguel  Servedo,  alias  Reves,  born  at  Tudela  in  Navarre  in  1511, 
son  of  Hernando  Villauueva,  a  notary  of  an  Aragouese  family,  of  which  Villanueva  had 
been  the  seat.  The  statement  of  De  la  Eoche  that  Servetus  was  born  in  Aragon.  though 
long  current,  is  now  exploded. 


448         THE  EEFOEMATION  AND  FEEETHOUGHT 

at  Basel,  where  he  pufe  in  the  hands  of   a  bookseller  the  signed 
manuscript  of   his  first  book.  De  Trinitatis  erroribus  libri  septem. 
The  bookseller   sent   it   on   to   Hagenau,  in  Alsace,  which   as   an 
"  imperial  city  "  seems  to  have  had  special  freedom  in  the  matter 
of  book-publishing ;  and  thither,  after  visiting  Bucer  and^Capito  at 
Strasburg,   Servetus  went   to   have   it   printed   in    1531/     In   this 
treatise,   produced   in   his   twenty-first   year,   he   definitely   rejects 
Trinitarianism,  while  putting  somewhat  obscurely  his  own  idea  of 
the  nature  of  Jesus  Christ— whom,  it  should  be  noted,  he  held  m 
high  reverence.     In  the  following  year  he  produced  at  the  same 
place   another   small   treatise,  Dialogoricm  de  Trinitate   libn  duo, 
wherein  he  recasts  his  first  work,  "  retracting  "  it  and  apologizmg 
for  its  crudity,  but  standing  substantially  to  its  positions.     It  was 
not  till  1553  that  he  printed  at  Vienne  in  Dauphin^,  without  his 
name,  his  Christianismi  Restitutio:'    In  the  interval  he  had  been 
doing  scientific  work  as  an  editor  of  Ptolemy  (1535,  Lyons),  and  as 
a  student  of  and  lecturer  on  anatomy  and  medicine  at  Pans,  where 
(1536)  he  met  Calvin  on  his  last  visit  to  France.     In  1538  he  is 
found    studying    at    Louvain;    and,    after    practising   medicine   at 
Avignon  and  Charlieu,  he  again  studies  medicine  at  Montpellier. 
The  Archbishop  of  Vienne,  who  had  heard  him  lecture  at  Pans, 
established  him  at  Vienne  as  his  confidential  physician  (1541-53), 
and  there  it  was  that   he  produced  the  book  for  which  he  died. 
About  1545-46  he  had  rashly  written  to  Calvin,  sending  him  the 
MS.  of  the  much-expanded  recast  of  his  books  which  later  appeared 
as  the  Restitutio,     Calvin  sent  a  hostile  reply,  and  on  the  same  day 
wrote  to  Farel :  "  If  he  come,  and  my  influence  can  avail,  I  shall 
not   suffer  him   to   depart   alive."     Servetus   had    denounced    the 
papacy  as  fiercely  as  any  Protestant  could  wish,  yet  his  heresy  on 
the  question  of  the  Trinity'  was  enough  to  doom  him  to  instant 
death  at  Calvin's  hands.     Servetus  could  not  get  back  his  MS.,  and 
wrote  to  a  friend  about  1547  that  he  felt  sure  the  affair  would  bring 
him  to  his  death.^    When  in  1552-53  he  had  the  book  pnvately 

1  De  la  Roche.  M^rmires  de  LitUrature.  cited  in  An  Impartial  History  of  Servetus. 

^''tSkHstianismi  Eestitutio,  U.e,  Totius  eccle^aposUM^aa  «-«,;jj^tl2^^,^J2ll^.S 
4-nfpnriim.  rentituta  coanitione  Det.y^det  christiance,  justiMatioms  nosirie,  rtyK^n^ru^ 

iZi^^ahtivitate  solutd,  et  antichristo  cum  mits  ^^'ll^'^'lZ'^A^^^^^ 


GEEMANY  AND  SWITZEELAND 


449 


printed  at  Vienne,  and  the  bulk  of  the  edition  was  sent  to  Lyons 
and  Frankfort,  the  toils  closed  around  him,  the  ecclesiastical  authori- 
ties at  Lyons  being  apprised  of  the  facts  by  de  Trie,  a  Genevan 
Protestant,  formerly  of  Lyons.  The  whole  Protestant  world,  in 
fact,  was  of  one  opinion  in  desiring  to  suppress  Servetus' s  anti- 
Trinitarian  books,  and  the  wonder  is  that  he  had  so  long  escaped 
both  Protestant  and  Catholic  fury.  Luther  had  called  his  first  book 
horribly  wicked  ;  and  Melanchthon,  who  in  1533  foresaw  from  the 
second  much  dangerous  debate,  wrote  in  1539  to  the  Venetian 
Senate  to  warn  them  against  letting  either  be  sold.^  It  is  significant 
of  the  random  character  of  Protestant  as  of  Catholic  thought  that 
Servetus,  like  Melanchthon,  was  a  convinced  believer  in  astrology,^ 
while  Luther  on  Biblical  grounds  rejected  astrology  and  the  Coper- 
nican  astronomy  alike,  and  held  devoutly  by  the  belief  in  witchcraft. 
The  superiority  of  Servetus  consists  in  his  real  scientific  work — he 
having  in  part  given  out  the  true  doctrine  of  the  circulation  of  the 
blood ^ — and  his  objection  to  all  persecution  of  heresy. "*  Philoso- 
phically, he  was  more  than  a  mere  Scripturist.  Though  pantheism 
was  not  charged  upon  him,  we  have  Calvin's  testimony  that  he 
propounded  it  in  the  strongest  form/ 

Calvin's  guilt  in  the  matter  begins  with  his  devices  to  have 
Servetus  seized  by  the  CathoHc  authorities  of  Lyons® — to  set  mis- 
believers, as  he  regarded  them,  to  slay  the  misbeliever — and  his  use 
of  Servetus's  confidential  letters  against  him.'  He  was  not  repelling 
a  heresy  from  his  own  city,  but  heretic-hunting  far  away  in  sheer 
maHgnity.  The  Catholics  were  the  less  cruel  gaolers,  and  let  their 
prisoner  escape,  condemning  him  to  death  at  Vienne  in  absence. 
After  some  months  of  wandering  he  had  the  temerity  to  seek  to  pass 
into  Italy  by  way  of  Geneva,  and  was  there  at  length  recognized,  and 
arrested.  After  a  long  trial  he  was  sentenced  to  be  burned  alive 
(Oct.  27,  1553).  The  trial  at  Geneva  is  a  classic  document  in  the 
records  of  the  cruelties  committed   in   honour   of   chimeras  ;  and 

1  Melanchthon.  Epist.  lib.  i,  ep.  3;  McCrie,  Beformation  in  Italy,  p.  96 ;  Trechsel,  Lelio 
Sozini,  1844,  pp.  38-41. 

2  Willis,  Servetus  and  Calvin,  1877,  p.  117. 

8  See  the  careful  account  of  Dr.  Austin  Flint,  of  New  York,  in  his  pamphlet.  Bahelais 
as  a  Physiologist,  rep.  from  New  York  Medical  Journal  of  June  29, 1901. 
*  Willis,  p.  53. 
«  Letter'to" Farel,  Aug.  20. 1553  (Letters,  Eng.  tr.  ii,  399).    Cp.  Henry,  ii.  195-96. 

6  Id.  ch.  xix.  See  the  letter  of  Trie,  given  in  Henry's  Life  of  Calvin  (Eng.  tr.  ii,  184-85), 
"with  the  admission  that  Trie  was  in  Calvin's  counsels.  Henry  vainly  endeavours  to  make 
light  (pp.  181-82)  of  Calvin's  written  words  to  Farel  concerning  Servetus:  "Si  venerit, 
modo  valeat  mea  autoritas,  vivum  exire  nunquam  patiar."  Still,  it  must  in  fairness  be 
remembered  that  Trie,  by  his  own  account,  persuaded  Calvin,  who  was  reluctant,  to  his 
act  of  complicity  with  the  inquisitors  of  Lyons.    Cp.  Bossert.  Calvin,  pp.  160-64. 

7  Willis,  ch.  XX.  Cp.  pp.  457,  503.  The  defence  of  Calvin  in  Mackenzie's  Life  (1809. 
p.  79)  on  the  score  that  he  was  not  likely  to  communicate  with  Catholic  officials  does  not 
meet  the  case  as  to  Trie.    And  cp.  p.  83. 

2g 


450         THE  REFOBMATION  AND  FREETHOUGHT 


Calvin's  part  is  the  sufficient  proof  that  the  Protestant  could  hold 
his  own  with  the  Catholic  Inquisitor  in  the  spirit  of  hate.^  It  has 
been  urged,  in  his  excuse,  that  the  doctrines  of  Servetus  were 
blasphemously  put ;  but  in  point  of  fact  Calvin  passed  some  of  his 
bitterest  denunciation  on  the  statement,  cited  (from  Lorenz  Friese) 
in  a  note  in  Servetus's  edition  of  Ptolemy's  Geography,  that  Judea 
is  actually  a  barren  and  meagre  country,  and  not  "  flowing  with 
milk  and  honey."  Despite  the  citation  of  ample  proof,  and  the  plea 
that  the  passage  was  drawn  from  a  previous  edition,  it  was  by  Calvin 
adjudged  blasphemous  in  that  it  "  necessarily  inculpated  Moses  and 
grievously  outraged  the  Holy  Spirit."''  The  language  of  Calvin 
against  Servetus  at  this  point  is  utterly  furious.  Had  Servetus 
chanced  to  maintain  the  doctrine  of  the  earth's  motion,  he  would 
certainly  have  been  adjudged  a  blasphemer  on  that  score  also  ;  for 
in  the  Argument  to  his  Commentary  on  Genesis  (1563)  Calvin 
doggedly  maintains  the  Ptolemaic  theory.  His  language  tells  of 
much  private  freethinking  around  him  on  the  Mosaic  doctrine,  and 
his  tone  leaves  no  doubt  as  to  how  he  would  treat  published  heresy 
on  that  theme.  The  audacity  of  Servetus  in  suggesting  that  the 
53rd  chapter  of  Isaiah  had  historical  reference  to  Cyrus  is  for  him 
anathema.^ 

Even  before  this  hideous  episode,  Calvin's  passion  of  malevolence 
against  his  theological  opponents  in  his  own  sect  is  such  as  to  shock 
some  of  his  adoring  biographers.*  All  the  Protestant  leaders,  broadly 
speaking,  grew  more  intolerant  as  they  grew  in  years — a  fair  test  as 
between  the  spirit  of  dogma  and  the  spirit  of  freethought.  Calvin 
had  begun  by  pleading  for  tolerance  and  clemency  ;  Luther,  beginning 
as  a  humanitarian,  soon  came  to  be  capable  of  hounding  on  the 
German  nobility  against  the  unhappy  peasants;  Melanchthon, 
tolerant  in  his  earlier  days,  applauded  the  burning  of  Servetus ; 
Beza  laboriously  defended  the  act.  Erasmus  stood  for  tolerance ; 
and  Luther  accordingly  called  him  godless,  an  enemy  of  true  religion, 
a  slanderer  of  Christ,  a  Lucian,  an  Epicurean,  and  (by  implication) 
the  greatest  knave  alive.® 


1  Ten  years  after  the  death  of  Servetus.  Calvin  calls  him  a  "dog  and  wicked  scoundrel' 
(Willis,  p.  530;  cp.  Hist,  of  Servetus,  p.  214.  citing  Calvin's  Coram,  on  Acts  xx) ;  and  m  his 
Commentary  on  Genesis  ;i,  3,  ed.  1838.  p.  9)  he  says  of  him  :  " Latrat  hie  obscoenus  cams. 
And  Servetus  had  asked  his  pardon  at  the  end. 

'3  White.  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology,  1896,  i,  113;  History  of  Servetus,  1724, 
p.  93  sq.;  Willis.  Servetus  and  Calvin,  p.  325. 

3  Wallace,  Antitrinitarian  Biography,  i,  430. 

*  See  Stabelin.  Johannes  Calvin,  ii,  300-308. 

6  F.  A.  Cox.  Life  of  Melanchtho7i.  1815.  pp.  .523-24  ;  Willis,  pp.  47.  511. 

6  Table  Talk,  ch.  43.  Cp.  Michelet's  Life  of  Luther,  Eng.  tr.  1846,  pp.  195-96;  and 
Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  i,  360-65.  Michelet's  later  enthusiasm  for  Luther  (Hist,  de  France, 
X,  ch.  V.  ed.  1884,  pp.  96-97)  is  oblivious  of  many  of  the  facts  noted  in  his  earlier  studies. 


GERMANY  AND  SWITZERLAND 


451 


The  burning  of  Servetus  in  1553,  however,  marked  a  turning 
point  in  Protestant  theological  practice  on  the  Continent.  There 
were  still  to  come  the  desperate  religious  wars  in  France,  in  which 
more  than  300,000  houses  were  destroyed,  abominable  savageries 
were  committed,  and  all  civilization  was  thrown  back,  both  materi- 
ally and  morally ;  and  there  was  yet  to  come  the  still  more  appalling 
calamity  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  in  Germany — a  result  of  the 
unstable  poHtical  conditions  set  up  at  the  Reformation  ;  but  theo- 
logical human  sacrifices  were  rapidly  discredited.  Servetus  was  not 
the  first  victim,  but  he  was  nearly  the  last. 

The  jurist  Matthieu  Gripaldi  (or  Gribaldo)  lectured  on  law  at 
Toulouse,  Cahors,  Valence,  and  Padua  successively,  and,  finding  his 
anti-Trinitarian  leanings  everywhere  a  source  of  danger  to  him,  had 
sought  a  retreat  at  Fargias  near  Geneva,  then  in  the  jurisdiction  of 
Berne.  Venturing  to  remonstrate  with  Calvin  against  the  sentence 
on  Servetus,  he  brought  upon  himself  the  angry  scrutiny  of  the  heretic- 
hunter,  and  was  banished  from  the  neighbourhood.  For  a  time  he 
found  refuge  in  a  new  professorship  at  Tubingen ;  but  there  too  the 
alarm  was  raised,  and  he  was  expelled.  Coming  back  to  Fargias,  he 
gave  refuge  to  the  heretic  Valentinus  Gentilis  on  his  escape  from 
Geneva;  and  again  Calvin  attacked  him,  delivering  him  to  the 
authorities  of  Berne.  An  abjuration  saved  him  for  the  time ;  but 
he  would  probably  have  met  the  martyr's  fate  in  time  had  not  his 
death  by  the  plague,  in  1564,  guaranteed  him,  as  Bayle  remarks, 
against  any  further  trial  for  heresy.^ 

The  effect  of  theological  bias  on  moral  judgment  is  interest- 
ingly exemplified  in  the  comment  of  Mosheim  on  the  case  of 
Servetus.  Unable  to  refer  to  the  beliefs  of  deists  or  atheists 
without  vituperation,  Mosheim  finds  it  necessary  to  add  to  his 
account  of  Servetus  as  a  highly-gifted  and  very  learned  man 
the  qualification :  "  Yet  he  laboured  under  no  small  moral 
defects,  for  he  was  beyond  all  measure  arrogant,  and  at  the 
same  time  ill-tempered,  contentious,  unyielding,  and  a  semi- 
fanatic."  Every  one  of  these  characterizations  is  apphcable  in 
the  highest  degree  to  Calvin,  and  in  a  large  degree  to  Luther ; 
yet  for  them  the  historian  has  not  a  word  of  blame. 

Even  among  rationalists  it  has  not  been  uncommon  to  make 
light  of  Calvin's  crimes  on  the  score  that  his  energy  maintained 
a  polity  which  alone  sustained  Protestantism  against  the 
Catholic  Reaction.  This  is  the  verdict  of  Michelet :  "The 
Renaissance,  betrayed  by  the  accident  of  the  mobilities  of 
France,  turning  to  the  wind  of  light  volitions,  would  assuredly 

»  Bayle,  Art.  Qribaud  ;  Christie,  ]^tienne  Dolet,  2nd  ed.  pp.  303-305.  Wallace.  Antitrini- 
tartan  Biography,  ii,  Art.  18. 


?«!  t 


452         THE  REFORMATION  AND  FREETHOUGHT 

have  perished,  and  the  world  would  have  fallen  into  the  great 
net  of  the  fishers  of  men.  but  for  that  supreme  concentration  of 
the  Reformation  on  the  rock  of  Geneva  by  the  bitter  genius  of 
Calvin.'*  And  again :  "  Against  the  immense  and  darksome 
net  into  which  Europe  fell  by  the  abandonment  of  France 
nothing  less  than  this  heroic  seminary  could  avail  {Mist  ae 
France,  vol.  x,  La  Bdforvie  :  end  of  pref.  and  end  of  vol. j. 
Though  this  verdict  has  been  accepted  by  such  critical  thinkers 

as   Pattison  {Essays,  ii.  30-32)  ,-,f  ..^^.^^.^.^^^^^^^ 

Lecture  on  Machiavelli,  1877,  p.  47).  it  is  difficult  to  find  foi  it 

any  justification  in  history.  ..,,./  i 

The   nature   of   the   proposition   is   indeed   far   from   clear. 
Michelet  appears  to  mean  that  Geneva  saved  Europe  as  consti- 
tuting a  political   rallying-point,  a  nucleus  for  Protes  antism. 
Pattison,  pronouncing  that  **  Calvinism  saved  Europe     (Essays, 
ii,  32),  explains  that  it  was  by      a  positive  education  of  the 
individual  soul";  and  that  "this,  and  this  alone,  enabled  the 
Reformation  to  make  head  against  the  terrible  repressive  forces 
brought  to  bear  by  Spain-the  Inquisition  and  the  Jesuits 
(p  32).     The  thesis  thus  vanishes  in  rhetoric,  for  it  is  quite 
impossible  to  give  such  a  formula  any  significance  in  the  hght 
of    the    history    of    Protestantism    in    Britam,    Scandinavia, 
Germany,  and  Holland.     It  implies  that  where  Protestantism 
finally  failed-as  in  Italy,  France,  Bohemia.  Hungary  Poland 
Belgium,  parts  of  Germany,  and  parts  of  Switzerland— it  was 
because  the  individual  spirit  had  not  been  educated  enough 
which  is  a  mere  omission  to  note  the  real  economic  and  political 
causation.     Neither  Michelet  nor  Pattison  had  any  scientific 
notion  of  the  nature  of  the  process.  ^.  ,    ,• 

If  we  revert  to  Michelet's  claim,  we  get  no  more  satisfaction. 
The  very  fact  that  Calvin's  polity  could  subsist  without  any 
special  military  protection  is  the  proof  that  it  could  have  sub- 
sisted without  the   gross  cruelty  and   systematic   persecution 
which  marked  it  out  from  the  rest  of  the  world,  making  Geneva 
"a  kind  of  frozen  hell  of  austerity  and  retribution  and  secret 
sin  "     To  say  otherwise  is  to  say  that  freedom  and  toleration 
are  less  attractive  to  men  than  ferocity,  tyranny,  and  gloom. 
Calvin  drove  many  men  back  to  Catholicism,  and  had  his  full 
share  in  the  mortal  schism  which  set  Calvinists  and  Lutherans 
at  daggers  drawn  for  a  century,  while  Catholicism  re-conquered 
Poland  and  Bohemia  and  Hungary,  held  France,  and  nearly 
re-conquered    Lutheran   Germany.      There   is  no    reason    to 
suppose  that  the  Reformation  would  have  gone  otherwise  in 
Britain,  Scandinavia,  and  Holland  had  Geneva  gone  as  far  in 
tolerance  as  it  actually  did  in  intolerance.     To  call  it.  as  Michelet 
does,  an  '*  asylum,"  in  view  of  Calvin's  expulsion  or  execution 
of  every  man  who  dared  to  differ  from  him,  is  courageous. 
At  the  close  of  bis  argument  (p.  41)  Pattison  sums  up  that. 


GERMANY  AND  SWITZERLAND 


453 


>  " 


"  Greatly  as  the  Calvinistic  Churches  have  served  the  cause  of 
political  liberty,  they  have  contributed  nothing  to  the  cause  of 
knowledge."      The  admission   is  in  the  main  vahd ;    but  the 
claim  will  not  stand,  unless  "political  liberty  "  is  to  be  newly 
defined.     The   Calvinistic  rule  at  Geneva  was  from  the  first 
a  class  tyranny,  which  became  more  and  more  narrow  in  its 
social  basis.     The  Calvinist  clergy  and   populace  of  Holland 
turned   their    backs   on   republican   institutions,    and    became 
violent  monarchists.     The  Calvinists  of  England  and  Scotland 
were  as  determined  persecutors  as  ever  lived.     And,  indeed, 
how   should    liberty   anywhere   flourish   when    knowledge    is 
trodden  under  foot  ? 
The  treatment  of  Bernardino  Ochino,  who  had  turned  Protestant 
after  being  vicar-general  of  the  Capuchin  order,  shows  the  slackening 
of   ferocity  after  the   end   of    Servetus.     Ochino  in  a  late  writing 
ventured  guardedly  to  suggest  certain   relaxations   of   the   law   of 
monogamy — a  point  on  which  some  Lutherans  went  much  further 
than  he — and  was  besides  mildly  heretical  about  the  Trinity.      He 
was  in  consequence  expelled  with  his  family  from  the  canton  of 
Zurich  (1563),  at  the  age  of  seventy-six.     Finding  Switzerland  wholly 
inhospitable,  and  being  driven  by  the  CathoUcs  from  Poland,  where 
he  had  sought  to  join  the  Socinians,  he  went  to  die  in  Moravia.^ 
This  was  no  worse  treatment  than  Lutherans  and  Calvinists  normally 
meted  out  to  each  other  ;^  and  several  of  the  Italian  Protestants 
settled   at   Geneva   who   leant   to    Unitarian   views — among  them 
Gribaldo,  Biandrata,  and  Alciati— found  it  prudent  to   leave  that 
fortress  of  orthodoxy,  where  they  were  open  to  official  challenge. 
Finally,  when  the  Italian  Valentinus  Gentilis,  or  Gentile,  the  anti- 
Trinitarian,   variously   described   as   Tritheist,     Deist,    and    Arian, 
uttered  his  heresies  at  Geneva,  he  contrived,  after  an  imprisonment, 
a  forced  recantation,  and  a  public  degradation  (1558),  to  escape  thence 
with  his  life,  but  was  duly  beheaded  at  Berne  in  1566,  refusing  this 
time  to  recant.* 

This  ends  the  main  Swiss  era  of  theological  murder ;  but  a 
century  was  to  pass  before  sectarian  hatreds  subsided,  or  the  spirit 
of  persecution  was  brought  under  control  of  civilization.  In  1632, 
indeed,  a  Protestant  minister,  Nicholas  Anthoine,  was  burned  at 
Geneva  on  the  charge  of  apostasy  to  Judaism.     As  he  had  been 

1  Benrath.  Bernardino  Ochino  of  Siena,  Eng.  tr.  1876,  pp.  268-72,  287-92. 

2  McCrie.  p.  230  ;  Audin.  ch.  xxxv  ;  Benrath,  Bernardino  Ochino,  p.  297. 

8  Cp.  Pusey,  Histor.  Enquiry  into  Oer.  Bationaliam,  1828,  p.  14  sq.;  Beard,  p.  Ibd. 

*  Stahelin.  ii,  337.  Biandrata  went  to  Hungary,  where,  as  we  saw  (p.  421),  be  turned 
persecutor,  and  then  Protestant.  ^^     .     , .        „.      *  tt-  * 

5  Mosheim,  16  Cent.  sec.  iii,  pt.  11,  ch.  iv,  §  6;  Audin.  pp.  394-99;  Aretius.  Short  Htst. 
of  Valentinus  Gentilis.  Eng.  ir.  1696 ;  Stahelin,  ii.  338-45 ;  Wallace,  Antitrtnttartan  Bio- 
gravhy.  ii,  Art.  20. 


454         THE  KEFOEMATION  AND  FBEETHOUGHT 

admittedly  insane  for  a  time,  and  had  repeatedly  shown  much 
mental  excitement/  his  execution  tells  of  a  spirit  of  cruelty  worthy 
of  the  generation  of  Calvin.  The  Protestant  Bibliolatry,  in  short, 
was  as  truly  the  practical  negation  of  freethought  and  tolerance  as 
was  Catholicism  itself ;  and  it  was  only  their  general  remoteness 
from  each  other  that  kept  the  different  reformed  communities  from 
absolute  war  where  they  were  not,  as  in  Switzerland,  held  in  check 
by  the  dangers  around  them.''  As  it  was,  they  had  their  full  share 
in  the  responsibility  for  the  furious  civil  wars  which  so  long  con- 
vulsed France,  and  for  those  which  ultimately  reduced  Germany  to 
the  verge  of  destruction,  arresting  her  civiHzation  for  over  a  hundred 
years. 

To  sum  up.  In  Germany  Protestantism  failed  alike  as  a  moral 
and  as  an  intellectual  reform.  The  lack  of  any  general  moral  motive 
in  the  ecclesiastical  revolution  is  sufficiently  proved  by  the  general 
dissolution  of  conduct  which,  on  the  express  admission  of  Luther, 
followed  upon  it.^  This  was  quite  apart  from  the  special  disorders 
of  the  Anabaptist  movement,  which,  on  the  other  hand,  contained 
elements  of  moral  and  religious  rationalism,  as  against  Bibliolatry, 
that  have  been  Httle  recognized.*  Of  that  movement  the  summing- 
up  is  that,  like  the  Lutheran,  it  turned  to  evil  because  of  sheer  lack 
of  rationalism.  Among  its  earlier  leaders  were  men  such  as  Denk, 
morally  and  temperamentally  on  a  higher  plane  than  any  of  the 
Lutherans.  But  Anabaptism  too  was  fundamentally  scriptural  and 
revelationist,  not  rational ;  and  it  miscarried  in  its  own  way  even 
more  hopelessly  than  the  theological  "reform."  Lutheranism, 
renouncing  the  rational  and  ethical  hope  of  social  betterment,  ran 
to  insane  dissension  over  irrational  dogma  ;  Anabaptism,  ignorantly 
attaching  the  hope  of  social  betterment  to  religious  delusion,  ran  to 
irrational  social  schemes,  ending  in  anarchy,  massacre,  and  extinc- 
tion. But  the  Lutheran  failure  was  intellectually  and  morally  no 
less  complete.  Luther  was  with  good  reason  ill  at  ease  about  his 
cause  when  he  died  in  1546 ;  and  Melanchthon,  dying  in  1560, 
declared  himself  glad  to  be  sot  free  from  the  rabies  theologorumJ^ 

The  test  of  the  new  regimen  lay,  if  anywhere,  in  the  University 
of  Wittemberg;  and  there  matters  were  no  better  than  anywhere 


1  See  the  Historical  Account  of  his  life  and  trial  in  the  HarlHan  Miscellany,  iv.  168  sq. 

2  See  Stahelin.  ii.  293,  304,  etc. 

8  Cp.  Menzel,  Geschichte  der  Deutschen,  3te  Aufl.  Cap.  417;  A.  F.  Pollard,  in  Cam.  Mod. 
Hist.  vol.  ii.  ch.  vii.  p.  223 ;  The  Dynamics  of  Religion,  pp.  6-8. 

*  See  Beard.  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  189-90.  196.  Ttie  same  avowal  was  made  in  the 
eighteenth  century  by  Mosheim  (16  Cent.  sec.  iii,  pt.  ii.  §  5). 

5  F.  A.  Cox.  Life  of  Melanchthon,  1815.  p.  544.  citing  Adam,  VitiB  philosophornm  (p. 
934).    Cp.  pp.  52&-29. 


GEKMANY  AND  SWITZERLAND 


455 


else.*  German  university  life  in  general  went  from  bad  to  worse  till 
a  new  culture  began  slowly  to  germinate  after  the  Thirty  Years' 
War;^  and  the  germs  came  mainly  from  the  neighbouring  nations. 
German  Switzerland  exhibited  similar  symptoms,  the  Reformation 
being  followed  by  no  free  intellectual  life,  but  by  a  tyranny 
identical  in  spirit  and  method  with  that  of  Rome.^  It  rests,  finally, 
on  the  express  testimony  of  leading  Reformers  that  the  main  effect 
of  the  Reformation  in  the  intellectual  life  of  Germany  was  to 
discredit  all  disinterested  learning  and  literature.  Melanchthon  in 
particular,  writing  at  dates  as  far  apart  as  1522  and  1557,  repeatedly 
and  emphatically  testifies  to  the  utter  disregard  of  erudition  and 
science  in  the  interests  of  pietism,  corroborating  everything  said  to 
the  same  effect  by  Erasmus.* 

On  the  social  and  poUtical  side  the  rule  of  the  Protestant  princes 
was  not  only  as  tyrannous  but  as  indecorous  as  that  of  their 
Catholic  days,  each  playing  pope  in  his  own  dominions  ;^  and  their 
clergy  were  not  in  a  position  to  correct  them.  Menzel  notes  that 
the  normal  drunkenness  of  the  Protestant  aristocracy  at  this  period 
made  current  in  Europe  the  expression  "  a  German  swine."  And 
whereas  Germany  before  the  Reformation  was  at  various  points 
a  culture  force  for  Europe — whence  the  readiness  in  other  nations 
at  first  to  follow  the  Lutheran  lead — it  progressively  became  more 
and  more  of  an  object-lesson  of  the  evils  of  heresy,  thus  fatally 
weakening  the  cause  of  Protestantism  in  France,  where  its  fortunes 
hung  in  the  balance. 

Even  in  the  matter  of  theology.  Protestantism  did  not  hold  its 
own  against  Cathohc  criticism.  Both  began  by  discriminating  in 
the  scriptural  canon,  rejecting  some  books  and  depreciating  others, 
all  the  while  professing  to  make  the  Word  of  God  their  sole  or  final 
standard.  When  the  CathoHcs  pressed  the  demand  as  to  how  they 
could  settle  what  was  the  true  Word  of  God,  their  followers  and 
successors  could  make  no  answer,  and  had  to  fall  back  on  an 
indiscriminate  acceptance  of  the  Canon.  Again,  Luther  and  Calvin 
ahke  maintained  the  doctrine  of  "Assurance,"  and  this  was  one  of 
the  points  in  Calvinism  accepted  by  Arminius.  The  Catholics, 
naturally  making  the  most  of  the  admitted  increase  of  sexual  and 
other  licence  in  Germany  and  elsewhere  under  Lutheranism,  dwelt 
upon  Luther's  predestinarianism  in  general,  and  the  doctrine  of 
Assurance  in  particular,  as  the  source  of  the  demorahzation ;  and 

1  K.  von  Raumer,  as  cited,  pp.  .32-37.  ^  jd.  pp.  42-52 ;  Pusey.  as  cited,  p.  112. 

8  Dandliker,  Geschichte  der  Schweiz,  ii,  556-59.  622  sq.,  728-29. 
<  See  the  extracts  in  Beard's  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  340-41. 
6  Menzel.  Geschichte  der  Deutschen,  Cap.  417. 


456         THE  EEFOKMATION  AND  FEEETHOUGHT 


at  the  Council  of  Trent  it  was  expressly  condemned.  Thereafter, 
though  it  was  "part  and  parcel  of  the  Confessions  of  all  the 
Churches  of  the  Keformation  down  to  the  Westminster  Assembly," 
it  was  in  the  last-named  conclave  (1643)  declared  not  to  be  of  the 
essence  of  faith  ;  and  the  Scottish  General  Assembly  subsequently 
deposed  and  condemned  holders  of  this,  the  original  Protestant 
doctrine.  Similar  modifications  took  place  elsewhere.  Thus  the 
Protestant  world  drifted  back  to  a  Catholic  position,  affirmed  at  the 
Council  of  Trent  against  Protestantism;^  and  in  Holland  we  shall 
see,  in  the  rise  of  Arminianism,  a  similar  surrender  on  the  Protestant 
side  to  the  general  pressure  of  Catholicism  upon  the  ethical  weak- 
nesses of  Predestinarianism.  On  that  point,  however,  the  original 
Catholic  doctrine  of  predestination  was  revived  by  the  Spanish 
Jesuit  Luis  Molina  (1535-1600 ;  not  to  be  confused  with  the  later 
Quietist,  Miguel  de  Molinos),  who  in  his  treatise  Liheri  Arhitrii 
Concordia  cum  gratice  donis  (1588)  set  it  forth  as  consequent  upon 
God's  foreknowledge  of  man's  free  use  of  his  will.  As  a  result  of  the 
dispute  between  the  Thomists  and  Molina's  followers,  known  as  the 
Molinists,  the  Pope  in  1607  pronounced  that  the  views  of  both  sides 
were  permissible — a  course  which  had  already  been  taken  twenty 
years  before  with  the  controversy  on  predestination  aroused  by  the 
doctrines  of  Michael  Baius  at  the  University  of  Louvain.^  Thus 
the  dissensions  of  Catholics  in  a  manner  kept  in  countenance  the 
divided  Protestants ;  but  the  old  confidence  of  affirmation  and 
formulation  was  inevitably  sapped  by  the  constant  play  of  contro- 
versy ;  and  from  this  Protestantism  necessarily  suffered  most. 

Intellectually,  there  was  visible  retrogression  in  the  Protestant 
world.  It  is  significant  that  throughout  the  sixteenth  century  most 
of  the  great  scientific  thinkers  and  the  freethinkers  with  the  strongest 
bent  to  new  science  lived  in  the  Catholic  world.  Kabelais  and  Bruno 
were  priests  ;  Copernicus  a  lay  canon  ;  Galileo  had  never  withdrawn 
from  the  Church  which  humiliated  him  ;  even  Kepler  returned  to  the 
Catholic  environment  after  professing  Protestantism.  He  was  in 
fact  excommunicated  by  the  Tiibingen  Protestant  authorities  in 
1612^  for  condemning  the  Lutheran  doctrine  that  the  body  of 
Christ  could  be  in  several  places  at  once.  The  immunity  of  such 
original  spirits  as  Gilbert  and  Harriott  from  active  molestation  is  to 


1  Cp.  Hamilton.  Discussions  in  Philosophy  and  Literature,  1852.  pp.  493-94,  note. 

2  Mosheim,  Reid's   ed.  pp.  625-36.     Such  solutions  were  common  m  papal  policy. 

8  Bishop  Schuster.  Joharin  Kei)lertmd  die  grossen  Tcirchlichen  Streitfragen  seiner  Zeit, 
1888.  p.  178  sq.    It  is  noteworthy  that  Kepler's  mother  was  sentenced  for  witchcraic.  ana 
saved  by  the  influence  of  her  son.    Johann  Keppler'a  Leben  und  JVerken  nach  neuerlicn 
avfgefundeten  MSS.,\on  G.  L.  C.  Freiherrn  von  Breitecliwert,  1835,  p.  97  sa. 


GEKMANY  AND  SWITZEELAND 


457 


be  explained  only  by  the  fact  that  they  lived  in  the  as  yet  un-Puritan- 
ized  atmosphere  of  Elizabethan  England,  before  the  age  of  BibHo- 
latry.  It  would  seem  as  if  the  spirit  of  Scripturalism,  invading 
the  very  centres  of  thought,  were  more  fatal  to  original  intellectual 
life  than  the  more  external  interferences  of  Catholic  sacerdotalism. 
In  the  phrase  of  Arnold,  Protestantism  turned  the  key  on  the  spirit, 
where  Catholicism  was  normally  content  with  an  outward  submis- 
sion to  its  ceremonies,  and  only  in  the  most  backward  countries,  as 
Spain,  destroyed  entirely  the  atmosphere  of  free  mental  intercourse. 
It  was  after  a  long  reaction  that  Bruno  and  Galileo  were  arraigned 

at  Eome. 

The  clerical  resistance  to  new  science,  broadly  speaking,  was 
more  bitter  in  the  Protestant  world  than  in  the  Catholic ;  and  it 
was  merely  the  relative  lack  of  restraining  power  in  the  former 
that  made  possible  the  later  scientific  progress.  The  history  of 
Lutheranism  upon  this  side  is  an  intellectual  infamy.  At  Wittem- 
berg,  during  Luther's  life,  Eeinhold  did  not  dare  to  teach  the 
Copernican  astronomy;  Eheticus  had  to  leave  the  place  in  order 
to  be  free  to  speak ;  and  in  1571  the  subject  was  put  in  the  hands 
of  Peucer,  who  taught  that  the  Copernican  theory  was  absurd. 
Finally,  the  rector  of  the  university,  Hensel,  wrote  a  text-book  for 
schools,  entitled  The  Restored  Mosaic  System  of  the  World,  showing 
with  entire  success  that  the  new  doctrine  was  unscriptural.  A  little 
later  the  Lutheran  superintendent,  Pfeififer,  of  Lubeck,  published  his 
Pansophia  Mosaica,  insisting  on  the  literal  truth  of  the  entire 
Genesaic  myth.®  In  the  next  century  Calovius  (1612-1686),  who 
taught  successively  at  Konigsberg,  Dantzic,  and  Wittemberg,  main- 
tained the  same  position,  contending  that  the  story  of  Joshua's 
staying  the  sun  and  moon  refuted  Copernicus.*  When  Pope 
Gregory  XIII,  following  an  impulse  abnormal  in  his  world,  took 
the  bold  step  of  rectifying  the  Calendar  (1584),  the  Protestants  in 
Germany  and  Switzerland  vehemently  resisted  the  reform,  and  in 
some  cities  would  not  tolerate  it,^  thus  refusing,  on  theological 
grounds,  the  one  species  of  co-operation  with  Catholicism  that  lay 
open  to  them.     And  the  anti-scientific  attitude  persisted  for  over  a 


1  "There  is  much  reason  to  believe  that  the  fetters  upon  scientific  thought  were  closer 
under  the  strict  interpretation  of  Scripture  by  the  early  Protestants  than  they  had  been 
under  the  older  church  "  (White.  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology,  i.  212).  Concerning 
the  Protestant  hostility  to  the  Copernican  system  and  to  Kepler,  see  Schuster,  as  cited, 
pp.  87  sa..  191  sa. 

2  White,  as  cited,  i,  129.  »  j^.  i,  213.  *  Id.  p.  147. 

«  Menzel,  Cap.  431 ;  Dandliker.  Geschichte  der  Schweiz,  1884.  ii,  743.  The  cantons  of 
Glarus.  Outer  Appenzell.  St.  Gall,  and  the  Grisons  formally  rejected  the  Gregorian 
Calendar.  Id.  ib.  Zschokke  (Des  Schweizerlands  Geschichte.  9te  Ausg.  1853.  p.  179) 
implies  that  the  Protestants  in  general  ignored  it.  Ranke  {Hist,  of  the  Popes,  Bohn 
tr.  1908.  i,  337)  mentions  that  "all  Catholic  nations  took  part  in  this  reform." 


458  THE  EEFOKMATION  AND  FREETHOUGHT 


ENGLAND 


459 


century  in  Switzerland  as  in  Scotland.  At  Geneva,  J.-A.  Turretin 
(1671-1737),  writing  after  Kepler  and  Newton  had  done  their  work, 
laboriously  repeated  the  demonstration  of  Calovius,  and  reaffirmed 
the  positions  of  Calvin.  So  far  as  its  ministers  could  avail,  the 
Sacred  Book  was  working  the  old  effect. 

§  2.  England 

Freethought  gained  permanently  as  little  in  England  as  elsewhere 
in  the  process  of  substituting  local  tyranny  for  that  of  Rome.  The 
secularizing  effect  of  the  Reformation,  indeed,  was  even  more  marked 
there  than  elsewhere.  What  Wolsey  had  aimed  at  doing  with 
moderation  and  without  revolution  was  done  after  him  with 
violence  on  motives  of  sheer  plunder,  and  a  multitude  not  only  of 
monasteries  but  of  churches  were  disendowed  and  destroyed.  The 
monastic  churches  were  often  magnificent,  and  "  when  the  monas- 
teries were  dissolved,  divine  service  altogether  ceased  in  ninety  out 
of  every  hundred  of  these  great  churches,  and  the  remaining  ten 

were  left without  any  provision  whatever"  for  public  worship.^ 

All  this  must  have  had  a  secularizing  effect,  which  was  accentuated 
by  the  changes  in  ritual ;  and  by  the  middle  of  the  century  it  was 
common  to  treat  both  churches  and  clergy  with  utter  irreverence, 
which  indeed  the  latter  often  earned  by  their  mode  of  life.^  Riots 
in  churches,  especially  in  London,  were  common  ;  there  was  in 
fact  a  habit  of  driving  mules  and  horses  through  them  ;^  and  buying 
and  selling  and  even  gaming  were  often  carried  on.  But  with  all 
this  there  was  no  intellectual  enlightenment,  and  in  high  places  there 
was  no  toleration.  Under  Henry  VIII  anti-Romanist  heretics  were 
put  to  death  on  the  old  Romanist  principles.  In  1532,  again,  was 
burned  James  Bainham,  who  not  only  rejected  the  specially  Catholic 
dogmas,  but  affirmed  the  possible  salvation  of  unbelievers. 

Under  the  Protectorate  which  followed  there  was  indeed  much 
religious  semi-rationalism,  evidently  of  continental  derivation,  which 
is  discussed  in  the  theological  literature  of  the  time.  Roger 
Hutchinson,  writing  about  1550,  repeatedly  speaks  of  contemporary 
"Sadducees  and  Libertines"  who  say  (l)  "that  all  spirits  and 
angels  are  no  substances,  but  inspirations,  affections,  and  qualities  "; 
(2)  "that  the  devil  is  nothing  but  nolitum,  or  a  filthy  affection 
coming  of  the  flesh  ";  (3)  "  that  there  is  neither  place  of  rest  nor 

1  Blunt.  Ref.  of  the  Church  of  England,  ed.  1892,  ii.  76.  Of  the  twenty-six  cathedrals  in 
the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  thirteen  had  been  monastic  churches,  and  these  were  razea  lo 
the  smallest  possible  dimensions  as  to  number  and  endowments."    Id.  p.  77. 

a  Strype'8  Metmriais  of  Cranmer,  ed.  1848.  ii.  89.  »  Blunt,  i,  160-61. 


pain  after  this  life ;  that  hell  is  nothing  else  but  a  tormenting  and 

desperate  conscience ;  and  that  a  joyful,  quiet,  and  merry  conscience 

is  heaven." 

See  The  Image  of  God,  or  Layman's  Book,  1550,  ch.  xxiv: 
Parker  Society's  rep.  1842,  pp.  134,  138,  140.  Cp.  p.  79  and 
Sermon  II,  on  The  Lord's  Supper  {id.  p.  247),  as  to  *'  Julianites  " 
who  "  do  think  mortal  corpo,  mortal  anima."  To  the  period 
1550-60  is  also  assigned  the  undated  work  of  John  Veron, 
A  Frutefull  Treatise  of  Predestination  a?id  of  the  Divine 
Providence  of  God,  with  an  Apology  of  the  same  against  the 
sioynishe  gruntinge  of  the  Epicures  and  Atheystes  of  oxire  time. 
There  was  evidently  a  good  deal  of  new  rationalism,  which  has 
been  generally  ignored  in  English  historiography.  Its  foreign 
source  is  suggested  by  the  use  of  the  term  "  Libertines,"  which 
derives  from  France  and  Geneva.  See  below,  p.  473.  The 
above-cited  tenets  are,  in  fact,  partly  identical  wdth  those  of 
the  libertins  denounced  at  Geneva  by  Calvin. 

Such  doctrine,  which  we  shall  find  in  vogue  fifty  years  later, 
cannot  have  been  printed,  and  probably  can  have  been  uttered  only 
by  men  of  good  status,  as  well  as  culture ;  and  even  by  them  only 
because  of  the  w^eakness  of  the  State  Church  in  its  transition  stage. 
Yet  heresy  went  still  further  among  some  of  the  sects  set  up  by  the 
Anabaptist  movement,  which  in  England  as  in  Germany  involved 
some  measure  of  Unitarianism.  A  letter  of  Hooper  to  Bullinger  in 
1549  tells  of  "  libertines  and  wretches  who  are  daring  enough  in 
their  conventicles  not  only  to  deny  that  Christ  is  the  Messiah  and 
Saviour  of  the  world,  but  also  to  call  that  blessed  Seed  a  mischievous 
fellow  and  deceiver  of  the  world."  ^  This  must  have  been  said  with 
locked  doors,  for  much  milder  heresy  was  heavily  punished,  the 
worst  penalties  falling  upon  that  which  stood  equally  with  orthodoxy 
on  Biblical  grounds. 

In  1541,  under  Henry  VIII,  were  burned  three  persons 
because  they  denied  transubstantiation,  and  had  not  received 
the  sacrament  at  Easter."  See  the  letter  of  Hilles  to  BuUinger, 
Original  Letters,  as  cited,  i,  200.  The  case  of  Jean  Bouchier 
or  Bocher,  burned  in  1550,  is  well  known.  It  is  worth  noting 
that  the  common  charge  against  Cranmer,  of  persuading  the 
young  king  to  sign  her  death  warrant,  is  false,  being  one  of 
the  myths  of  Foxe.  The  warrant  was  passed  by  the  whole 
Privy  Council,  Cranmer  not  being  even  present.  See  the 
Parker  Society's  reprint  of  Eoger  Hutchinson,  1842,  introd. 
pp.  ii-5.  Hutchinson  apparently  approved  ;  and  it  is  signifi- 
cant of  the  clerical  attitude  of  the  time  that  he  calls  {Image  of 

*  Original  Letters  relative  to  the  English  Beformation,  Parker  Society,  1846,  i,  66. 


I 


460         THE  EEFOEMATION  AND  FREETHOUGHT 

God,  ch.  xrx,  p.  201)  for  the  punishment  of  Anabaptists  by 
death  if  necessary,  but  does  not  suggest  it  for  "  Sadducees  and 
Libertines." 

The  EUzabethan  archbishops  and  the  Puritans  were  equally 
intolerant ;  and  the  idea  of  free  inquiry  was  undreamt  of.  That 
there  had  been  much  private  discussion  in  clerical  circles,  however, 
is  plain  from  the  13th  and  18th  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  (1562), 
which  repudiate  natural  moraUty  and  hold  "  accursed  "  those  who 
say  that  men  can  be  saved  under  any  creed/  This  fulmination 
would  not  have  occurred  had  the  heresy  not  been  pressing  ;  but  the 
"  curse"  would  thenceforth  set  the  key  of  clerical  and  public  utterance. 
The  Reformation,  in  fact,  speedily  over-clouded  with  fanaticism 
what  new  light  of  freethought  had  been  glimmering  before  ;  turning 
into  Bibliolaters  those  who  had  rationally  doubted  some  of  the 
Catholic  mysteries,  and  forcing  back,  either  into  silence  or,  by 
reaction,  into  Catholic  bigotry,  those  more  refined  spirits  who,  like 
Sir  Thomas  More,  had  before  been  really  in  advance  of  their  age 
intellectually  and  morally,  and  desired  a  transmutation  of  the  old 
system  rather  than  its  overthrow.  Nothing  so  nearly  rational  as 
the  Utopia  (1515-16)  appeared  again  itt  English  literature  for  a 
century ;  it  is  indeed,  in  some  respects,  a  lead  to  social  science  in 
our  own  day.  More,  with  all  his  spontaneous  turn  for  pietism,  had 
evidently  drunk  in  his  youth  or  prime'^  at  some  freethinking  source, 
for  his  book  recognizes  the  existence  of  unbelievers  in  deity  and 
immortality;  and  though  he  pronounces  them  unfit  for  poHtical 
power,  as  did  Milton,  Locke,  and  Voltaire  long  after  him,  he 
stipulates  that  they  be  tolerated.^  Broadly  speaking,  the  book  is 
simply  deistic.  "  From  a  world,"  says  a  popular  historian,  clerically 
trained— "  from  a  world  where  fifteen  hundred  years  of  Christian 
teaching  had  produced  social  injustice,  religious  intolerance,  and 
political  tyranny,  the  humorist  philosopher  turns  to  a  *  Nowhere ' 
in  which  the  efforts  of  mere  natural  human  virtue  realized  those 
ends  of  security,  equality,  brotherhood,  and  freedom,  for  which  the 
very  institution  of  society  seems  to  have  been  framed."*  In  his 
own  case,  however,  we  see  the  Nemesis  of  the  sway  of  feeling  over 

1  Bishop  Burnet  (ExpoHHon  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  Art.  18)  has  given  currency  to 
the  pretence  that  the  words  "saved  by  the  law  "  are  meant  to  exclude  the  sense  s?;veQ  m 
the  law."  the  latter  salvation  beinfi  allowed  as  possible.  That  there  was  no  such  though 
on  the  part  of  the  framersof  the  Article  is  shown  by  the  Latin  version,  where  t»e  expreb 
8ion  is  precisely  "in  lege."    Burnet  prints  the  Latin,  yet  utterly  ifinores  its  ^'^'"'^i'''^^;- 

'i  Book  II  of  the  Utopia  was  written  at  Antwerp,  during  his  six  months  stay  tncie  vu 

an  mubassy.      ,,  Religions  "  (Arber's  ed.  pp.  143-47  ;  Morley's  ed.PP.  151-53). 

4  Green.  Short  History,  ch.  vi.  §  4 ;  1881  ed.  p.  311.  Compare  Green's  whole  ei^t mi ate^ 
Michelefs  hostile  criticism  (x.  356)  is  surprisingly  inept.  For  the  elements  of  nauuaium 
in  the  Utopia  see  bk.  ii.  sections  *'  Of  their  Journeying  "  and    Of  the  Beligions. 


THE  NETHEELANDS 


461 


judgment,  for,  beginning  by  keeping  his  prejudice  above  the  reason 
of  whose  teaching  he  is  conscious,  he  ends  by  becoming  a  Wind 
religious  polemist  and  a  bitter  persecutor. 

Cp  Isaac  Disraeli's  essay,  "  The  Psychological  Character  of 
Sir  Thomas  More,"  in  the  Amenities  of  Literature,  and  the 
present  writer's  essay,  "  Culture  and  Eeaction,"  in  Essays^  m 
Sociology,  vol.  i.  Lord  Acton,  vindicating  More  as  against 
Wolsey,  pleads  {Histor.  Essays  and  Studies,  1907,  p.  64j  that 
More  before  his  death  protested  that  no  Protestant  perished  by 
his  act.  This  seems  to  be  true  in  the  bare  sense  that  he^  did 
not  exceed  his  ostensible  legal  duties,  and  several  times  restrained 
the  execution  of  the  law  (Archdeacon  Button,  Sir  Thomas  More, 
1895,  pp.  215-22).  But  the  fact  remains  that  More  expressly 
justified  and  advocated  the  burning  of  heretics  as  "lawful, 
necessary,  and  well  done."  Title  of  ch.  xiii  of  Dialogue,  The 
Supper  of  the  Lord.     Cp.  title  of  ch.  xv. 

It  is  in  the  wake,  then,  of  the  overthrow  of  Catholicism  in  the 
second  generation  that  a  far-reaching  freethought  begins  to  be  heard 
of  in  England ;  and  this  clearly  comes  by  way  of  new  continental 
and  hterary  contact,  which  would  have  occurred  in  at  least  as  great 
a  degree  under  CathoHcism,  save  insofar  as  unbelief  was  facihtated 
by  the  irreverence  developed  by  the  ecclesiastical  revolution,  or  by 
the  state  of  indifference  which  among  the  upper  classes  was  the 
natural  sequel  of  the  shameless  policy  of  plunder  and  the  oscillation 
between  Protestant  and  CathoUc  forms.  And  it  was  finally  in  such 
negative  ways  only  that  Protestantism  furthered  freethought  any- 
where. 

§  3.  The  Netherlands 

Hardly  more  fortunate  was  the  earlier  course  of  things  intel- 
lectual after  the  Eeformation  in  the  Netherlands,  where  by  the 
fifteenth  century  remarkable  progress  had  been  made  alike  in  science 
and  the  arts,  and  where  Erasmus  acquired  his  culture  and  did  his 
service  to  culture's  cause.  The  fact  that  Protestantism  had  to  fight 
for  its  life  against  PhiHp  was  of  course  not  the  fault  of  the  Pro- 
testants ;  and  to  that  ruinous  struggle  is  to  be  attributed  the  arrest 
of  the  civihzation  of  Flanders.  But  it  lay  in  the  nature  of  the 
Protestant  impulse  that,  apart  from  the  classical  culture  which  m 
Holland  was  virtually  a  successful  industry,  providing  editions^  for 
all  Europe,  it  should  turn  all  intellectual  life  for  generations  into 
vain  controversy.  The  struggle  between  reform  and  popery  was 
followed  by  the  struggle  between  Calvinism  and  Arminianism  ;  and 


462 


THE  REFORMATION  AND  FREETHOUGHT 


the  second  was  no  less  bitter  if  less  bloody  than  the  first/  the 
religious  strife  passing  into  civil  feud. 

The  secret  of  the  special  bitterness  of  Calvinist  resentment 
towards  the  school  of  Arminius  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  latter 
endorsed  some  of  the  most  galling  of  the  Catholic  criticisms  of 
Calvinism.  Aeminius  [Latinized  name  of  Jacob  Harmensen  or 
van  Harmin,  1560-1609,  professor  of  theology  at  Leyden]  was 
personally  a  man  of  great  amiability,  averse  to  controversy,  but 
unable  to  reconcile  the  Calvinist  view  of  predestination  with  his 
own  quasi-rational  ethic,  and  concerned  to  secure  that  the  dogma 
should  not  be  fastened  upon  all  Dutch  Protestants.  In  his  opinion, 
no  effective  answer  could  be  made  on  Calvinist  lines  to  the  argument 
of  Cardinal  Bellarmin^  that  from  much  Calvinist  doctrine  there 
flowed  the  consequences :  "  God  is  the  author  of  sin  ;  God  really 
sins  ;  God  is  the  only  sinner;  sin  is  no  sin  at  all."'*  This  was  sub- 
stantially true  ;  and  Arminius,  like  Bellarmin,  unable  to  see  that 
the  Calvinist  position  was  simply  a  logical  reduction  to  moral 
absurdity  of  all  theistic  ethic,  sought  safety  in  fresh  dogmatic 
modifications.  Of  these  the  Calvinists,  in  turn,  could  easily 
demonstrate  the  logical  incoherence;  and  in  a  ring  of  dilemmas 
from  which  there  was  no  logical  exit  save  into  Naturalism  there 
arose  an  exacerbated  strife,  as  of  men  jostling  each  other  in  a  prison 
where  some  saw  their  nominal  friends  in  partial  sympathy  with 
their  deadly  enemies,  who  jeered  at  their  divisions. 

The  wonder  is  that  the  chaos  of  dispute  and  dogmatic  tinkering 
which  followed  did  not  more  rapidly  disintegrate  faith.  Calvinists 
sought  modifications  under  stress  of  dialectic,  like  their  predecessors ; 
and  the  high  "  Supralapsarian  "  doctrine — the  theory  of  the  certain 
regeneration  or  "  perseverance  "  of  "  the  saints  " — shaded  into  "  the 
Creabilitarian  opinion  "*  and  yet  another ;  while  the  "  Sublapsarian  " 
view  claimed  also  to  safeguard  predestination.  So  long  as  men 
remained  in  the  primary  Protestant  temper,  convinced  that  they 
possessed  in  their  Bibles  an  infallible  revelation,  such  strife  could 
but  generate  new  passion,  even  as  it  had  done  on  the  other  irrational 
problem  of  the  eucharist.  For  men  of  sane  and  peaceful  disposition, 
the  only  modes  of  peace  were  resignation  and  doubt ;  and  in  the 
case  of  the  doubters  the  first  intellectual  movements  would  be  either 


1  Cp.  T.  C.  Grattan.  The  Netherlands,  1830,  pp.  231-43. 

2  Who,  a8  it  happened,  avowed  that "  religion  was  almost  extinct** in  Europe  at  the 
time  of  the  rise  of  the  Lutheran  and  Calvinistic  heresies.  Concio  xxviii.  Opera,  vi,  296, 
ed.  1617,  cited  by  Blunt,  Ref.  of  Church  of  Englmid,  ed.  1893,  i.  4,  note. 

8  Cp.  The  Works  of  Arminius,  ed.  by  James  NictiQla,  1825,  i,  580.  note. 
*  Id.  p.  581  note. 


THE  NETHEBLANDS 


463 


back  towards  Kome^  or  further  on  towards  deism.  The  former  course 
would  be  taken  by  some  who  had  winced  under  the  jeers  of  the 
CathoHcs  ;  the  latter  by  the  hardier  spirits  who  judged  CathoHcism 
for  themselves.  As  most  of  the  fighting  had  been  primed  by  and 
transacted  over  texts,  the  surrender  of  the  belief  in  an  inspired 
scripture  greatly  reduced  the  friction  ;  and  in  Holland  as  elsewhere 
deism  would  be  thus  spontaneously  generated  in  the  Protestant 
atmosphere.  A  few  went  even  further.  **  I  have  no  doubt  that 
many  persons  have  secretly  revolted  from  the  Keformed  Church  to 
the  Papists,"  wrote  Uifcenbogaert  to  Vorstius  in  1613.  **  I  firmly 
beheve,"  he  added,  "  that  Atheism  is  creeping  by  degrees  into  the 
minds  of  some."* 

Where  mere  Arminianism  could  bring  Barneveldt  to  the  block, 
even  deism  could  not  be  avowed ;  and  generations  had  to  pass  before 
it  could  have  the  semblance  of  a  party ;  but  the  proof  of  the  new 
vogue  of  unbelief  lies  in  the  labour  spent  by  Grotius  (Hugo  or 
Huig  van  Groot,  1583-1645)  on  his  treatise  De  Veritate  Religionis 
ChristiayicB  (1627) — a  learned  and  strenuous  defence  of  the  faith 
which  had  so  lacerated  his  fatherland,  first  through  the  long  struggle 
with  Spain,  and  again  in  the  feud  of  Arminians  and  Calvinists. 
When  Barneveldt  was  put  to  death,  Grotius  had  been  sentenced 
to  imprisonment  for  life ;  and  it  was  only  after  three  years  of  the 
dungeon  that,  by  the  famous  stratagem  of  his  wife,  he  escaped  in 
1621.  The  fact  that  he  devoted  his  freedom  in  France  first  to  his 
great  treatise  O^i  the  Laiu  of  War  and  Feace  (1625),  seeking  to 
humanize  the  civil  life  of  the  world,  and  next  to  his  defence  of  the 
Christian  religion,  is  the  proof  of  his  magnanimity ;  but  the  spectacle 
of  his  life  must  have  done  as  much  to  set  thinkers  against  the  whole 
creed  as  his  apologetic  did  to  reconcile  them  to  it.  He,  the  most 
distinguished  Dutch  scholar  and  the  chief  apologist  of  Christianity 
in  his  day,  had  to  seek  refuge,  on  his  escape  from  prison,  in  Catholic 
France,  whose  king  granted  him  a  pension.  The  circumstance 
which  in  Holland  chiefly  favoured  freethought,  the  freedom  of 
the  press,  was,  like  the  great  florescence  of  the  arts  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  a  result  of  the  whole  social  and  political  conditions, 
not  of  any  Protestant  belief  in  free  discussion.  That  there  were 
freethinkers  in  Holland  in  and  before  Grotius's  time  is  implied  in 
the  pains  he  took  to  defend  Christianity ;  but  that  they  existed  in 
despite  and  not  by  grace  of  the  ruling  Protestantism  is  proved  by 
the  fact  that  they  did  not  venture  to  publish  their  opinions.     In 


*  Cp.  Schuster,  as  cited,  pp.  191  sa.,  202  sq. 


2  Nichols's  Arminius,  i,  p.  233. 


I 


464  THE  KEFORMATION  AND  FREETHOUGHT 

France,  doubtless,  he  found  as  much  unbelief  as  he  had  left  behind. 
In  the  end,  Grotius  and  Casaubon  alike  recoiled  from  the  narrow 
Protestantism  around  them,  which  had  so  sadly  failed  to  reahze 
their  hopes.'  "  In  1642  Grotius  had  become  wholly  averse  to  the 
Reformation.  He  thought  it  had  done  more  harm  than  good  ";  and 
had  he  lived  a  few  years  longer  he  would  probably  have  become 
a  Catholic.^ 

§  4.  Conclusion 
Thus  concerning  the  Reformation  generally  "  we  are  obliged  to 
confess  that,  especially  in  Germany,  it  soon  parted  company  with 
free  learning ;  that  it  turned  its  back  upon  culture ;  that  it  lost  itself 
in  a  maze  of  arid  theological  controversy  ;  that  it  held  out  no  hand 
of  welcome  to  awakening  science.  Presently  we  shall  see  that  the 
impulse  to  an  enhghtened  study  and  criticism  of  the  Scriptures 
came  chiefly  from  heretical  quarters ;  that  the  unbelieving  Spinoza 
and  the  Arminian  Le  Clerc  pointed  the  way  to  investigations  which 
the  great  Protestant  systematizers  thought  neither  necessary  nor 
useful.  Even  at  a  later  time  it  has  been  the  divines  who  have  most 
loudly  declared  their  aUegiance  to  the  theology  of  the  Reformation 
who  have  also  looked  most  askance  at  science,  and  claimed  for  their 
statements  an  entire  independence  of  modern  knowledge." '  In  fine, 
"  to  look  at  the  Reformation  by  itself,  to  judge  it  only  by  its 
theological  and  ecclesiastical  development,  is  to  pronounce  it  a 
failure";  and  the  claim  that  "to  consider  it  as  part  of  a  general 

movement  of  European  thought is  at  once  to  vindicate  its  past 

and  to  promise  it  the  future"— this  amounts  merely  to  avowmg  the 
same  thing.  Only  as  an  eddy  in  the  movement  of  freethought  is 
the  Reformation  intellectually  significant.  Politically  it  is  a  great 
illustration  of  the  potency  of  economic  forces. 

While  however,  the  Reformation  in  itself  thus  did  little  for  the 
spirit  of  freethought,  substituting  as  it  did  the  arbitrary  standard  of 
"  revelation  "  for  the  not  more  arbitrary  standard  of  papal  authority, 
it  set  up  outside  its  own  sphere  some  new  movements  of  rational 
doubt  which  must  have  counted  for  much  in  the  succeeding  period. 
It  was  not  merely  that,  as  we  shall  see,  the  bloody  strifes  of  the  two 
Churches,  and  the  quarrels  of  the  Protestant  sects  among  themselves, 
sickened  many  thoughtful  men  of  the  whole  subject  of  theology ;  but 
that  the  disputes  between  Romanists  and  anti-Romanists  raisea 

1  Hallam.  Lit  of  Europe,  ii.  40&^16 ;  Pattison   Isaac  Casauhm,  2nd  ed.  PP.  447-48.    As 
to  Casaubon's.own  intolerance,  however,  see  p.  446.  ^^^^  Lectures,  p.  298. 

2  Hallam,  ii.  411.  Ho-  *jo»iv*, 


CONCLUSION 


465 


difficult  questions  as  to  the  bases  of  all  kinds  of  belief.  As  always 
happens  when  established  beliefs  are  long  attacked,  the  subtler  spirits 
in  the  conservative  interest  after  a  time  begin  putting  in  doubt  behefs 
of  every  species ;  a  method  often  successful  with  those  who  cannot 
carry  an  argument  to  its  logical  conclusions,  and  who  are  thus  led  to 
seek  harbour  in  whatever  credence  is  on  the  whole  most  convenient ; 
but  one  which  puts  stronger  spirits  on  the  reconsideration  of  all 
their  opinions.  Thus  we  shall  find,  not  only  in  the  skepticism  of 
Montaigne,  which  is  historically  a  product  of  the  wars  of  rehgion  in 
France,  but  in  the  more  systematic  and  more  cautious  argumentation 
of  the  abler  Protestants  of  the  seventeenth  century,  a  measure  of 
general  rationahsm  much  more  favourable  alike  to  natural  science 
and  to  Biblical  and  ethical  criticism  than  had  been  the  older 
environment  of  authority  and  tradition,  brutal  sacerdotalism,  and 
idolatrous  faith.  Men  continued  to  hate  each  other  religiously  for 
trifles,  to  quarrel  over  gestures  and  vestures,  and  to  wrangle  endlessly 
over  worn-out  dogmas ;  but  withal  new  and  vital  heresies  were  set 
on  foot ;  new  science  generated  new  doubt ;  and  under  the  shadow 
of  the  aging  tree  of  theology  there  began  to  appear  the  growths  of 
a  new  era.  As  Protestantism  had  come  outside  the  "universal" 
Church,  rearing  its  own  tabernacles,  so  freethought  came  outside 
both,  scanning  with  a  deepened  intentness  the  universe  of  things. 
And  thus  began  a  more  vital  innovation  than  that  dividing  the 
Reformation  from  the  Renaissance,  or  even  that  dividing  the 
Renaissance  from  the  Middle  Ages. 


1 


THE  ITALIAN  INFLUENCE 


467 


Chapter  XIII 
THE  EISE  OF  MODEKN  FKEETHOUGHT 

§  1.  The  Italian  Influence 

The  negative  bearing  of  the  Beformation  on  freethought  is  made 
clear  by  the  historic  fact  that  the  new  currents  of  thought  which 
broadly  mark  the  beginning  of  the  "  modern  spirit "  arose  in  its 
despite,  and  derive  originally  from  outside  its  sphere.  It  is  to 
Italy,  where  the  political  and  social  conditions  thus  far  tended  to 
frustrate  the  Inquisition,  that  we  trace  the  rise  alike  of  modern 
deism,  modern  Unitarianism,  modern  pantheism,  modern  physics, 
and  the  tendency  to  rational  atheism.  The  deistic  way  of  thinking^ 
of  course,  prevailed  long  before  it  got  that  name  ;  and  besides  the 
vogue  of  Averroism  we  have  noted  the  virtual  deism  of  More's 
Utopia  (1516).  The  first  explicit  mention  of  deism  noted  by  Bayle, 
however,  is  in  the  epistle  dedicatory  to  the  second  and  expanded 
edition  of  the  Instruction  ChrUienne  of  the  Swiss  Protestant  Viret 
(1563),  where  professed  deists  are  spoken  of  as  a  new  species  bearing 
a  new  name.  On  the  admission  of  Viret,  who  was  the  friend  and 
bitter  disciple  of  Calvin,  they  rejected  all  revealed  religion,  but  called 
themselves  deists  by  way  of  repudiating  atheism ;  some  keeping  a 
belief  in  immortality,  some  rejecting  it.  In  the  theological  manner 
he  goes  on  to  call  them  all  execrable  atheists,  and  to  say  that  he 
has  added  to  his  treatise  on  their  account  an  exposition  of  natural 
religion  grounded  on  the  "  Book  of  Nature  ";  stultifying  himself  by 
going  on  to  say  that  he  has  also  dealt  with  the  professed  atheists. 
Of  the  deists  he  admits  that  among  them  were  men  of  the  highest 
repute  for  science  and  learning.  Thus  within  ten  years  of  the 
burning  of  Servetus  we  find  privately  avowed  deism  and  atheism  in 
the  area  of  French-speaking  Protestantism. 

Doubtless  the  spectacle  of  Protestant  feuds  and  methods  would 
go  far  to  foster  such  unbelief ;  but  though,  as  we  have  seen,  there 
were  aggressive  Unitarians  in  Germany  before  1530,  who,  being 
scholars,  may  or  may  not  have  drawn  on  Italian  thought,  thereafter 
there  is  reason  to  look  to  Italy  as  the  source  of  the  propaganda. 

»  Bayle.  Bictionnaire,  art.  VraET,  note  D. 

466 


Thence  came  the  two  Sozzini,  the  founders  of  Socinianism,  of  whom 
Lelio.  the  uncle  of  Fausto,  travelled  much  in  northern  Europe 
(including  England)  between  1546  and  1552.'  As  the  earlier 
doctrine  of  Servetus  shows  clear  affinities  to  that  of  the  Sozzini, 
and  his  earlier  books  were  much  read  in  Italy  between  1532  and 
1540,  he  may  well  have  given  them  their  impulse.'*  It  is  evidently 
to  Servetus  that  Zanchi  referred  when  he  wrote  to  BuUinger  in 
1565  that  "  Spain  bore  the  hens,  Italy  hatched  the  eggs,  and  we 
now  hear  the  chickens  piping."'  Before  Socinianism  had  taken 
form  it  was  led  up  to,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  later  writings  of  the 
ex-monk  Bernardino  Ochino  (1487-1564),  who,  in  the  closing  years 
of  a  much  chequered  career,  combined  mystical  and  Unitarian 
tendencies  with  a  leaning  to  polygamy  and  freedom  of  divorce.' 
His  influence  was  considerable  among  the  Swiss  Protestants,  though 
they  finally  expelled  him  for  his  heresies.  From  Geneva  or  from 
France,  in  turn,  apparently  came  some  of  the  English  freethought 
of  the  middle  period  of  the  sixteenth  century;*  for  in  1562  Speaker 
WiUiams  in  the  House  of  Commons,  in  a  Hst  of  misbehevers,  speaks 
of  "Pelagians,  Libertines,  Papists,  and  such  others,  leaving  God's 
commandments  to  follow  their  own  traditions,  affections,  and 
minds  "^— using  theologically  the  foreign  term,  which  never  became 
naturalized  in  English  in  its  foreign  sense.  It  was  about  the  year 
1563,  again,  that  Eoger  Ascham  wrote  his  Scholemaster,  wherein  are 
angrily  described,  as  a  species  new  in  England,  men  who,  "where 
they  dare,"  scorn  both  Protestant  and  Papist,  "  rejecting  scripture, 
and  counting  the  Christian  mysteries  as  fables."'  He  describes 
them  as  "  c[6>cot  in  doctrine ";  adding,  "  this  last  word  is  no  more 
unknowne  now  to  plane  Englishe  men  than  the  Person  was  unknown 
somtyme  in  England,  untill  some  Englishe  man  took  peines  to  fetch 
that  develish  opinion  out  of  ItaHe."'  The  whole  tendency  he 
connects  in  a  general  way  with  the  issue  of  many  new  translations 
from  the  Italian,  mentioning  in  particular  Petrarch  and  Boccaccio. 

»  Calvin,  scenting  his  heresy,  warned  him  in  1552  (Bayle.  art.  Mabianus  Socin.  the 
first,  note  B) ;  but  they  remained  on  surprisingly  good  terms  till  Lelio  s  deatn  m  I5b:i. 
Cp.  Stahelin,  Jo/ian?i€s  Caii7i?i.  ii,  321-28.  ,      ,    ^  ,.     «       •    •       ^  ^•- 

2  Cp.  the  English  History  of  Servetus,  1724.  p.  39,  and  Trechsel,  Lelio  Sozzim  und  aw 
Antitrinitarier  seiner  Zeit  (Bd.  ii.  of  Die  vrotestantisclien  Antitrinitarier,  1844,  pp.  d8-4i. 

8  Cited  by  Trechsel.  p.  42.  note.  .  ^„„     _  -cr^   ,^t. 

4  Cp.  Bayle.  art.  Ochin  ;  Miss  Lowndes.  Iff cTiel  de  Montaigne,  v.  266;  Owen,  French 
Skeptics,  p.  588;  Benraith,  Bernardino  Ochino  of  Siena,  Eng.  tr.  1876,  pp.  2e>8-72.  Mcurie 
mentions  {Bef.  in  Italy,  p.  228.  note)  that  Ochino's  dialogue  on  polygamy  has  been 
translated  and   published  in   England   "  by  the   friends  of   that   practice.      Un  ib57. 

6  Above,  pp.  458-59.  Sermons  (orthodox)  by  Ochino  were  published  in  English  in  1548, 
and  often  reprinted.  _ 

6  DEwes.  Journals  of  Parliament  in  the  Beign  of  Elizabetn,  1682,  p.  w. 
'  See  above,  p.  459. 
®  The  Scholemaster,  Arber's  rep.  p,  82,  o    * 


468 


THE  KISE  OF  MODEKN  FKEETHOUGHT 


Among  good  Protestants  his  view  was  general  ;  and  so  Lord 
Burghley  in  his  Advice  to  his  Son  writes:  "Suffer  not  thy  sons 
to  pass  the  Alps,  for  they  shall  learn  nothing  there  but  pride, 
blasphemy,  and  atheism."  As  it  happened,  his  grandson  the  second 
Earl  of  Exeter,  and  his  great-grandson  Lord  Koos,  went  to  Kome, 
and  became  not  atheists  but  Eoman  Catholics. 

Such  episodes  should  remind  us  that  in  that  age  of  ignorance 
and  superstition  the  Church  had  always  an  immense  advantage. 
Those  who,  like  Gentillet  in  his  raging  Discours,  commonly 
known  as  the  Contre-Machiavel  (1576),  ascribed  to  "  atheism  "  and 
the  teaching  of  Machiavelli  all  the  crimes  and  oppressions  wrought 
by  Catholics,^  were  ludicrously  perverting  the  facts.  Massacres  in 
churches,  which  are  cited  by  Gentillet  as  impossible  to  believing 
Catholics,  were  wrought,  as  we  have  seen,  oa  the  largest  scale  by 
the  Church  in  the  thirteenth  century.  So,  when  Scaliger  calls  the 
ItaHans  of  his  day  "  a  set  of  atheists,"  we  are  to  understand  it 
rather  of  "the  hypocrisy  than  of  the  professed  skepticism  of  the 
time."'^  But  rationalism  and  semi-rationalism  did  prevail  in  Italy 
more  than  in  any  other  country/ 

Like  the  old  Averroism,  the  new  pietistic  Unitarianism  persisted 
in  Italy  and  radiated  thence  afresh  when  it  had  flagged  in  other 
lands.  The  exploded  Unitarian  tradition^  runs  that  the  doctrine 
arose  in  the  year  1546  among  a  group  of  more  than  forty  learned 
men  who  were  wont  to  assemble  in  secret  at  Vicenza,  near  Venice. 
Claudius  of  Savoy,  however,  emphatically  gave  out  his  anti- 
Trinitarian  doctrine  at  Berne  in  1534,  after  having  been  imprisoned 
at  Strasburg  and  banished  thence  ;^  and  Ochino  and  Leho  Sozzini 
left  Italy  in  1543.  But  there  seems  to  have  been  a  continuous 
evolution  of  Unitarian  heresy  in  the  south  after  the  German  move- 
ment had  ceased.  Giorgio  Biandrata,  whom  we  have  seen  flying  to 
Poland  from  Geneva,  had  been  seized  by  the  Inquisition  at  Pavia 
for  such  opinion.  Still  it  persisted.  In  1562  Giulio  Guirlando  of 
Treviso,  and  in  1566  Francesco  Saga  of  Kovigo,  were  burned  at 
Venice  for  anti-Trinitarianism.  Giacomo  Aconzio  too,  who  dedicated 
his  Stratagems  of  Satan  (Basel,  1565)  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  who 


1  E.g.,  work  cited,  pt.  ii.  Max.  1,  and  Max.  6,  end.    Eng.  tr.  1608.  pp.  93, 128. 

2  Mark  Pattison,  Essay  on  Joseph  Scaliger.  in  Essays.  Routledge's  ed.  i,  114. 

8  When  Pattison  declares  that  Italian  curiosity  had  bred  "  not  secret  unbelief  buc 
callous  acquiescence  "  he  sets  up  a  spurious  antithesis  ;  and  when  he  generalizes  that  in 
Italy  "  men  did  not  disbelieve  the  truths  of  the  Christian  religion,"  he  understates  the 
case.  He  errs  equally  in  the  opposite  direction  when  he  alleges  iib.  p.  141)  that  in  the 
France  of  Montaigne  "  a  philosophical  skepticism  had  become  the  creed  of  all  thinking 
men."    Such  a  difference  between  France  and  Italy  was  impossible. 

<  See  McCrie.  R^ormatioii  in  Italy,  ed.  1856,  pp.  96-99.  ,  .    ^  . 

*  Trechsel.  Die  Protestantischen  Antitrinitarier  vor  Faustus  Soctnus,  i  (1839),  ob, 
Mosheim,  16  Cent.  3rd  sec.  pt.  ii,  ch.  iv,  §  3. 


THE  ITALIAN  INFLUENCE 


469 


pleaded  notably  for  the  toleration  of  heresy,*  was  a  decided  latitu- 
dinarian.'* 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  whole  ferment  occurs  in  the  period  of 
the  CathoHc  Keaction,  the  Council  of  Trent,  and  the  subjection  of 
Italy,  when  the  papacy  was  making  its  great  effort  to  recover  its 
ground.  It  would  seem  that  in  the  compulsory  peace  which  had 
now  fallen  on  Italian  life  men's  thoughts  turned  more  than  ever  to 
mental  problems,  as  had  happened  in  Greece  after  the  rise  of 
Alexander's  empire.  The  authority  of  the  Church  was  outwardly 
supreme;  the  Jesuits  had  already  begun  to  do  great  things  for 
education;^  the  revived  Inquisition  was  everywhere  in  Italy;  its 
prisons,  as  we  have  seen,  were  crowded  with  victims  of  all  grades 
during  a  whole  generation ;  Pius  V  and  the  hierarchy  everywhere 
sought  to  enforce  decorum  in  life  ;  the  "  pagan  "  academies  formed 
on  the  Florentine  model  were  dissolved  ;  and  classic  culture  rapidly 
decayed  with  the  arts,  while  clerical  learning  flourished,*  and  a  new 
religious  music  began  with  Palestrina.  Yet  on  the  death  of  Paul  IV 
the  Koman  populace  burned  the  Office  of  the  Inquisition  to  the 
ground  and  cast  the  pope's  statue  into  the  Tiber  ;^  and  in  that  age 
(1548)  was  born  Giordano  Bruno,  one  of  the  types  of  modern  free- 
thought. 

The  great  service  of  Italy  to  modern  freethought,  however,  was 
to  come  later,  in  respect  of  the  impulse  given  to  the  scientific  spirit 
by  Bruno,  Vanini,  and  Galileo.  On  the  philosophical  or  critical 
side,  the  Italy  of  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  left  no  enduring 
mark  on  European  thought,  though  her  serious  writers  were  numerous. 
Aconzio  had  published,  before  his  De  Stratagematibus  Sataiice,  a 
treatise  De  Methodo,  sive  recta  investigaiidarum  tradendarumqiie 
scientiarum  ratione  (Basel,  1558),  wherein  he  pleads  strenuously 
for  a  true  logical  method  as  the  one  way  to  real  knowledge  of  things. 
In  this  he  anticipates  Bacon,  as  did,  still  earlier,  Mario  Nizolio  in 
his  Antiharharus  sive  de  veris  principiis  et  vera  ratione  philosophandi 
contra  pseudo-philosopJios  (Parma,  1553).  Nizolio's  main  effort  is 
towards  the  discrediting  of  Aristotle,  whom,  like  so  many  in  the 


*  Hallam.  Lit.  of  Europe,  ii.  82. 

2  Art.  AcoNTiDS.  in  Diet,  of  National  Biog.  Cp.  J.  J.  Tayler.  Ref  respect  of  the  Religious 
Life  of  England,  2nd  ed.  pp.  205-206.  As  to  the  attack  on  latitudinarianism  in  the  Thirty- 
nine  Articles,  see  above,  p.  460. 

*  Bacon,  Adv.  of  Learning,  bk.  i ;  Filum  Labyrinthi.  §  7  (Routledge  ed.  pp.  60,  63, 209). 

*  Cp.  Zeller,  Hist,  de  Vltalie,  pp.  400-12  ;  Green,  Short  Hist,  ch.  viii.  §  2. 

*  McCrie,  p.  164.  It  was  said  by  Scaliger  that  "  in  the  time  of  Pius  IV  [between  Paul  IV 
and  Pius  V]  people  talked  very  freely  in  Rome."  Id.  ib.  note.  "  It  was  even  considered 
characteristic  of  good  society  in  Rome  to  call  the  principles  of  Christianity  in  question. 
'One  passes,'  says  P.  Ant.  Bandiuo,  '  no  longer  for  a  man  of  cultivation  unless  one  put 
forth  heterodox  opinions  concerning  the  Christian  faith."*  Ranke,  Hist,  of  the  Popes, 
Bohn.  tr.  ed.  1908.  i.  58.  citing  Caracciolo's  MS.  Life  of  Paul  IV. 


470  THE  KISE  OF  MODERN  FKEETHOUGHT 

generation  following,  he  regarded  as  the  great  bulwark  of  scholastic 
obscurantism.  He  insists  that  all  knowledge  must  proceed  from 
sensation,  which  alone  has  immediate  certainty  ;  and  thus  stands 
for  direct  scientific  observation  as  against  tradition  and  verbalism. 
But  Ludovicus  Vives  had  before  him  (in  his  De  causis  corniptarim 
artium,  Antwerp.  1531)  claimed  that  the  true  Aristotelian  went 
direct  to  nature,  as  Aristotle  himself  had  done ;  and  Nizolio  did 
nothing  in  practical  science  to  substantiate  his  polemic  against  the 

logic-choppers. 

He  and  Aconzio  in  effect  cancel  each  other.     Bach  had  glimpsed 
a  truth,  one  seeing  the  need  for  a  right  method  in  inference,  the 
other  protesting  against  the  idea  that  abstract  reasoning  could  lead 
to  knowledge  ;  but  neither  made  good  his  argument  by  any  treasure 
trove  of  fact.     Another  writer  of  the  same  decade,  Gomez  Pereira, 
joined  in  the  revolt  against  Aristotelianism,  publishing  in  1554  his 
Margarita  Antoniana,  wherein,  in  advance  of  Descartes,  he  main- 
tained the   absence   of    sensation    in   brutes.'      For   the    rest,  he 
championed  freedom  in  speculation,  denying  that  authority  should 
avail  save  in  matters  of  faith.     But  he  too  failed  to  bring  forth 
fruits  meet  for  freedom.     Neither  by  abstract  exposition  of  right 
methods  of  reasoning,  nor  by  abstract  attacks  on  wrong  methods, 
could  any  vital  impulse  yet  be  given  to  thought.     What  was  lacking 
was  the  use  of  reason  upon  actual  problems,  whether  of  human  or 
of  natural  science.     All  the  while  Europe  was  anchored  to   ancient 
delusion,  historical  and  scientific.     Even  as  the  horrors  of  age-long 
religious  war  could  alone  drive  men  to  something  like  toleration  m 
the  religious  life,  there  was  needed  the  impact  of  actual  discovery 
to  win   them   to   science   as   against   scholasticism.     And  rational 
thinking  on  the  religion  which  resisted  all  new  science  was  to  be 
still  later  of  attainment,  save  for  the  nameless  men  who  throughout 
the  ages  of  faith  rejected  the  creeds  without  publishing  their  unbehef. 
Of  these  Italy  had  always  a  large  sprinkling. 

§  2.  Spain 
The  fact  that  sixteenth-century  Spain  could  be  charged,  on  the 
score  of  Servetus,  with  producing  the  "  hen"  of  Socinianism,  is  an 
important  reminder  of  the  perpetuity  of  variation  and  of  the  fatality 
of  environment.  The  Portuguese  Sanchez,  whom  we  shaU  find 
laying  new  potential  foundations  of  skepticism  in  France  alongside 
of   Montaigne,   could   neither   have   acquired   nor  propounded   his 

»  Hallam.  ii.  116. 


SPAIN 


471 


»' 


I 


philosophy  in  his  native  land.  But  it  is  to  be  noted  that  an  elder 
contemporary  of  Sanchez,  living  and  dying  in  Spain,  was  able,  in 
the  generation  after  Servetus,  to  make  a  real  contribution  to  the 
revival  of  freethought,  albeit  under  shelter  of  a  firm  profession  of 

orthodoxy. 

No  book  of  the  kind,  perhaps,  had  a  wider  European  popularity 
than  the  Examen  de  Ingenios  para  las  ciencias  of  HUARTE  de  San 
Juan,  otherwise  Juan  Huarte  y  Navarro  (c.  1530-1592).  Like 
Servetus  and  Sanchez  and  many  another,  Huarte  had  his  bias  to 
reason  fostered  by  a  medical  training ;  and  it  is  as  a  "  natural 
philosopher  "  that  he  stands  for  a  rational  study  of  causation.  As 
a  pioneer  of  exact  science,  indeed,  he  counts  for  next  to  nothing. 
Taking  as  his  special  theme  the  divergences  of  human  faculty,  he 
does  but  found  himself  on  the  ^  priori  system  of  "  humours"  and 
"temperatures"  passed  on  by  Aristotle  to  Galen  and  Hippocrates, 
inconsistently  affirming  on  the  one  hand  that  the  "  characters  "  not 
only  of  whole  nations  but  of  the  inhabitants  of  provinces  are 
determined  by  their  special  climates  and  aliments,  and  on  the  other 
hand  that  individual  faculty  is  determined  by  the  proportions  of 
hot  and  cold,  moist  and  dry  **  temperatures  "  in  the  parents.  Apart 
from  his  insistence  on  the  functions  of  the  brain,  and  from  broadly 
rational  deliverances  as  to  the  kinds  of  faculty  which  determine 
success  in  theology  and  law,  arms  and  arts,  his  "  science  "  is  naught. 
Dealing  with  an  obscure  problem,  he  brought  to  it  none  of  the 
exact  inductiveness  which  alone  had  yielded  true  knowledge  in  the 
simpler  field  of  astronomy.  In  virtue,  however,  either  of  his  con- 
fidence in  affirmation  or  of  his  stand  for  rational  inquiry,  or  of  both, 
Huarte's  book,  published  in  1575,  went  the  round  of  Europe. 
Translated  into  Italian  in  1582  (or  earlier  ;  new  rendering  1600),  it 
was  thence  rendered  into  English  by  Eichard  Carew  in  1594.  A 
French  version  appeared  in  1598,  and  two  others  in  1661  and  1671. 
A  later  EngHsh  translation,  from  the  original,  was  produced  in 
1698 ;  and  Lessing  thought  the  book  worth  putting  into  German 
in  1785. 

The  rationalistic  importance  of  Huarte  lies  in  his  insistence  on 
the  study  of  "  second  causes  "  and  his  protest  against  the  burking  of 
all  inquiry  by  a  reference  to  deity.  On  this  head  he  anticipates  much 
of  the  polemic  of  Bacon.  The  explanation  of  all  processes  and 
phenomena  by  the  will  of  God,  he  observes,  "  is  so  ancient  a  manner 
of  talk,  and  the  natural  philosophers  have  so  often  refuted  it,  that 

»  Under  the  alternative  titles  of  The  Examination  of  Men's  Wits  and  A  Trial  of  Wits. 
Bep.  1596. 1604. 1616. 


472 


THE  KISE  OF  MODEEN  FEEETHOUGHT 


FEANCE 


473 


the  seeking  to  take  the  same  away  were  superfluous,  neither  is  it 

convenient But  I  have  often  gone  about  to  consider  the  reason 

and  the  cause  whence  it  may  grow  that  the  vulgar  sort  is  so  great 
friend  to  impute  all  things  to  God,  and  to  reave  them  from  Nature, 
and  do  so  abhor  the  natural  means."  ^  His  solution  is  the 
impatience  of  men  over  the  complexity  of  Nature,  their  spiritual 
arrogance,  their  indolence,  and  their  piety.  For  himself,  he  pro- 
nounces, as  Middleton  did  in  England  nearly  two  centuries  later, 
that  "God  doth  no  longer  those  unwonted  things  of  the  New 
Testament;  and  the  reason  is,  for  that  on  his  behalf  he  hath 
performed  all  necessary  diligence  that  men  might  not  pretend 
ignorance.     And  to  think  that  he  will  begin  anew  to  do  the  like 

miracles is  an  error  very  great God  speaks  once  (saith  Job) 

and  turns  not  to  a  second  replial."'* 

Only  thus  could  the  principle  of  natural  causation  be  affirmed  in 
the  Spain  of  Philip  II.  Huarte  is  careful  to  affirm  miracles  while 
denying  their  recurrence ;  and  throughout  he  writes  as  a  good 
Scripturist  and  Cathohc.  But  he  sticks  to  his  naturahst  thesis  that 
'*  Nature  makes  able,"  and  avows  that  "  natural  philosophers  laugh 
at  such  as  say.  This  is  God's  doing,  without  assigning  the  order  and 
discourse  of  the  particular  causes  whence  they  may  spring."^  The 
fact  that  the  book  was  dedicated  to  Philip  tells  of  royal  protection, 
without  which  the  author  could  hardly  have  escaped  the  Inquisition. 
Years  after,  we  shall  find  Lilly  in  England  protesting  on  the  stage 
against  the  conception  of  Natura  naturans ;  and  Bacon  powerfully 
reaffirming  Huarte's  doctrine,  with  the  same  reservations.  The 
Spaniard  must  have  counted  for  something  as  a  pleader  for 
elementary  reason,  if  Bacon  did. 

But  this  is  practically  the  only  important  contribution  from 
Spain  to  the  intellectual  renascence  then  going  on  in  Europe.  As 
we  have  seen,  it  was  not  that  Spaniards  had  any  primordial  bias  to 
dogmatism  and  persecution :  it  was  simply  that  their  whole  socio- 
political evolution,  largely  determined  by  Spanish  discovery  and 
dominion  in  the  New  World,  set  up  institutions  and  forces  which 
became  specially  powerful  to  stamp  out  freethought.  The  work  of 
progress  was  done  in  lands  where  lack  of  external  dominion  left  on 
the  one  hand  a  greater  fund  of  variant  energy,  and  on  the  other 
made  for  a  lesser  power  of  repression  on  the  part  of  Church  and 
State. 


1  Carew's  tr.  ed.  1596,  p.  15. 


«  Id.  p.  17. 


8  Id.  p.  19. 


< 


i 


§  3.  France 

While  Italy  continues  to  be  reputed  throughout  the  sixteenth 
century  a  hotbed  of  freethinking,  styled  "  atheism,"  it  appears  to 
have  been  in  France,  alongside  of  the  wars  of  religion,  that  positive 
unbelief,  as  distinct  from  scripturaHst  Unitarianism,  made  most  new 
headway  among  laymen.  It  was  in  France  that  the  forces  of  change 
had  greatest  play.  The  mere  contact  with  Italy  which  began  with 
the  invasion  of  Charles  VII  in  1494  meant  a  manifold  moral  and 
mental  influence,  afi'ecting  French  literature  and  life  aUke ;  and  the 
age  of  strife  and  destruction  which  set  in  with  the  first  Huguenot 
wars  could  not  but  be  one  of  disillusionment  for  multitudes  of  serious 
men.  We  have  seen  as  much  in  the  work  of  Bonaventure  des 
Periers  and  Kabelais ;  but  the  spread  of  radical  unbelief  is  to  be 
traced,  as  is  usual  in  the  ages  of  faith,  by  the  books  written  against 
it.  Already  in  1552  we  have  seen  Guillaume  Postell  pubhshing  his 
book.  Contra  Atheos.^  Unbelief  increasing,  there  is  published  in 
1564  an  Atheonmchie  by  one  De  Bourgeville  ;  but  the  Massacre 
must  have  gone  far  to  frustrate  him.  In  1581  appears  another 
Atheomachie,  ou  refutation  des  erreiirs  et  impietds  des  Atlieistes, 
Liber  tins,  etc.,  issued  at  Geneva,  but  bearing  much  on  French  life ; 
and  in  the  same  year  is  issued  the  long-time  popular  work  of 
the  Huguenot  Philippe  de  Mornay,  De  la  verity  de  la  religion 
Chrestienne,  Contre  les  Ath6es,  Epicuriens,  Payens,  Juifs,  Mahume- 
distes,  et  autres  Infideles.^  In  both  the  Epistle  Dedicatory  (to  Henry 
of  Navarre)  and  the  Preface  the  author  speaks  of  the  great  multiplica- 
tion of  unbelief,  the  refutation  of  which  he  declares  to  be  more 
needful  among  Christians  than  it  ever  had  been  among  the  heathen. 
But,  like  most  of  the  writers  against  atheism  in  that  age,  he  declares'* 
that  there  are  no  atheists  save  a  few  young  fools  and  utterly  bad 
men,  who  turn  to  God  as  soon  as  they  fall  sick.  The  reputed 
atheists  of  antiquity  are  vindicated  as  having  denied  not  the 
principle  of  deity  but  the  false  Gods  of  their  age— this  after  the 
universality  of  a  belief  in  Gods  in  all  ages  had  been  cited  as  one  of 
the  primary  proofs  of  God's  existence.  In  this  fashion  is  compiled 
a  book  of  nine  hundred  pages,  ostensibly  for  the  confutation  of  a  few 
fools  and  knaves,  described  as  unworthy  of  serious  consideration. 

1  According  to  Henri  Estienne,  Postell  himself  vended  strange  heresies,  one  being  to 
the  effect  that  to  make  a  good  religion  there  were  needed  three— the  Christian,  the 
Jewish,  and  the  Turkish.    Apnlogie  pour  Herodote,  liv.  i.  ed.  1607,  pp.  98-100. 

2  Published  at  Antwerp.  It  was  reprinted  in  1582. 15a3,  and  1590 :  translated  into  Ijatin 
in  1583,  and  frequently  reprinted  in  that  form ;  translated  into  English  (begun  by  Sir 
Philip  Sidney  and  completed  by  Arthur  Golding)  in  1587.  and  in  that  form  at  least  thrice 
reprinted  in  blackletter.  »  Ed.  1582,  p.  18.    Eng.  tr.  1604.  p.  10. 


474  THE  EISE  OF  MODEKN  FREETHOUGHT 


FEANCE 


475 


Evidently  the  unbelief  of  de  Mornay's  day  was  a  more  vigorous 
growth  than  he  affected  to  think ;  and  his  voluminous  performance 
was  followed  by  others.  In  1586,  Christophe  Cheffontaines 
published  his  Epitome  nova  illustrationis  Christianae  Fidei  adversiis 
Impios,  Libertinos  et  Atheos  ;  and  still  skepticism  gained  ground, 
having  found  new  abettors. 

""  First  came  the  Portuguese  Francisco  Sanchez  (1552-1623  ?),  born 
in  Portugal,  but  brought  as  a  child  to  Bordeaux,  which  seems  to  have 
been  a  place  of  refuge  for  many  fugitive  heretics  from  both  sides  of 
the  Peninsula.  Sanchez  has  recorded  that  in  his  early  youth  he  had 
no  bias  to  incredulity  of  any  kind ;  but  at  some  stage  of  his  adoles- 
cence he  travelled  in  Italy  and  spent  some  time  at  Eome.  The 
result  was  not  that  special  disbelief  in  Christianity  which  was 
proverbially  apt  to  follow,  but  a  development  on  his  part  of 
philosophic  skepticism  properly  so-called,  which  found  expression 
in  a  Latin  treatise  entitled  Quod  Nihil  Scitur—"  That  Nothing  is 
Known."  Composed  as  early  as  1576,  in  the  author's  twenty-fourth 
year,  the  book  was  not  published  till  1581,  a  year  after  the  first  issue 
of  the  Essais  of  Montaigne.  It  is  natural  to  surmise  that  while 
Sanchez  was  at  Bordeaux  he  may  have  known  something  of  his 
famous  contemporary  ;  but  though  Montaigne  is  likely  to  have  read 
the  Quod  Nihil  Scitur  in  due  course,  he  nowhere  speaks  of  it ;  and 
in  1576  Sanchez  was  a  Professor  of  Medicine  at  MontpeUier,  then 
a  town  of  Huguenot  leanings.  Soon  he  left  it  for  Toulouse,  the 
hotbed  of  CathoHc  fanaticism,  where  he  contrived  to  live  out  his 
long  life  in  peace,  despite  his  production  of  a  Pyrrhonist  treatise  and 
of  a  remarkable  Latin  poem  (1578)  on  the  comet  of  1577.  The 
Quod  Nihil  Scitur  is  a  skeptical  flank  attack  on  current  science, 
in  no  way  animadverting  on  religion,  as  to  which  he  professed 
orthodoxy:  the  poem  is  a  frontal  attack  on  the  whole  creed  of 
astrology,  then  commonly  held  by  Averroists  and^ Aristotelians,  as  well 
as  by  orthodox  Catholics.  Yet  he  seems  never  to  have  been  molested. 
It  would  seem  as  if  a  skepticism  which  ostensibly  disallowed 
all  claims  to  "natural"  knowledge,  while  avowedly  recognizing 
"  spiritual,"  was  then  as  later  thought  to  make  rather  for  faith  than 
against  it.  That  such  virtual  Pyrrhonism  as  that  of  Sanchez  can 
ever  have  ministered  to  religious  zeal  is  not  indeed  to  be  supposed : 
it  is  rather  as  a  weapon  against  the  confidence  of  the  "  Naturalist  " 
that  the  skeptical  method  has  always  recommended  itself  to  the 
calculating  priest.  And  inasmuch  as  astrology  could  be,  and  was, 
held  by  a  non-religious  theory,  though  many  Christians  added  it  to 
their  creed,  a  polemic  against  that  was  the  least  dangerous  form  of 


rationalizing  then  possible.  At  all  times  there  had  been  priests  who 
so  reasoned,  though,  as  we  have  seen  in  dealing  with  the  men  of  the 
Protestant  Reformation,  the  belief  in  astral  influences  is  too  closely 
akin  to  the  main  line  of  religious  tradition  to  be  capable  of  ejection 
on  religious  grounds. 

With  his  hostility  to  credulous  hopes  and  fears  in  the  sphere  of 
Nature,  Sanchez  is  naturally  regarded  as  a  forerunner  and  helper  of 
freethought.  But  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  his  work  had  any 
effect  in  undermining  the  most  formidable  of  all  the  false  beliefs  of 
Christendom.^  Like  so  many  others  of  his  age,  he  flouted  Aristotelean 
scholasticism,  but  was  perforce  silent  as  to  the  verbalisms  and 
sophistries  of  simple  theology.  It  may  fairly  be  inferred  that  his 
poem  on  the  comet  of  1577  helped  to  create  that  current  of  reasoned 
disbehef'  which  we  find  throwing  up  almost  identical  expressions 
in  Montaigne,  Shakespeare,  and  Moli^re,^  concerning  the  folly  of 
connecting  the  stars  with  human  affairs.  But  a  skepticism  which 
left  untouched  the  main  matter  of  the  creeds  could  not  affect  conduct 
in  general ;  and  while  Sanchez  passed  unchecked  the  watchdogs  of 
the  Inquisition,  the  fiery  Bruno  and  Vanini  were  in  his  day  to  meet 
their  fiery  death  at  its  hands— the  latter  in  Toulouse,  perhaps  under 
the  eyes  of  Sanchez.  Having  resigned  his  professorship  of  medicine, 
he  seems  to  have  lived  to  a  ripe  age,  dying  in  1623. 

Probably  those  very  deaths  availed  more  for  the  rousing  of 
critical  thought  than  did  the  dialectic  of  the  Pyrrhonist.  To  the 
life  of  the  reason  may  with  perfect  accuracy  be  applied  the  claim  so 
often  made  for  that  of  religion — that  it  feeds  on  feeling  and  is  rooted 
in  experience.  Revolt  from  the  cruelties  and  follies  of  faith  plays 
a  great  part  in  the  history  of  freethought.  In  the  greatest  French 
writer  of  that  age,  a  professed  Catholic,  but  in  mature  life  averse 
alike  to  Catholic  and  to  Protestant  bigotry,  the  shock  of  the 
Massacre  of  Saint  Bartholomew  can  be  seen  disintegrating  once  for 
all  the  spirit  of  faith.  MONTAIGNE  typifies  the  kind  of  skepticism 
produced  in  an  unscientific  age  by  the  practical  demonstration  that 
religion  can  avail  immeasurably  more  for  evil  than  for  good.*  A  few 
years  before  the  Massacre  he  had  translated  for  his  dying  father 

1  Or  even  in  modifying  pbilosopbic  doctrine,  save  perhaps  as  regards  Descartes,  later. 
Cp.  Bartholmess.  Hist.  crit.  des  doctr.  relig.  de  la  philos.  moderne,  1855,  i,  21-22. 

2  See  Owen,  Skeptics  of  the  French  Benaissance,  pp.  631-36 — a  fairer  and  more  careful 
estimate  than  that  of  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  ii,  111-13. 

»  Essais,  bk.  ii.  ch.  xiii.  ed.  Firmin-Didot,  vol.  ii,  2-3;  King  Lear,  i,  2,  near  end;  Les 
Amants  Magnifiques,  i,  2 ;  iii,  1.  Montaigne  echoes  Pliny  (Hist.  Nat.  ii,  8),  as  Moli^re  does 
Cicero,  De  Divinatione,  ii,  43. 

*  "Our  religion,"  be  writes,  "is  made  to  extirpate  vices;  it  protects,  nourishes,  and 
incites  them"  (Essais,  liv.  ii,  ch.  xii ;  6d.  Firmin-Didot,  ii,  464).  "There  is  no  enmity  so 
extreme  as  the  Christian."  (I  quote  in  general  Florio's  translation  for  the  flavour's  sake ; 
but  it  should  be  noted  that  he  makes  many  small  slips.) 

6  Owen  was  mistaken  (Skeptics  of  tlie  Frerich  Benaissance,  p.  414)  in  supposing  that 


miBHflH 


476 


THE  KISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


FRANCE 


477 


the  old  Theologia  Naturalis  of  Raymond  of  Sebonde  ;  and  we  know 
from  the  later  Apology  in  the  Essays  that  freethinking  contem- 
poraries declared  the  argument  of  Raymond  to  be  wholly  insuffi- 
cient.^ It  is  clear  from  the  same  essay  that  Montaigne  felt  as 
much  ;  though  the  gist  of  his  polemic  is  a  vehement  attack  upon 
all  forms  of  confident  opinion,  religious  and  anti-religious  alike. 
"  In  replying  to  arguments  of  so  opposite  a  tenour,  Montaigne 
leaves  Christianity,  as  well  as  Raimond  Sebonde,  without  a  leg 
to  stand  upon.  He  demolishes  the  arguments  of  Sebonde  with  the 
rest  of  human  presumption,  and  allows  Christianity,  neither  held  by 
faith  nor  provable  by  reason,  to  fall  between  the  two  stools."  The 
tnith  is  that  Montaigne's  skepticism  was  the  product  of  a  mental 
evolution  spread  over  at  least  twenty  years.  In  his  youth  his 
vivid  temperament  kept  him  both  credulous  and  fanatical,  so 
much  so  that  in  1562  he  took  the  reckless  oath  prescribed  by 
the  Catholic  Parlement  of  Paris.  As  he  avows  with  his  incom- 
parable candour,  he  had  been  in  many  things  pecuUarly  susceptible 
to  outside  influences,  being  always  ready  to  respond  to  the  latest 
pressure;^  and  the  knowledge  of  his  susceptibility  made  him  self- 
distrustful.  But  gradually  he  found  himself.  Beginning  to  recoil 
from  the  ferocities  and  iniquities  of  the  League,  he  yet  remained  for 
a  time  hotly  anti-Protestant ;  and  it  seems  to  have  been  his  dislike 
of  Protestant  criticism  that  led  him  to  run  amuck  against  reason,  at 
the  cost  of  overthrowing  the  treatise  he  had  set  out  to  defend.  The 
common  end  of  such  petulant  skepticism  is  a  plunge  into  uneasy  yet 
unreasoning  faith ;  but,  though  Montaigne  professed  Catholicism  to 
the  end,  the  sheer  wickedness  of  the  Catholic  policy  made  it 
impossible  for  him  to  hold  sincerely  to  the  creed  any  more  than 
to  the  cause.'  Above  all  things  he  hated  cruelty.'  It  was  the 
Massacre  that  finally  made  Montaigne  renounce  public  life;^  it 
must  have  affected  likewise  his  working  philosophy. 

That  philosophy  was  not,  indeed,  an  original^  construction :  lie 
found  it  to  his  hand  partly  in  the  deism  of  his  favourite  Seneca ; 
partly  in  the  stoical  ethic  of  Epictetus,  then  so  much  appreciated  in 
France;  and  partly  in  the  Eypotyposes  of  Sextus  Empiricus,  of 
which   the   Latin   translation  is   known  to  have  been  among  his 

Montaigne  spent  several  years  over  this  translation.  By  Montaigne's  own  account  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Apolngie,  it  was  done  in  a  few  days,  Cp.  Miss  Lowndes  s  excellent 
monograph.  Michel  de  Mmitaigne,  pp.  103, 106. 

1  Ed.  Firmin-Didot,  ii.  469.  ,    ,,     ^    .         ,/w^ 

2  Miss  Lowndes,  p.  145.    Cp.  Chanapion.  Introd.  aux  Essais  de  Montaigne,  1900. 
8  SssaiAJ,  liv.  ii.ch.  xii;  liv.  iii,  eh.  V.    Ed.  cited,  i,  65:  ii.  309. 

*  For  a  view  of  Montaigne's  development  see  M.  Champion's  excellent  Introductton—^, 
work  indispensable  to  a  full  understanding  of  the  Essais.  ^  Liv.  ii,  ch.  xi. 

6  Cp.  the  Essais,  liv.  iii,  ch.  i  (ed.  cited,  ii.  208).  Owen  gives  a  somewhat  misleadmg 
idea  of  the  passage  {French  Skeptics,  p.  486), 


books  ;    from  which  he  took  several  of  the  mottoes  inscribed  on 
his  library  ceiling,^  and  from  which  he  frequently  quotes  towards 
the  end  of  his  Apology.     The  body  of  ideas  compacted  on  these 
bases  cannot  be  called  a  system  :  it  was  not  in  Montaigne's  nature 
to  frame  a  logical  scheme  of  thought ;  and  he  was  far  from  being  the 
philosophic  skeptic  he  set  out  to  be^  by  way  of  confounding  at  once 
the  bigots  and  the  atheists.     He  was  essentially  ondoyant  et  divers, 
as  he  freely  admitted.     As  he  put  it  in  a  passage  added  to  the  later 
editions  of  the  Essais,^  he  was  a  kind  of  fnetis,  belonging  neither  to 
the  camp  of  ignorant  faith  nor  to  that  of  philosophic  conviction, 
whether   believing  or  unbeHeving.     He  early  avows  that,  had   he 
written  what  he  thought  and  knew  of  the  affairs  of  his  times,  he 
would  have  published  judgments  "  k  mon  gr6  mesme  et  selon  raison," 
in  his  opinion  true  and  reasonable,  but  "ill6gitimes  et  punissable." 
Again,  *'  whatsoever  is  beyond  the  compass  of  custom,  we  deem 
likewise   to  be  beyond   the  compass  of   reason,   God   knows   how 
unreasonably,  for  the  most  part."*     Yet  in  the  next  breath  he  will 
exclaim  at  those  who  demand  changes.     Often  he  comments  keenly 
on  the  incredible  readiness  of  men  to  go  to  war  over  trifles ;  but  in 
another  mood  he  accuses  the  nobility  of  his  day  of  unwillingness  to 
take  up  arms  "  except  upon  some  urgent  and  extreme  necessity." 
In  the  same  page  he  will  tell  us  that  he  is  "easily  carried  away  by 
the  throng,"  and  that  he  is  yet  "  not  very  easy  to  change,  forsomuch 
as  I  perceive  a  like  weakness  in  contrary  opinions." '     "  I  am  very 
easily  to  be  directed  by  the  world's  pubHc  order,"  ^  is  the  upshot  of 
his  easy  meditations.     And  a  conformist  he  remained  in  practice  to 
the  last,  always  bearing  himself  dutifully  towards  Mother  Church, 
and  generally  observing  the  proprieties,  though  he  confesses  that  he 
"  made  it  a  conscience  to  eat  flesh  upon  a  fish  day."  ^ 

His  conformities,  verbal  and  practical,  have  set  certain 
CathoHcs  upon  proving  his  orthodoxy,  though  his  Essays  are 
actually  prohibited  by  the  Church.  A  Benedictine,  Dom 
Devienne,  published  in  1773  a  Dissertation  sur  la  Beligion  de 
Montaigne,  of  which  the  main  pleas  are  that  the  Essais  often 
affirm  the  divinity  of  the  Christian  faith ;  that  the  essayist 
received  the  freedom  of  the  city  of  Eome  under  the  eyes  of  the 

1  Miss  Lowndes,  Michel  de  Montaigne,  p.  131.    Cp.  Owen,  p.  444.      ,        ,^„„^,.o  oa  ^u^^ 

2  He  was  consistent  enough  to  doubt  the  new  cosmology  of  Copernicus  CEssat.s,  as  cited. 
i  615);  and  he  even  made  a  rather  childish  attack  on  the  reform  of  the  Calendar  (iiv.  in, 
chs.  x!  xi) ;  but  he  was  a  keen  and  convinced  critic  of  the  prevailing  abuses  in  law  and 
education.  Owen's  discussion  of  his  opinions  is  illuminating;  but  that  of  Champion 
makes  a  still  more  searching  analysis  as  regards  the  conflicting  tendencies  m  Montaigne. 

8  Liv.  i.  ch.  liv.  «^  Liv.  1.  ch.  XX.  end. 

6  Liv  i  ch  xxii.  ®  Liv.  ii,  ch.  ix. 

7  Liv!  ii.  ch.  xvii.  Ed.  cited,  ii,  58.  ®  Id.  p.  59. 

8  Jjiv.  iii.  ch.  xiii.  Ed.  cited,  ii,  572. 


478 


THE  EISE  OF  MODERN  FKEETHOUGHT 


FRANCE 


479 


pope ;  and  that  his  epitaph  declared  his  orthodoxy !  A  genera- 
tion later,  one  Labouderie  undertook  to  set  forth  Le  Chris- 
tianisme  de  Montaigne  in  a  volume  of  600  pages  (1819).  This 
apologist  has  the  courage  to  face  the  protest  of  Pascal :  "  Mon- 
taigne puts  everything  in  a  doubt  so  universal  and  so  general 
that,  doubting  even  whether  he  doubts,  his  uncertainty  turns 

upon  itself  in  a  perpetual  and  unresting  circle It  is  in  this 

doubt  which  doubts  of  itself,  and  in  this  ignorance  which  is 

ignorant  of  itself,  that  the  essence  of  his  opinion  consists In 

a  word,  he  is  a  pure  Pyrrhonist  "  {Pens4es,  supp.  to  Pt.  i,  art.  11). 
The  reply  of  the  apologist  is  that  Montaigne  never  extends  his 
skepticism  to  **  revelation,"  but  on  the  contrary  declares  that 
revelation  alone  gives  man  certainties  (work  cited,  p.  127). 

That  is  of  course  merely  the  device  of  a  hundred  skeptics  of 
the  Middle  Ages ;  the  old  shibboleth  of  a  *'  twofold  truth " 
modified  by  a  special  disparagement  of  reason,  with  no  attempt 
to  meet  the  rejoinder  that,  if  reason  has  no  certainties,  there 
can  be  no  certainty  that  revelation  is  what  it  claims  to  be. 
When  the  apologist  concludes  that  Montaigne's  aim  en  froissant 
la  raison  humaine  is  to  "  oblige  men  to  recognize  the  need  of 
a  revelation  to  fix  his  incertitudes,"  it  suffices  to  answer  that 
Montaigne  in  so  many  words  declares  at  the  outset  of  the 
Apologie  de  Eaimond  Sebonde  that  he  knows  nothing  of  theology, 
which  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  he  is  not  a  student  of  the 
Bible.     As  a  matter  of  fact  he  never  quotes  it  1 

In  the  last  and  most  characteristic  essay  of  all,  discoursing  at 
large  Of  Experience,  he  makes  the  most  daring  attack  on  laws  in 
general,  as  being  always  arbitrary  and  often  irrational,  and  not 
seldom  more  criminal  than  the  offences  they  punish.  After  a 
planless  discourse  of  diseases  and  diets,  follies  of  habit  and  follies 
of  caprice,  the  wisdom  of  self-rule  and  the  wisdom  of  irregularity, 
he  contrives  to  conclude  at  once  that  we  should  make  the  best  of 
everything  and  that  "  only  authority  is  of  force  with  men  of  common 
reach  and  understanding,  and  is  of  more  weight  in  a  strange 
language" — a  plea  for  Catholic  ritual.  Yet  in  the  same  page  he 
pronounces  that  **  Supercelestial  opinions  and  under- terrestrial 
manners  are  things  that  amongst  us  I  have  ever  seen  to  be  of 
singular  accord." 

There  is  no  final  recognition  here  of  religion  as  even  a  useful 
factor  in  life.  In  point  of  fact  Montaigne's  whole  habit  of  mind  is 
perfectly  fatal  to  orthodox  religion  ;  and  it  is  clear  that,  despite  his 
professions  of  conformity,  he  did  not  hold  the  Christian  beliefs.' 

*  Cp.  the  clerical  protests  of  Sterling  (Lond.  and  Westm.  Rev.  July,  1838.  p.  346)  and 
Dean  Church  (Oxford  Essays,  p.  279)  with  the  judgment  of  Champion,  pp.  159-73.  Sterling 
piously  declares  that  "All  that  we  find  in  him  [Montaigne]  of  Christianity  would  be 
suitable  to  apes  and  dogs " 


He  was  simply  a  deist.  Again  and  again  he  points  to  Sokrates  as 
the  noblest  and  wisest  of  men ;  there  is  no  reference  to  Jesus  or  any 
of  the  saints.  Whatever  he  might  say  in  the  Apology,  in  the  other 
essays  he  repeatedly  reveals  a  radical  unbelief.  The  essay  on 
Custom  strikes  at  the  root  of  all  orthodoxy,  with  its  thrusts  at  "  the 
gross  imposture  of  religions,  wherewith  so  many  worthy  and  sufficient 
men  have  been  besotted  and  drunken,"  and  its  terse  avowal  that 
**  miracles  are  according  to  the  ignorance  wherein  we  are  by  nature, 
and  not  according  to  nature's  essence."  ^  Above  all,  he  rejected  the 
great  superstition  of  the  age,  the  belief  in  witchcraft ;  and,  following 
the  lead  of  Wier,^  suggested  a  medical  view  of  the  cases  of  those 
who  professed  wizardry.*  This  is  the  more  remarkable  because  his 
rubber-ball  fashion  of  following  impulsions  and  rebounding  from 
certainty  made  him  often  disparage  other  men's  certainties  of 
disbelief  just  because  they  were  certainties.  Declaring  that  he 
prefers  above  all  things  qualified  and  doubtful  propositions,*  he 
makes  as  many  confident  assertions  of  his  own  as  any  man  ever 
did.  But  the  effect  of  the  whole  is  a  perpetual  stimulus  to  question- 
ing. His  function  in  literature  was  thus  to  set  up  a  certain  mental 
atmosphere,'  and  this  the  extraordinary  vitality  of  his  utterance 
enabled  him  to  do  to  an  incalculable  extent.  He  had  the  gift  to 
disarm  or  at  least  to  baffle  hostility,  to  charm  kings,'  to  stand  free 
between  warring  factions.  No  book  ever  written  conveys  more 
fully  the  sensation  of  a  living  voice ;  and  after  three  hundred  years 
he  has  as  friendly  an  audience  as  ever. 

Owen  notes  {French  Skeptics,  p.  446 ;  cp.  Champion,  pp. 
168-69)  that,  though  the  papal  curia  requested  Montaigne  to 
alter  certain  passages  in  the  Essays,  "  it  cannot  be  shown  that 
he  erased  or  modified  a  single  one  of  the  points."  Sainte-Beuve, 
indeed,  has  noted  many  safeguarding  clauses  added  to  the  later 
versions  of  the  essay  on  Prayers  (i,  56)  ;  but  they  really  carry 
further  the  process  of  doubt.  M.  Champion  has  well  shown 
how  the  profession  of  personal  indecision  and  mere  self-por- 
traiture served  as  a  passport  for  utterances  which  would  have 
brought  instant  punishment  on  an  author  who  showed  any 
clear  purpose.  As  it  was,  nearly  a  century  passed  before  the 
Essais  were  placed  upon  the  Koman  Index  Librorum  Prohibi- 

torum  (1676). 

To  the  orthodox  of  his  own  day  Montaigne  seems  to  have 
given  entire  satisfaction.     Thus  Florimond  de  BcEmond,  in  his 

I  Liv.  i,  ch.  xxii.    Cp.  liv.  iii.  eh.  xi.  ^  Below.  §  5. 

8  T  ii7    iii    pVi     Tl  L/IV.  Ill,  Cn.  XI. 

5  CP  cVtatioiis  in  Buckle,  3-vol.  ed.  ii,  18,  note  42  (1-vol.  ed.  p.  296) ;  Lecky.  BaitonaUsm, 
i,  92-95;  and  Perrens.  Les  Libertins,  p.  U. 

6  As  to  Henri  IV  see  Perrens,  p.  53. 


480 


THE  EISB  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


Antichrist  {2e  6d.  1599,  p.  4),  begins  his  apologetic  with  a 
skeptical  argument,  which  he  winds  up  by  referring  the  reader 
with  eulogy  to  the  Apologie  of  Montaigne.  The  modern  resort 
to  the  skeptical  method  in  defence  of  traditional  faith  seems  to 
date  from  this  time.  See  Prof.  Fortunat  Strowski,  Histoire  du 
sentiment  religieux  en  France  an  xviie  sidcle ;  1907,  i,  55,  note. 
{De  Montaigne  a  Pascal.) 

The  momentum  of  such  an  influence  is  seen  in  the  work  of 
Charkon  (1541-1603),  Montaigne's  friend  and  disciple.  The  Essais 
had  first  appeared  in  1580 ;  the  expanded  and  revised  issue  in  1588 ; 
and  in  1601  there  appeared  Charron's  De  la  Sagesse,  which  gives 
methodic  form  and  as  far  as  was  permissible  a  direct  application  to 
Montaigne's  naturalistic  principles.  Charron's  is  a  curious  case  of 
mental  evolution.  First  a  lawyer,  then  a  priest,  he  became  a  highly 
successful  popular  preacher  and  champion  of  the  Catholic  League  ; 
and  as  such  was  favoured  by  the  notorious  Marguerite  (the  Second  ^ 
of  Navarre.  On  the  assassination  of  the  Duke  of  Guise  by  order 
of  Henri  III  he  delivered  an  indignant  protest  from  the  pulpit,  of 
which,  however,  he  rapidly  repented.^  Becoming  the  friend  of 
Montaigne  in  1586,  he  shows  already  in  1593,  in  his  Three  Truths, 
the  influence  of  the  essayist's  skepticism,^  though  Charron's  book 
was  expressly  framed  to  refute,  first,  the  atheists ;  second,  the 
pagans,  Jews,  Mohammedans ;  and,  third,  the  Christian  heretics 
and  schismatics.  The  Wisdom,  published  only  eight  years  later,  is 
a  work  of  a  very  difl'erent  cast,  proving  a  mental  change.  Even  in 
the  first  work  "  the  growing  teeth  of  the  skeptic  are  discernible 
beneath  the  well-worn  stumps  of  the  believer";*  but  the  second 
almost  testifies  to  a  new  birth.  Professedly  orthodox,  it  was  yet 
recognized  at  once  by  the  devout  as  a  "  seminary  of  impiety,"*  and 
brought  on  its  author  a  persecution  that  lasted  till  his  sudden  death 
from  apoplexy,  which  his  critics  pronounced  to  be  a  divine  dispensa- 
tion. In  the  second  and  rearranged  edition,  published  a  year  after 
his  death,  there  are  some  modifications  ;  but  they  are  so  far  from 
essential'  that  Buckle  found  the  book  as  it  stands  a  kind  of  pioneer 


1  Not.  as  Owen  states  (French  Skeptics,  p.  569),  the  sister  of  Francis  I.  who  died  when 
Charron  was  eight  years  old,  but  the  daughter  of  Henri  II,  and  first  wife  of  Henri  of 
Navarre,  afterwards  Henri  IV. 

2  Cp.  Prof.  Strowski,  De  Montaigne  d  Pascal,  as  cited,  p.  170  sq.,  and  the  Discours 
Chretien  of  Charron— an  extract  from  a  letter  of  1589— published  with  the  1609  ed.  of  the 
Sagesse. 

5  Cp.  Sainte-Beuve.  as  cited  by  Owen,  p.  571,  note,  and  Owen's  own  words,  p.  572. 

*  Owen,  p.  571.    Cp.  pp.  573,  574. 

*  Bayle.  art.  Charron.  "  A  brutal  atheism"  is  the  account  of  Charron's  doctrine  given 
by  the  Jesuit  Gai-asse.    Cp.  Perrens.  p.  57. 

6  Owen  (p.  570)  comes  to  this  conclusion  after  carefully  collating  the  editions.  Cp. 
p.  587.  note.  The  whole  of  the  alterations,  including  those  proposed  by  President  Jeannin, 
will  be  found  set  forth  in  the  edition  of  1607,  and  the  reprints  of  that.  One  of  the  modified 
passages  (first  ed.  p.  257;  ed.  1609,  p.  785)  is  the  Moutaignesque  comment  (noted  by  Prof. 


FEANCE 


481 


manual  of  rationalism.*  Its  way  of  putting  all  religions  on  one 
level,  as  being  alike  grounded  on  bad  evidence  and  held  on  prejudice, 
is  only  the  formal  statement  of  an  old  idea,  found,  Hke  so  many 
others  of  Charron's,  in  Montaigne  ;  but  the  didactic  purpose  and 
method  turn  the  skeptic's  shrug  into  a  resolute  propaganda.  So 
with  the  formal  and  earnest  insistence  that  true  morality  cannot  be 
built  on  religious  hopes  and  fears— a  principle  which  Charron  was 
the  first  to  bring  directly  home  to  the  modern  intelligence,^  as  he 
did  the  principle  of  development  in  religious  systems.^  Attempting 
as  it  does  to  construct  a  systematic  practical  philosophy  of  life,  the 
book  puts  aside  so  positively  the  claims  of  the  theologians,^  and  so 
emphatically  subordinates  religion  to  the  rule  of  natural  reason,® 
that  it  constitutes  a  virtual  revolution  in  public  doctrine  for 
Christendom.  As  Montaigne  is  the  effective  beginner  of  modern 
literature,  so  is  Charron  the  beginner  of  modern  secular  teaching. 
He  is  a  Naturalist,  professing  theism ;  and  it  is  not  surprising  to 
find  that  for  a  time  his  book  was  even  more  markedly  than 
Montaigne's  the  French  **  freethinker's  breviary." 

Strowski,  as  cited,  pp.  164-65,  183  sq.,  founding  on  Garasse 
and  Mersenne.  Strowski  at  first  pronounces  Charron  in 
reaUty  only  a  collector  of  commonplaces  "  (p.  166)  ;  but  after- 
wards obliviously  confesses  (p.  191)  that  "  his  audacities  are 
astonishing,"  and  explains  that  "  he  formulates,  perhaps 
without  knowing  it,  a  whole  doctrine  of  irrehgion  which 
outgoes  the  man  and  the  time— a  thought  stronger  than  the 
thinker  !  "  And  again  he  forgetfully  speaks  of  **  cette  critique 
bardie  et  m^thodique,  j'allais  6crire  scientifique  "  (p.  240).  All 
this  would  be  a  new  form  of  commonplace. 

It  was  only  powerful  protection  that  could  save  such  a  book 
from  proscription;  but  Charron  and  his  book  had  the  support  at 
once  of  Henri  IV  and  the  President  Jeannin— the  former  a  proved 
indifferentist  to  religious  forms ;  the  latter  the  author  of  the  remark 
that  a  peace  with  two  rehgions  was  better  than  a  war  which  had 
none.  Such  a  temper  had  become  predominant  even  among  pro- 
fessed Catholics,  as  may  be  gathered  from  the  immense  popularity 
of  the  Satyre  Menippde  (1594).  EidicuHng  as  it  did  the  insensate 
fanaticism  of  the  Catholic  League,  that  composition  was  naturally 

strowski.  p.  195)  on  the  fashion  in  which  men's  religion  is  deternained  by  their  place  of 
birth.    "C'est  du  Montaigne  aggrav6,"  complains  M.  Strowski.    And  it  is  left  uncbangea 

in  substance.  ,  .       ,.  i.  ^  «*  „,^,.„i= 

1  "The  first attempt  made  in  a  modern  language  to  construct  a  system  of  morals 

without  the  aid  of  theology"  (3-vol.  ed.  ii,  19:  1- vol.  ed.  p.  296).      ,      ,     ^ 

a  Cp.  Owen,  pp.  580-85.  »  Buckle,  3-vol.  ed.  ii,  21 :  1-vol.  ed.  p.  297. 

*  E.g.,  the  preface  to  the  first  edition,  ad  init. 

6  E.g,%  liv.  ii,  ch.  xxviii  of  revised  ed.  (ed.  1609,  p.  399). 


482  THE  EISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

described  as  the  work  of  atheists ;  but  there  seems  to  have  been  no 
such  element  in  the  case,  the  authors  being  all  CathoUcs  of  good 
standing,  and  some  of  them  even  having  a  record  for  zeal.  The 
Satyre  was  in  fact  the  triumphant  revolt  of  the  humorous  common 
sense  of  France  against  the  tyranny  of  fanaticism,  which  it  may  be 
said  to  have  overthrown  at  one  stroke,'  inasmuch  as  it  made  possible 
the  entry  of  Henri  into  Paris.  By  a  sudden  appeal  to  secular  sanity 
and  the  sense  of  humour  it  made  the  bulk  of  the  Catholic  mass 
ashamed  of  its  past  course.'  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  expressly 
testified  by  the  CathoHc  historian  De  Thou  that  all  the  rich  and 
the  aristocracy  held  the  League  in  abomination.'  In  such  an 
atmosphere  rationaUsm  must  needs  germinate,  especially  when 
the  king's  acceptance  of  CathoUcism  dramatized  the  unreality  of 

the  grounds  of  strife.  ,     ^     .  i.v 

After  the  assassination  of  the  king  in  1610,  the  last  of  the 
bloody  deeds  which  had  kept  France  on  the  rack  of  uncertainty 
in  religion's  name  for  three  generations,  the  spirit  of  rationalism 
naturally  did  not  wane.  In  the  Paris  of  the  early  seventeenth 
century,  doubtless,  the  new  emancipation  came  to  be  associated, 
as  "libertinism,"  with  licence  as  well  as  with  freethinking.  In 
the  nature  of  the  case  there  could  be  no  serious  and  free  Hterary 
discussion  of  the  new  problems  either  of  life  or  belief,  save  insofar 
as  they  had  been  handled  by  Montaigne  and  Charron  ;  and. 
inasmuch  as  the  accounts  preserved  of  the  freethought  of  the  age 
are  almost  invariably  those  of  its  worst  enemies,  it  is  chiefly  their 
side  of  the  case  that  has  been  presented.  Thus  in  1623  the  Jesuit 
Father  Francois  Garasse  published  a  thick  quarto  of  over  a  thousand 
pages,  entitled  La  Doctrine  Curieuse  des  Beaux  Esprits  de  ce  temps, 
ou  prStendm  tels,  in  which  he  assails  the  "  libertins  "  of  the  day  with 
an  infuriated  industry.  The  eight  books  into  which  he  divides  his 
treatise  proceed  upon  eight  alleged  maxims  of  the  freethinkers, 
which  run  as  follows : — 

I    There  are  very  few  good  wits  [bons  Esprits]  in  the  world ; 
and  the  fools,  that  is  to  say,  the  common  run  of  men,  are  not 

i  Seethebiog.pref.of  Labitte  to  the  Cbarpenti^^^^ 

innumerable.    Ever  since  its  issue  Jthas  been  ^^^^^1^^^^%'^^  If n  ex  Jt  reprint.)     The 

3  Cp.  Ch.  Read's  m trod,  to  ed  18«6  »'  the/afyr^  the  modern  saying  that  the  worst 
Satyre  anticipates  (ed.  Read,  p.  -281 ;  ed.  Labitte.  p.  Ill)  tne  moaern  bayius  «o 

peace  is  better  than  the  best  war.  e^#„r/.  r»  4ftq    De  Thou  was  one  of 

4  -r*^  T"Vi/Mi  T  V  liv  Oft  n  6.^  cited  in  ed.  1699  of  tne  iatyre.  p.  4C5W.  *-'x.  ,  ,  j[^j»  v.— 
the  cith^oh^cs'wJ'lVatred^t^  ^PilS^^Jtr^  ""^  accordingly  branded  by 
the  pope  as  a  heretic.    Buckle.  1-vol.  ed.  pp.  291.  300.  notes. 


FRANCE 


483 


capable  of  our  doctrine ;  therefore  it  will  not  do  to  speak  freely, 
but  in  secret,  and  among  trusting  and  cabalistic  souls. 

II.  Good  wits  [beaux  Esprits]  believe  in  God  only  by  way  of 
form,  and  as  a  matter  of  public  poHcy  {par  Maxime  d'Etat), 

III.  A  bel  Esprit  is  free  in  his  belief,  and  is  not  readily  to  be 
taken  in  by  the  quantity  of  nonsense  that  is  propounded  to  the 
simple  populace. 

IV.  All  things  are  conducted  and  governed  by  Destiny, 
which  is  irrevocable,  infallible,  immovable,  necessary,  eternal, 
and  inevitable  to  all  men  whomsoever. 

V.  It  is  true  that  the  book  called  the  Bible,  or  the  Holy 
Scripture,  is  a  good  book  {u7i  gentil  livre),  and  contains  a  lot  of 
good  things  ;  but  that  a  bon  esprit  should  be  obliged  to  believe 
under  pain  of  damnation  all  that  is  therein,  down  to  the  tail  of 
Tobit's  dog,  does  not  follow. 

VI.  There  is  no  other  divinity  or  sovereign  power  in^  the 
world  but  Nature,  which  must  be  satisfied  in  all  things, 
without  refusing  anything  to  our  body  or  senses  that  they 
desire  of  us  in  the  exercise  of  their  natural  powers  and  faculties. 

VII.  Supposing  there  be  a  God,  as  it  is  decorous  to  admit,  so 
as  not  to  be  always  at  odds  with  the  superstitious,  it  does  not 
follow  that  there  are  creatures  which  are  purely  intellectual  and 
separated  from  matter.  All  that  is  in  Nature  is  composite, 
and  therefore  there  are  neither  angels  nor  devils  in  the  world, 
and  it  is  not  certain  that  the  soul  of  man  is  immortal. 

VIII.  It  is  true  that  to  live  happily  it  is  necessary  to  extin- 
guish and  drown  all  scruples  ;  but  all  the  same  it  does^  not  do 
to  appear  impious  and  abandoned,  for  fear  of  ofifending  the 
simple  or  losing  the  support  of  the  superstitious. 

This  is  obviously  neither  candid  ^  nor  competent  writing  ;  and  as  it 
happens  there  remains  proof,  in  the  case  of  the  life  of  La  Mothe  le 
Vayer,  that  "  earnest  freethought  in  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth 
century  afforded  sl point  d'appui  for  serious-minded  men,  which  neither 
the  corrupt  Eomanism  nor  the  narrow  Protestantism  of  the  period 
could  furnish."  '^  Garasse's  own  doctrine  was  that  "  the  true  liberty 
of  the  mind  consists  in  a  simple  and  docile  {sage)  belief  in  all  that 
the  Church  propounds,  indifferently  and  without  distinction."  ^  The 
later  social  history  of  Catholic  France  is  the  sufficient  comment  on  the 

1  M.  Labitte.  himself  a  Catholic,  speaks  of  Garasse's  "forfanterie  habituelle"  and  "ton 
d'insolence  sincere  qui  d^guise  tant  de  mensonges"  (Pref.  cited,  p.  xxxi.).  Prof,  btrowski 
(p  130)  admits  too  that  "  II  ne  faut  pas  trop  s'attacher  aux  revelations  sensationelles  du 
pe're  Garasse  :  les  maximes  qu'il  prete  aux  beaux  esprits.  il  les  leur  pr^te  en  effet,  elles  ne 
leur  appartient  pas  toutes.  La  society  secrete,  la  Confr&rie  des  Bouteilles,  ou  il  les  dit 
engages,  est  un  invention  de  sa  verve  bouffonne."  But  the  Professor,  with  a  N  importe  1  , 
forgives  him,  and  trades  on  his  matter.  .  ^     .^-       ,,  „  *.^  4.1.^ 

2  Owen.  French  Skeptics,  p.  659.  Cp.  Lecky,  Rattonahsm,  1,  97,  citing  Maury,  as  to  the 
resistance  of  libertins  to  the  superstition  about  witchcraft.     _,  .     .  .  ^- 

8  Doctrine  Curieuse  des  Beaux  Esprits,  as  cited,  p.  208.  This  is  one  of  the  passages 
which  fully  explain  the  opinion  of  the  orthodox  of  that  age  that  Garasse  helped  rather 
than  hindered  atheism"  (Reimmann,  Hist.  Atheismi,  1725,  p.  408). 


484  THE  KISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

efficacy  of  such  teaching  to  regulate  life.  In  any  case  the  new  ideas 
steadily  gained  ground  ;  and  on  the  heels  of  the  treatise  of  Garasse 
appeared  that  of  Marin  Mersenne,  L'inipieU  des  D&istes,  AtUes  et 
Libertins  de  ce  temps  combattue,  avec  la  refutation  des  opinions  de 
Charron,  de  Cardan,  de  Jordan  Brim,  et  des  quatraines  du  D6iste 
(1624).     In  a  previous  treatise,  Qumtiones  celeberrimcB  in  Genesim 

in  quo  voluviine  Athei  et  Deisti  impugnantur  et  expugnantiir 

(1623),  Mersenne  set  agoing  the  often-quoted  assertion  that,  while 
atheists  abounded  throughout  Europe,  they  were  so  specially 
abundant  in  France  that  in  Paris  alone  there  were  some  fifty 
thousand.  Even  taking  the  term  "  atheist "  in  the  loosest  sense 
in  which  such  writers  used  it,  the  statement  was  never  credited  by 
any  contemporary,  or  by  its  author ;  but  neither  did  anyone  doubt 
that  there  was  an  unprecedented  amount  of  unbelief.  The  Quatraines 
du  Diiste,  otherwise  L'Antibigot,  was  a  poem  of  one  hundred  and  six 
stanzas,  never  printed,  but  widely  circulated  in  manuscript  in  its  day. 
It  is  poor  poetry  enough,  but  its  doctrine  of  a  Lucretian  God  who 
left  the  world  to  itself  sufficed  to  create  a  sensation,  and  inspired 
Mersenne  to  write  a  poem  in  reply.^  Such  were  the  signs  of  the 
times  when  Pascal  was  in  his  cradle. 

Mersenne's  statistical  assertion  was  made  in  two  sheets  of  the 
QucBstiones  Celeberrinm,  "  qui  ont  6t6  supprim6  dans  la  plupart 
des  exemplaires,  k  cause,  sans  doute,  de  leur  exaggeration" 
(BouiUier,  Hist,  de  la  philos,  cart&sienne,  1854,  i,  28,  where 
the  passage  is  cited).  The  suppressed  sheets  included  a  Hst  of 
the  "  atheists "  of  the  time,  occupying  five  folio  columns. 
(Julian  Hibbert,  Pliitarchus  and  Theophrastus  on  Superstition, 
etc.,  1828  ;  App.  Catal.  of  Works  written  against  Atheism,  p.  3  ; 
Prosper  Marchand,  Lettre  surle  Cymbalnm  Mundi,  in  6d.  Biblio- 
phile Jacob,  1841,  p.  17,  note;  Prof.  Strowski,  De  Montaigne 
a  Pascal,  1907,  p.  138  sq)  Mersenne  himself,  in  the  preface  to 
his  book,  stultifies  his  suppressed  assertion  by  declaring  that 
the  impious  in  Paris  boast  falsely  of  their  number,  which  is 
really  small,  unless  heretics  be  reckoned  as  atheists.  Garasse, 
writing  against  them,  all  the  while  professed  to  know  only 
five  atheists,  three  of  them  Italians  (Strowski,  as  cited). 


1  Mersenne  ascribed  the  quatrains  to  a  skilled  controversialist.    Quastiones,  pref. 


END  OF  VOL.  I. 


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A  SHORT 

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ANCIENT  AND  MODEKN 


EEEATA 


BY 


P.  138,  line  26,  jor  "  1583  "  read  "  1563  " 

P.  229,  line  5  of  note  1,  ^w  "Receuil"  read 
''  Recueil  " 

P.  241,  under  '*  17G7,"  ^m  "religioufi"  read 
"  religions  " 

P.   241,   under    "1767,"   for    "Freret"    read 
"  Freret,"  and  so  elsewhere 


JOHN   M.  EOBERTSON 


THIRD  EDITION,  REVISED  AND  EXPANDED 


«  «l 


•    IN  TWO  VOLUMES 
Vol.  II 


( ISSUED  FOR  THE  RATIONALIST  PRESS  ASSOCIATION,  LIMITED ) 


•  't    •    •     * 

I         t      • 

•  •      • 


I         ••       » 


•       * 
t     t  t 


«    •      *    •     • 


*  ' , 


i   • 


?  1 


:   DoKPOK: 

wA^i'cb'.;  ■  ■ 

JOHNSON'S  COURT,  FLEET  STREET,  E.G. 

1915 


CONTENTS 


.  '  •     •        i 

I    *     *        I 


t 
t     I 


•        •  « 

•  •        •  •     •        •  ■        • 

•  It      I  •  I      •  I  •    •  I  • 


•  I    i  •    »  •       I    •        t 

•  »        I     t  t     #i    i        • 

•  •       »     •       •  t    I    *    %        I 

•  «   »        »  li     I     I       t 

■  »        It  I 


VOLUME  II 

Chap.  XIII— The  Rise  of  Modern  Freethought  (continued) 

§  4.  England.  Persecution  and  executions  under  Henry  VIII, 
Edward  VI,  Mary,  and  Elizabeth.  Charges  of  atheism. 
Lilly's  polemic.  Reginald  Scot  on  witchcraft.  The 
Family  of  Love.  Hamond,  Lewes,  Kett.  Apologetic 
literature.  Influence  of  Machiavelli.  Nashe's  polemic. 
Marlowe,  Raleigh,  Harriott,  Kyd.  Protests  of  Pilkington 
and  Hooker.  Polemic  of  Bishop  Morton.  Shakespeare. 
The  drama  generally.    Executions  under  James.    Bacon. 

Suckling      -  -  -  -  "  "        .    ' 

§  5.  Popular  TJuyught  in  Europe.  Callidius.  Flade.  Wier. 
Coornhert.  Grotius.  Gorlaeus.  Zwicker.  Koerbagh. 
Beverland.  Socinianism.  The  case  of  Spain.  Cervantes 
§  6.  Scientific  Thought.  Copernicus.  Giordano  Bruno.  Vanini. 
Galileo.  The  Aristotelian  strife.  Vives.  Ramus.  Des- 
cartes.    Gassendi    ----"' 

CHAP.  XIV— BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

§  1.  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury.     Hobbes.     Selden 
§  2.  The  popular  ferment :  attempted  suppression  of  heresy  by 
Parliament.     Lawrence  Clarkson.      The   Levellers   and 
Toleration.     Forms  of  unbelief.     The  term  "rationalist." 
Propaganda  against  atheism.     Culverwel.     The  Polemic  ' 
of  Henry  More.     Freethought  at  the  Restoration.     The 
case  of  Biddle.     The  protests  of  Howe,  Stillingfleet,  and 
Baxter.     Freethought  in   Scotland.      The  argument   of 
Mackenzie.      English   Apologetics   of  Casaubon,  Ingelo, 
Temple,  Wilkins,  Tillotson,  Cudworth,  Boyle,  and  others. 
Martin  ClifEord.    Emergence  of  Deism.    Avowals  of  Arch- 
deacon Parker,  Sherlock,  and  South.    Dryden.    Discussion 
on  miracles.    Charles  Blount.    Leslie's  polemic.    Growth 
of  apologetic  literature.     Toland.     The  Licensing  Act      - 
§  3.  Literary,  scientific,  and  academic  developments.     Sir  Thomas 
Browne.   Jeremy  Taylor.   John  Spencer.   Joseph  Glanvill. 
Cartesianism.     Glisson.     Influence  of  Gassendi.     Resist- 
ance  to  Copemican  theory.      Lord   Falkland.      Colonel 
Fry.     Locke.    Bury.     Temple.     The  Marquis  of  Halifax. 
Newton,      Unitarianism.      Penn.       Firmin.      Latit€di- 
narianism.     Tillotson.     Dr.  T.  Burnet.     Dr.  B.  Connor. 
John  Craig.     The  "  rationalists  "    - 


PAGE 


32 


41 


69 


76 


100 


VI 


CONTENTS 


>  .' 


CONTENTS 


vu 


PAOE 


Chap.  XV- 


-PRENCH  AND  DUTCH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  SEVEN- 
TEENTH Century 


1.  Influence  of  Montaigne  and  Charron.   Gui  Patin.    Naud(i.    La 

Mothe  le  Vayer        -  -  -  -  -  -  117 

2.  Catholic  Pyrrhonism       ------  120 

3.  Descartes' s  influence.     Boileau.     Jesuit  and  royal  hostility    -  121 

4.  Vogue  of  freethinking.    Malherbe.   Jean  Fontanier.   Th^ophile 

de  Viau.    Claude  Petit.     Corneille.     Moli6re       -  -  122 

5.  Cyrano  de  Bergerac         _.----  123 

6.  Pascal's  skepticism.     Religious  quarrels  -  -  -  124 

7.  Huet's  skepticism  .-..--  126 

8.  Cartesianism.     Malebranche      -----  128 

9.  Buffier.     Scientific  movements  -----  130 

10.  Richard  Simon.     La  Peyrero      -----  131 

11.  Dutch  thought.     Louis  Meyer.     Cartesian  heresy        -  -  132 

12.  Spinoza    ---..---  133 

13.  Biblical  criticism.     Spinozism.     Deurhoff.    B.  Bekker  -  137 

14.  Bayle       --....--  139 

15.  Developments  in  France.    The  polemic  of  Abbadie.    Persecu- 

tion of  Protestants.     Fontenelle    -  -  -  -  Ml 

16.  St.  Evremond.    Regnard.    La  Bruy^re.    Spread  of  skepticism. 

Fanaticism  at  court  -----  148 

CHAP.  XVI— British  Freethought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century 

§  1.  Toland.  Blasphemy  Law.  Strifes  among  believers.  Cudworth. 
Bishops  Browne  and  Berkeley.  Heresy  in  the  Church. 
The  Schools  of  Newton,  Leibnitz,  and  Clarke.  Hutchin- 
son. Halley.  Provincial  deism.  Saunderson.  Simson. 
Literary  orthodoxy.  Addison.  Steele.  Berkeley.  Swift. 
New  deism.  Shaftesbury.  Trenchard.  Unitarianism. 
Asgill.     Coward.     Dodwell.     Whiston      -  -  -        147 

§  2.  Anthony  Collins.  Bentley's  attack.  Mandeville.  Woolston. 
Middleton.  Deism  at  Oxford.  Tindal.  Middleton  and 
Waterland   -------         154 

§  3.  Unitarianism:    its    spread    among   Preshyterians.      Chubb. 

Hall.     ElwaU 159 

§  4.  Berkeley's  polemic.     Lady  Mary  Montagu.     Pope.     Deism 

and  Atheism.     Coward.     Strutt     -  -  -  -        162 

§  6.  Parvish.     Influence  of  Spinoza  ....        167 

§  6.  William     Pitt.      Morgan.     Annet.     Dodwell  the  Younger  -        169 

§  7.  The  work  achieved  by  deism.     The  social  situation.     Recent 

disparagements  and  German  testimony     -  -  -        170 

§  8.  Arrest  of  English  science.  Hale.  Burnet.  Whiston. 
Woodward.  Effects  of  Imperialism.  Contrast  with 
France.     The  mathematicians       ...  -        176 

§  9.  Supposed  "decay  "of  deism.     Butler.     William  Law.     Hume        179 

§  10.  Freethought  in  Scotland.  Execution  of  Thomas  Aikenhead. 
Confiscation  of  innovating  books.  Legislation  against 
deism.    Anstruther's  and  Halyburton's  polemic.    Strife 


«  *i 


over  creeds.  John  Johnstone.  WilHam  Dudgeon.  Hutche- 
son.  Leechman.  Forbes.  Miller.  Kames.  Smith. 
Ferguson.     Church  riots    -  -  -  -       1    - 

§  11.  Freethought  in  Ireland.     Lord  Molesworth.     Archbishop 

Synge.     Bishop  Clayton     -  -  -  -  - 

§  12.  Situation   in    England    in   1750.       Richardson's  lament. 

Middleton.      Deism  among  the  clergy.      Sykes.     The 

deistic  evolution      ------ 

§  13.  Materialism.  La  Mettrie.  Shifting  of  the  social  centre : 
socio-poUtical  forces.  Gray's  avowal.  Hume's  estimate. 
Goldsmith's.      The  later  deism.     Bolingbroke      - 

§  14.  Diderot's  diagnosis.  Influence  of  Voltaire.  Chatterton. 
Low  state  of  popular  culture.  Prosecutions  of  poor  free- 
thinkers. Jacob  Hive.  Peter  Annet.  Later  deistic 
literature.  Unitarianism.  Evanson.  Tomkyns.  Watts. 
Lardner.     Priestley.     Toulmin.    D.  Williams     - 

§  15.  Gibbon.  Spread  of  unbelief.  The  creed  of  the  younger 
Pitt.  Fox.  Geology.  Hutton.  Cowper's  and  Paley's 
complaints.    Erasmus  Darwin.    Mary  Wollstonecraft      - 

§  16.  Burns  and  Scotland     ----"" 

§  17.  Panic  and  reaction  after  the  French  Revolution.  New 
aristocratic  orthodoxy.  Thomas  Paine.  New  democratic 
freethought  -----"' 

CHAr.  XVII— French  Freethought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century 

1.  BoulainviUiers.    Strifes  in  the  Church.    F^nelon  and  Ramsay. 

Fanaticism    at    courji.      New    freethinking.       Gilbert. 
Tyssot  de  Patot.     Deslandes.     Persecution  of  Protestants 

2.  Output  of  apologetics      ------ 

3.  The  political  situation    ------ 

4.  Huard  and  Huet-  ------ 

5.  Montesquieu        ------- 

6.  Jean  Meslier 

7.  Freethinking  priests. 

8.  Voltaire    -----"'' 

9.  Errors  as  to  the  course  of  development  -  -  -  - 

10.  Voltaire's  character  and  influence  -  -  -  " 

11.  Progress  of  tolerance.     Marie  Huber.     Resistance  of  bigotry. 

De  Prades.     The  Eticydopidie.     Fontenelle  as  censor     - 

12.  Chronological  outline  of  the  literary  movement 

13.  New    politics.     The    less    famous    freethinkers:   Burigny ; 

Fontenelle;  DeBrosses;  Meister;  Vauvenargues ;  Mira- 
baud;  Fr^ret  ------ 

14.  N.-A.  jBoulanger.   Dumarsais.   Pr^montval.   Solidity  of  much 

of  the  French  product         -  -  -  ■  " 

15.  General  anonymity  of  the  freethinkers.     The  orthodox  defence 

16.  The  prominent  freethinkers.     Rousseau 

17.  Astruc      ■  "  "  ■  '  1 

18.  Freethought  in  the  Academic.    Beginnings  in  classical  research. 

Emergence  of  anti-clericalism.     D'Argenson's  notes 


FAQE 
181 

188 
190 
194 


198 


203 

208 


209 


Pleas  for  toleration.    Boindin 


213 
214 
216 
216 
217 
219 
221 
222 
224 
229 

233 
236 


244 

246 
250 
253 
256 

257 


4 


viii  CONTENTS 


19.  The  affair  of  Pompignan  .  .  -  -  - 

20.  Marmontel's  Bilisaire     ------ 

21.  The  scientific  movement :  La  Mettrie    -  -  -  - 

22.  Study  of  Nature.     Fontenelle.      Lenglet  du  Fresnoy.      De 

Maillet's  Telliamed.  Mirabaud.  Resistance  of  Voltaire 
to  the  new  ideas.     Switzerland.     Buffon  and  the  Church 

23.  Maupertuis.     Diderot.     Condillac.     Robinet.     Helv^tius 

24.  Diderot's  doctrines  and  influence  .  -  -  - 

25.  D'Alembert  and  d'Holbach         -  -  -  -  - 

26.  Freethought  and  the  Revolution  -  -  -  - 

27.  The  conventional  myth  and  the  facts.    Necker.    Abb6  Gr^goire. 

The  argument  of  Michelet.  The  legend  of  the  Goddess  of 
Reason.  Sacrilege  in  the  English  and  French  Revolu- 
tions. Hubert.  Danton.  Chaumette.  Clootz.  The 
atheist  Salaville       ------ 

28.  Religious  and  political  forces  of  revolt.     The  polemic  of  Rivarol 

29.  The  political  causation.     Rebellion  in  the  ages  of  faith 

30.  The  polemic  of  Mallet  du  Pan.     Saner  views  of  Barante.     Free- 

thinkers and  orthodox  in  each  political  camp.  Mably. 
Voltaire.  D'Holbach.  Rousseau.  Diderot.  Orthodoxy 
of  the  mass.     The  thesis  of  Chamfort 

31.  The  reign  of  pei'secution  -  .  .  -  -  - 

32.  Orthodox  lovers  of  tolerance       -  -  -  -  - 

33.  Napoleon-  ...---- 

Chap,  xvill— German  Freethought  in  the  Seventeenth  and 

Eighteenth  Centuries 

1.  Moral  Decline  under  Lutheranism.     Freethought  before  the 

Thirty  Years'  War.  Orthodox  polemic.  The  movement 
of  Matthias  Knutzen  .  -  .  -  - 

2.  Influence  of  Spinoza.     Stosch.     Output  of  apologetics 

3.  Leibnitz  -------- 

4.  Pietism.     Orthodox  hostility.     Spread  of  Rationalism - 

5.  Thomasius  ------- 

6.  Dippel      -------- 

7.  T.  L.  Lau  ...---- 

8.  Wolff 

9.  Freemasonry  and  free  thinking.  J.L.Schmidt.  Martin  Knutzen 

10.  J.  C.  Edelmann  ------- 

11.  Abbot  Jerusalem  ...--- 

12.  English  and   French   influences.     The   scientific  movement. 

Orthodox  science.     Haller.     Rapid  spread  of  rationalism 

13.  Frederick  the  Great        ------ 

14.  Mauvillon.     Nicolai.     Riem.     Schade.    Basedow.    Eberhard. 

Steinbart.     Spalding.     Teller         -  .  -  - 

15.  Semler.    ToUner.     Academic  rationalism 

16.  Bahrdt     -------- 

17.  Moses  Mendelssohn.     Lessing.     Reimarus 


PAOE 

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259 
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264 
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271 
273 


274 
280 
281 


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289 
391 
292 


294 

297 
298 
300 
302 
304 
305 
805 
806 
307 
308 

309 
312 

315 
318 
320 
322 


CONTENTS 

18  Vogue  of  deism.  Wieland.  Cases  of  Isenbiehl  and  SteinbuWer. 
A  secret  society.  Clerical  rationalism.  Schulz.  The 
edict  of  Frederick  William  II.  Persistence  of  skepticism. 
^he  Marokkanische  Briefe.    Mauvillon.    Herder  - 

19.  Goethe     -■"'"'.. 

20.  Schiller    -""'"']. 

22.  Influence  of  Kant.    The  sequel.    Hamann.    Chr.  A.  Crusius. 
Platner.    Beausobre  the  younger   -  -  -  " 

23    Fichte.    Philosophic  strifes        -  -  -  -  " 

24*  Rationalism  and  conservatism  in  both  camps    - 
25.  Austria.     Jahn.    Joseph  II.    Beethoven 

CHAP    XIX-FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  REMAINING  EUROPEAN  STATES 
§  1    Holland.    Elizabeth  Wolff.     Leenhof .     Booms      Influence 
ofBayle.  Passerano.  Lack  of  native  freethought  literature 

8  2.  The  Scandinavian  States.  t>..<.^« 

1.  Course  of  the  Reformation.     Subsequent  wars.    Retro- 

gression  in  Denmark    -  -  "  '  " 

2.  Holberg's  Nicolas  Klirnius  -  -  '  ' 

3.  Sweden.     Queen  Christina         -  -  -  " 

4.  Swedenborg         -  -  ■  'r      v  ii«*«r, 
5    Upper-class  indifference.     Gustavus  III.     Kjellgren 

and  Bellman.    Torild.     Retrogression  in  Sweden      - 

6.  Revival  of  thought  in  Denmark.     Struensee.     Mary 

WoUstonecraft's  survey  -  -  -  - 

§  3.  TJie  Slavonic  States. 

1    Poland.     Liszinski  -  ■  "  '  v     •    ' 

%  Russia.  Nikon.  Peter  the  Great.  Kantemir.  Catherine 

§  4.  Italy.  . 

1.  Decline  under  Spanish  Rule.    Naples  - 

3.'  Subsequent  scientific  thought.  General  revival  of 
freethought  under  French  influence    - 

4.  Beccaria.  Algarotti.  Filangieri.  Galiani.  Genovesi. 
Alfieri.  Bettinelli.  Dandolo.  Giannone.  Algarotti 
and  the  Popes.  The  scientific  revival.  Progress  and 
reaction  in  Tuscany.   Effects  of  the  French  Revolution 

§  5.  Smin  and  Portugal.  tmaiv, 

1    Progress  under  Bourbon  rule  in  Spain.  Aranda.  D  Alba 

2.  Tyranny  of  the  Inquisition.     Aranda.     Olavid^s 

3*.  Duke  of  Almodobar.     D'Azara.     Ricla  -  " 

4.  The  case  of  Samaniego   -  -  "  "  " 

5.  Bails.     Cagnuelo.     Centeno  '  '  '  [ 

6.  Faxardo.    Iriarte            -  -  "  '  _ 

7.  Ista.  Salas    .     .  -  -  -  ^ 

8.  Reaction  after  Charles  III  -  -  "  ^ 

9.  P&rtugal.    Pombal    -  -  -  -  ' 


IX 


PAGE 


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33'3 
336 
337 

345 
349 
350 
351 


352 


354 
355 
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358 

359 
361 

362 
363 

365 
366 

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368 

372 
373 
373 

374 
375 
375 
376 
376 
377 


X  CONTENTS 

§  6.  Switzerland. 

Socinianism  and  its  sequelae.    The  Turrettini.    Geneva 
and  Rousseau.     Burlamaqui.     Spread  of  deism 

Chap.  XX— Early  Freethought  in  the  United  States 

1.  Deism  of  the  revolutionary  statesmen      -  -  .  . 

2.  First  traces  of  unbelief.     Franklin  -  -  .  . 

3.  Jefferson.    John  Adams.     Washington   -  -  -  - 

4.  Thomas  Paine       -----.. 

5.  Paine's  treatment  in  America      -  -  .  .  , 

6.  Palmer.     Houston.    Deism  and  Unitarianism  - 

Chap.  XXI.— freethought  in  the  nineteenth  Century 

TJie  Reaction.  Tone  in  England.  Clericalism  in  Italy  and  Spain. 
Movement  in  France  and  Germany 

The  Forces  of  Renascence.  International  movement.  Summary 
of  critical  forces.  Developments  of  science.  Lines  of 
resistance     ----_.. 

SECTION  1.— Popular  Propaganda  and  Culture 

1.  Democracy.     Paine.    Translations  from  the  French   - 

2.  Huttman.     Houston.     Wedderburn     - 

3.  Pietist  persecution.      Richard  Carlile.      John  Clarke. 

Robert  Taylor.    Charles  Southwell.    G.  J.  Holyoake. 
Women  helpers  -  -  -  .  . 

4.  Hetherington.    Operation  of  blasphemy  law    - 

6.  Robert  Owen       ----_. 

6.  The  reign  of  bigotry.     Influence  of  Gibbon 

7.  Charles  Bradlaugh  and  Secularism.    Imprisonment  of 

G.  W.  Foote.  Treatment  of  Bradlaugh  by  Parliament. 
Resultant  energy  of  secularist  attack  - 

8.  New  literary  developments.     Lecky.     Conway.    Win- 

wood   Reade.      Spencer.      Arnold.     Mill.     Clifford. 
Stephen.     Amberley.     New  apologetics 

9.  Freethought   in    France.     Social  schemes.     Fourier. 

Saint-Simon.    Comte.     Duruy  and  Sainte-Beuve      - 

10.  Bigotry    in   Spain.     Popular  freethought  in  Catholic 

countries.     Journalism  .... 

11.  Fluctuations  in  Germany.  ^  Persistence    of   religious 

liberalism.    Marx  and  Socialism.    Official  orthodoxy  - 

12.  The  Scandinavian  States  and  Russia     - 

13.  "Free-religious"  societies  .... 

14.  Unitarianism  in  England  and  America 

16.  Clerical  rationalism  in  Protestant  countries.    Switzer- 
land.    Holland.     Dutch  South  Africa 

16.  Developments  in  Sweden  .... 

17.  The   United   States.     IngersoU.      Lincoln.      Stephen 

Douglas.   Frederick  Douglass.  Academic  persecution. 
Changes  of  front  -  -  -  .  . 


PAOI 


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381 
381 
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883 
384 
885 


386 

389 

391 
393 


393 
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395 
398 


399 

402 
404 

406 

409 
412 
413 
414 

415 
417 

419 


CONTENTS 
Section  2.— Biblical  Criticism 

1.  Rationalism  in  Germany.     The  Schleiermacher  reac- 

tion :  its  heretical  character.     Orthodox  hostility     - 

2.  Progress  in  both  camps.   Strauss's  critical  syncretism 

3.  Criticism  of  the  Fourth  Gospel 

4.  Strauss's  achievement    -  -  -  -  - 
6.  Official  reaction              .            -            -            -  - 

6.  Fresh  advance.     Schwegler.     Bruno  Bauer      - 

7.  Strauss's  second  Life  of  Jesus.     His  politics.     His 

Voltaire  and  Old  and  New  Faith.    His  total  influence 

8.  Fluctuating  progress  of  criticism.     Important  issues 

passed-by.  Nork.  Ghillany.  Daumer.  Ewerbeck. 
Colenso.     Kuenen.     Kalisch.     Wellhausen    - 

9.  New    Testament    criticism.       Baur.       Zeller.      Van 

Manen  ------- 

10.  Falling-off  in  German  candidates  for  the  ministry  as 

in  congregations.     Official  orthodox  pressures 

11.  Attack  and  defence  in    England.      The  Tractarian 

reaction.  Progress  of  criticism.  Hennell.  The  United 
States :  Parker.  English  publicists  :  F.  W.  Newman  ; 
R.  W.  Mackay  ;  W.  R.  Greg.  Translations.  E.  P. 
Meredith  ;  Thomas  Scott ;  W.  R.  Cassels      - 

12.  New  Testament  criticism  in  France.      Renan    and 

Havet   ------- 

SECTION  3.— Poetry  and  General  Literature 

1.  The  French  literary  reaction.     Chateaubriand 

2.  Predominance  of  freethought  in  later  belles  lettres 

3.  B^ranger.     De  Musset.     Victor  Hugo.     Leconte  de 

Lisle.     The  critics.     The  reactionists 

4.  Poetry  in  England.  Shelley.    Coleridge.    The  romantic 

movement.     Scott.     Byron.     Keats  - 

5.  Charles  Lamb     ------ 

6.  Carlyle.     Mill.     Froude  .  .  -  - 

7.  Orthodoxy  and  conformity.     Bain's  view  of  Carlyle, 

Macaulay,  and  Lyell    -  -  -  -  - 

8.  The  literary  influence.     Ruskin.     Arnold.    Intellectual 

preponderance  of  rationalism  .  -  -  - 

9.  English  fiction  from  Miss  Edgeworth  to  the  present 

time      ------- 

10.  Richard  Jefferies             -  -            -  -  - 

11.  Poetry  since  Shelley       -  -            -  -  - 

12.  American  belles  lettres    -  -            -  -  - 

13.  Leopardi.     Carducci.    Kleist.  Heine  - 

14.  Russian  belles  lettres      .  -            -  -  - 

15.  The  Scandinavian  States  .            -  -  - 

SECTION  4.— THE  NATURAL  SCIENCES 

1.  Progress  in  cosmology.     Laplace    and  modern  astro- 
nomy.    Orthodox  resistance.     Leslie  - 


XI 


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423 
425 
425 
426 
426 

423 


431 
434 

435 


437 
439 

440 
441 

442 

443 
445 

447 

448 

450 

451 
452 
452 
453 
454 
456 
457 


457 


xii  CONTENTS 

2.  Physiology  in  Prance.     Cabanis 

3.  Physiology  in  England.     Lawrence.     Morgan 

4-  Geology  after  Huttou.     Hugh  Miller,     Baden  Powell  - 

5.  Darwin    -  -  -  - 

6.  Robert  Chambers  -  -  .  _  . 

7.  Orthodox  resistance.     General  advance 

8.  Triumph  of  evolutionism.    Spencer.   Clifford.    Huxley 

SECTION  5.— THE  SOCIOLOGICAL  SCIENCES 

1.  Eighteenth-century    sociology.       Salverte.       Charles 

Comte.     Auguste  Comte  - 

2.  Progress  in  England.   Orthodoxy  of  Hallam.    Carlyle. 

Grote.     Thirl  wall.     Long        -  .  -  - 

3.  Sociology  proper.     Orthodox  hostility 

4.  Mythology     and     anthropology.        Tylor.       Spencer. 

Avebury.     Frazer         -  -  .  .  . 

Section  6.— Philosophy  and  Ethics 

1.  Fichte.     Schelling.     Hegel        .  -  _  - 

2.  Germany  after  Hegel.     Schopenhauer.     Hartmann     - 

3.  Feuerbach\     Stirner       -  .  .  -  . 

4.  Arnold  Ruge       ------ 

6.  Biichne*  ------ 

6.  Philosophy   in   Prance.      Maine   de   Biran.     Cousin. 

Jouffroy  ------ 

7.  Movement  of  Lamennais  -  -  .  . 

8.  Comte  and  Comtism       -  -  .  >  - 

9.  Philosophy    in    Britain.       Bentham.       James    Mill. 

Grote.     Political  rationalism  -  -  -  - 

10.  Hamilton.     Mansel.     Spencer 

11.  Semi-rationalism  in  the  churches 

12.  J.  S.  Mill 

Section  7. — Modern  Jewry 

Jewish  influence  in  philosophy  since  Spinoza.  Modern 
balance  of  tendencies   -  -  -  -  - 

Section  8.— The  Oriental  Civilizations 

Asiatic  intellectual  life.  Japan.  Discussions  on  Japanese 
psychosis.  Pukuzawa.  The  recent  Cult  of  the 
EmpeYor.     China.     India.     Turkey.     Greece 

Conclusion  ---..... 
Index         --.... 


PAGE 

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461 

464 
464 
465 
466 


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475 
478 
478 

479 
480 
483 

484 
485 
487 
489 


489 


490 
499 

503 


Chapter  XIII 
THE  EISE  OF  MODEKN  EEEETHOUGHT— (Coniinw^^) 

§  4.  England 
While  France  was  thus  passing  from  general  fanaticism  to  a  large 
measure  of  freethought,  England  was  passing  by  a  less  tempestuous 
path  to  a  hardly  less  advanced  stage  of  opinion.  It  was  indeed  a 
bloody  age ;  and  in  1535  we  have  record  of  nineteen  men  and  live 
women  of  Holland,  apparently  Anabaptists,  who  denied  the 
"  humanity  "  of  Christ  and  rejected  infant  baptism  and  transub- 
stantiation,  being  sentenced  to  be  burned  alive— two  suffering  at 
Smithfield,  and  the  rest  at  other  towns,  by  way  of  example.  Others 
in  Henry's  reign  suffered  the  same  penalty  for  the  same  offence  ;  and 
in  1538  a  priest  named  Nicholson  or  Lambert,  refusing  on  the  King  s 
personal  pressure  to  recant,  was  "  brent  in  Smithfield"  for  denying 
the  bodily  presence  in  the  eucharist.^  The  first  decades  of 
"Reformation"  in  England  truly  saw  the  opening  of  new  vials 
of  blood.  More  and  Fisher  and  scores  of  lesser  men  died  as 
Catholics  for  denying  the  King's  "supremacy"  in  rehgion;  as 
many  more  for  denying  the  Catholic  tenets  which  the  King  held 
to  the  last ;  and  not  a  few  by  the  consent  of  More  and  Fisher  for 
translating  or  circulating  the  sacred  books.  Latimer,  martyred 
under  Mary,  had  applauded  the  burning  of  the  Anabaptists.  One 
generation  slew  for  denial  of  the  humanity  of  Christ ;  the  next  for 
denial  of  his  divinity.  Under  Edward  VI  there  were  burned  no 
Catholics,  but  several  heretics,  including  Joan  Bocher  and  a  Dutch 
Unitarian,  George  Van  Pare,  described  as  a  man  of  saintly  life. 
Still  the  English  evolution  was  less  destructive  than  the  French  or 
the  German,  and  the  comparative  bloodlessness  of  the  strife  between 
Protestant  and  Catholic  under  Mary'  and  EUzabeth,  the  treatment 

1  Stow's  ^Jinals.  ed.  1615,  pp.  570,  575.  ..    ,_.....  nan.  cfi-vnA    Mpmorials  of 

2  Burnet.  Hist,  of  the  Beforination,  ed.  Nares,  ii,  179;  lu,  289.  Strype.  Memouais  oi 

^'sThlf  Madarpl^riec^^^^  undoubtedly  did  much  to  stimulate  Protestantism.  It  is 
not  JeneranyreaHzed  that  many  of  the  burnings  of  heretics  under  Mary  were  quasi- 
LtifiXonL'r  behalf.'  On  each'^.ccasion  of  her  hopes  of  pregnancy  b^mg  disappointe^^^^ 
some  victims  were  sent  to  the  stake.  See  Strype,  ed.  cited,  in,  196.  and  ^^^^^.f^^\^J' 
tbP^«  JitPd-  Fronde  ed  1870  v  521  sq.,  539  sq.  The  influence  of  Spanish  ecclesiastics  may 
beTnfeirtd!  ^Thfexp' ilsfons  of  X^^^  the  Moriscoes  from  S^ain  were  by  way  of 

averting  the  wrath  of  God.  Still,  a  Spanish  priest  at  Court  preached  in  favour  of  mercy. 
Lingard.  ed.  1855.  v,  231. 

VOL.  II  1 


\ 


2  THE  KISE  OF  MODEKN  FREETHOUGHT 

of  the  Jesuit  propaganda  under  the  latter  queen  as  a  political  rather 
than  a  doctrinal  question/  prevented  any  such  vehemence  of  recoil 
from  religious  ideals  as  took  place  in  France.  When  in  1575  the 
law  De  hceretico  comburendo,  which  had  slept  for  seventeen  years, 
was  set  to  work  anew  under  Elizabeth,  the  first  victims  were  Dutch 
Anabaptists.  Of  a  congregation  of  them  at  Aldgate,  twenty-seven 
were  imprisoned,  of  whom  ten  were  burned,  and  the  rest  deported. 
Two  others,  John  Wielmacker  and  Hendrich  Ter  Woort.  were  anti- 
Trinitarians,  and  were  burned  accordingly.  Foxe  appealed  to  the 
Queen  to  appoint  any  punishment  short  of  death,  or  even  that  of 
hanging,  rather  than  the  horrible  death  by  burning;  but  in  vain. 
"  All  parties  at  the  time  concurred  "  in  approving  the  course  taken.^ 
Orthodoxy  was  rampant. 

Unbelief,  as  we  have  seen,  however,  there  certainly  was  ;  and 
it  is  recorded  that  Walter,  Earl  of  Essex,  on  his  deathbed  at  Dublin 
in  1576,  murmured  that  among  his  countrymen  neither  Popery  nor 
Protestantism  prevailed  :  "  there  was  nothing  but  infidelity,  infidehty, 
infidelity;  atheism,  atheism;  no  religion,  no  religion."^  And  when 
we  turn  aside  from  the  beaten  paths  of  Elizabethan  literature  we  see 
clearly  what  is  partly  visible  from  those  paths— a  number  of  free- 
thinking  variations  from  the  norm  of  faith.  Ascham,  as  we  saw, 
found  some  semblance  of  atheism  shockingly  common  among  the 
travelled  upper  class  of  his  day;  and  the  testimonies  continue. 
Edward  Kirke,  writing  his  "glosses"  to  Spenser's  ShepJierd's 
Calendar  in  1578,  observes  that  "  it  was  an  old  opinion,  and  yet 
is  continued  in  some  men's  conceit,  that  men  of  years  have  no  fear 
of  God  at  all,  or  not  so  much  as  younger  folk,"  experience  having 
made  them  skeptical  Erasmus,  he  notes,  in  his  Adages  makes  the 
proverb  "  Nemo  senex  metuit  Jovem  "  signify  merely  that  "  old  men 
are  far  from  superstition  and  belief  in  false  Gods."  But  Kirke 
insists  that,  "  his  great  learning  notwithstanding,  it  is  too  plain  to 
be  gainsaid  that  old  men  are  much  more  incHned  to  such  fond 
fooleries  than  younger  men,"^  apparently  meaning  that  elderly  men 
in  his  day  were  commonly  skeptical  about  divine  providence. 

Other  writers  of  the  day  do  not  limit  unbelief  to  the  aged.  Lilly, 
in  his  Euphues  (1578),  referring  to  England  in  general  or  Oxford  in 
particular  as  Athens,  asks  :  "  Be  there  not  many  in  Athens  which 
think  there  is  no  God,  no  redemption,  no  resurrection  ?  "     Further, 

1  The  number  slain  was  certainly  not  small.  It  amounted  to  at  least  190.  perhaps  to 
204.  Soames.  Elizabethan  Eeliaions  History,  1839.  p.  596-98.  Under  Mary  there  perished 
some  288.    Durham  Dunlop.  The  Church  uiid^r  the  Tudors,  1869,  p.  104  and  rels. 

'^  Soames,  as  cited,  pp.  213-18.  and  refs.  ,  ,,or.   t    i^   ji 

8  Froude.  Hist,  of  England,  ed.  1870,  x.  545  (ed.  1875.  xi.  199).  citing  MSS.  Ireland. 

*  Gloss  to  February  in  the  Shepherd's  Calendar,  Globe  ed.  pp.  451-52. 


r 


ENGLAND  3 

he  complains  that  "  it  was  openly  reported  of  an  old  man  in  Naples 

that  there  was  more  lightness  in  Athens  than  in  all  Italy more 

Papists,  more  Atheists,  more  sects,  more  schisms,  than  in  all  the 
monarchies  in  the  world";'  and  he  proceeds  to  frame  an  absurd 
dialogue  of  "  Euphues  and  Atheos,"  in  which  the  latter,  "  monstrous, 
yet  tractable   to   be  persuaded,"'  is   converted  with   a  burlesque 
facility.     Lilly,  who   writes   as  a  man-of-the-world  beUever,  is  a 
poor  witness  as  to  the  atheistic  arguments  current ;  but  those  he 
cites  are  so  much  better  than  his  own,  up  to  the  point  of  terrified 
collapse  on  the  atheist's  part,  that  he  had  doubtless  heard  them. 
The    atheist    speaks    as    a   pantheist,    identifying   deity   with   the 
universe ;  and  readily  meets  a  simple  appeal  to  Scripture  with  the 
reply  that  "  whosoever  denieth  a  godhead  denieth  also  the  Scriptures 
which  testifie  of  him."'     But  in  one  of  his  own  plays,  played  in 
1584,  Lilly  puts  on  the  stage  a  ghmpse  of  current  controversy  in 
a  fashion  which  suggests  that  he  had  not  remained  so  contemptu- 
ously confident  of  the  self-evident  character  of  theism.    In  Campaspe 
(i,3)  he  introduces,  undramatically  enough,  Plato,  Aristotle,  Cleanthes, 
Crates,  and  other  philosophers,  who  converse  concerning  "  natural 
causes  "  and  "  supernatural  effects."     Aristotle  is  made  to  confess 
that  he  "  cannot  by  natural  reason  give  any  reason  of  the  ebbing 
and  flowing  of  the  sea";   and  Plato  contends  against  Cleanthes, 
"  searching  for  things  which  are  not  to  be  found,"  that  "  there  is  no 
man  so  savage  in  whom  resteth  not  this  divine  particle,  that  there  is 
an  omnipotent,  eternal,  and  divine  mover,  which  may  be  called  God." 
Cleanthes  repHes  that  "  that  first  mover,  which  you  term  God,  is  the 
instrument  of  all  the  movings  which  we  attribute  to  Nature.     The 
earth seasons fruits the  whole  firmament and  what- 
soever else  appeareth  miraculous,  what  man  almost  of  mean  capacity 
but  can  prove  it  natural."     Nothing  is  concluded,  and  the  debate  is 
adjourned.     Anaxarchus  declares  :  "  I  will  take  part  with  Aristotle, 
that  there  is  Natura  naturans,  and  yet  not  God";  while  Crates 
rejoins:  "And  I  with  Plato,  that  there  is  Deus  optimus  maximus, 

and  not  Nature." 

It  is  a  curious  dialogue  to  put  upon  the  stage,  by  the  mouth  of 
children-actors,  and  the  arbitrary  ascription  to  Aristotle  of  high 
theistic  views,  in  a  scene  in  which  he  is  expressly  described  by  a 
fellow  philosopher  as  a  Naturalist,  suggests  that  Lilly  felt  the  danger 
of  giving  offence  by  presenting  the  supreme  philosopher  as  an  atheist. 

»  Euphues  :  The  Anatomy  of  Wit,  Arber's  reprint,  pp.  140, 153.  That  the  reference  was 
mainly  to  Oxford  is  to  be  inferred  from  the  address  To  my  verie  good  friends  the 
Gentlemen  Schollers  of  Oxford."  prefixed  to  the  ed.  of  1581.    Id.  P.  2OT. 

a  Id.  p.  158.  ^  Id'  PP- 161. 166. 


THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


3 


It  is  evident,  however,  both  from  Euphues  and  from  Campaspe, 
that  naturahstic  views  were  in  some  vogue,  else  they  had  not  been 
handled  in  the  theatre  and  in  a  book  essentially  planned  for  the 
general  reader.  But  however  firmly  held,  they  could  not  be  directly 
published  ;  and  a  dozen  years  later,  over  thirty  years  after  the 
outburst  of  Ascham,  we  still  find  only  a  sporadic  and  unwritten 
freefchought.    however    abundant,    going    at   times    in   fear   of    its 

life. 

Private  discussion,  indeed,  there  must  have  been,  if  there  be  any 
truth  in  Bacon's  phrase  that  "  atheists  will  ever  be  talking  of  that 

opinion,  as  if  they would  be  glad  to  be   strengthened  by  the 

consent  of  others  "  * — an  argument  which  would  make  short  work  of 
the  vast  literature  of  apologetic  theism— but  even  private  talk  had 
need  be  cautious,  and  there  could  be  no  pubhcation  of  atheistic 
opinions.  Printed  rationalism  could  go  no  further  than  such  a 
protest  against  superstition  as  Eeginald  Scot's  Discoverie  of  Witch- 
craft (1584).  which,  however,  is  a  sufficiently  remarkable  expression 
of  reason  in  an  age  in  which  a  Bodin  held  angrily  by  the  delusion." 
Elizabeth  was  herself  stibstantially  irrehgious,"  and  preferred  to  keep 
the  clergy  few  in  number  and  subordinate  in  influence;^  but  her 
Ministers  regarded  the  Church  as  part  of  the  State  system,  and 
punished  all  open  or  at  least  aggressive  heresy  in  the  manner  of  the 
Inquisition.  Yet  the  imported  doctrine  of  the  subjective  character 
of  hell  and  heaven,'  taken  up  by  Marlowe,  held  its  ground,  and  is 
denounced  by  Stubbes  in  his  Anatomic  of  Abuses^  (1583);  and  other 
foreign  philosophy  of  the  same  order  found  religious  acceptance. 
A  sect  called  the  "  Family  of  Love,"  deriving  from  Holland  (already 
a  country  fruitfull  of  heretics")/  went  so  far  as  to  hold  that 
Christ  doth  not  signify  any  one  person,  but  a  quality  whereof 
many  are  partakers  " — a  doctrine  which  we  have  seen  ascribed  by 
Calvin  to  the  libertins  of  Geneva  a  generation  before;®  but  it  does 


J  Essay  Of  Atheism.  . 

^  Lecky.  Rationalism,  i.  103-101.  Scot's  book  (now  made  accessible  by  a  reprmt,  1886) 
had  practically  no  influence  in  his  own  day  ;  and  King  James,  who  wrote  against  it.  caused 
it  to  be  burned  by  the  hangman  in  the  next.  Scot  inserts  the  "infldelitie  of  atheists  "  m 
the  list  of  intellectual  evils  on  his  title-page;  but  save  for  an  allusion  to  the  abhomma- 
tion  of  idolatrie"  all  the  others  indicted  are  aspects  of  the  black  art. 

*  "No  woman  ever  lived  who  was  so  totally  destitute  of  the  sentiment  of  religion" 
(Green.  Short  History,  ch.  vii.  9  3,  p.  369). 

*  Cp.So&mes,  Elizabethan  Beliaioun  History,  1839,  v.^Q5.  Yet  when  Morris,  the  attorney 
of  the  Duchy  of  Lancaster,  introduced  in  Parliament  a  Bill  to  restrain  the  power  of  the 
ecclesiastical  courts,  she  had  him  dismissed  and  imprisoned  for  life,  being  determined 
that  the  control  should  remain,  through  those  courts,  in  her  own  hands.  Heylyn,  Hist, 
of  the  Reformation,  ed.  1849.  pref .  vol.  i,  pp.  xiv-xv. 

•>  See  above,  vol.  i,  pp.  4a5,  446.  459.  ^  Collier's  Reprint,  p.  190. 

'  Camden.  Annuls  of  Elizabeth,  sub.  ann.  1580;  3rd  ed.  1635,  p.  218.    Cp.  Soames.  p.  214. 

8  Hooker.  Pref.  to  Ecclesiastical  Polity,  ch.  iii,  §  9.  ed.  1850.  Camden  (p.  219)  states  that 
the  Dutch  teacher  Henry  Nichalai.  whose  works  wore  translated  for  the  sect,  "gave  out 
that  he  did  partake  of  God.  and  God  of  his  humanity." 


It 


i( 


ENGLAND 


not  appear  that  they  were  persecuted.'  Some  isolated  propagandists, 
however,  paid  the  last  penalty.  One  Matthew  Hamont  or  Hamond, 
a  ploughwright,  of  Hetherset,  was  in  1579  tried  by  the  Bishop  and 
Consistory  of  Norwich  "for  that  he  denyed  Christe,"  and,  being 
found  guilty,  was  burned,  after  having  had  his  ears  cut  off, "  because 
he  spake  wordes  of  blasphemie  against  the  Queen's  Maiistie  and 
others  of  her  Counsell."'  The  victim  would  thus  seem  to  have 
been  given  to  violence  of  speech ;  but  the  record  of  his  negations, 
which  suggest  developments  from  the  Anabaptist  movement,  is  none 
the  less  notable.     In  Stow's  wording/  they  run  :— 


"  That  the  newe  Testament  and  Gospell  of  Christe  are  but  mere 
foolishnesse,  a  storie  of  menne,  or  rather  a  mere  fable. 

"  Item,  that  man  is  restored  to  grace  by  the  meere  mercy  of  God, 
wythout  the  meane  of  Christ's  bloud,  death,  and  passion. 

"  Item,  that  Christe  is  not  God,  nor  the  Saviour  of  the  world,  but 
a  meere  man,  a  sinfull  man,  and  an  abhominable  IdoU. 

"Item,  that  al  they  that  worshippe  him  are  abhominable 
Idolaters;  And  that  Christe  did  not  rise  agayne  from  death  to  life 
by  the  power  of  his  Godhead,  neither,  that  hee  did  ascende  into 

Heaven.  ^    ^       .  .       ,,    .    .1 

*'  Item,  that  the  holy  Ghoste  is  not  God,  neither  that  there  is 

any  suche  holy  Ghoste.  .      ,      ^1       i        /  n  ;i 

"  Item,  that  Baptisme  is  not  necessarie  m  the  Churche  of  Cjod, 
neither  the  use  of  the  sacrament  of  the  body  and  bloude  of  Christ." 

There  is  record  also  of  a  freethinker  named  John  Lewes  burned 
at  the  same  place  in  1583  for  "  denying  the  Godhead  of  Christ,  and 
holding  other  detestable  heresies,"  in  the  manner  of  Hamond.'  In 
the  same  year  Elias  Thacker  and  John  Coping  were  hanged  at 
St.  Edmonsbury  "for  spreading  certaine  bookes,  seditiously  penned 
by  one  Robert  Browne  against  the  Booke  of  Common  Prayer  ";  and 
'*  their  bookes  so  many  as  could  be  found  were  burnt  before  them.'"" 
Further,  one  Peter  Cole,  an  Ipswich  tanner,  was  burned  in  1587 
(also  at  Norwich)  for  similar  doctrine  ;  and  Francis  Kett,  a  young 
clergyman,  ex-fellow  of  Corpus  Christi  College,  Cambridge,  was 
burned  at  the  same  place  in  1589  for  heresy  of  the  Unitarian  order.' 

1  See  above,  i,  458.  as  to  a  much  more  pronounced  heresy  in  1549,  which  also  Reems  to 
have  escaped  punishment.  Camden  tells  that  the  books  of  th%;Family  of  Love"  w^e 
burnt  in  1580,  but  mentions  no  other  penalties.  Stow  records  that  on  October  9,  1580, 
"  Sroclama^n  was  published  at  London  for  the  apprehension  and  severe  punishing  of  all 
perso^^us^ectTdtoheof  the  family  of  love."  Ed.  1615.  p.  687.  Five  of  them  had  been 
frightened  into  a  public  recantation  in  1575.    Id.  p.  679. 

'■*  May  13,  1579.    The  burning  was  on  the  20th. 

8  Stow's  47j?ial.s.  ed.  1580.  pp.  1,194-95.    Ed.  1615,  p.  695.  «  t>     j-    ,. 

*  StSw.ed.  1615.  p  697;  David's  Evidence,  by  William  Burton.  Preacher  of  Readmg, 
1592  (?),  p.  125. 

6  Stow.  ed.  1615.  p.  696.  ^    ^  ^^, 

6  Burton,  as  cited.    See  below,  pp.  7. 12.  as  to  Kett  s  writings. 


6  THE  EISE  OF  MODEKN  FEEETHOUGHT 

Hamond  and  Cole  seem,  however,  to  have  been  in  their  own  way 
religious  men,*  and  Kett  a  devout  mystic,  with  ideas  of  a  Second 
Advent.*    All  founded  on  the  Bible. 

Most  surprising  of  all  perhaps  is  the  record  of  the  trial  of 
one  John  Hilton,  clerk  in  holy  orders,  before  the  Up{)er  House 
of  Convocation  on  December  22,  1584,  on  the  charge  of  having 
"said  in  a  sermon  at  St.  Martin's-in-the-Fields  that  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments  are  but  fables."  (Lansdowne  MSS. 
British  Museum,  No.  982,  fol.  46,  cited  by  Prof.  Storojenko, 
Life  of  Bohert  Greene,  Eng.  tr.  in  Grosart's  "  Huth  Library  " 
ed.  of  Greene's  Works,  i,  39,  note.)  As  Hilton  confessed  to  the 
charge  and  made  abjuration,  it  may  be  surmised  that  ho  had 
spoken  under  the  influence  of  liquor.  Even  on  that  view,  how- 
ever, such  an  episode  tells  of  a  considerable  currency  of  un- 
believing criticism. 

Apart  from  constructive  heresy,  the  perpetual  religious  dissen- 
sions of  the  time  were  sure  to  stimulate  doubt ;  and  there  appeared 
quite  a  number  of  treatjses  directed  wholly  or  partly  against  explicit 
unbelief,  as :  The  Faith  of  the  Church  Militant,  translated  from 
the  Latin  of  the  Danish  divine  Hemming  (1581),  and  addressed  **  to 
the  confutation  of  the  Jewes,  Turks,  Atheists,  Papists,  Hereticks, 
and  all  other  adversaries  of  the  truth  whatsoever";  '' The  Touch- 
stone of  True  Beligion against  the  impietie  of  Atheists,  Epicures, 

Libertines,  Hippocrites,  and  Temporisours  of  these  times  "  (1590)  ; 
An  Enemie  to  Atheisme,  translated  by  T,  Rogers  from  the  Latin 
of  Avenar  (1591)  ;  the  preacher  Henry  Smith's  God's  Arrow 
against  Atheists  (1593,  rep.  1611)  ;  an  English  translation  of  the 
second  volume  of  La  Primaudaye's  L'Acaddmie  Frangaise,  containing 
a  refutation  of  atheistic  doctrine  ;  and  no  fewer  than  three  "  Treatises 
of  the  Nature  of  God" — all  anonymous,  the  third  known  to  be  by 
Bishop  Thomas  Morton — all  appearing  in  the  year  1599. 

All  this  smoke — eight  apologetic  treatises  in  eighteen  years — 
implies  some  fire  ;  and  the  translator  of  La  Primaudaye,  one  "  T.  B.," 
declares  in  his  dedication  that  there  has  been  a  general  growth  of 
atheism  in  England  and  on  the  continent,  which  he  traces  to  "  that 
Monster  Machiavell."  Among  English  atheists  of  that  school  he 
ranks  the  dramatist  Robert  Greene,  who  had  died  in  1592 ;  and  it 
has  been  argued,  not  quite  convincingly,  that  it^as  to  Machiavelli 
that  Greene  had  pointed,  in  his  death-bed  recantation  A  Groatsworth 


*  Art.  Matthew  Hamond.  in  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog. 
^  Art.  Fbancib  Kett,  in  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog. 


ENGLAND  7 

of  Wit  (1592),  as  the  atheistic  instructor  of  his  friend  Marlowe,* 
who  introduces  "Machiavel"   as   cynical   prologist  to  his  Jew  of 
Malta,     Greene's   own   "atheism"  had    been   for   the   most  part 
a  matter  of  bluster  and  disorderly  living  ;  and  we  find  his  zealously 
orthodox  friend  Thomas  Nashe,  in  his  Strange  News  (1592),  callmg 
the  Puritan  zealot  who  used  the  pseudonym  of  Martin  Marprelate 
" a  mighty  platformer  of  atheism";  even  as  his  own  and  Greene's 
enemy,  Gabriel  Harvey,  called  Nashe  an  atheist.'    But  Nashe  in 
his  Christ's  Tears  over  Jerusalem  (1592),  though  he  speaks   char- 
acteristically of   the  "atheistical   Juhan,"  discusses  contemporary 
atheism  in  a  fashion  descriptive  of  an  actual  growth  of  the  opmion, 
concerning  which  he  alleges  that  there  is  no  "  sect  now  in  England 
so  scattered  [i.e.,  so  widely  spread]  as  atheisme."     The  "  outward 
atheist,"  he  declares,  "  establishes  reason  as  his  God  " ;  and  he  offers 
some    sufficiently   primitive    arguments    by    way    of    confutation. 
"  They  follow  the  Pironicks  [i.e.,  Pyrrhonists] ,  whose  position  and 
opinion  it  is  that  there  is  no  hell  or  misery  but  opinion.     Impudently 
they  persist  in  it,  that  the  late  discovered  Indians  show  antiquities 
thousands  before  Adam."      For  the  rest,  they  not  only  reject  the 
miracles  of  Moses  as  mere  natural  expedients  misrepresented,  but 
treat  the  whole  Bible  as  "  some  late  writers  of  our  side"  treat  the 
Apocrypha.     And  Nashe  complains  feelingly  that  while  the  atheists 
"  are  special  men  of  wit,"  and  that  "  the  Romish  seminaries  have  not 
allured  unto  them  so  many  good  wits  as  atheism,"  the  preachers  who 
reply  to  them  are  men  of  dull  understanding,  the  product  of  a  system 
under  which  preferment  is  given  to  graduates  on  the  score  not  of 
capacity  but  of  mere   gravity  and  solemnity.      "  It  is  the   super- 
abundance of  wit,"  declares  Nashe,  "  that  makes  atheists  :  will  you 
then  hope  to  beat  them  down  with  fusty  brown-bread  dorbelHsm?"^ 
There   had   arisen,  in  short,  a  ferment  of   rationalism  which  was 
henceforth  never  to  disappear  from  English  life. 

In  1593,  indeed,  we  find  atheism  formally  charged  against  two 
famous  men,  Cheistopher  Marlowe  and  Sir  Walter  Raleigh, 
of  whom  the  first  is  documentarily  connected  with  Kett,  and  the 
second  in  turn  with  Marlowe.     An  official  document,*  preserved  by 

1  Prof,  storojenko.  Life  of  Greene,  Eng.  tr.  in  Grosart's  "  Huth  Library  "  ed.  of  Greene's 
Works  i  42-50.  It  is  quite  clear  that  Malone  and  the  critics  who  have  followed  him  were 
wrong  in  supposing  the  unnamed  instructor  to  be  Francis  Kett,  who  was  a  devout  Uni- 
tarian. Prof,  storojenko  speaks  of  Kett  as  having  been  made  an  Arian  at  Norwich,  after 
his  return  there  in  1585,  by  the  influence  of  Lewes  and  Haworth.    Query  Hamond  <• 

"i  In  Pierce's  Supererogation,  Collier's  ed. -p.  S5.  ..    ^       ,   •  ,r,fi  1,70  i,to  iqo 

8  Rep.  of  Nashe's  Works  in  Grosart's  Huth  Library  "  ed.  vol.  iv.  pp.  172, 173, 178, 182, 
183.  etc.    Ed.  McKerrow.  1904,  ii,  114-129.  ,.     ^    ^,,     -.     i.  ■  *  ^.v,- 

<  MS.  Harl.  6853,  fol.  3-30.  It  is  given  in  full  in  the  appendix  to  the  first  issue  of  the 
selected  plays  of  Marlowe  in  the  Mermaid  Series,  edited  by  Mr.  Havelock  Ellis :  and. 
with  omissions,  in  the  editions  of  Cunningham,  Dyce,  and  BuUen. 


8 


THE  EISE  OF  MODEEN  FKEETHOUGHT 


some  chance,  reveals  that  Marlowe  was  given — whether  or  not  over 
the  wine- cup — to  singularly  audacious  derision  of  the  received 
beliefs ;  and  so  explicit  is  the  evidence  that  it  is  nearly  certain  he 
would  have  been  executed  for  blasphemy  had  he  not  been  privately 
killed  (1593)  while  the  proceedings  were  pending.  The  "  atheism  " 
imputed  to  him  is  not  made  out  in  any  detail ;  but  many  of  the 
other  utterances  are  notably  in  keeping  with  Marlowe's  daring 
temper  ;  and  they  amount  to  unbelief  of  a  stringent  kind.  In  Doctor 
Faiistus  ^  he  makes  Mephistopheles  affirm  that  "  Hell  hath  no  limits 

but  where  we  are  is  hell" — a  doctrine  which  we  have  seen  to 

be  current  before  his  time  ;  and  in  his  private  talk  he  had  gone  much 
further.     Nashe  doubtless  had  him  in  mind  when  he  spoke  of  men 
of   "  superabundance   of   wit."      Not   only  did   he   question,  with 
Ealeigh,  the  Biblical  chronolpgy:  he  affirmed  "That  Moyses  was 
but  a  juggler,  and  that  one  Heriots "  [i.e.,  Thomas   Harriott,  or . 
Harriots,  the  astronomer,  one   of   Ealeigh's  circle]  "  can  do  more 
than  he";    and  concerning  Jesus  he  used  language  incomparably 
more  offensive  to  orthodox  feeling  than  that  of  Hamond  and  Rett. 
There  is  more  in  all  this  than  a  mere  assimilation  of  Machiavelli ; 
though  the  further  saying  "that  the  first  beginning  of  religion  was 
only  to  keep  men  in  awe" — put  also  by  Greene  [if  not  by  MarloweJ, 
with  much  force  of  versification,  in  the  mouth  of  a  villain-hero  in 
the  anonymous  play  of  Selinms  ^ — tells  of  that  influence.     Marlowe 
was  indeed  not  the  man  to  swear  by  any  master  without  adding 
something  of  his  own.    Atheism,  however,  is  not  inferrible  from  any  of 
his  works  :  on  the  contrary,  in  the  second  part  of  his  famous  first  play 
he  makes  his  hero,  described  by  the  repentant  Greene  as  the  "  atheist 
Tamburlaine,"  declaim  of  deity  with  signal  eloquence,  though  with 
a   pantheistic   cast    of    phrase.     In    another   passage,    a    Moslem 
personage  claims  to  be  on  the  side  of  a  Christ  who  would  punish 
perjury  ;  and  in  yet  another  the  hero  is  made  to  trample  under  foot 
the  pretensions  of  IMohammed.^     It  was  probably  his  imputation  of 
perjury  to  Christian  rulers  in  particular  that  earned  for  Marlowe  the 
malignant  resentment  which  inspired  the  various  edifying  comments 
published  after  his  unedifying  death.     Had  he  not  perished  as  he 
did  in  a  tavern   brawl,  he  might  have  had  the  nobler  fate  of  a 
martyr. 

Concerning  Ealeigh,  again,  there  is  no  shadow  of  proof  of  atheism, 

1  Act  II,  8C.  i. 

*  Grosarf  8  ed.  in  "  Temple  Dramatists  "  series.  11, 246-371.  There  is  plenty  of  "  irreligion  " 
in  the  passage,  but  not  atheism,  though  there  is  a  denial  of  a  future  state  (365-70).  The 
lines  in  question  strongly  suggest  Marlowe's  influence  or  authorship,  which  indeed  is 
claimed  by  Mr.  C.  Crawford  for  the  whole  play.  But  all  the  external  evidence  ascribes 
the  play  to  Greene.  »  Tamburlaim^  Part  U,  Ac(  U,  so.  ii,  iii ;  Y,  go.  i. 


ENGLAND  ^ 

though  his  circle,  which  included  the  Earls  of  Northumberland  and 
Oxford,  was  called  a  "school  of  atheism"  in  a  Latin  pamphle   by 
the  Jesuit  Parsons,^  published  at  Eome  in  1593  ;  and  this  repu  ation 
clung  to  him.     It  is  matter  of  literary  history,  however  that  he 
like  Montaigne,  had  been  influenced  by  the  Hypotyposes  of  Sextus 
Empiricus  ;^  his  short  essay  The  Sceptick  being  a  ^-\^  ^^P^^^^^^^^^ 
the  thesis  that  "the  sceptick  doth  neither  afiirm  neither  deny  any 
position  ;  but  doubteth  of  it,  and  applyeth  his  Eeason  against  that 
which  is  affirmed,  or  denied,  to  justifie  his  non-consenting.         The 
essay  itself,  nevertheless,  proceeds  upon  a  set  of  wildly  false  proposi- 
tions in  natural  history,  concerning  which  the  adventurous  reasoner 
has  no  doubts  whatever  ;  and  altogether  we  may  be  sure  that  his 
artificial  skepticism  did  not  carry  him  far  in  philosophy.     In  the 
Discovery  of  Guiana  (1600)  he  declares  that  he  is     /^solved      of 
the  truth  of  the  stories  of  men  whose  heads  grow  beneath  their 
shoulders;  and  in  his  mstory  of  the  TForZ^(1603-16)  he  insists 
that   the   stars   and   other   celestial   bodies       mchne   the   will    by 
mediation  of  the  sensitive  appetite." '     In  other  directions,  however, 
he  was  less  credulous.     In   the   same   History  he   points  out,  as 
Marlowe  had  done  in  talk,  how  incompatible  was  such  a  pheno- 
menon as  the  mature  civiHzation  of  ancient  Egypt  in  the  days  of 
Abraham  with  the  orthodox  chronology .«     This,  indeed,  was  heresy 
enough,  then  and  later,  seeing  that  not  only  did  Bishop  Pearson,  in 
1659  in  a  work  on  The  Creed  which  has  been  circulated  down  to 
the  nineteenth  century,  indignantly  denounce  all  who  departed  from 
the  figures  in  the  margin  of  the  Bible ;  but  Coleridge,  a  century 
and  a  half   later,  took   the  very  instance  of   Egyptian   history  as 
triumphantly  estabHshing  the  accuracy  of  the  Bible  record  against 
the  French  atheists.^     As  regards  Ealeigh's  philosophy,  the  evidence 
goes  to  show  only  that  he  was  ready  to  read  a  Unitarian  essay 
presumably  that  already  mentioned,  supposed  to  be  Rett's;    and 
that  he  had  intercourse  with  Marlowe  and  others  (in  particular  his 
secretary  Harriott)  known  to  be  freethinkers.     A  prosecution  begun 
against  him  on  this  score,  at  the  time  of  the  inquiry  concerning 
Marlowe  (when   Ealeigh  was  in  disgrace  with   the  Queen),  came 
to  nothing.     It  had  been  led  up  to  by  a  translation  of  Parsons  s 
pamphlet,  which   affirmed  that   his   private   group  was  known  as 
"  Sir  Walter  Eawley's  school  of  Atheisme,"  and  that  therein     both 

1  Writing  as  Andrew  Philopater.    See  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.,  art.  Robebt  Pabsons.  and 
Storoienko,  as  cited,  i,  36.  endnote.  ;„  i«.o 

2  Translated  into  Latm  by  Henri  Estienne  m  156J.  4  tiv  i   rh  i  sec  11 

8  Bemains  of  Sir  Walter  Baleigh,  ed.  1657.  p.  123.  J  l^say  on  IheFrLetheus. 

8  Bk.  ii,  ch.  i,  sec.  7. 


I 


10 


THE  EISE  OF  MODERN  FEEETHOUGHT 


ENGLAND 


11 


Moyses  and  our  Savior,  the  Old  and  the  New  Testaments,  are  jested 
at,  and  the  scholars  taught  among  other  things  to  spell  God  back- 
wards."^ This  seems  to  have  been  idle  gossip,  though  it  tells  of 
unbelief  somewhere;  and  Raleigh's  own  writings  always  indicate' 
belief  in  the  Bible  ;  though  his  dying  speech  and  epitaph  are 
noticeably  deistic.  That  he  was  a  deist,  given  to  free  discussion, 
seems  the  probable  truth. 

In  passing  sentence  at  the  close  of  Ealeigh's  trial  for  treason  in 
1603,  in  which  his  guilt  is  at  least  no  clearer  than  the  inequity  of 
the  proceedings.  Lord  Chief  Justice  Popham  unscrupulously  taunted 
him  with  his  reputation  for  heresy.  "  You  have  been  taxed  by  the 
world  with  the  defence  of  the  most  heathenish  and  blasphemous 
opinions,  which  I  list  not  to  repeat,  because  Christian  ears  cannot 
endure  to  hear  them,  nor  the  authors  and  maintainors  of  them  be 
suffered  to  live  in  any  Christian  commonwealth.  You  know  what 
men  said  of  Harpool."'  If  the  preface  to  his  History  of  the  World, 
written  in  the  Tower,  be  authentic,  Raleigh  was  at  due  pains  to 
make  clear  his  belief  in  deity,  and  to  repudiate  alike  atheism  and 
pantheism.  "I  do  also  account  it,"  he  declares,  "an  impiety 
monstrous,  to  confound  God  and  Nature,  be  it  but  in  terms."* 
And  he  is  no  more  tolerant  than  his  judge  when  he  discusses  the 
question  of  the  eternity  of  the  universe,  then  the  crucial  issue  as 
between  orthodoxy  and  doubt.  "  Whosoever  will  make  choice 
rather  to  believe  in  eternal  deformity  [  =  want  of  form]  or  in 
eternal  dead  matter,  than  in  eternal  light  and  eternal  life,  let 
eternal  death  be  his  reward.  For  it  is  a  madness  of  that  kind, 
as  wanteth  terms  to  express  it."^  Inasmuch  as  Aristotle  was  the 
great  authority  for  the  denounced  opinion,  Ealeigh  is  anti- 
Aristotelean.  "I  shall  never  be  persuaded  that  God  hath  shut 
up  all  light  of  learning  within  the  lantern  of  Aristotle's  brains."^ 
But  in  the  whole  preface  there  is  only  one,  and  that  a  conventional, 
expression  of  belief  in  the  Christian  dogma  of  salvation  ;  and  as  to 
that  we  may  note  his  own  words :  "  We  are  all  in  effect  become 
comedians  in  religion." '  Still,  untruthful  as  he  certainly  was,^  we 
may  take  him  as  a  convinced  theist  of  the  experiential  school, 
standing  at  the  ordinary  position  of  the  deists  of  the  next  century. 
Notably  enough,  he  anticipates  the  critical  position  of  Hume  as 

\  Art.  Raleigh,  in  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.,  xlvii,  W2.  2  j^.  pp  200-201 

«  Report  in  1736  ed.  of  History  of  the  World,  p.  ccxlix.  "  Harpool "  seems  an  error  for 
Harriott.  C p.  Edwards,  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  1868,  i,  432.  436.  It  is  after  naming 
Harpool  that  the  judge  says:  Let  not  any  devil  persuade  you  to  think  there  is  no 
eternity  in  heaven." 

<  Ed.  cited,  p.  xxviii.  6  jd.  p.  xxiv. 

0  Id.  p.  xxu.  7  ja.  p.  xvi. 

8  Cp.  Gardiner,  History  of  England.  1603-1642, 10-vol.  ed.  i.  132-35;  iii.  150. 152. 


to  reason  and  experience :  "  That  these  and  these  be  the  causes  of 
these  and  these  effects,  time  hath  taught  us  and  not  reason  ;  and  so 
hath  experience  without  art." '     Such  utterance,  if  not  connected 
with  professions  of  piety,  might  in  those  days  give  rise  to  such 
Tharges  of  unbelief  as  were  so  freely  cast  at  him.     But  the  charges 
seem  to  have  been  in  large  part  mere  expressions  o    the  ^lahgnity 
which  religion  so  normally  fosters,  and  which  can  seldom  have  been 
more  bitter  than  then.     Ealeigh  is  no  admirable  type  of  rectitude  ; 
but   he  can   hardly  have  been   a  worse   man  than  his  orthodox 
enemies.     And  we  must  estimate  such  men  in  full  view  of  the  low 
standards  of  their  age. 

The  belief  about  Raleigh's  atheism  was  so  strong  tliat  we 
have  Archbishop  Abbot  writing  to  Sir  Thomas  Eoe  on  Fek  19. 
1618-1619,  that  Raleigh's  end  was  due  to  his  questioning  ot 
"God's  being  and  omnipotence."  It  js  asserted  by  Francis 
0?born,  who  had  known  Raleigh,  that  he  got  his  title  of  Athetst 
from  Queen  Elizabeth.  See  the  preface  {Author  to  Beader)  to 
Osborn's  Miscellany  of  Sundry  Essays,  etc  m  7th  ed  of  his 
Works,  1673.  As  to  atheism  at  Bhzabetlis  court  see  J.  J. 
Tayler,  Retrospect  of  Belig.  Life  of  England,  2nd  ed.  p.  198,  and 
ref  Lilly  makes  one  of  his  characters  write  of  the  ladies  at 
court  that  "they  never  jar  about  matters  of  religion,  because 
they  never  mean  to  reason  of  them"  {Euphiies,  Arber  s  ed. 

t)     194)  e         v.' 

A  curious  use  was  made  of  Raleigh's  name  and  fame  after  his 
death  for  various  purposes.  In  1620  or  1621  appeared  Vox 
Spiritus.  or  Sir  Walter  Eawleigh's  Ghost ;  a  Conference  between 

Sicnr.  Gondamier and  Father  Bauldwine   —a     seditious 

tract  by  one   Captain   Gainstord.     It   appears   to   have  been 
reprinted    in    1622    as   "  Prosopoeia.     Sir   Walter  Rawleighs 
Ghost "     Then  in   1626   came   a  new   treatise,      bir    Walter 
Rawleigh's   Ghost,   or   England's    Forewarner,"   published    in 
1626  at  Utrecht  by  Thomas  Scott,  an  English  minister  there, 
who  was  assassinated  in  the  same  year.     The  title  having  thus 
had  vogue,  there  was  published  in  1631    Bawleigh  s  Ghost,  or, 
a  Feigned  Apparition  of  Syr  Walter  Rawleigh  to  a  friend  of  his, 
for  the  translating  into  English  the  Booke  of  Leonard  Lessius 
(tliat  most  learned  man),  entituled  De  Providentta  Nurnmts  et 
animi  immortalitate,  vfritteu  against  the  Atheists  and  Polititians 
of  these  days."     The  translation  of   a  Jesuits  treatise  (1616) 
thus  accredited  purports  to  be  by    A.  B."    In  a  reprint  of  1651 
the  "  feigned  "  disappears  from  the  title-page;  but     Sir  Walter 
Eawleigh's  Ghost  "  remains  to  attract  readers  ;  and  the  trans- 
lation, now  purporting  to  be  by  John  Holden,  who  claims  to 

»  Ed.  cited,  p.  xxii. 


i 


12  THE  KISE  OF  MODEKN  FKEETHOUGHT 

have  been  a  friend  of  Ealeigh*s,  is  dedicated  to  his  son  Carew. 
In  the  preface  the  Ghost  adjures  the  translator  (who  professes 
to  have  heard  him  frequently  praise  the  treatise  of  Lessius)  to 
translate  the  work  with  Kaleigh's  name  on  the  title,  so  as  to 
clear  his  memory  of  "  a  foul  and  most  unjust  aspersion  of  me 
for  my  presumed  denial  of  a  deity." 

The  latest  documentary  evidence  as  to  the  case  of  Marlowe 
is  produced  by  Mr.  F.  S.  Boas  in  his  article,  "New  Light  on 
Marlowe  and  Kyd,"  in  the  Fortnightly  Bevieiu,  February,  1899, 
reproduced  in  his  edition  of  the  works  of  Thomas  Kyd  (Clarendon 
Press,  1901).     In  addition  to  the  formerly  known  data  as  to 
Marlowe's  "  atheism,"  it  is  now  established  that  Thomas  Kyd, 
his  fellow  dramatist,  was  arrested  on   the  same  charge,  and 
that  there  was  found  among  his  papers  one  containing  "vile 
hereticall  conceiptes  denyinge  the  divinity  of  Jhesus  Christe 
our  Saviour."     This  Kyd  declared  he  had  had  from  Marlowe, 
denying   all   sympathy   with   its   view.     Nevertheless,    he   was 
put    to    the    torture.     The    paper,    however,   proves    to   be   a 
vehement  Unitarian  argument  on  Scriptural  grounds,  and  is 
much  more  likely  to  have  been  written  by  Francis  Kett  than  by 
Marlowe.     In  the  MSS.  now  brought  to  light,  one  Cholmeley, 
who  "confessed  that  he  was  persuaded  by  Marlowe's  reasons 
to  beconie  an  Atheiste,"  is  represented  by  a  spy  as  speaking 
"all  evil  of  the  Counsell,  saying  that  they  are  all  Atheistes 
and  MachiaviUians,  especially  my  Lord  Admirall."     The  same 
atheist,"  who  imputes  atheism  to  others  as  a  vice,  is  described 
as  regretting  he  had  noc  killed  the  Lord  Treasurer,  "  sayenge 
that  he  could  never  have  done  God  better  service." 

For  the  rest,  the  same  spy  tells  that  Cholmeley  believed 
Marlowe  was  "  able  to  shew^e  more  sound  reasons  for  Atheisme 
than  any  devine  in  Englande  is  able  to  geve  to  prove  devinitie, 
and  that  Marloe  told  him  that  he  hath  read  the  Atheist  lecture 
to  Sir  Walter  Kaleigh  and  others."  On  the  last  point  there 
it  no  further  evidence,  save  that  Sir  Walter,  his  dependent 
Thomas  Harriott,  and  Mr.  Care  we  Eawley,  were  on  March  21, 
1593-1594,  charged  upon  sworn  testimonies  with  holding 
impious  opinions  concerning  God  and  Providence."  There 
was,  however,  no  prosecution.  Harriott  had  published  in 
1588  a  work  on  his  travels  in  Virginia,  at  the  close  of  which 
is  a  passage  in  the  devoutest  vein  telling  of  his  missionary 
labours  (quoted  by  Mr.  Boas,  art.  cited,  p.  225).  Yet  by  1592 
he  had,  with  his  master,  a  reputation  for  atheism ;  and  that  it 
was  not  wholly  on  the  strength  of  his  great  scientific  knowledge 
IS  suggested  by  the  statement  of  Anthony  k  Wood  that  he 
made  a  philosophical  theology,  wherein  he  cast  off  the  Old 
Testament." 

Of  this  no  trace  remains ;  but  it  is  established  that  he  was 
a  highly  accomplished  mathematician,  much  admired  by  Kepler ; 


ENGLAND 


13 


and  that  he  "  applied  the  telescope  to  celestial  purposes  almost 
simultaneously  with  Galileo"  (art.  HARRIOTT  m  Diet,  of  Nat 
Biog.;  cp.  art.  in  Encyc.  Brit).        Harriott      .^w as  the  first 
who  dared  to  say  A  =  B   in  the  form  A-B  =  0,  one  of  the 
greatest  sources  of  progress  ever  opened  in^alg^^^^^^^^^^^' 7 
De  Morgan,  Newton,  his  Friend  and  his  Niece,  IbbO,  p.  ^i;. 
Further,  he  improved  algebraic  notation  by  the  use  of  small 
italic  letters  in  place  of  Koman  capitals,  and  threw  out  the 
hypothesis  of  secondary  planets  as  well  as  of  stars  ^visible 
from  their  size  and  distance.        He  was  the  first  to  verify  the 
results  of  Galileo."     Eev.  Baden  Powell,  Hist,  of  Nat.  Bhilos 
1834,  pp.  126,  168.     Cp.  Eigaud,  as  cited  ^y  Powell ;  Ellis  s 
notes  on  Bacon,  in  Koutledge's  1-vol.  ed.  1905.  pp.  674-76  , 
and  Storojenko,  as  above  cited,  p.  38,  note. 
Against  the  aspersion  of  Harriott  at  Ealeigh's  trial  may  be  cited 
the  high  panegyric  of  Chapman,  who  terms  him  "  my  admired  and 
soul-loved  friend,  master  of  all  essential  and  true  knowledge,      and 
one  "whose  judgment  and  knowledge,  in  all  kinds.  I  know  to  be 
incomparable  and  bottomless,  yea,  to  be  admired  as  much  as  his 
most  blameless  life,  and  the  right  sacred  expense  of  his  time,  is  to 
be  honoured  and  reverenced";  with  a  further^   affirmation  of  his 
clear  unmatchedness  in  all  manner  of  learning."  .  ^i  .     4. 

The  frequency  of  such  traces  of  rationalism  at  this  period  is  to 
be  understood  in  the  light  of  the  financial  and  other  scandals  of  the 
Eeformation ;  the   bitter   strifes   of   Church   and   dissent;  and  the 
horrors  of  the  wars  of  religion  in  France,  concermng  which  Bacon 
remarks  in  his  essay  Of  Unity  in  Beligion  that  the  spectacle  would 
have  made  Lucretius  "  seven  times  more  Epicure  and  atheist  than 
he  was."     The  proceedings  against  Ealeigh  and  Kyd,  accordingly, 
did  not  check  the  spread  of  the  private  avowal  of  unbehef.     A  few 
years  later  we  find  Hooker,  in  the  Fifth  Book  of  his  EcclesiasHcal 
Polity  (1597),  bitterly  declaring  that  the  unbelievers  m  the  higher 
tenets  of  religion  are  much  strengthened  by  the  strifes  of  believers  ;^^ 
as  a  dozen  years  earlier  Bishop  Pilkington  told  of     young  whelps 
who  "in  corners  make  themselves  merry  with  railing  and  scotting 
at  the  holy  scriptures." '     And  in  the  Treatise  of  the  Nature  of  God, 
by  Bishop  Thomas  Morton  (1599),  a  quasi-dialogue  m  which  the 
arguing  is  all  on  one  side,  the  passive  interlocutor  indicates,  m  the 
process  of  repudiating  them,  a  full  acquaintance  with  the  pleas  ot 
those  who  "  would  openly  profess  themselves  to  be  of  that   Lthe 

1  Title  of  verses  appended  to  trans,  of  AcMlles  Shield.  1598.    Chapman  spells  the  name 

Harriots.  ,xi-  ^i 

2  Pref.  to  complete  trans,  of  Hiad. 

8  -Rk  V  ch  ii  §§1-4.     Works,  ed.  1850, 1,  isz  i^.  *  Trr^„7,„  loio  r»  4ni 

4  E%ositU>nupcm  NeJwmiah  (1585)  in  Parker  See.  ed.  of  Works,  1812.  p.  401. 


u 


THE  BISE  OF  MODERN  FBEETHOUGHT 


atheistic]  judgment,  and  as  far  as  they  might  without  danger  defend 
it  by  argument  against  any  whatever."  The  pleas  include  the  lack 
of  moral  control  in  the  world,  the  evidences  of  natural  causation, 
the  varieties  of  religious  belief,  and  the  contradictions  of  Scripture. 
And  such  atheists,  we  are  told,  '*  make  nature  their  God."  ^ 

From   Hooker's   account   also  it    is    clear   that,    at   least  with 
comparatively  patient  clerics  like  himself,  the  freethinkers  would  at 
times  deliberately  press  the  question  of  theism,  and  avow  the  con- 
viction that  belief  in  God  was  *'  a  kind  of  harmless  error,  bred  and 
confirmed  by  the  sleights  of  wiser  men."     He  further  notes  with 
even  greater  bitterness  that  some — an  "  execrable  crew  " — who  were 
themselves  unbelievers,  would  in  the  old  pagan  manner  argue  for 
the  fostering  of  religion  as  a  matter  of  State  policy,  herein  conning 
the  lesson  of  Machiavelli.     For  his  own  part  Hooker  was  confessedly 
ill-prepared  to  debate  with  the  atheists,  and  his  attitude  was  not 
fitted  to  shake  their  opinions.     His  one  resource  is  the  inevitable 
plea  that  atheists  are  stich  for  the  sake  of  throwing  off  all  moral 
restraint^— a  theorem  which   could   hardly  be  taken   seriously  by 
those  who  knew  the  history  of  the  EngUsh  and  French  aristocracies, 
Protestant  and  Catholic,  for  the  past  hundred  years.     Hooker's  own 
measure  of  rationahsm,  though  remarkable  as  compared  with  previous 
orthodoxy,  went  no  further  than  the  application  of  the  argument  of 
Pecock  that  reason  must  guide  and  control  all  resort  to  Scripture 
and  authority;^  and  he  came  to  it  under  stress  of  dispute,  as  a 
principle  of  accommodation  for  warring  believers,  not  as  an  expres- 
sion of  any  independent  skepticism.     When   his   pious  antagonist 
Travers  cited  him  as  saying  that  "his  best   author  was  his  own 
reason  " '  he  was  prompt  to  reply  that  he  meant  "  true,  sound,  divine 

^'eason  ; reason  proper  to  that  science  whereby  the  things  of  God 

are  known  ;  theological  reason,  which  out  of  principles  in  Scripture 
that  are  plain,  soundly  deduceth  more  doubtful  inferences." '  Of  the 
application  of  rational  criticism  to  Scriptural  claims  he  had  no  idea. 
The  unbelievers  of  his  day  were  for  him  a  frightful  portent,  menacing 
all  his  plans  of  orthodox  toleration ;  and  he  would  have  had  them 
put  down  by  force— a  course  which  in  some  cases,  as  we  have  seen, 
had  in  that  age  been  actually  taken,  and  was  always  apt  to  be 
resorted  to.  But  orthodoxy  all  the  while  had  a  sure  support  in  the 
social  and  political  conditions  which  made  impossible  the  pubHcation 

Iv^J^i^/'t^'^^-^'^l'^^--    r..     ■     ..     ,.  ^  Works,  i.  432;  ii,762-G3. 

»  Eccles.  Pol  bk.  I.  ch.  vii ;  bk.  ii.  ch.  i.  vii ;  bk.  iii.  ch.  viii.  §  16  ;  bk.  v.  ch.  viii  •  bk  vii 

lvof'ii'Vn^-J^t^^,'T^^^i,'^^'  '^''  ^'  *^6i  ii.  388   537).    See  the  citatSms  in  Buckle; 
d-vol.  ed.  in,  341-4.2 ;  1-vol.  ed.  pp.  193-94.  u».jxic. 

*  Supphcation  of  Travers.  in  Hooker's  Works,  ed.  1860,  ii.  662. 
»  Answer  to  Travers,  id.  p.  693.  .     .  «.  . 


ENGLAND 


15 


of  rationalistic  opinions.  While  the  whole  machinery  of  public 
doctrine  remained  in  religious  hands  or  under  ecclesiastical  control, 
the  mass  of  men  of  all  grades  inevitably  held  by  the  traditional 
faith.  What  is  remarkable  is  the  amount  of  unbelief,  either 
privately  explicit  or  implicit  in  the  higher  literature,  of  which  we 
have  trace. 

Above  all  there  remains  the  great  illustration  of  the  rationalistic 
spirit  of  the  English  literary  renascence  of  the  sixteenth  century — 
the  drama  of  Shakespeare.  Of  that  it  may  confidently  be  said 
that  every  attempt  to  find  for  it  a  religious  foundation  has  failed. 
Gervinus,  while  oddly  suggesting  that  "  in  not  only  not  seeking  a 
reference  to  religion  in  his  works,  but  in  systematically  avoiding  it 
even  when  opportunity  offered,"  Shakespeare  was  keeping  clear  of 
an  embroilment  with  the  clergy,  nevertheless  pronounces  the  plays 
to  be  wholly  secular  in  spirit.  While  contending  that  "  in  action  the 
religious  and  divine  in  man  is  nothing  else  than  the  moral,"  the 
German  critic  admits  that  Shakespeare  "  wholly  discarded  from  his 

works that  which  religion  enjoins  as  to  faith  and  opinion."      And, 

while  refusing  the  inference  of  positive  unbelief  on  the  poet's  part,  he 
pronounces  that,  "Just  as  Bacon  banished  religion  from  science,  so  did 

Shakespeare  from  art From  Bacon's  example  it  seems  clear  that 

Shakespeare  left  rehgious  matters  unnoticed  on  the  same  grounds."^ 
The  latest  and  weightiest  criticism  comes  to  the  same  conclusion ; 
and  it  is  only  on  presupposition  that  any  other  can  be  reached. 
One  of  the  ablest  of  Shakespearean  critics  sums  up  that  "  the  Eliza- 
bethan drama  was  almost  wholly  secular ;  and  while  Shakespeare 
was  writing  he  practically  confined  his  view  to  the  world  of  non- 
theological  observation  and  thought,  so  that  he  represents  it  in 
substantially  one  and  the  same  way  whether  the  period  of  the  story 
is  pre-Christian  or  Christian." 

[Prof.  A.  C.  Bradley,  Shakesperean  Tragedy,  2nd  ed.  p.  25. 
In  the  concluding  pages  of  his  lecture  on  Hamlet,  Professor 
Bradley  slightly  modifies  this  statement,  suggesting  that  the 
ghost  is  made  to  appear  as  "  the  representative  of  the  hidden 
ultimate  power,  the  messenger  of  divine  justice"  (p.  174). 
Here,  it  seems  to  the  present  writer,  Professor  Bradley  obtrudes 
the  chief  error  of  his  admirable  book — the  constant  implication 
that  Shakespeare  planned  his  plays  as  moral  wholes.  The  fact 
is  that  he  found  the  ghost  an  integral  part  of  the  old  play  which 
he  rewrote ;  and  in  making  it,  in  Professor  Bradley's  words, 

^  Some  typical  attempts  of  the  kind  are  discussed  in  the  author's  two  lectures  on  The 
BeZtcrt07i  o/ Sha/cespeare.  1887  (South  Place  Institute).  »  „   ..  eoe 

2  Shakespeare  Commentaries,  Eng.  tr.  1863,  ii.  618-19.  »  Id.  n,  586. 


16  THE  RISE  OE  MODERN  EREETHOUGHT 

"  so  majestical  a  phantom,"  he  was  simply  heightening  the 
character  as  he  does  others  in  the  play,  and  as  was  his  habit  in 
the  presentment  of  a  king.  In  his  volume  of  lectures  entitled 
Oxford  Lectures  on  Poetry  (1909),  Professor  Bradley  goes  more 
fully  into  the  problem  of  Shakespeare's  religion.  Il^re  ^^ 
somewhat  needlessly  obscures  the  issue  by  contending  (p.  d4y; 
that  it  is  preposterous  to  suppose  that  Shakespeare  was  an 
arderit  and  devoted  atheist  or  Brownist  or  Roman  Catholic, 
and  makes  the  most  of  the  poet's  sympathetic  treatment  of 
religious  types  and  religious  sentiments ;  but  still  sums  up  that 
he  "was  not,  in  the  distinctive  sense  of  the  word,  a  religious 
man,"  and  that  "  all  was,  for  him.  in  the  end,  mystery  '  (p.  ^o6),\ 

This  perhaps  somewhat  understates  the  case.  The  Elizabethan 
drama  was  not  wholly  secular;^  and  certainly  the  dramatists  indi- 
vidually were  not.  Peele's  David  and  Bethsahe  is  wholly  Biblical 
in  theme,  and,  though  sensual  la  sentiment,  substantially  orthodox 
in  spirit ;  and  elsewhere  he  has  many  passages  of  Protestant  and 
propagandist  fervour.'  Greene  and  Lodge  give  a  highly  Scriptural 
ring  to  their  Looking-Glass  for  London;  and  Lodge,  who  uses 
religious  expressions  freely  in  his  early  treatise,  A  Defence  of  Poetry, 
Music,  and  Stage  Plays,'  later  translated  Josephus.  Kyd  in  Arden 
of  Feversham^  accepts  the  Christian  view  at  the  close,  though  The 
Spanish  Tragedy  is  pagan  ;  and  the  pre-Shakespearean  Kiiig  Leir 
and  his  Three  Daughters  (1594),  probably  the  work  of  Kyd  and 
Lodge,  has  long  passages  of  specifically  Christian  sentiment.  Nashe, 
again,  was  a  hot  religious  controversialist  despite  his  Bohemian 
habits  and  his  indecorous  vein  ;  Greene  on  his  repentant  deathbed 
was  profusedly  censorious  of  atheism ;'  Lilly,  as  we  have  seen,  is 
combatively  theistic  in  his  Campaspe  ;  while  Jonson,  as  we  shall  see, 
girds  at  skeptics  in  Volpone  and  The  Magnet ick  Lady,  and  further 
wrote  a  quantity  of  devotional  verse.  Even  the  "  atheist  "  Marlowe, 
as  we  saw,  puts  theistic  sentiment  into  the  mouth  of  his  "  atheist 
Tamburlaine";  and  of  Doctor  Fausttis,  despite  incidental  heresy, 
the  dSnoucTneJit  is  religiously  orthodox.  Thomas  Heywood  may 
even  be  pronounced  a  rehgious  man,^  as  he  was  certainly  a  strong 
Protestant,'  though  an  anti-Puritan;    and   his   prose  treatise  The 

1  In  the  last  edition  I  had  written  to  that  eflfect;  but  I  have  modified  the  opinion. 

2  The  allusion  to  "  popish  ceremonies  "  in  Titus  Andronicus  is  probably  from  us  hand. 
See  the  author's  work.  Did  Shakespeare  WriU  "  TUus  Andronicus "f,  where  it  is  argued 
that  the  play  in  question  is  substantially  Peele's  and  Greene  s. 

3  Shakespeare  Soc.  rep.  1853,  pp.  14. 16-17, 18.  24,  '28,  etc. 

*  This  has  been  shown  to  be  his  by  Fleay  and  Mr.  Crawford. 

6  See  his  Groatsworthof  Wit  Bought  with  a  MiUion  of  Bemn^^^^  ir^.m/,.,  KilUd 

6  Compare  the  Jane  Shore  portions  of  his  Edward  IV  with  the  close  of  A  \\  oman  Killed 
with  Kindness.    Note  also  the  conclusion  of  The  English  Traveller. 

7  See  the  poem  England's  Elizabeth,  1631. 


ENGLAND 


17 


ti^ 


Hierarchy  of  the  Blessed  Angels  (1635)  exhibits  a  religious  tempera- 
ment. The  same  may  be  said  of  Dekker,  who  is  recorded  to  have 
written  at  least  the  prologue  and  the  epilogue  for  a  play  on 
Pontius  Pilate,^  and  is  beheved  to  be  the  author  of  the  best  scenes 
in  The  Virgin  Martyr,  in  which  he  collaborated  with  Massinger.  He 
too  uses  supererogatory  religious  expressions,^  and  shows  his  warm 
Protestantism  in  The  Whore  of  Babylon,  as  he  does  his  general 
religious  sentiment  in  his  treatise  The  Seven  Deadly  Sins.  Chapman 
was  certainly  a  devout  theist,  and  probably  a  Christian.  In  the 
-/ "  domestic  "  tragedy,  A  Warning  for  Fair  Women  (1599),  which  is 
conjecturally  ascribed  to  Lodge,  the  conclusion  is  on  Christian  Hues, 
as  in  Arden ;  and  the  same  holds  of  The  Witch  of  Edmonton,  by 
Dekker  and  others.  Of  none  of  these  dramatists  could  it  be  said, 
on  the  mere  strength  of  his  work,  that  he  was  **  agnostic,"  though 
Marlowe  was  certainly  a  freethinker.  The  others  were,  first  or 
last,  avowedly  religious.  Shakespeare,  and  Shakespeare  alone,  after 
Marlowe,  is  persistently  non-religious  in  his  handling  of  Hfe.  Lear, 
his  darkest  tragedy,  is  predominantly  pagan ;  and  The  Tempest,  in 
its  serener  vein,  is  no  less  so.  But  indeed  all  the  genuine  plays 
aUke  ignore  or  tacitly  negate  the  idea  of  immortahty  ;  even  the 
conventional  rehgious  phrases  of  Macbeth  being  but  incidental 
poetry. 

In  the  words  of  a  clerical  historian,  "the  rehgious  phrases 
which  are  thinly  scattered  over  his  work  are  little  more  than 
expressions  of  a  distant  and  imaginative   reverence.     And  on  the 

deeper  grounds  of  rehgious  faith  his  silence  is  significant The 

riddle  of  life  and  death he  leaves a  riddle  to  the  last,  with- 
out heeding  the  common  theological  solutions  around  him."^  The 
practical  wisdom  in  which  he  rose  above  his  rivals  no  less  than  in 
dramatic  and  poetic  genius,  kept  him  prudently  reticent  on  his 
opinions,  as  it  set  him  upon  building  his  worldly  fortunes  while  the 
others  with  hardly  an  exception  lived  in  shallows  and  miseries.  As 
so  often  happens,  it  was  among  the  ill-balanced  types  that  there  was 
found  the  heedless  courage  to  cry  aloud  what  others  thought ;  but 
Shakespeare's  significant  silence  reminds  us  that  the  largest  spirits 


*  Henslowe's  Diary,  ed.  Greg,  i,  fol.  96. 

2  E.g.,  the  lines, 

The  best  of  men 
That  e'er  wore  earth  about  him,  was  a  sufferer, 
A  soft,  meek,  patient,  humble,  tranquil  spirit. 
The  first  true  gentleman  that  ever  breathed, 

at  the  close  of  Part  I  of  The  Honest  Whore;  and  the  phrase,  "  Heaven's  great  arithme- 
tician," at  the  close  of  Oid  FortwTiatus.  ,^.,.      ^     ^   ...   c,,^ 
8  Green,  Short  Hist.  ch.  vii,  §  7  end.    Cp.  Ruskin,  Sesame  and  Lthes,  Lect.  in,  S  115. 

VOL.  II  C 


I 


I 


18 


THE  BISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


of  all  could  live  in  disregard  of  contemporary  creeds.  For.  while 
there  is  no  record  of  his  having  privately  avowed  unbelief,  and 
certainly  no  explicit  utterance  of  it  in  his  plays/  in  no  genuine  work 
of  his  is  there  any  more  than  bare  dramatic  conformity  to  current 
habits  of  religious  speech  ;  and  there  is  often  significantly  less.  In 
Measure  for  Measure  the  Duke,  counselUng  as  a  friar  the  condemned 
Claudio,  discusses  the  ultimate  issues  of  life  and  death  without  a  hint 

of  Christian  credence. 

So  silent  is  the  dramatist  on  the  ecclesiastical  issues  of  his  day 
that  Protestants  and  Catholics  are  enabled  to  go  on  indefinitely 
claiming  him  as  theirs ;  the  latter  dweUing  on  his  generally  kindly 
treatment  of  friars  ;  the  former  citing  the  fact  that  some  Protestant 
preacher— evidently  a  prot6g6  of  his  daughter  Susannah— was 
allowed  lodging  at  his  house.  But  the  preacher  was  not  very 
hospitably  treated  ;'  and  other  clues  fail.  There  is  good  reason  to 
think  that  Shakespeare  was  much  influenced  by  Montaigne's  Essays, 
read  by  him  in  Florio's  translation,  which  was  issued  when  he  was 
recasting  the  old  Hamlet ;  and  the  whole  treatment  of  Ufe  in  the 
great  tragedies  and  serious  comedies  produced  by  him  from  that 
time  forward  is  even  more  definitely  untheological  than  Montaigne's 
own  doctrine.'  Nor  can  he  be  supposed  to  have  disregarded  the 
current  disputes  as  to  fundamental  beliefs,  implicating  as  they  did 
his  fellow-dramatists  Marlowe,  Kyd,  and  Greene.  The  treatise  of 
De  Mornay,  of  which  Sir  Philip  Sidney  began  and  Arthur  Golding 
finished  the  translation,*  was  in  his  time  widely  circulated  in 
England;  and  its  very  inadequate  argumentation  might  well 
strengthen  in  him  the  anti-theological  leaning. 

A  serious  misconception  has  been  set  up  as  to  Shakespeare's 
cast  of  mind  by  the  persistence  of  editors  in  including  among 
his  works  without  discrimination  plays  which  are  certainly  not 
his,  as  the  Henry  VI  group,  to  which  he  contributed  little,  and 
in  particular  the  First  Part,  of  which  he  wrote  probably  nothing. 
It  is  on  the  assumption  that  that  play  is  Shakespeare's  work 
that  Lecky  (Eationalism  in  Europe,  ed.  1887,  i,  105-106)  speaks 
of  "  that  melancholy  picture  of  Joan  of  Arc  which  is  perhaps 
the  darkest  blot  upon  his  genius."  Now,  whatever  passages 
Shakespeare  may  have  contributed  to  the  Second  and  Third 
Parts,  it  is  certain  that  he  has  barely  a  scene  in  the  First,  and 

1  The  old  work  of  W.  J.  Birch,  M.A..  An  Inquiry  into  the  Philosophy  and  Relioion  of 
Shakspere  (1848).  is  an  unjudicial  ex  parte  statement  of  the  case  for  hhakespeare  s 
unbelief ;  but  it  is  worth  study.  .  ,     ,..  ,  i-         *. 

2  The  town  paid  for  his  bread  and  wine,  no  doubt  by  way  of  complimenli. 

'»  Cp.  the  &nt,hor's  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare.  2nd  ed.  sec.  \ni.  •   f^/,  j„ 

4  A  Woorke  concerning  the  trewneaae  of  tlte  Christian  Meligton,  1587.  Beprmted  in 
1592. 1604,  and  1617. 


ENGLAND 


19 


that  there  is  not  a  line  from  his  hand  in  the  La  Pucelle  scenes. 
Many  students  think  that  Dr.  Furnivall  has  even  gone  too  far  in 

saying  that  *' the  only  part to  be  put  down  to  Shakespeare 

is  the  Temple  Garden  scene  of  the  red  and  white  roses  "  (Introd. 
to  Leopold  Shakespeare,  p.  xxxviii) ;  so  little  is  there  to  suggest 
even  the  juvenile  Shakespeare  there.  (The  high  proportion  of 
double-endings  is  a  ground  for  reckoning  it  a  late  sample  of 
Marlowe,  who  in  his  posthumously  published  translation  of 
Lucan  had  approached  that  proportion.  Cp.  the  author's  vol. 
on  Titus  Andronicus,  p.  190.)  But  that  any  critical  and 
qualified  reader  can  still  hold  him  to  have  written  the  worst 
of  the  play  is  unintelligible.  The  whole  work  would  be  a  "  blot 
on  his  genius  "  in  respect  of  its  literary  weakness.  The  doubt 
was  raised  long  before  Lecky  wrote,  and  was  made  good  a 
generation  ago.  When  Lecky  further  proceeds,  with  reference 
to  the  witches  in  Macbeth,  to  say  {id.  note)  that  it  is  **  probable 

that  Shakespeare believed  with  an  unfaltering  faith  in  the 

reality  of  witchcraft,"  he  strangely  misreads  that  play.  Nothing 
is  clearer  than  that  it  grounds  Macbeth 's  action  from  the  first 
in  Macbeth's  own  character  and  his  wife's,  employing  the  witch 
machinery  (already  used  by  Middleton)  to  meet  the  popular 
taste,  but  never  once  making  the  witches  really  causal  forces. 
An  '*  unfaltering "  believer  in  witchcraft  who  wrote  for  the 
stage  would  surely  have  turned  it  to  serious  account  in  other 
tragedies.  This  Shakespeare  never  does.  On  Lecky's  view, 
he  is  to  be  held  as  having  believed  in  the  fairy  magic  of  the 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream  and  the  Tempest,  and  in  the  actuality 
of  such  episodes  as  that  of  the  ghost  in  Macbeth.  But  who  for 
a  moment  supposes  him  to  have  had  any  such  belief  ?  It  is 
probable  that  the  entire  undertaking  of  Macbeth  (1605?)  and 
later  of  the  Tempest  (1610  ?)  was  due  to  a  wish  on  the  part  of 
the  theatre  management  to  please  King  James,  whose  belief 
in  witchcraft  and  magic  was  notorious.  Even  the  use  of  the 
Ghost  in  Hamlet  is  an  old  stage  expedient,  common  to  the 
pre- Shakespearean  play  and  to  others  of  Kyd's  and  Peele's. 
Shakespeare  significantly  altered  the  dying  words  of  Hamlet 
from  the  "  heaven  receive  my  soul "  of  the  old  version  to  "  the 
rest  is  silence."  The  bequest  of  his  soul  to  the  Deity  in  his 
will  is  merely  the  regulation  testamentary  formula  of  the  time. 
In  his  sonnets,  which  hint  his  personal  cast  if  anything  does, 
there  is  no  real  trace  of  religious  creed  or  feeling.  And  it  is 
clearly  the  hand  of  Fletcher,  a  no  less  sensual  writer  than 
Peele,  that  penned  the  part  of  Henry  VIII  in  which  occurs  the 

Protestant  tag:    "In  her  [Elizabeth's]  days God  shall  be 

truly  known."  ^ 


1  As  to  the  expert  analysis  of  this  play,  which  shows  it  to  be  in  large  part  Fletcher's, 
see  Furnivall,  as  cited,  pp.  xciii-xcvi. 


20  THE  EISE  OF  MODEEN  FKEETHOUGHT 

While,  however,  Shakespeare  is  notably  naturalistic  as  compared 
with  the  other  Elizabethan  dramatists,  it  remains  true  that  their 
work  in  the  mass  tells  little  of  a  habitually  religious  way  of  thinkmg. 
Apart  from  the  plays  above  named,  and  from  polemic  passages  and 
devotional  utterances   outside   their  plays,  they  hint   as   little   of 
Christian  dogma  as  of  Christian  asceticism.     Hence,  in  fact,  the 
general  and  bitter  hostihty  of  the  Puritans  to  the  stage.     Even  at 
and  after  Shakespeare's  death,  the  drama  is  substantially     graceless. 
Jonson,  who  was  for  a  time  a  Catholic,  but  reverted  to  the  Church 
of  England,  disliked  the  Puritans,  and  in  BartJiolonmo  Fair  derides 
them.     The  age  did  not  admit  of  a  pietistic  drama  ;  and  when  there 
was  a  powerful  pietistic  public,  it  made  an  end  of  drama  altogether 
To   EHzabeth's   reign   probably   belongs   the   Atheist's   Tragedy  of 
Cyril  Tourneur.  first  published   in  1611,  but  evidently  written  m 
its  author's  early  youth— a  coarse  and  worthless  performance,  full 
of  extremely  bad   imitations   of    Shakespeare.'     But  to  the  age  of 
Elizabeth  also  belongs,  perhaps,  the  sententious  tragedy  of  Miistapha 
by  Fulke  Greville.  Lord  Brooke,  first  surreptitiously  published  in 
1609.     A  century  and  a  half  later  the  deists  were  fond  of  quoting 
the  concluding  Chorus  Sacerdotmi,  beginning : 

O  wearisome  condition  of  humanity. 
Born  under  one  law,  to  another  bound  ; 

Vainly  begot,  and  yet  forbidden  vanity; 
Created  sick,  commanded  to  be  sound : 

If  nature  did  not  take  delight  in  blood. 

She  would  have  made  more  easy  ways  to  good. 

It  is  natural  to  suspect  that  the  author  of  such  lines  was  less 
orthodox  than  his  own  day  had  reputed  him  ;  and  yet  the  whole 
of  his  work  shows  him  much  pre-occupied  with  religion,  though 
perhaps  in  a  deistic  spirit.  But  Brooke's  introspective  and 
undramatic  poetry  is  an  exception  :  the  prevailing  colour  of  the 
whole  drama  of  the  Shakespearean  period  is  pre-Puritan  and  semi- 
pagan  ;  and  the  theological  spirit  of  the  next  generation,  intensified 
by  King  James,  was  recognized  by  cultured  foreigners  as  a  change 
for  the  worse.'  The  spirit  of  free  learning  for  the  time  was  gone, 
expelled  by  theological  rancours  ;  and  when  Selden  ventured  in  his 
History  of  Tythes  (1618)  to  apply  the  method  of  dispassionate 
historical  criticism  to  ecclesiastical  matters  he  was  compelled  to 
make  a  formal  retractation.'     Early  Protestants  had  attacked,  as  a 

1  Tn  Spcfombe  and  Allen.  The  Age  of  ShaJcftpere,  1903,  ii.  189.  ,       „ 

2  A?berttB?t>/A°trX^      den  Zustand  der  Religion  in  Oross-Brtfan7n^  Hanover. 
1752  ii  4%     Alberti  reads  "God"  at  the  end  of  the  passage  :  I  follow  Grosart  s  edition. 

'^'n\a\^m,Lit  Eurcm.  ii,  371.  376  ;  Pattison,  Isaac  Casawbon  2nd  ed  p.  286  sq. 
*  Fatti^oii.  as  cited,  p! ii90 :  G.  W.  Johnson.  Memoirs  of  John  Selden,  1835.  pp.  56-70. 


ENGLAND 


21 


papal  superstition,  the  doctrine  that  tithes  were  levied  jure  divino : 
Protestants  had  now  come  to  regard  as  atheistic  the  hint  that  tithes 
were  levied  otherwise.^ 

Not  that  rationalism  became  extinct.  The  "  Italianate  " 
incredulity  as  to  a  future  state,  which  Sir  John  Davies  had 
sought  to  repel  by  his  poem,  Nosce  Teipsum  (1599),  can  hardly 
have  beeu  overthrown  even  by  that  remarkable  production,  which 
in  the  usual  orthodox  way  pronounces  all  doubters  to  be  "light 
and  vicious  persons,"  who,  "  though  they  would,  cannot  quite  be 
beasts." '  And  there  were  other  forms  of  doubt.  In  1602  appeared 
The  UnmaskiJig  of  the  Politique  Atheist,  by  J.  H.  [John  Hull], 
Batchelor  of  Divinitie,  which,  however,  is  in  the  main  a  mere 
attempt  to  retort  upon  Catholics  the  charge  of  atheism  laid  by 
them  against  Protestants.  Soon  after,  in  1605,  we  find  Dr.  John 
Dove  producing  a  Confutation  of  Atheisme  in  the  manner  of  previous 
continental  treatises,  making  the  word  "  atheism  "  cover  many  shades 
of  theism  ;  and  an  essayist  writing  in  1608  asserts  that,  on  account 
of  the  self-seeking  and  corruption  so  common  among  churchmen, 
"  prophane  Atheisme  hath  taken  footing  in  the  hearts  of  ignorant 
and  simple  men." '  The  orthodox  Ben  Jonson,  in  his  Volpone  (1607), 
puts  in  the  mouth  of  a  fool^  the  lines : — 

And  then,  for  your  religion,  profess  none, 

But  wonder  at  the  diversity  of  all ; 

And,  for  your  part,  protest,  were  there  no  other 

But  simply  the  laws  o'  th'  land,  you  would  content  you. 

Nic  Machiavel  and  Monsieur  Bodin  both 

Were  of  this  mind. 
But  the  testimony  is  not  the  less  significant ;  as  is  the  account  in 
The  Magnctick  Lady  (1632)  of 

A  young  physician  to  the  family 
That,  letting  God  alone,  ascribes  to  Nature 
More  than  her  share  ;  licentious  in  discourse. 
And  in  his  life  a  prof  est  voluptuary. « 

Such  statements  of  course  prove  merely  a  frequent  coolness 
towards  religion,  not  a  vogue  of  reasoned  unbelief.  But  the 
existence  of  rationalizing  heresy  is  attested  by  the  burning  of  two 
men,  Bartholomew  Legate  and  Edward  Wightman,  for  avowing 
Unitarian  views,  in  1612.  These,  the  last  executions  for  heresy  in 
England,   were   results   of    the    theological    zeal   of    King  James, 

1  Memoirs  cited,  pp.  60-61.    On  the  whole  question  see  the  Beview  appended  by  Selden 
to  his  History  after  a  few  copies  had  been  distributed. 

2  Poems  of  Sir  John  Davies,  ed.  Grosart,  1876.  i.  82.  &3. 

8  Essaies  Politicke  and  Morall,  by  D.  T.  Gent.  1608.  fol.  9.  *  "^  ,.17' r;i:fo,-„ 

8  Act  i.  sc.  1.    Jonson  himself  could  have  been  so  indicted  on  the  strength  of  certain 

verses. 


22 


THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


stimulated  by  the  Calvinistic  fanaticism  of  Archbishop  Abbot,  the 
predecessor  of  Laud. 

James's  career  as  a  persecutor  began  characteristically  in  a 
meddlesome  attack  upon  a  professor  In  Holland.  A  German 
theologian  of  Socinian  leanings,  named  Conrad  Vorstius,  professor 
at  Stein  furth,  had  produced  in  1606  a  somewhat  heretical  treatise, 
De  Deo,  but  had  nevertheless  been  appointed  in  1610  professor  of 
theology  at  Leyden,  in  succession  to  Arminius.  It  was  his  accep- 
tance of  Arminian  views,  joined  with  his  repute  as  a  scholar,  that 
secured  him  the  invitation,  which  was  given  without  the  knowledge 
that  at  a  previous  period  he  had  been  offered  a  similar  appointment 
by  the  Socinians.  In  his  Anti-Bellarmmus  contractus,  "  a  brief 
refutation  of  the  four  tomes  of  Bellarmin,"  he  had  taken  the 
Arminian  line,  repudiating  the  Calvinist  positions  w^hich,  in  the 
opinion  of  Arminius,  could  not  be  defended  against  the  Catholic 
attack.  But  he  was  too  speculative  and  ratiocinative  to  be  safe  in 
an  age  in  which  the  fear  of  spreading  Socinianism  and  the  hate  of 
Calvinists  towards  Arminianism  had  set  up  a  reign  of  terror. 
Vorstius  w^as  both  "unsettling"  and  heterodox.  His  opinions 
were  *'  such  as  in  our  own  day  would  certainly  disqualify  him 
from  holding  such  an  office  in  any  Christian  University";"  and 
James,  worked  upon  by  Abbot,  went  so  far  as  to  make  the 
appointment  of  Vorstius  a  diplomatic  question.  The  stadhouder 
Maurice  and  the  bulk  of  the  Dutch  clergy  being  of  his  view,  the 
more  tolerant  statesmen  of  Holland,  and  the  mercantile  aristocracy, 
yielded  from  motives  of  prudence,  and  Vorstius  was  dismissed  in 
order  to  save  the  English  alliance.  Remaining  thenceforth  without 
employment,  he  was  further  denounced  in  1619  by  the  Synod  of 
Dort,  and  banished  by  the  States  General.  Thereafter  he  lived  for 
two  years  in  hiding ;  and  soon  after  obtaining  a  refuge  in  Holstein, 
died,  worn  out  by  his  troubles.  In  England,  meantime,  James  drew 
up  with  his  own  hands  a  catalogue  of  the  heresies  found  by  him  in 
Vorstius's  treatise,  and  caused  the  book  to  be  burned  in  London  and 
at  the  two  Universities.' 


*  He  had  been  oflfered  professorships  of  divinity  at  Saumur  and  Marburg. 

2  Gardiner,  History  of  England,  1603-1642,  4th  ed.  ii.  128.  Cp.  Bayle,  art.  Vorstius. 
Note  N.  By  his  theological  opponents  and  by  James.  Vorstius  was  of  course  called  an 
atheist.  He  was  in  reality  not  a  Socinian.  but  a  "  strict  Arian,  who  believed  that  the  Son 
of  God  was  at  first  created  by  the  Father,  and  then  delegated  to  create  the  universe— a 
sort  of  inferior  deity,  who  was  nevertheless  entitled  to  religious  homage"  (James  Nichols, 
note  to  App.  P.  on  Brandt's  Life  of  Arminius  in  Works  of  Arminius,  18'25,  i.  218).  Nichols 
gives  a  full  survey  of  the  subject,  pp.  202-237.  Fuller  (C/i.  Hist.  B.  x,  cent.  17.  sec.  iv, 
l§  i-5)  tells  the  story,  and  pronounces  the  opinions  of  Vorstius  "fitter  to  be  remanded  to 
hell  than  committed  to  writing." 

^  Bayle  (art.  cited.  Note  F)  says  both  Universities,  as  does  Fuller.  At  the  Synod  of 
Dort,  however,  the  British  representatives  read  only,  it  seems,  a  decree  (dated  Sept.  21, 
1611)  of  the  Vice-Chancellor  of  Cambridge,  ordering  the  burning  of  the  book  there. 
(Nichols,  Account  of  the  Synod  of  Dort.  in  Works  of  Arminius,  i,  497). 


ENGLAND 


23 


On  the  heels  of  this  amazing  episode  came  the  cases  of  Wightman 
and  Legate.  Finding,  in  a  personal  conversation,  that  Legate  had 
"  ceased  to  pray  to  Christ,"  the  King  had  him  brought  before  the 
Bishop  of  London's  Consistory  Court,  which  sentenced  the  heretic 
to  Newgate.  Being  shortly  released,  he  had  the  imprudence  to 
threaten  an  action  for  false  imprisonment,  whereupon  he  was 
re-arrested.  Chief  Justice  Coke  held  that,  technically,  the  Con- 
sistory Court  could  not  sentence  to  burning ;  but  Hobart  and  Bacon, 
the  law  oflScers  of  the  Crown,  and  other  judges,  were  of  opinion  that 
it  could.  Legate,  accordingly,  was  duly  tried,  sentenced,  and  burned 
at  Smithfield  ;  and  Wightman  a  few  days  later  was  similarly  disposed 
of  at  Lichfield.^ 

Bacon's   share   in   this   matter   is   obscure,  and   has  not   been 
discussed  by  either  his  assailants  or  his  vindicators.     As  for  the 
general  public,  the  historian  records  that  "  not  a  word  was  uttered 
against  this  horrible  cruelty.    As  we  read  over  the  brief  contemporary 
notices  which  have  reached  us,  we  look  in  vain  for  the  slightest 
intimation  that  the  death  of  these  two  men  w^as  regarded  with  any 
other  feelings  than  those  with  which  the  writers  were  accustomed  to 
hear  of  the  execution  of  an  ordinary  murderer.     If  any  remark  was 
made,  it  was  in  praise  of  James  for  the  devotion  which  he  showed  to 
the  cause  of  God."""     That  might  have  been  reckoned  on.     It  was 
not  twenty  years  since  Hamond,  Lewis,  Cole,  and  Kett  had  been 
burned  on  similar  grounds;    and  there  had  been  no  outcry  then. 
For  generations  "  dironess  "  had  been  too  familiar  to  men's  thoughts 
to  admit  of  their  being  shocked  by  a  judicial  murder  or  two  the 
more.     Catholic  priests  had  been  executed  by  the  score :  why  not 
a  pair  of  Unitarians  ?  ^     Little  had  gone  on  in  the  average  intel- 
lectual Hfe  in  the  interim  save  religious  discussion  and  Bibliolatry, 
and  not  from  such  culture  could  there  come  any  growth  of  human 
kindness  or  any  clearer  conception  of  the  law  of  reciprocity.     But, 
whether  by  force  of  recoil  from  a  revival  of  the  fires  of  Smithfield 
or  from   a  perception   that   mere  cruelty  did  not  avail  to  destroy 
heresy,  the  theological  ultima  ratio  was  never  again  resorted  to  on 

English  ground. 

Though  no  public  protest  was   made,  the  retrospective   Fuller 

1  Gardiner,  pp.  129-30.    Fuller  (as  last  cited,  §§  (5-14)  gives  a  list  of  Legate's  "  damnable 
tenets"    See  it  in  Mrs.  Bradlaugh  Bonner's  Pe»iai<te.s  ?/po?i02n7MWi,  pp.  12-14. 

2  Gardiner,  as  cited.     Fuller  is  cheerfully  acquiescent,  [though  he  notes  the  private 
demurs,  whicii  he  denounces.     "  God,"  he  says.  "  may  seem  well  pleased  with  this  season- 

able  seventy. ^^^  records  how  one  Randall  was  put  on  trial  for  "conjuring  to  know  where 
treasure  was  hid  in  the  earth  and  goods  feloniously  taken  were  become  ;  and  four  others 
wl?e  tried  "for  being  present."  Four  were  found  guilty  and  sentenced  to  be  hanged. 
Randall  was  executed,  and  the  others  reprieved.    (Ed.  1615,  p.  688.) 


24 


THE  EISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


testifies  that  "such  burning  of  heretics  much  startled  common 
people,  pitying  all  in  pain,  and  prone  to  asperse  justice  itself  with 
cruelty,  because  of  the  novelty  (!)  and  hideousness  of  the  punish- 
ment."^ It  is  noteworthy  that  within  a  few  years  of  the  burning  of 
Legate  and  Wightman  there  appeared  quite  a  cluster  of  treatises 
expHcitly  contending  for  toleration.  In  1614  came  Beligion's 
Peace :  or,  a  Plea  for  Liberly  of  Conscience,  by  Leonard  Busher, 
the  first  English  book  of  the  kind.  In  1615  came  Persecution  for 
Beligion  Jiulged  and  Condemned  ;  and  in  1620  An  Humble  Supplica- 
tion to  the  King's  Majesty,  pressing  the  same  doctrine.'*  There  is 
no  record  of  any  outcry  over  these  works,  though  they  are  tolerably 
freespoken  in  their  indictment  of  the  coercive  school ;  and  they  had 
all  to  be  reprinted  a  generation  later,  their  point  having  never  been 
carried ;  but  it  may  be  surmised  that  their  appeal,  which  is  sub- 
stantially well  reasoned  from  a  secular  as  well  as  from  a  theological 
point  of  view,  had  something  to  do  with  the  abandonment  of  perse- 
cution unto  death.  Even  King  James,  in  opening  the  Parliament 
of  1614,  professed  to  recognize  that  no  religion  or  heresy  was  ever 
extirpated  by  violence. 

That  an  age  of  cruel  repression  of  heresy  had  promoted  unbelief 
is  clear  from  the  Atheomastix  of  Bishop  Fotherby  (1622),  which 
notes  among  other  things  that  as  a  result  of  constant  disputing  "  the 
Scriptures  (with  many)  have  lost  their  authority,  and  are  thought 
onely  fit  for  the  ignorant  and  idiote."  *  On  this  head  the  bishop 
attempts  no  answer ;  and  on  his  chosen  theme  he  is  perhaps  the 
worst  of  all  apologists.  His  admission  that  there  can  be  no  k  priori 
proof  of  deity*  may  be  counted  to  him  for  candour  ;  but  the  childish- 
ness of  his  reasoning  a  posteriori  excludes  the  ascription  of  philo- 
sophic insight.  He  does  but  use  the  old  pseudo-arguments  of 
universal  consent  and  design,  with  the  simple  device  of  translating 
polytheistic  terms  into  monotheistic.  All  the  while  he  makes  the 
usual  suggestions  that  there  are  few  or  no  atheists  to  convert,  and 
these  not  worth  converting — this  at  a  folio's  length.  The  book  tells 
only  of  difiiculties  evaded  by  vociferation.  And  while  the  growing 
stress  of  the  strife  between  the  ecclesiasticism  of  the  Crown  and  the 
forces  of  nonconformity  more  and  more  thrust  to  the  front  religio- 
poUtical  issues,  there  began  alongside  of  those  strifes  the  new  and 

1  FuUer  actually  alleges  that  "there  was  none  "ever  after  tbat  openly  avowed  these 
heretical  doctrines  "—an  unintelligible  figment.  „     .  ,        ..,  a..  .       •   ^     ^   i.    t^  t^ 

2  All  reprinted  in  1846  for  the  Hanserd  Knollys  Society,  with  histor.  introd.  by  E.  B. 
Underbill,  in  the  vol.  Tracts  mi  Liberty  of  Conscience  arid  Persecutwwi.  1614-1661.  They 
do  not  speak  of  Legate  or  Wightman. 

8  Atheomastix,  1622.  pref.    Big.  B.  3,  verso.    The  work  was  posthumous  and  incomplete. 
*  Bk.  i.  ch.i,  p.  5. 


ENGLAND 


26 


powerful  propaganda  of  deism,  which,  beginning  with  the  Latin 
treatise,  De  Veritate,  of  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury  (1624),  was 
gradually  to  leaven  English  thought  for  over  a  century. 

Further,  there  now  came  into  play  the  manifold  influence  of 
Francis  Bacon,  whose  case  illustrates  perhaps  more  fully  than 
any  other  the  difficulties,  alike  external  and  internal,  in  the  way  of 
right  thinking.  Taken  as  a  whole,  his  work  is  on  account  of  those 
difficulties  divided  against  itself,  insisting  as  he  does  alternately  on 
a  strict  critical  method  and  on  the  subjection  of  reason  to  the 
authority  of  revelation.  He  sounds  a  trumpet-call  to  a  new  and 
universal  effort  of  free  and  circumspect  inteUigence ;  and  on  the 
instant  he  stipulates  for  the  prerogative  of  Scripture.  Though  only 
one  of  many  who  assailed  alike  the  methodic  tyranny  of  Aristo- 
tehanism*  and  the  methodless  empiricism  of  the  ordinary  "  scientific  " 
thought  of  the  past,  he  made  his  attack  with  a  sustained  and  mani- 
fold force  of  insight  and  utterance  which  still  entitles  him  to  pre- 
eminence as  the  great  critic  of  wrong  methods  and  the  herald  of 
better.  Yet  he  not  only  transgresses  often  his  own  principal 
precepts  in  his  scientific  reasoning;  he  falls  below  several  of  his 
contemporaries  and  predecessors  in  respect  of  his  formal  insistence 
on  the  final  supremacy  of  theology  over  reason,  alike  in  physics  and 
in  ethics.  Where  Hooker  is  ostensibly  seeking  to  widen  the  field 
of  rational  judgment  on  the  side  of  creed.  Bacon,  the  very  champion 
of  mental   emancipation   in   the   abstract,    declares    the   boundary 

to  be  fixed. 

Of  those  lapses  from  critical  good  faith,  part  of  the  explanation 
is  to  be  found  in  the  innate  difficulty  of  vital  innovation  for  all 
intelligences  ;  part  in  the  special  pressures  of  the  religious  environ- 
ment.    On  the  latter  head  Bacon  makes  such  frequent  and  emphatic 
protest  that  we  are  bound  to  infer  on  his  part  a  personal  experience 
in  his  own  day  of  the  religious  hostility  which  long  followed  his 
memory.     "Generally,"  he  wrote  of  himself  in  one  fragment,  "he 
perceived  in  men  of  devout  simpUcity  this  opinion,  that  the  secrets 
of  nature  were  the  secrets  of  God,  and  part  of  that  glory  whereinto 
the  mind  of  man  if  it  seek  to  press  shall  be  oppressed  ;...... and  on 

the  other  side,  in  men  of  a  devout  policy  he  noted  an  incHnation  to 
have  the  people  depend  upon  God  the  more  when  they  are  less 
acquainted  with  second  causes,  and  to  have  no  stirring  in  philosophy, 
lest  it  may  lead  to  innovation  in  divinity  or  else  should  discover 


»  In  the  Advancement  of  Learning,  bk.  KRoutledge  ed.  p.  54).  he  himself  notes  how. 
long  before  his  time,  the  new  learning  had  in  part  discredited  the  schoolmen. 


26 


THE  EISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


ENGLAND 


27 


matter  of  further  contradiction  to  divinity  " '—a  summary  of  the 
whole  early  history  of  the  resistance   to   science.'     In  the  works 
which  he  wrote   at   the   height   of    his   powers,  especially  in  Ms 
masterpiece,  the  Novum  Organum  (1620),  where  he  comes  closest 
to  the  problems  of  exact  inquiry,  he  specifies  again  and  agam  both 
popular  superstition  and  orthodox  theology  as  hindrances  to  scientific 
research,  commenting  on  "  those  who  out  of  faith  and  veneration 
mix  their  philosophy  with  theology  and  traditions,'' '  and  declarmg 
that  of  the  drawbacks  science  had  to  contend  with  "  the  corruption 
of  philosophy  by  superstition  and  an  admixture  of  theology  is  far 
the  more  widely  spread,  and  does  the  greatest   harm,  whether  to 
entire  systems  or  to  their  parts.     For  the  human  understanding  is 
obnoxious  to  the  influence  of  the  imagination  no  less  than  to  the 
influence  of  common  notions."  *     In  the  same  passage  he  exclaims 
at  the  "  extreme  levity  "  of  those  of  the  moderns  who  have  attempted 
to  "found  a  system  of  natural  philosophy  on  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis,  on  the  book  of  Job,  and  other  parts  of  the  sacred  writings  "; 
and  yet  again,  coupling  as  obstinate  adversaries  of  Natural  Philo- 
sophy "  superstition,  and  the  blind  and  immoderate  zeal  of  religion/* 
he  roundly  affirms  that  "  by  the  simpleness  of  certain  divines  access 
to   any  philosophy,  however   pure,  is  well   nigh   closed.'"     These 
charges  are  repeatedly  salved  by  such  claims  as  that  "  true  religion  " 
puts  no  obstacles  in  the  way  of  science ;'  that  the  book  of  Job  runs 
much  to  natural  philosophy  ;^  and,  in  particular,  in  the  last  book  of 
the  De  Aiigmentis  Scientiarum,  redacted  after  his  disgrace,  by  the 
declaration— more  emphatic  than  those  of  the  earlier  Advancement 
of  Learning—that  "  Sacred  Theology  ought  to  be  derived  from  the 
word  and  oracles  of  God,  and  not  from  the  light  of  nature  or  the 
dictates  of  reason.'"     In  this  mood  he  goes  ^  so  far  as  to  declare, 
with  the  thorough-going  obscurantists,  that  "  the  more  discordant 
and  incredible  the  divine  mystery  is,  the  more  honour  is  shown  to 
God  in  believing  it,  and  the  nobler  is  the  victory  of  faith." 

[It  was  probably  such  deliverances  as  these  that  led  to  the 
ascription  to  Bacon  of  The  Ckristian  Paradoxes,  first  published 

1  Filum  Lahyrinthi-a.n  English  version  of  the  Coffitataet  Vim—iJ. 

2  Cp.  Huarte.  citedabove.  p.  471.  ^  , 

8  Nnv  Ora  bk  i.  Aph.  6-2  ( Works,  Routledge  ed.  p.  271).  it/.  Apn.  55. 

5  Id  ib.    Cp.  the  Advancement  of  Learning,  bk.  ii.  and  ihe  I>e  Auormntta,  bk.  ix.  near 

^""iNo^^Vrl^lX'sa^'c^^  46.  49.  06;  the  Valeriu.  Terminus,  ch.  xxv;  the  English 

Filiim  Labyriuthi,  §  7 ;  and  the  De  Principiis  atqm  Origimbus  (ed.  cited,  p.  650). 

7  Valerius  Terminus^  cap.  i.    (Ed.  cited,  p.  188.) 

a  Id.r>.18T,  Filum  Labyrinthi,^.^^.  „  ,  „,        •  i,    :  /„   ioc\    „„^   n^ 

9  Bk  ix.  ch.  i.  (Ed.  cited,  p.  6:31.)  Compare  F.iiertus  Termtnu8,c^  i  (p  186),  and  Pa 
Aua  bk.  iii.  ch.  ii  (p.  456),  as  to  the  impossibility  of  knowing  the  will  and  character  of 
God  from  Nature,  though  {De  Aug.  last  cit.)  it  reveals  his  power  and  glory. 


(surreptitiously),  without  author's  name,  in  1645.  As  has  been 
shown  by  Dr.  Grosart  {Lord  Bacon  NOT  the  Author  of  "  The 
Christian  Paradoxes,''  1865)  that  treatise  was  really  by  Herbert 
Palmer,  B.D.,  who  published  it  in  full  in  part  ii  of  his 
Memorials  of  Godliness  and  Christianity,  5th  ed.  1655.  The 
argument  drawn  from  this  treatise  as  to  Bacon's  skepticism  is 
a  twofold  mystification.  The  Paradoxes  are  the  deliberate 
declaration  of  a  pietist  that  he  believes  the  dogmas  of  revelation 
without  rational  comprehension.  The  style  is  plainly  not 
Bacon's ;  but  Bacon  had  said  the  same  thing  in  the  sentence 
quoted  above.  Dr.  Grosart's  explosive  defence  against  the 
criticism  of  Bitter  (work  cited,  p.  14)  is  an  illustration  of  the 
intellectual  temper  involved.] 

Yet  even  in  the  calculated  extravagance  of  this  last  pronounce- 
ment there  is  a  ground  for  question  whether  the  fallen  Chancellor, 
hoping  to  retrieve  himself,  and  trying  every  device  of  his  ripe 
sagacity  to  avert  opposition,  was  not  straining  his  formal  orthodoxy 
beyond  his  real  intellectual  habit.  As  against  such  wholesale 
affirmation  we  have  his  declarations  that  "  certain  it  is  that  God 
worketh  nothing  in  nature  but  by  second  causes,"  and  that  any 
pretence  to  the  contrary  "  is  mere  imposture  as  it  were  in  favour 
towards  God,  and  nothing  else  but  to  offer  to  the  author  of  truth  the 
unclean  sacrifice  of  a  lie  ";^  his  repeated  objection  to  the  discussion 
of  Final  Causes  '."^  his  attack  on  Plato  and  Aristotle  for  rejecting  the 
atheistic  scientific  method  of  Democritus;^  his  peremptory  assertion 
that  motion  is  a  property  of  matter;*  and  his  almost  Democritean 
handling  of  the  final  problem,  in  which  he  insists  that  primal  matter 
is,  "  next  to  God,  the  cause  of  causes,  itself  only  without  a  cause."* 
Further,  though  he  speaks  of  Scriptural  miracles  in  a  conventional 
way,^  he  drily  pronounces  in  one  passage  that,  "  as  for  narrations 
touching  the  prodigies  and  miracles  of  religions,  they  are  either  not 
true  or  not  natural,  and  therefore  impertinent  for  the  story  of 
nature."'  Finally,  as  against  the  formal  capitulation  to  theology  at 
the  close  of  the  De  Atigmentis,  he  has  left  standing  in  the  first  book 
of  the  Latin  version  the  ringing  doctrine  of  the  original  Adva?icement 
of  Learning  (1605),  that  "  there  is  no  power  on  earth  which  setteth 

^  Advancement,  bk.  i  (ed.  cited,  p.  45).    Cp.  Valerius  Terminus,  ch.  1  (p.  187). 

2  Advancemeyit,  bk.  ii;  De  Augmentis,  bk.  iii,  chs.  iv  and  v;  Valerius  Terminus, 
ch.  XXV ;  Novum  Organum.  bk.  i,  Aph.  48;  bk.  ii.  Aph.  2.  (Ed.  cited,  pp.  96,  205,  266,  302, 
471.473.) 

3  De  Principiis  atquc  Originibus.  (Ed.  cited,  pp.  649-50.)  Elsewhere  (De  Au{i.  bk.  iii, 
ch.  iv,  p.  471)  he  expressly  puts  it  that  the  system  of  Democritus.  which  "removed  God 
and  mind  from  the  structure  of  things."  was  more  favourable  to  true  science  than  the 
teleology  and  theology  of  Plato  and  Aristotle. 

*  Id.  pp.  651,  657.  ^  Id.  p.  648. 

6  De  Augmentis,  bk.  iii,  ch.  ii ;  bk.  iv.  ch.  ii.    (Ed.  cited,  pp.  456,  482.) 

7  Id.  bk.  ii.  ch.  i.    (Ed.  cited,  p.  428. ) 


i^mtaimaaiam. 


28 


THE  KISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


up  a  throne  or  chair  in  the  spirits  and  souls  of  men,  and  in  their 
cogitations,  imaginations,  opinions,  and  beliefs,  but  knowledge  and 
learning";'  and  in  his  Wisdom  of  the  Ancients^  he  has  contrived  to 
turn  a  crude  myth  into  a  subtle  allegory  in  behalf  of  toleration. 

Thus,  despite  his  many  resorts  to  and  prostrations  before  the 
Scriptures,  the  general  effect  of  his  writings  in  this  regard  is  to  set 
up  in  the  minds  of  his  readers  the  old  semi-rationaHstic  equivoque  of 
a  "two-fold  truth";  reminding  118  as  they  do  that  he  "did  in  the 
beginning  separate  the  divine  testimony  from  the  human."  When, 
therefore,  he  announces  that  "  we  know  by  faith  "  that  "  matter  was 
created  from  nothing,"'  he  has  the  air  of  juggling  with  his  problem ; 
and  his  further  suggestion  as  to  the  possibility  of  matter  being 
endowed  with  a  force  of  evolution,  however  cautiously  put,  is  far 
removed  from  orthodoxy.  Accordingly,  the  charge  of  atheism— 
which  he  notes  as  commonly  brought  against  all  who  dwell  solely 
on  second  causes  '—was  actually  cast  at  his  memory  in  the  next 
generation.'  It  was  of  course  false :  on  the  issue  of  theism  he  is 
continually  descanting  with  quite  conventional  unction  ;  as  in  the 
familiar  essay  on  atheism.'  Hia  dismissal  of  final  causes  as 
"  barren  "  meant  merely  that  the  notion  was  barren  of  scientific 
result;'  and  he  refers  the  question  to  metaphysic'  But  if  his 
theism  was  of  a  kind  disturbing  to  believers  in  a  controlling 
Providence,  as  little  was  it  satisfactory  to  Christian  fervour :  and  it 
can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  main  stream  of  his  argument  made 
for  a  non-Bibhcal  deism,  if  not  for  atheism  ;  his  dogmatic  orthodoxies 
being  undermined  by  his  own  scientific  teaching. 

Lechler  {Gesch.  cles  englischen  Deismus,  pp.  23-25)  notes  that 
Bacon  involuntarily  made  for  deism.  Cp.  Amand  Saintes,  Hist, 
de  la  philos.  de  Kant,  1844,  p.  69 ;  and  Kuno  Fischer,  Fraticis 
Bacon,  Eng.  tr.  1857,  ch.  xi,  pp.  341-43.  Dean  Church  {Bacon, 
in  '*  Men  of  Letters  "  series,  pp.  174,  205)  insists  that  Bacon 
held  by  revelation  and  immortality;  and  can  of  course  cite  his 
profession  of  such  belief,  which  is  not  to  be  disputed.  (Cp.  the 
careful  judgment  of  Prof.  Fowler  in  his  Bacon,  pp.  180-91,  and 
his  ed.  of  the  Novum  Organum,  1878,  pp.  43-53.)  But  the 
tendency  of  the  specific  Baconian  teaching  is  none  the  less  to 
put  these  beliefs  aside,  and  to  overlay  them  wath  a  naturalistic 
habit  of  mind.    At  the  first  remove  from  Bacon  we  have  Hobbes. 

2  §0  Iviu!  l5i^iS^''^.'ciIed.  p.  841.  »  m  PHncipiU  at<iue  Originilms.  p.  664. 

4  Nov.  Org.  i.  89:  Filum  Labyrinthi,  §  7;  Essay  16. 

«  Francis  Osborn.  pref .  to  his  *'  Miscellany."  in  Works,  Tth  ed.  1673. 

7  This^?fnoted^brGiL"ssfS?ci  \n  his  tr.  of  the  Novum  Organnm  (1844   p.  26) ;  and  by 
Ellison  his  and  Spedding's  edition  of  the  Works.    (Koutledge  ed.  pp.  M.  473.  note.) 

8  DeAugmentis,  bk.  iii.  ch.  iv,  end. 


ENGLAND 


29 


As  regards  his  intellectual  inconsistencies,  we  can  but  say  that 
they  are  such  as  meet  us  in  men's  thinking  at  every  new  turn. 
Though  we  can  see  that  Bacon's  orthodoxy  "  doth  protest  too  much," 
with  an  eye  on  king  and  commons  and  public  opinion,  we  are  not 
led  to  suppose  that  he  had  ever  in  his  heart  cast  off  his  inherited 
creed.  He  shows  frequent  Christian  prejudice  in  his  references  to 
pagans ;  and  can  write  that  **  To  seek  to  extinguish  anger  utterly  is 
but  the  bravery  of  the  Stoics,"  ^  pretending  that  the  Christian  books 
are  more  accommodating,  and  ignoring  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 
In  arguing  that  the  **  religion  of  the  heathen  "  set  men  upon  ending 
"  all  inquisition  of  nature  in  metaphysical  or  theological  discourse," 
and  in  charging  the  Turks  with  a  special  tendency  to  "ascribe 
ordinary  effects  to  the  immediate  workings  of  God,"  ^  he  is  playing 
not  very  scrupulously  on  the  vanity  of  his  co-rehgionists.  As  he 
was  only  too  well  aware,  both  tendencies  ruled  the  Christian  thought 
of  his  own  day,  and  derive  direct  from  the  sacred  books — not  from 
"abuse,"  as  he  pretends.  And  on  the  metaphysical  as  on  the 
common-sense  side  of  his  thought  he  is  self-contradictory,  even  as 
most  men  have  been  before  and  since,  because  judgment  cannot 
easily  fulfil  the  precepts  it  frames  for  itself  in  illuminated  hours. 
Latter-day  students  have  been  impressed,  as  was  Leibnitz,  by  the 
original  insight  with  which  Bacon  negated  the  possibility  of  our 
forming  any  concrete  conception  of  a  primary  form  of  matter,  and 
insisted  on  its  necessary  transcendence  of  our  powers  of  knowledge." 
On  the  same  principle  he  should  have  negated  every  modal  concep- 
tion of  the  still  more  recondite  Something  which  he  put  as  antecedent 
to  matter,  and  called  God.^  Yet  in  his  normal  thinking  he  seems  to 
have  been  content  with  the  commonplace  formula  given  in  his  essay 
on  Atheism — that  we  cannot  suppose  the  totality  of  things  to  be 
"  without  a  mind."  He  has  here  endorsed  in  its  essentials  what  he 
elsewhere  calls  "the  heresy  of  the  Anthropomorphites,"^  failing  to 
apply  his  own  law  in  his  philosophy,  as  elsewhere  in  his  physics. 
When,  however,  we  realize  that  similar  inconsistency  is  fallen  into 
after  him  by  Spinoza,  and  wholly  escaped  perhaps  by  no  thinker, 
we  are  in  a  way  to  understand  that  with  all  his  deflections  from 
his  own  higher  law  Bacon  may  have  profoundly  and  fruitfully 
influenced   the   thought   of    the   next   generation,   if    not    that    of 

his  own. 

The  fact  of  this  influence  has  been  somewhat  obscured  by  the 


1  Essay  57.  0/  Anger,  ^  Valerius  Terminus,  ch.  xxy. 

«  De  Principiis,  ed.  cited,  pp.  648-49.    Cp.  pp.  642-43.     ,        „,     .*  ^^'  ?A^^?;„ 
fi  Valerius  Terminus,  ch.  ii ;  De  Augnientis,  bk.  v,  ch.  iv.    Ed.  cited,  pp.  199.  517. 


30 


THE  BISE  OF  MODEBN  FEEETHOUGHT 


modern  dispute  as  to  whether  he  had  any  important  influence  on 
scientific  progress/  At  first  sight  the  old  claim  for  him  in  that 
regard  seems  to  be  heavily  discounted  by  the  simple  fact  that  he 
definitely  rejected  the  Copernican  system  of  astronomy.^  Though, 
however,  this  gravely  emphasizes  his  fallibility,  it  does  not  cancel 
his  services  as  a  stimulator  of  scientific  thought.  At  that  time  only 
a  few  were  yet  intelligently  convinced  Copernicans ;  and  we  have 
the  record  of  how,  in  Bacon's  day,  Harvey  lost  heavily  in  credit 
and  in  his  medical  practice  by  propounding  his  discovery  of  the 
circulation  of  the  blood,'  which,  it  is  said,  no  physician  over  forty 
years  old  at  that  time  believed  in.  For  the  scientific  men  of  that 
century— and  only  among  them  did  Copernicanism  find  the  slightest 
acceptance — it  was  thus  no  fatal  shortcoming  in  Bacon  to  have 
failed  to  grasp  the  true  scheme  of  sidereal  motion,  any  more  than  it 
was  in  Galileo  to  be  wrong  about  the  tides  and  comets.  They  could 
realize  that  it  was  precisely  in  astronomy,  for  lack  of  special  study 
and  expert  knowledge,  that  Bacon  was  least  quaUfied  to  judge. 
Intellectual  influence  on  science  is  not  necessarily  dependent  on 
actual  scientific  achievement,  though  that  of  course  furthers  and 
establishes  it ;  and  the  fact  of  Bacon's  impact  OE  the  mind  of  the 
next  age  is  abundantly  proved  by  testimonies. 

For  a  time  the  explicit  tributes  came  chiefly  from  abroad; 
though  at  aU  times,  even  in  the  first  shock  of  his  disgrace,  there 
were  Englishmen  perfectly  convinced  of  his  greatness.  To  the 
winning  of  foreign  favour  he  had  specially  addressed  himself  in  his 
adversity.  Grown  wary  in  act  as  well  as  wise  in  theory,  he  deleted 
from  the  Latin  De  Augmentis  a  whole  series  of  passages  of  the 
Advancement  of  Learning  which  disparaged  Catholics  and  Catho- 
licism ;*  and  he  had  his  reward  in  being  appreciated  by  many  Jesuit 
and  other  CathoHc  scholars.'  But  Protestants  such  as  Comenius 
and  Leibnitz  were  ere  long  more  emphatic  than  any  Catholics  ;^  and 
at  the  time  of  the  Restoration  w^e  find  Bacon  enthusiastically  praised 
among  the  more  open-minded  and  scientifically  biassed  thinkers  of 

»  Cp.  Brewster,  Life  of  Newton,  1855.  ii.  400-404 ;  Draper.  Intel.  Devel.  of  Europe,  ed.  1875, 
ii.  258-60;  Dean  Church.  Bacon,  pp.  18<H!01;  Fowler.  Bacon,  ch.  vi;  Ijodge,  Fumefrs  of 
Science,  pp.  145-51;  Lange.  Oesch.  d.  Materialismus,  i.  197  sq.  (Eng.  tr.  i.  23fa-37).  and 
cife.  from  Liebig— as  to  whom,  however,  see  Fowler,  pp.  133.  157.   ^    ,.„,..    ,  _». 

2  Novum  Organum,  ii,  46  and  48,  §  17  ;  De  Aug.  iii.  4 ;  Thema  Coelt.  Ed.  cited,  pp.  364. 
375.  461.  705.  709.  Whewell  (Hist,  of  Induct.  Sciences,  3rd  ed.  i,  296.  298)  ignores  the  second 
andthirdof  these  passages  in  denying  Hume's  assertion  that  Bacon  rejected  the  Coper- 
nican theory  with  "disdain."  It  is  true,  however,  that  Bacon  had  vacillated.  Ihe  facts 
are  fairly  faced  by  Prof.  Fowler  in  his  Bacon,  1881.  pp.  151-52.  and  his  ed.  of  Novum 
Orgamon,  Introd.  pp.  30-36.  See  also  the  summing-up  of  Ellis  in  notes  to  passages  above 
cited,  and  at  p.  675.  ,.         ..        „„„ 

3  Aubrey,  Lives  of  Eminent  Persona,  ed.  1813.  vol.  u,  pt.  ii,  p.  383. 
*  See  notes  in  ed.  cited,  pp.  50.  53.  61.  63.  68.  75.  76.  84.  110. 

5  Fowler,  ed.  of  Nov.  Org.  §  14,  pp.  101-104. 

6  Id.  §  14.  p.  108 ;  Ellis  in  ed.  cited,  p.  643. 


ENGLAND 


31 


England,  w^ho  included  some  zealous  Christians.*  It  was  not  that 
his  special  "  method  "  enabled  them  to  reach  important  results  with 
any  new  facility ;  its  impracticability  is  now  insisted  on  by  friends 
as  well  as  foes.  It  was  that  he  arraigned  with  extraordinary 
psychological  insight  and  brilliance  of  phrase  the  mental  vices 
which  had  made  discoveries  so  rare  ;  the  alternate  self-complacency 
and  despair  of  the  average  indolent  mind;  the  "  opinion  of  store" 
which  was  "  cause  of  want ";  the  timid  or  superstitious  evasion  of 
research.  In  all  this  he  was  using  his  own  highest  powers,  his 
comprehension  of  human  character  and  his  genius  for  speech.  And 
though  his  own  scientific  results  were  not  to  be  compared  with  those 
of  Galileo  and  Descartes,  the  wonderful  range  of  his  observation 
and  his  curiosity,  the  unwearying  zest  of  his  scrutiny  of  well-nigh 
all  the  known  fields  of  Nature,  must  have  been  an  inspiration  to 
multitudes  of  students  besides  those  who  have  recorded  their  debt 
to  him.  It  is  probable  that  but  for  his  literary  genius,  which 
though  little  discussed  is  of  a  very  rare  order,  his  influence  would 
have  been  both  narrower  and  less  durable  ;  but,  being  one  of  the 
great  writers  of  the  modern  world,  he  has  swayed  men  down  till 
our  own  day. 

Certain  it  is  that  alongside  of  his  doctrine  there  persisted  in 
England,  apart  from  all  printed  utterance,  a  movement  of  deistic 
rationalism,  of  which  the  eighteenth  century  saw  only  the  fuller 
development.  Sir  John  SuckHng  (1609-1641),  rewriting  about 
1637  his  letter  to  the  Earl  of  Dorset,  An  Account  of  Religion  by 
Beason,  tells  how  in  a  first  sketch  it  "  had  like  to  have  made  me  an 
Atheist  at  Court,"  and  how  "  the  fear  of  Socinianism  at  this  time 
renders  every  man  that  ofl^ers  to  give  an  account  of  religion  by 
reason,  suspected  to  have  none  at  all  ";^  but  he  also  mentions  that 
he  knows  it  **  still  to  be  the  opinion  of  good  wits  that  the  particular 
reHgion  of  Christians  has  added  little  to  the  general  religion  of  the 
world."  *  Himself  a  young  man  of  talent,  he  ofi'ers  quasi-rational 
reconciliations  of  faith  with  reason  which  can  have  satisfied  no  real 
doubter,  and  can  hardly  have  failed  to  introduce  doubt  into  the 
minds  of  some  of  his  readers. 


1  Rawley's  i<f?,  in  ed.  cited,  p.  9;  Osborn,  as  above  cited;  Fowler,  ed.  of  Nov.  Org. 
Tntrod.  §  14  ;  T.  Martin.  Character  of  Bacon,  1835.  pp.  216,  227,  222-23. 

'-*  Cp.  Fowler.  Bacon,  pp.  139-41 ;  Mill,  Logic,  bk.  vi,  ch.  v,  §  5 ;  Jevons.  Princ.  of  Science, 
1-vol.  ed.  p.  576;  Tyndall,  Scientific  Use  of  the  Imagination,  3rd  ed.  pp.  4,  8-9,  42-43;  T. 
Martin,  as  cited,  pp.  210-38 ;  Bsigehot,  Postulates  of  Eng.  Polit.  Econ.  ed,  1885,  pp.  18-19; 
Ellis  and  Spedding,  in  ed.  cited,  pp.  x,  xii,  22.  389.  The  notion  of  a  dialectic  method 
which  should  mechanically  enable  any  man  to  make  discoveries  is  an  irredeemable 
fallacy,  and  must  be  abandoned.  Bacon's  own  remarkable  anticipation  of  modern 
scientific  thought  in  the  formula  that  heat  is  a  mode  of  motion  {Nov.  Org.  ii,  20)  is  not 
mechanically  yielded  by  his  own  process,  noteworthy  and  suggestive  though  that  is. 

8  Pref.  Epistle.  <  Works,  ed.  Dublin.  1766,  p.  159 ;  ed.  1910,  p.  344. 


n 


THE  BISE  OF  MOBEEN  FBEETHOUGHT 


§  5.  Popular  Thoiight  in  Europe 
Of  popular  freethought  in  the  rest  of  Europe  there  is  little  to 
chronicle  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  the  Keformation.     The 
epoch-making  work  of  COPERNICUS,  published  in  1543,  had  httle  or 
no  immediate  effect  in  Germany,  where,  as  we  have  seen,  physical  and 
verbal  strifes  had  begun  with  the  ecclesiastical  revolution,  and  were 
to  continue  to  waste  the  nation's  energy  for  a  century.     In  1546, 
all  attempts  at  ecclesiastical  reconciliation  having  failed,  the^emperor 
Charles  V,  in  whom  Melanchthon  had  seen  a  model  monarch,  decided 
to  put  down  the  Protestant  heresy  by  war.     Luther  had  just  died, 
apprehensive  for  his  cause.     Civil  war  now  raged  tiU  the  peace  of 
Augsburg  in  1555  ;  whereafter  Charles  abdicated  in  favour  of  his 
son  Philip.     Here  were  in  part  the  conditions  which  in  France  and 
elsewhere  were  later  followed  by  a  growth  of  rational  unbehef ;  and 
there  are  some  traces  even  at  this  time  of  partial  skepticism  in  high 
places  in  the  German  world,  notably  in  the  case  of  the  Emperor 
Maximihan  II,  who,  "  grown  up  in  the  spirit  of  doubt,"    ^would 
never  identify  himself  with  either  Protestants  or  Catholics.      But 
in  Germany  there  was  still  too  little  intellectual   light,  too  little 
brooding  over  experience,  to  permit  of  the  spread  of  such  a  temper ; 
and  the  balance  of  forces  amounted  only  to  a  deadlock  between  the 
ecclesiastical   parties.     Protestantism  on   the   intellectual   side,   as 
already  noted,  had  sunk  into  a  bitter  and  barren  polemic    among 
the  reformers  themselves  ;  and  many  who  had  joined  the  movement 
reverted  to  CathoHcism.'     Meanwhile  the  teaching  and  preaching 
Jesuits  were  zealously  at  work,  turning  the  dissensions  of  the  enemy 
to  account,  and  contrasting  its  schism  upon  schism  with  the  unity 
of  the  Church.     But  Protestantism  was  well  welded  to  the  financial 
interest  of   the   many  princes    and   others  who    had  acquired  the 
Church  lands  confiscated   at  the   Reformation  ;    since  a  return  to 
Catholicism   would    mean    the    surrender   of    these.'     Thus   there 
wrought  on  the  one  side  the  organized  spirit  of  anti-heresy^  and  on 
the  other  the  organized  spirit  of  Bibliolatry,  neither  gaining  ground ; 
and  between  the  two,  intellectual  life  was  paralysed.     Protestantism 
saw  no  way  of  advance  ;  and  the  prevailing  temper  began  to  be  that 

1  Kohlraiisch.Htst.o/ Gferrminv.Eng.tr.  p.  385.  .. 

'^  Moritz  Ribter.  Geschichte  der  deutHchen  Union,  1867-73,  ii.  55. 

8  Menzel.  Geschichte  der  Deutschen,  3te  Aiifl.  Cap.  416.  rr.„*„^    r«/i 

*  Cp  Gardiner.  Thirty  Years'  War,  pp.  12-13:  Kohlrausch,  p.  438;  Pusey.  Htstor.  Em. 

into  Get.  Bationalism,  pp.  &-25 ;.  Henderson.  Short  »»»/-.«f  f^f^.^J'l'i^A^'  ui'ttJr' GBScMchte 

5  Kohlrausch,  p.  439.    A  specially  strong  reaction  set  in  about  1573.    Bitter.  GeacMC/iie 
derdeutschm  Union,  i.  19.    Cp.  Menzel.  Cap.  433.  ^  ^  oTn 

6  Cp.  Gardiner.  Thirty  Years'  War,  pp.  16.  18.  21  ;  Koblrausch,  p.  370. 

7  As  to  this  see  Moritz  Bitter,  as  cited,  i.  9,  27;  u,  122  m-i  Dunham.  Htat.  of  the 
Germanic  Empire,  iii.  186 ;  Henderson,  i.  411  sa. 


POPULAB  THOUGHT  IN  EUROPE 


33 


of  the  Dark  Ages,  expectant  of  the  end  of  the  world.^  Superstition 
abounded,  especially  the  belief  in  witchcraft,  now  acted  on  with 
frightful  cruelty  throughout  the  whole  Christian  world  ;^  and  in  the 
nature  of  the  case  Catholicism  counted  for  nothing  on  the  opposite 
side. 

The  only  element  of  rationalism  that  one  historian  of  culture  can 
detect  is  the  tendency  of  the  German  moralists  of  the  time  to  turn 
the  devil  into  an  abstraction  by  identifying  him  with  the  different 
aspects  of  human  folly  and  vice.^  There  was,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
a  somewhat  higher  manifestation  of  the  spirit  of  reason  in  the  shape 
of  some  new  protests  against  the  superstition  of  sorcery.  About 
1560  a  Cathohc  priest  named  Cornelius  Loos  Callidius  was 
imprisoned  by  a  papal  nuncio  for  declaring  that  witches'  con- 
fessions were  merely  the  results  of  torture.  Forced  to  retract,  he 
was  released  ;  but  again  offended,  and  was  again  imprisoned,  dying 
in  time  to  escape  the  fate  of  a  councillor  of  Treves,  named  Fiade, 
who  was  burned  alive  for  arguing,  on  the  basis  of  an  old  canon 
(mistakenly  named  from  the  Council  of  Ancyra),  that  sorcery  is  an 
imaginary  crime."*  Such  an  infamy  explains  a  great  deal  of  the 
stagnation  of  many  Christian  generations.  But  courage  was  not 
extinct  ;  and  in  1563  there  appeared  the  famous  John  Wier's 
treatise  on  witchcraft,^  a  work  which,  though  fully  adhering  to  the 
belief  in  the  devil  and  things  demoniac,  argued  against  the  notion 
that  witches  were  conscious  workers  of  evil.  Wier®  was  a  physician, 
and  saw  the  problem  partly  as  one  in  pathology.  Other  laymen, 
and  even  priests,  as  we  have  seen,  had  reacted  still  more  strongly 
against  the  prevailing  insanity ;  but  it  had  the  authority  of  Luther 
on  its  side,  and  with  the  common  people  the  earlier  protests  counted 
for  little. 

Eeactions  against  Protestant  bigotry  in  Holland  on  other  lines 
were  not  much  more  successful,  and  indeed  were  not  numerous. 
One  of  the  most  interesting  is  that  of  DiRK  COORNHERT  (1522- 
1590),  who  by  his  manifold  literary  activities^  became  one  of  the 
founders  of  Dutch  prose.     In  his  youth  Coornhert  had  visited  Spain 


1  Freytag,  Bilder  aus  d^  deutschen  Vergangenheit,  Bd.  ii,  1883.  p.  381 ;  Bd.  iii,  ad  init. 

2  Cp.  Lecky.  Bationalisyn  in  Euro%>e,  i,  53-83. 
8  Freytag,  Bilder,  Bd.  ii.  Abth.  ii,  p.  378. 

*  r/i<3  Pope  and  the  Coiuicil,  Eng.  tr.  p.  260  ;  French  tr.  p.  285. 

s  De  Praestigiis  Daemonum,  1563.  See  it  described  by  Lecky,  nationalism,  i,^&Sl\ 
Hallam.  Lit.  of  Europe,  ii,  76. 

6  By  Dutch  historians  Wier  is  claimed  as  a  Dutchman.  He  was  born  at  Grave,  m 
North  Brabant,  but  studied  medicine  at  Paris  and  Orleans,  and  after  practising  physic  at 
Arnheim  in  the  Netherlands  was  called  to  Diisseldorf  as  physician  to  the  Duke  of  Julich, 
to  whom  he  dedicated  his  treatise.  His  ideas  are  probably  traceable  to  his  studies  in 
France. 

7  His  collected  works  (1632)  amount  to  nearly  7,000  folio  pages.  J.  Ten  Brink,  Kleine 
Qeschiedenis  der  Nederlandsche  Letteren,  1882.  p.  91. 


VOL.  II 


D 


31 


THE  EISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


and  Portugal,  and  had  there,  it  is  said,  seen  an  execution  of  victims 
of  the  Inquisition/  deriving  thence  the  aversion  to  intolerance  which 
stamped  his  whole  life's  work.  It  does  not  appear,  however,  that 
any  such  peninsular  experience  was  required,  seeing  that  the  Dutch 
Inquisition  became  abundantly  active  about  the  same  period. 
Learning  Latin  at  thirty,  in  order  to  read  Augustine,  he  became 
a  translator  of  Cicero  and— singularly  enough— of  Boccaccio.  An 
engraver  to  trade,  he  became  first  notary  and  later  secretary  to  the 
burgomaster  of  Haarlem  ;  and,  faihng  to  steer  clear  of  the  strifes  of 
the  time,  was  arrested  and  imprisoned  at  the  Hague  in  1567.  On 
his  release  he  sought  safety  at  Kleef  in  Santen,  whence  he  returned 
after  the  capture  of  Brill  to  become  secretary  of  the  new  national 
Government  at  Haarlem ;  but  he  had  again  to  take  to  flight,  and 
lived  at  Kleef  from  1572  to  1577.  In  1578  he  debated  at  Leyden 
with  two  preachers  of  Delft  on  predestination,  which  he  declared  to 
be  unscriptural ;  and  was  officially  ordered  to  keep  silence.  There- 
upon he  published  a  protest,  and  got  into  fresh  trouble  by  drawing 
up,  as  notary,  an  appeal  to  the  Prince  of  Orange  on  behalf  of  his 
Catholic  fellow-countrymen  for  freedom  of  worship,  and  by  holding 
another  debate  at  the  Hague.^  Always  his  master-ideal  was  that  of 
toleration,  in  support  of  which  he  wrote  strongly  against  Beza  and 
Calvin  (this  in  a  Latin  treatise  published  only  after  his  death), 
declaring  the  persecution  of  heretics  to  be  a  crime  in  the  kingdom 
of  God  ;  and  it  was  as  a  moralist  that  he  gave  the  lead  to  Arminius 
on  the  question  of  predestination.'  "  Against  Protestant  and  Catholic 
sacerdotalism  and  scholastic  he  set  forth  humanist  world- wisdom  and 
Biblical  ethic,"*  to  that  end  publishing  a  translation  of  Boethius 
(1585),  and  composing  his  chief  work  on  Zedekimst  (Ethics). 
Christianity,  he  insisted,  lay  not  in  profession  or  creed,  but  in 
practice.  By  w^ay  of  restraining  the  ever-increasing  mahgnity  of 
theological  strifes,  he  made  the  quaint  proposal  that  the  clergy 
should  not  be  allowed  to  utter  anything  but  the  actual  words  of 
the  Scriptures,  and  that  all  works  of  theology  should  be  seques- 
trated. For  these  and  other  heteroclite  suggestions  he  was  expelled 
from  Delft  (where  he  sought  finally  to  settle,  1587)  by  the  magis- 
trates, at  the  instance  of  the  preachers,  but  was  allowed  to  die  in 
peace  at  Gouda,  where  he  wrote  to  the  last. 

All  the  while,  though  he  drew  for  doctrine  on  Plutarch,  Cicero, 

1  Ten  Brink,  p.  86.    Jonckbloet  {BeJcnopte  Chschiedenis  der  Nederl.  Letterhunde.  ed. 

^^'  Teu'eVink^lp-'S^S^'  S  Hallam.  Lit.  of  Europe,  ii.  83.  -  Ten  Brink,  p.  87. 

8  Jonckbloet.  Beknopte  aeschiedenia,  p.  149;  Ten  Brink,  p.  91 ;  Ba.yle,Dtctt07iyiatre.  art. 
Koobnhert;  Piinjer.  Hist,  of  the  Chr.  Philos.  of  Beltoton,  Eng.  tr.  p.  269 ;  Dr.  E.  Gosse. 
art.  on  Dutch  Literature  in  Encyc.  Brit.  9th  ed.  xii,  93. 


POPULAR  THOUGHT  IN  EUROPE 


35 


Seneca,  and  Marcus  Aurelius  equally  with  the  Bible,  Coornhert 
habitually  founded  on  the  latter  as  the  final  authority.^  On  no 
other  footing  could  any  one  in  his  age  and  country  stand  as  a 
teacher.  It  was  not  till  after  generations  of  furious  intolerance  that 
a  larger  outlook  was  possible  in  the  Netherlands  ;  and  the  first  steps 
towards  it  were  naturally  taken  independently  of  theology.  Although 
Grotius  figured  for  a  century  as  one  of  the  chief  exponents  of  Christian 
evidences,  it  is  certain  that  his  great  work  on  the  Law  of  War  and 
Peace  (1625)  made  for  a  rationalistic  conception  of  society.  "  Modern 
historians  of  jurisprudence,  like  Lerminier  and  Bluntschli,  represent 
it  as  the  distinctive  merit  of  Grotius  that  he  freed  the  science  from 
bondage  to  theology.'"*  The  breach,  indeed,  is  not  direct,  as  theistic 
sanctions  are  paraded  in  the  Prolegomena;  but  along  with  these 
goes  the  avowal  that  natural  ethic  would  be  vahd  even  were  there 
no  God,  and — as  against  the  formula  of  Horace,  Utilitas  justi  mater 
— that  "the  mother  of  natural  right  is  human  nature  itself."® 

Where  Grotius,  defender  of  the  faith,  figured  as  a  heretic, 
unbehef  could  not  speak  out,  though  there  are  traces  of  its 
underground  life.  The  charge  of  atheism  was  brought  against 
the  Excercitationes  PhilosophiccB  of  Gorlaeus,  pubHshed  in  1620  ; 
but,  the  book  being  posthumous,  conclusions  could  not  be  tried. 
Views  far  short  of  atheism,  however,  were  dangerous  to  their 
holders;  for  the  merely  Socinian  work  of  Voelkel,  published  at 
Amsterdam  in  1642,  w^as  burned  by  order  of  the  authorities,  and 
a  second  impression  shared  the  same  fate.*  In  1653  the  States  of 
Holland  forbade  the  publication  of  all  Unitarian  books  and  all 
Socinian  worship ;  and  though  the  veto  as  to  books  was  soon 
evaded,  that  on  worship  was  enforced.^  Still,  Holland  was  relatively 
tolerant  as  beside  other  countries ;  and  when  the  Unitarian  physician 
Daniel  Zwicker  (1612-1678),  of  Dantzig,  found  his  own  country  too 
hot  to  hold  him,  he  came  to  Holland  (about  1652)  "  for  security  and 
convenience."  ^  He  was  able  to  publish  at  Amsterdam  in  1658  his 
Latin  Irenicuni  Irenicorum,  wherein  he  lays  down  three  principles 
for  the  settlement  of  Christian  difficulties,  the  first  being  "  the 
universal  reason  of  mankind,"  while  Scripture  and  tradition  hold 
only  the  second  and  third  places.  His  book  is  a  remarkable 
investigation  of  the  rise  of  the  doctrines  of  the  Logos  and  the 
Trinity,  which  he  traced  to  polytheism,  making  out  that  the  first 
Christians,  whom  he  identified  with  the  Nazarenes,  regarded  Jesus 


1  Ten  Brink,  p.  91. 

8  Be  Jure  Belli  et  Pacis,  proleg.  §§  11, 16. 

s  Schlegel's  note  on  Mosheim,  Reid's  ed.  p.  862. 

6  Nelson,  Life  of  Bishop  Bull,  2nd  ed.  1714,  p.  392. 


2  Flint,  Vico,  p.  142. 
*  Bayle,  art.  Voelkel, 


36  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

as  a  man.     The  book  evoked  many  answers,  and  it  Is  somewhat 
surprising  that  Zwicker  escaped  serious  persecution,  dymg  peaceful  y 
in  Amsterdam  in  1678,  whereas  writers  much  less  pronounced  in 
their  heresy  incurred  aggressive  hostihty.     Descartes,  as  we  sha^l 
see.  during  his  stay  in  Holland  was  menaced  by  clerical  ^^na^^^^^^ 
Some  fared  worse.     In  the  generation  after  Grotms  one  Koerba^^^^ 
a  doctor,  for  publishing  (1668)  a  dictionary  of  ^^^^^  ^^^^^^^^f^/J^^^^ 
advanced   ideas,  had   to   fly   from    Amsterdam.     At   Cu^enberg   be 
translated  a  Unitarian  work  and  began  another ;  but  was  betrayed 
tried  for  blasphemy,  and  sentenced  to  ten  years    imprisonment     o 
be  followed  by  ten  years'  banishment.    He  compromised  by  dyin,  in 
prison  within   the   year.     Even   as   late   -   1678  the  ^un^onsuU 
Hadrian  Beverland  (afterwards  appointed,  through  Isaac  Vossius 
to  a  lay  office  under  the  Church  of  England)  was  imprisoned  and 
struck  off  the  rolls  of  Leyden  University  for  his  Peccatum  Onginale, 
in  which  he  speculated  erotically  as  to  the  nature  of  the  sin  of  Adain 
and  Eve      The  book  was  furiously  answered,  and  publicly  burned. 
It  was  only  after  an  age  of  such  intolerance  that  Holland,  at  the  end 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  began  to  become  for  England  a  model  of 
freedom  in  opinion,  as  formerly  in  trade.     And  it  seems  to  have  been 
through  Holland,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  that 
there  came  the  fresh  Unitarian  impulse  which  led  to  the  comiderable 
spread  of  the  movement  in  England  after  the  Revolution  of  1688. 

Unitarianism,  which  we  have  seen  thus  invading  Holland  some- 
what persistently  during  half  a  century,  was  then  as  now  impotent 
beyond  a  certain  point  by  reason  of  its  divided  allegiance,  though  it 
has  always  had  the  support  of  some  good  minds.     Its  denial  of  the 
deity  of  Jesus  could  not  be  made  out  without  a  certain  superposing 
of  reason   on   Scripture ;  and   yet   to    Scripture   it   always   finally 
appealed.      The   majority  of    men   accepting   such  authority^  have 
always  tended  to  believe  more  uncritically ;    and  the  majority  o 
men  who  are  habitually  critical  will  always  repudiate  the  Scriptural 
jurisdiction.     In  Poland,  accordingly,  the  movement,  so  flourishing 
in  its  earlier  years,  was  soon  arrested,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  per- 
ception that  it  drove  many  Protestants  back  to  Catholicism  ;  among 
these  being  presumably  a  number  whose  critical   insight  showed 
them  that  there  was  no  firm  standing-ground  between  Catholicism 
and  Naturalism.      Every  new  advance  within  the  Unitarian  pale 

1  Nic^ron.  Memoires  pour  servir^  etc.,  ^^v  /mi)  340  «a.    One^of  the  replies  i^thej;^^^^ 

'      the  uSe'Zt  de  I'Zmme  /ar!we  PecMOrioineL    It  reached  a  sixth  edition  in  1741. 

2  Nelson.  Life  of  Bishop  Bull,  as  cited,  p.  280. 


POPULAR  THOUGHT  IN  EUROPE 


37 


terrified  the  main  body,  many  of  whom  were  mere  Arians,  holding 
by  the  term  Trinity,  and  merely  making  the  Son  subordinate  to  the 
Father.  Thus  when  one  of  their  most  learned  ministers,  Simon 
Budny,  followed  in  the  steps  of  Ferencz  Davides  (whom  we  have 
seen  dying  in  prison  in  Transylvania  in  1579),  and  represented 
Jesus  as  a  **  mere "  man,  he  was  condemned  by  a  synod  (1582) 
and  deposed  from  his  office  (1584).  He  recanted,  and  was 
reinstated,^  but  his  adherents  seem  to  have  been  excommunicated. 
The  sect  thus  formed  were  termed  Semi-Judaizers  by  another  heretic, 
Martin  Czechowicz,  who  himself  denied  the  pre-existence  of  Jesus, 
and  made  him  only  a  species  of  demi-god;^  yet  Fausto  Sozzini, 
better  known  as  Faustus  Socinus,  who  also  wrote  against  them,  and 
who  had  worked  with  Biandrata  to  have  Davides  imprisoned, 
conceded  that  prayer  to  Christ  was  optional.^ 

Faustus,  who  arrived  in  Poland  in  1579,  seems  to  have  been 
moved  to  his  strenuously  "  moderate  "  policy,  which  for  a  time 
unified  the  bulk  of  the  party,  mainly  by  a  desire  to  keep  on  tolerable 
terms  with  Protestantism.  That,  however,  did  not  serve  him  with 
the  Catholics  ;  and  when  the  reaction  set  in  he  suffered  severely  at 
their  hands.  His  treatise,  De  Jesu  Christu  Servatore,  created  bitter 
resentment;  and  in  1598  the  Catholic  rabble  of  Cracow,  led  "as 
usual  by  the  students  of  the  university,"  dragged  him  from  his 
house.  His  life  was  saved  only  by  the  strenuous  efforts  of  the 
rector  and  two  professors  of  the  university ;  and  his  library  was 
destroyed,  with  his  manuscripts,  whereof  "  he  particularly  regretted 
a  treatise  which  he  had  composed  against  the  atheists  ";*  though  it  is 
not  recorded  that  the  atheists  had  ever  menaced  either  his  life  or 
his  property.  He  seems  to  have  been  zealous  against  all  heresy 
that  outwent  his  own,  preaching  passive  obedience  in  politics  as 
emphatically  as  any  churchman,  and  condemning  alike  the  rising 
of  the  Dutch  against  Spanish  rule  and  the  resistance  of  the  French 
Protestants  to  their  king.*^ 

This  attitude  may  have  had  something  to  do  with  the  better  side 
of  the  ethical  doctrines  of  the  sect,  which  leant  considerably  to  non- 
resistance.  Czechowicz  (who  was  deposed  by  his  fellow-Socinians 
for  schism)  seems  not  only  to  have  preached  a  patient  endurance  of 
injuries,  but  to  have  meant  it ;®  and  to  the  Socinian  sect  belongs  the 

1  Krasinski,  Bef.  tn  Poland,  1840.  ii.  363 ;  Mosheim,  16  Cent.  sec.  iii,  pt.  ii.  ch.  iv.  §  22. 
Budny  translated  the  Bible,  with  rationalistic  notes.  2  Krasinski,  p.  361. 

^  Mosheim,  last  cit.  §  23,  note  4. 

<  Krasinski,  p.  367  ;  Wallace,  A.ntitrin.  Biog.  1850,  ii,  320. 

*  Bayle,  art.  Fauste  Socin.    Krasinski,  p.  374. 

«  Krasinski.  pp.  361-62.  Fausto  Sozzini  also  could  apparently  forgive  everybody  save 
those  who  believed  less  than  he  did. 


38 


THE  EISE  OF  MODEKN  FKEETHOUGHT 


main  credit  of  setting  up  a  humane  compromise  on  tbe  doctrine  of 
eternal  punishment/  The  time,  of  course,  had  not  come  for  any 
favourable  reception  of  such  a  compromise  in  Christendom ;  and  it 
is  noted  of  the  German  Socinian,  Ernst  Schoner  (Sonerus),  who 
wrote  ac^ainst  the  orthodox  dogma,  that  his  works  are  *'  exceedingly 


i>2 


scarce.  "■     Unitarianism  as  a  whole,  indeed,  made  little  headway 
outside  of  Poland  and  Transylvania. 

In  Spain,  meantime,  there  was  no  recovery  from  the  paralysis 
wrought  by  the  combined  tyranny  of  Church  and  Crown,  incarnate 
in  the  Inquisition.      The  monstrous  multipUcation  of   her   clergy 
might  alone  have  sufficed  to  set  up  stagnation  in  her  mental  life  ; 
but,  not  content  with  the  turning  of  a  vast  multitude'  of  men  and 
women  away  from  the  ordinary  work  of  hfe,  her  rulers  set  them- 
selves to  expatriate  as  many  more  on  the  score  of  heresy.     A  century 
after  the  expulsion  of  the  Jews  came  the  turn  of  the  Moors,  whose 
last  hold  in  Spain,  Granada,  had  been  overthrown  in  1492.     Within 
a  generation  they  had  been  deprived  of  all  exterior  practice  of  their 
religion;'  but  that  did  not  suffice,  and  the  Inquisition  never  left 
them  alone.     Harried,  persecuted,  compulsorily  baptized,  deprived 
of  their  Arabic  books,  they  repeatedly  revolted,  only  to  be  beaten 
down.     At  length,  in  the  opening  years  of  the  seventeenth  century 
(1610-1613).  under  Philip  III.  on  the  score  that  the  great  Armada 
had  failed  because  heretics  were  tolerated  at  home,  it  was  decided 
to  expel  the  whole  race ;  and  now  a  miUion  Moriscoes,  among  the 
most  industrious  inhabitants  of  Spain,  were  driven  the  way  of  the 
Jews.     It  is  needless  here  to   recall   the  ruinous  effect  upon  the 
material  life  of  Spain:'  the  aspect  of  the  matter  which  specially 
concerns  us  is  the  consummation  of  the  policy  of  killing  out  all 
intellectual  variation.     The  Moriscoes  may  have  counted  for  little 
in  positive  culture  ;  but  they  were  one  of  the  last  and  most  important 
factors  of  variation   in   the   country;    and  when   Spain  was  thus 
successively  denuded  of  precisely  the   most  original  and  energetic 
types  among  the  Jewish,  the  Spanish,  and  the  Moorish  stocks,  her 
mental  arrest  was  complete. 

To  modern  freethought,  accordingly,  she  has  till  our  own  age 

1  Cd  the  inquiry  as  to  Locke's  Socinianism  in  J.  Milner's  Account  of  Mr.  Lock's 
Beligion  out  of  his  own  Writings,  1706,  and  Lessings  Zur  Geschichte  und  Literatur.  i.  as 
to  Leibnitz's  criticism  of  Sonerus.  ^    ,„       i      \  ^a   lo^n  «  kqt 

'^  Enfield's  History  of  Pnilosophy  (an  abstract  of  Brucker),  ed.  1840.  p.  537. 

8  In  the  dominion!  of  Philip  II  there  are  said  to  have  been  58  Y.^J^ishops  684  bishops. 
11400  abbeys  23,000  religious  fraternities.  46,000  monasteries.  13.500  nunneries.  31'2,000 
secXr  priests,  400^^  200.000  friars  and  other  ecclesiastics.    H.  E.  Watts.  Miguel 

de  Cervantes,  1895.  pp.  67-68.    Spain  alone  had  9.088  monasteries. 

4  Wnoklfi  "^-vol  ed  ii  484:  1-vol.  ed.  p.  564,  and  refs.  _       , 

fi  CpBuckle?i?oi.edii.  4^7-99;  1-vol.  ed.  pp.  572-73  :  La  Kigaudi^re.  Hist,  des  Fersic. 
Belig.  en  Espagne,  1860.  pp.  226-26. 


POPULAK  THOUGHT  IN  EUEOPE 


39 


contributed  practically  nothing.  Huarte  seems  to  have  had  no 
Spanish  successors.  The  brilliant  dramatic  literature  of  the  reigns 
of  the  three  Philips,  which  influenced  the  rising  drama  alike  of 
France  and  England,  is  notably  unintellectual,^  dealing  endlessly  in 
plot  and  adventure,  but  yielding  no  great  study  of  character,  and 
certainly  doing  nothing  to  further  ethics.  Calderon  was  a  thorough 
fanatic,  and  became  a  priest;'^  Lope  de  Vega  found  solace  under 
bereavement  in  zealously  performing  the  duties  of  an  Inquisitor  ; 
and  was  so  utterly  swayed  by  the  atrocious  creed  of  persecution 
which  was  blighting  Spain  that  he  joined  in  the  general  exultation 
over  the  expulsion  of  the  Moriscoes.  Even  the  mind  of  Cervantes 
had  not  on  this  side  deepened  beyond  the  average  of  his  race  and 
time;^  his  old  wrongs  at  Moorish  hands  perhaps  warping  his  better 
judgment.  His  humorous  and  otherwise  kindly  spirit,  so  incon- 
gruously neighboured,  must  indeed  have  counted  for  much  in 
keeping  life  sweet  in  Spain  in  the  succeeding  centuries  of  bigotry 
and  ignorance.  But  from  the  seventeenth  century  till  the  other 
day  the  brains  were  out,  in  the  sense  that  genius  was  lacking. 
That  species  of  variation  had  been  too  effectually  extirpated  during 
two  centuries  to  assert  itself  until  after  a  similar  duration  of  normal 
conditions.  The  "  immense  advantage  of  religious  unity,"  which 
even  a  modern  Spanish  historian*  has  described  as  a  gain  balancing 
the  economic  loss  from  the  expulsion  of  the  Moriscoes,  was  precisely 
the  condition  of  minimum  intellectual  activity — the  unity  of  stagna- 
tion. No  kind  of  ratiocinative  thought  was  allowed  to  raise  its 
head.  A  Latin  translation  of  the  Hypotyposes  of  Sextus  Empiricus 
had  been  permitted,  or  at  least  published,  in  Catholic  France ;  but 
when  Martin  Martinez  de  Cantatapiedra,  a  learned  orientalist  and 
professor  of  theology,  ventured  to  do  the  same  thing  in  Spain — 
doubtless  with  the  idea  of  promoting  faith  by  discouraging  reason 
— he  was  haled  before  the  Inquisition,  and  the  book  proscribed 
(1583).  He  was  further  charged  with  Lutheran  leanings  on  the 
score  that  he  had  a  preference  for  the  actual  text  of  Scripture  over 
that  of  the  commentators.*^  In  such  an  atmosphere  it  was  natural 
that  works  on  mathematics,  astronomy,  and  physics  should  be 
censured  as  "  favouring  materialism  and  sometimes  atheism."  ^    It 

*  Cp.  Lewes.  Spanish  Drama,  passim. 

2  "He  inspires  me  only  with  horror  for  the  faith  which  he  professes.  No  one  ever  so 
far  disfigured  Christianity;  no  one  ever  assigned  to  it  passions  so  ferocious,  or  morals  so 
corrupt"  (Sismondi,  Lit.  of  South  of  Europe,  Bohn  tr.  ii,  379). 

8  Ticknor.  £ftsf.  of  Spanish  Lit.  6th  ed.  ii,  501;  Don  Quixote,  pt.  ii,  ch.  liv;  Ormsby, 
tr.  of  Don  Quixote,  1885,  introd.  i,  58. 

*  Lafuente,  Historia  de  Espana,  1856,  xvii.  340.  It  is  not  Quite  certain  that  Lafuente 
expressed  his  sincere  opinion. 

6  Llorente,  ii.  433.  ^  id.  p.  420. 


ittiiiMyHUiMia 


40  THE  EISE  OF  MODEEN  FEEETHOUGHT 

has  been  held  by  one  historian  thafe  at  the  death  of  PhiUp  II  tbere 
arose  some  such  sense  of  reUef  throughout  Spain  as  was  felt  later 
in  France  at  the  death  of  Louis  XIV;  that  *' the  Spaniards  now 
ventured  to  sport  with  the  chains  which  they  had  not  the  power  to 
break";  and  that  Cervantes  profited  by  the  change  m  conceiving 
and  writing  his  Don  Quixote.^  But  the  same  historian  had  before 
seen  that  "  poetic  freedom  was  circumscribed  by  the  same  shackles 
which  fettered  moral  hberty.  Thoughts  which  could  not  be  expressed 
without  fear  of  the  dungeon  and  the  stake  were  no  longer  materials 
for  the  poet  to  work  on.     His  imagination,  instead  of  improving 

them  into  poetic  ideas had  to  be  taught  to  reject  them.     But 

the  eloquence  of  prose  was  more  completely  bowed  down,  under  the 
inquisitorial  yoke  than  poetry,  because  it  was  more  dosely  allied 
to  truth,  which  of  all  things  was  the  most  dreaded."  Cervantes, 
Lope  de  Vega,  and  Calderon  proved  that  within  the  iron  wall  of 
Catholic  orthodoxy,  in  an  age  when  conclusions  were  but  slowly 
bein^  tried  between  dogma  and  reason,  there  could  be  a  vigorous 
play'of  imaginative  genius  on  the  field  of  human  nature  ;  even  as 
in  Velasquez,  sheltered  by  royal  favour,  the  genius  of  colour  and 
portraiture  could  become  incarnate.  But  after  these  have  passed 
away,  the  laws  of  social  progress  are  revealed  in  the  defect  of  all 
further  Spanish  genius.  Even  of  Cervantes  it  is  recorded— on  very 
doubtful  authority,  however— that  he  said  "  I  could  have  made 
Don  Quixote  much  more  amusing  if  it  were  not  for  the  Inquisition  " ; 
and  it  is  matter  of  history  that  a  passage  in  his  book'  disparaging 
perfunctory  works  of  charity  was  in  1619  ordered  by  the  Holy  Office 
to  be  expunged  as  impious  and  contrary  to  the  faith. 

See  H.  E.  Watts,  Miguel  de  Cervantes,  p.  167.  Do7i  Quixote 
was  "always  under  suspicion  of  the  orthodox."  Id.  p.  166. 
Mr.  Watts,  saying  nothing  of  Cervantes's  approval  of  the 
expulsion  of  the  Moriscoes,  claims  that  his  head  was  clear 
of  the  follies  and  extravagances  of  the  reigning  superstition " 
{id.  p.  231).  But  the  case  is  truly  summed  up  by  Mr.  Ormsby 
when  he  says  :  "For  one  passage  capable  of  ^being  tortured 
into  covert  satire  "  against  things  ecclesiastical,  there  are  ten 
in  Don  Quixote  and  the  novels  that  show— what  indeed  is  very 
obvious  from  the  little  we  know  of  his  life  and  character— that 
Cervantes  was  a  faithful  son  of  the  Church  "  (tr.  of  Don  Quixote, 
1885,  introd.  i,  57). 
When  the  total  intellectual  life  of  a  nation  faUs  ever  further  in 
the  rear  of  the  world's  movement,  even  the  imaginative  arts  are 

1  Bouterwek.  Hist,  of  Spanish  a«d  Portuguese  Literature,  Eng.  tr.  1823.  i.  331. 

2  j,t.  p.  151.  8  Park  II.  ch.  xxxvi. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


41 


stunted.  Turkey  excepted,  the  civilized  nations  of  Europe  which 
for  two  centuries  have  contributed  the  fewest  great  names  to  the 
world's  bead-roll  have  been  Spain,  Austria,  Portugal,  Belgium,  and 
Greece,  all  noted  for  their  "  religious  unity."  And  of  all  of  these 
Spain  is  the  supreme  instance  of  positive  decadence,  she  having 
exhibited  in  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  a  greater  complex 
of  energy  than  any  of  the  others.^     The  lesson  is  monumental. 


§  6.  Scientific  Thought 

It  remains  to  trace  briefly  the  movement  of  scientific  and  specu- 
lative thought  which  constituted  the  transition  between  the  Scholastic 
and  the  modern  philosophy.  It  may  be  compendiously  noted  under 
the  names  of  Copernicus,  Bruno,  Vanini,  Galileo,  Eamus,  Gassendi, 
Bacon,  and  Descartes. 

The  great  performance  of  COPERNICUS  (Nicolaus  Koppernigk, 
1473-1543),  given  to  the  world  with  an  editor's  treacherous  preface 
as  he  lay  paralysed  on  his  deathbed,  did  not  become  a  general 
possession  for  over  a  hundred  years.  The  long  reluctance  of  its 
author  to  let  it  be  published,  despite  the  express  invitation  of  a 
cardinal  in  the  name  of  the  pope,  was  well  founded  in  his  knowledge 
of  the  strength  of  common  prejudice  ;  and  perhaps  partly  in  a  sense 
of  the  scientific  imperfection  of  his  own  case.^  Only  the  special 
favour  accorded  to  his  first  sketch  at  Eome — a  favour  which  he  had 
further  carefully  planned  for  in  his  dedicatory  epistle  to  Pope  Paul — 
saved  his  main  treatise  from  prohibition  till  long  after  its  work  was 
done.^  It  was  in  fact,  with  all  its  burden  of  traditional  error,  the 
most  momentous  challenge  that  had  yet  been  offered  in  the  modern 
world  to  established  beUefs,  alike  theological  and  lay,  for  it  seemed 
to  flout  "  common  sense  "  as  completely  as  it  did  the  cosmogony  of 
the  sacred  books.  It  was  probably  from  scraps  of  ancient  lore 
current  in  Italy  in  his  years  of  youthful  study  there  that  he  first 
derived  his  idea ;  and  in  Italy  none  had  dared  publicly  to  propound 
the  geocentric  theory.  Its  gradual  victory,  therefore,  is  the  first 
great  modern  instance  of  a  triumph  of  reason  over  spontaneous  and 

1  Bouterwek,  whose  sociology,  though  meritorious,  is  ill-clarified,  argues  that  the 
Inquisition  was  in  a  manner  congenital  to  Spain  because  before  its  establishment  the 
suspicion  of  heresy  was  already  "  more  degrading  in  Spain  than  the  most  odious  crimes 
in  other  couutries."  But  the  same  might  have  been  said  of  the  other  countries  also.  As 
to  earlier  Spanish  heresy  see  above,  vol.  i.  p.  337  sq.  ..... 

2  Despite  the  many  fallacies  retained  by  Copernicus  from  the  current  astronomy,  he 
must  be  pronounced  an  exceptionally  scientific  spirit.  Trained  as  a  mathematician, 
astronomer,  and  physician,  he  showed  a  keen  and  competent  intei-est  in  the  practical 
problem  of  currency  ;  and  one  of  the  two  treatises  which  alone  he  published  of  his  own 
accord  was  a  sound  scheme  for  the  rectification  of  that  of  hi  i  own  government.  Though 
a  canon  of  Frauenburg,  he  never  took  orders ;  but  did  mf.nifold  and  unselfish  secular 
service.  ^  It  was  shielded  by  thirteen  popes— from  Paul  III  to  Paul  V. 


42 


THE  EISE  OF  MODEEN  FKEETHOUGHT 


instilled  prejudice ;  and  Galileo's  account  of  his  reception  of  it  should 
be  a  classic  document  in  the  history  of  rationahsm. 

It  was  when  he  was  a  student  in  his  teens  that  there  came  to 
Pisa  one  Christianus  Urstitius  of  Kostock,  a  follower  of  Copernicus, 
to  lecture  on  the  new  doctrine.     The  young  Galileo,  being  satisfied 
that  "that  opinion  could  be  no  other  than  a  solemn  madness,"  did 
not  attend ;  and  those  of  his  acquaintance  who  did  made  a  jest  of 
the  matter,  all  save  one,  "very  intelligent  and  wary,"  who  told  him 
that  "  the  business  was  not  altogether  to  be  laughed  at."  ^  Thence- 
forth he  began  to  inquire  of  Copernicans,  with  the  result  inevitable 
to  such  a  mind  as  his.     "  Of  as  many  as  I  examined  I  found  not  so 
much  as  one  who  told  me  not  that  he  had  been  a  long  time  of  the 
contrary  opinion,  but  to  have  changed  it  for  this,  as  convinced  by 
the   strength   of   the   reasons   proving   the   same;    and   afterwards 
questioning   them   one    by   one,   to    see   whether   they   were   well 
possessed  of  the  reasons  of  the  other  side,  I  found  them  all  to  be 
very  ready  and  perfect  in  them,  so  that  I  could  not  truly  say  that 
they  took  this  opinion  out  of  ignorance,  vanity,  or  to  show  the 
acuteness  of  their  wits."     On  the  other  hand,  the  opposing  Aristo- 
teleans  and  Ptolemeans  had  seldom  even  superficially  studied  the 
Copernican   system,  and   had  in  no   case   been   converted  from  it. 
"  Whereupon,  considering  that  there  was  no  man  who  followed  the 
opinion  of  Copernicus  that  had  not  been  first  on  the  contrary  side, 
and  that  was  not  very  well  acquainted  with  the  reasons  of  Aristotle 
and  Ptolemy,  while,  on  the   contrary,  there  was  not  one   of   the 
followers   of    Ptolemy   that   had    ever    been   of    the   judgment   of 
Copernicus,  and  had  left  that  to   embrace   this   of   Aristotle,"  ho 
began  to  realize  how  strong  must  be  the  reasons  that  thus  drew 
men  away  from  beliefs  "  imbibed  with  their  milk."  *     We  can  divine 
how  slow  would  be  the  progress  of  a  doctrine  which  could  only  thus 
begin  to  find  its  way  into  one  of  the  most  gifted  scientific  minds  of 
the   modern   world.     It   was   only  a  minority  of   the  dlite  of   the 
intellectual  life   who   could  receive  ifc.  even   after  the  lapse  of  a 
hundred  years. 

The  doctrine  of  the  earth's  two-fold  motion,  as  we  have  seen, 
had  actually  been  taught  in  the  fifteenth  century  by  Nicolaus 
of  Cusa  (1401-1464),  who,  instead  of  being  prosecuted,  was 
made  a  cardinal,  so  little  was  the  question  then  considered 
(Ueberweg,  ii,  23-24).  See  above,  vol.  i,  p.  368,  as  to  Pulci. 
Only  very  slowly  did  the  work  even  of  Copernicus  make  its 
impression.     Green    {Short   History,  ed.  1881,  p.  297)  makes 

1  Galileo,  Dialogi  dei  due  massimi  sistemi  del  mondo,  ii  iOpere,  ed.  1811.  xi,  303-304). 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


43 


first  the  mistake  of  stating  that  it  influenced  thought  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  and  then  the  further  mistake  of  saying  that 
it  was  brought  home  to  the  general  intelligence  by  Galileo 
and  Kepler  in  the  later  years  of  the  sixtee7ith  century  (id, 
p.  412).  Galileo's  European  notoriety  dates  from  1616  ;  his 
Dialogues  of  the  Two  Systems  of  the  World  appeared  only  in 
1632  ;  and  his  Dialogues  of  the  New  Sciences  in  1638.  Kepler's 
indecisive  Mysterium  Cosmographicum  appeared  only  in  1597 ; 
his  treatise  on  the  motions  of  the  planet  Mars  not  till  1609. 

One  of  the  first  to  bring  the  new  cosmological  conception  to  bear 
on  philosophic  thought  was  GIORDANO  Beuno  of  Nola  (1548-1600), 
whose  life  and  death  of  lonely  chivalry  have  won  him  his  place  as 
the  typical  martyr  of  modern  freethought.^  He  may  be  conceived  as 
a  blending  of  the  pantheistic  and  naturalistic  lore  of  ancient  Greece, 
assimilated  through  the  Florentine  Platonists,  with  the  spirit  of 
modern  science  (itself  a  revival  of  the  Greek)  as  it  first  takes  firm 
form  in  Copernicus,  whose  doctrine  Bruno  early  and  ardently 
embraced.  Baptized  Filippo,  he  took  Giordano  as  his  cloister-name 
when  he  entered  the  great  convent  of  S.  Domenico  Maggiore  at 
Naples  in  1563,  in  his  fifteenth  year.  No  human  being  was  ever 
more  unfitly  placed  among  the  Dominicans,  punningly  named  the 
"  hounds  of  the  Lord"  {domini  canes)  for  their  work  as  the  corps  of 
the  Inquisition  ;  and  very  early  in  his  cloister  life  he  came  near  being 
formally  proceeded  against  for  showing  disregard  of  sacred  images, 
and  making  light  of  the  sanctity  of  the  Virgin.^  He  passed  his 
novitiate,  however,  without  further  trouble,  and  was  fully  ordained 
a  priest  in  1572,  in  his  twenty-fourth  year.  Passing  then  through 
several  Neapolitan  monasteries  during  a  period  of  three  years,  he 
seems  to  have  become  not  a  little  of  a  freethinker  on  his  return  to 
his  first  cloister,  as  he  had  already  reached  Arian  opinions  in  regard 


1  A  good  study  of  Bruno  is  supplied  hy  Owen  in  his  Skeptics  of  the  Italian  Renaissance. 
He  has,  however,  omitted  to  embody  the  later  discoveries  of  Dufoi^r  and  Berti.  and  has 
some  wrong  dates.  The  Life  of  Giordano  Bruno,  by  I.  Frith  (Mrs.  Oppenheim),  1887.  gives 
all  the  data,  but  is  inadequate  on  the  philosophic  side.  A  competent  estimate  is  given  in 
the  late  Prof.  Adamson's  lectures  on  The  Development  of  Modern  Philosophy,  etc.,  1903,  ii, 
23  sq.;  also  in  his  art.  in  Encyc.  Brit.  For  a  hostile  view  see  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  ii, 
105-111.  The  biography  of  Bartholm^ss,  Jordano  Bruno,  1846,  is  extremely  full  and 
sympathetic,  but  was  unavoidably  loose  as  to  dates.  Much  new  matter  has  since  been 
collected,  for  which  see  the  Vita  di  Giordano  Bruno  of  Domenico  Berti,  rev.  and  enlarged 
ed.  1889;  Prof.  J.  L.  Mclntyre,  Giordano  Bruno,  1903  ;  Dufour,  Giordano  Bruno  d  Gin^ve: 
Documents  In^dits,  1884  ;  David  Levi.  Giordano  Bruno,  o  la  religione  del  pensiero:  Vuomo, 
lapostolo  e  il  martire.1887  ;  Dr.  H.  Brunnhofer's  Giordano  Bruno's  Weltanschauung  und 
Verhangniss,  1882;  and  the  doctoral  treatise  of  C.  Sigwart,  Die  Lebensgeschichte  Giordano 
Brunos,  Ttibingen.  1880.  For  other  authorities  see  Owen's  and  I.  Frith's  lists,  and  the 
final  Literal urnachweis  in  Gustav  Louis's  Giordano  Bruno,  seine  Weltanschauung  und 
Lebensverfassung.  Berlin,  1900.  The  study  of  Bruno  has  been  carried  further  in  Germany 
than  in  England;  but  Mr.  Whittaker  {Essays  and  Notices,  1895)  and  Prof.  Mclntyre  make 
up  much  leeway.  ,^        ,     .  ^  ^. 

2  Cp.  Bartholra^ss,  i,  4^-53;  Lange.  Gesch.  des  Materialismus,  1. 191-94  (Eng.  tr.  i,  232) ; 
Gustav  Louis,  as  cited,  pp.  11,  88. 

s  Berti,  Vita  di  Giordano  Bruno,  1889,  pp.  40-41,  420.  Bruno  gives  the  facts  in  bis  own 
narrative  before  the  Inquisitors  at  Venice. 


44  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOTJGHT 

to  Christ,  and  soon  proceeded  to  substitute  a  mystical  and  Pytha- 
gorean  for  the  orthodox  view  of  the  Trinity. 

For  the  second  time  a  "  process  "  was  begun  against  him  and  he 
took  flight  to  Rome  (1576).  presenting  h  msel  f  J  -^  f  ;g2 
Order.  News  speedily  came  from  Naples  of  ^^^  P'^^J^^ff^i,, 
him.  and  of  the  discovery  that  he  had  f^^^^^^.^  r^^^"JJ,,_, 
works  of  Chrysostom  and  Jerome  with  the  scholia  of  E™smus  a 
prohibited  thing.  Only  a  few  months  before  Bartol^eo  ^ar^^^^^^^^ 
Bishop  of  Toledo,  who  had  won  the  praise  of  the  Council  oTxen 
for  his  index  of  prohibited  books,  had  been  ^o-demned  to  abjure  for 
the  doctrine  that  "  the  worship  of  the  relics  of  the  «amts  is  of  human 

•     .-.  ,■      ■'  „„^  v,n^  flipd  in  the  same  year  at  the  convent  to  wmon 
institution,    and  had  died  m  t,ne  sam    y  ^   ^g 

Bruno   had  now   gone.     Thus   doubly   warned    he  tmew 
priestly  habit,  and  fled  to  the  Genoese  te«>tory     where    in  tbe 
commune  of  Noli,  he  taught  grammar  and  ^^'^y^J-J^^l 
he  visited  successively  Turin.  Venice.  Padua,  f  ^^S^'^^'jf "^^^ ^e 
resuming  at  the  last-named  town  his  -'^^'^^^'f '^''f'    ^^f^f  ,^^^^ 
again  returned  to  Turin,  passing  thence  to  Chambdry  at  the  end  of 
S    nd  thence  to  Geneva  early  in  1519^    His  wish  he  said,  w 
"  to  ive  in  Uberty  and  security  " ;  but  for  that  ^-^^1^%;';';^Z 
his  Dominican  habit ;  other  Italian  re  ugees.  of  -^"^  ^^^-^ j^;'^: 

i.    n„^«xr„    Koli^irtct   him  to   a  layman  8  smt.     i^ecomiub 
many  at   Geneva,  neipmg   nuu  tu  «.    u-j  ^^f^v^allv  to 

corrector  of  the  press,  he  seems  to  ^^-/-'"^t  he  ^  sh  d 
Calvinism ;  but  after  a  stay  of  two  and  a-half  ^lonths  he  pubhshed 
a  short  diatribe  against  one  Antonio  de  La  Faye.  who  pro  essea 
phtsophy  at  the  Academy  ;  and  for  this  he  was  arrested  and 
L^nTed^o  excommunication  whUehUboo^^^^^^^^^ 

rxcormut^:tirr=d\  but  h^tUlss  .ft  G.eva^a.d 
Iffcerwards  spoke  of  Calvinism  as  the  '' deiovmed  religion.  Af  er 
a  ew  w^^^^^^^^^^  at  Lyons  he  went  to  Toulouse,  the  very  centre 

of  n™ional  o^  and  there,  strangely  enough,  he  was  ah 

to  stay  for  more  than  a  year,^  taking  his  degree  as  Master  of  Arts 
InfbLniing  professor  of  astronomy     But  the  c.vd^^^^^^^^ 
Toulouse  unsafe;    and   at   length,  probably  in    1581  or   158i    he 
reached  Paris,  where  for  a  time   he  lectured  as  professor  ext  a- 
ordinary «     In  1583  he  reached  England,  where  he  remained  till 

1  ro^io^G^en^i^t/BinS^^^  ff  bis  first  e^    See  ea.  1889.  PP.  54.  3.2. 
I  I^:^T.rn:^r'.SiTi>ePo^^  Z^nl^ii<^fn^-'  Berti.  p.  394. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


45 


1585,  lecturing,  debating  at  Oxford  on  the  Copernican  theory,  and 
publishing  a  number  of  his  works,  four  of  them  dedicated  to  his 
patron  Castelnau  de  Mauvissi^re,  the  French  ambassador.  Oxford 
was  then  a  stronghold  of  bigoted  Aristotelianism,  where  bachelors 
and  masters  deviating  from  the  master  were  fined,  or,  if  openly 
hostile,  expelled.^  In  that  camp  Bruno  was  not  welcome.  But  he 
had  other  shelter,  at  the  French  Embassy  in  London,  and  there  he 
had  notable  acquaintances.  He  had  met  Sir  Phihp  Sidney  at  Milan 
in  1578  ;  and  his  dialogue,  Cena  de  le  Ceneri,  gives  a  vivid  account 
of  a  discussion  in  which  he  took  a  leading  part  at  a  banquet  given 
by  Sir  Fulke  Greville.  His  picture  of  "Oxford  ignorance  and 
English  ill-manners'"^  is  not  lenient;  and  there  is  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  his  doctrine  was  then  assimilated  by  many;^  but 
his  stay  in  the  household  of  Castelnau  was  one  of  the  happiest 
periods  of  his  chequered  Ufe.  While  in  England  he  wrote  no  fewer 
than  seven  works,  four  of  them  dedicated  to  Castelnau,  and  two — the 
Heroic  Fervours  and  the  Expulsion  of  the  Triumphant  Beast— to 
Su:  Philip  Sidney. 

Eeturning  to  Paris  on  the  recall  of  Castelnau  in  1585,  he  made 
an  attempt  to  reconcile  himself  to  the  Church,  but  it  was  fruitless ; 
and  thereafter  he  went  his  own  way.  After  a  public  disputation  at 
the  university  in  1586,  he  set  out  on  a  new  peregrination,  visiting 
first  Mayence.  Marburg,  and  Wittemberg.  At  Marburg  he  was 
refused  leave  to  debate ;  and  at  Wittemberg  he  seems  to  have  been 
carefully  conciliatory,  as  he  not  only  matriculated  but  taught  for 
over  a  year  (1586-1588),  till  the  Calvinist  party  carried  the  day 
over  the  Lutheran.*  Thereafter  he  reached  Prague,  Helmstadt, 
Frankfort,  and  Zurich.  At  length,  on  the  fatal  invitation  of  the 
Venetian  youth  Mocenigo,  he  re-entered  ItaHan  territory,  where,  in 
Venice,  he  was  betrayed  to  the  Inquisition  by  his  treacherous  and 

worthless  pupil.^ 

What  had  been  done  for  freethought  by  Bruno  in  his  fourteen 
years  of  wandering,  debating,  and  teaching  through  Europe  it  is 
impossible  to  estimate ;  but  it  is  safe  to  say  that  he  was  one  of  the 
most   powerful    antagonists   to   orthodox   unreason   that   had    yet 

'  Mclntyre,  GiortJano  JBruHO,  1907,  pp.  21-22.        ,,    ,     ,       ^     ,     ^  t> „»«/,,•  i^r  ^q 

«  Frith,  Life,  p.  121,  and  refs.;  Owen.  p.  275;  Bartholm^ss,  Jordam  Bruno,  i,  136-^. 

8  Cp.  Hallam.  Lit.  of  Europe,  ii,  111.  note.  As  to  Bruno's  supposed  influence  on  Bacon 
and  Shakespeare,  cp.  Bartholm^ss.  i,  134-35;  Fnth.  Life,  pp.  104-48;  and  the  author  s 
Montaigyie  and  Shakspere,  pp.  132-38.  Here  there  is  no  case  ;  but  there  is  much  to  be  said 
for  Mr  Whittaker's  view  {Essays  and  Notices,  p.  94)  that  Spenser  s  late  Cantos  on 
Mutability  were  suggested  by  Bruno's  Spaccio.    Prof-  Mclntyre  supports.  ^^^t^^^i. 

*  His  praise  of  Luther,  and  his  compliments  to  the  Lutherans,  are  in  notable  contrast 
to  his  verdict  on  Calvinism.  What  happened  was  that  at  Wittemberg  he  was  on  his  best 
behaviour,  and  was  well  treated  accordingly. 

^  As  to  the  traitor's  motives  cp.  Mclntyre,  p.  66  sq.;  Berti.  p.  362  sq. 


46 


THE  KISE  OF  MODEKN  EBEETHOUGHT 


appeared.     Of  all  men  of  his  time  he  had  perhaps  the  least  affinity 
with  the  Christian  creed,  which  was  repellent  to  him  alike  in  the 
Catholic  and  the  Protestant  versions.     The  attempt  to  prove  him 
a  believer  on  the  strength  of  a  non-autograph  manuscript '  is  idle. 
His  approbation  of  a  religion  for  the  discipHne  of  uncivilized  peoples 
is  put  in  terms  of  unbelief.'     In  the  Spaccio  clella  bcstia  trionfante 
he  derides  the  notion  of  a  union  of  divine  and  human  natures,  and 
substantially  proclaims    a   natural  (theistic)   rehgion,  negating  all 
"  revealed  "  religions  alike.     Where  Boccaccio  had  accredited  all  the 
three  leading  religions.  Bruno  disallows  all  with  paganism,  though 
he  puts  that  above  Christianity.'      And   his   disbelief   grew   more 
stringent  w^ith  his  years.     Among  the  heretical  propositions  charged 
against  him  by  the  Inquisition  were  these  :  that  there  is  transmigra- 
tion of  souls ;  that  magic  is  right  and  proper ;  that  the  Holy  Spirit 
is  the  same  thing  as  the  soul  of  the  world ;  that  the  world  is  eternal ; 
that  Moses,  like  the  Egyptians,  wrought  miracles  by  magic  ;  that 
the  sacred  writings  are  but  a  romance  {sogno) ;  that  the  devil  will  be 
saved  ;  that  only  the  Hebrews  are  descended  from  Adam,  other  men 
having  descended  from  progenitors  created  by  God  before  Adam  ; 
that  Christ  was  not  God,  but  was  a  notorious  sorcerer  {insigne 
mago),   who,    having    deceived   men,    was    deservedly   hanged,  not 
crucified;  that  the  prophets   and  the  apostles  were  bad  men   and 
sorcerers,  and  that  many  of  them  were  hanged  as  such.     The  cruder 
of  these  propositions  rest  solely  on  the  allegation  of  Mocenigo,  and 
were  warmly  repudiated  by  Bruno  :  others  are  professedly  drawn, 
always,  of  course,  by  forcing  his  language,  but  not  without  some 
colourable  pretext,  from  his  two  "  poems,"   Ba  triplice,  miniim,  et 
7nensiira,  and  De  monade,  numero  etfigura,  published  at  Frankfort  in 
1591,  in  the  last  year  of  his  freedom.*     But  the  allusions  in  the 
Sigillus  Sigillormn'  to  the  weeping  worship  of  a  suffering  Adonis,  to 
the  exhibition    of    suffering    and   miserable  Gods,  to  transpierced 
divinities,  and  to  sham  miracles,  were  certainly  intended  to  contemn 
the  Christian  system. 

AHke  in  the  details  of  his  propaganda  and  in  the  temper  of  his 
utterance,  Bruno  expresses  from  first  to  last  the  spirit  of  freethought 

1  Noroff,  as  cited  in  Frith ,  p.  345.  ,      ,  ^^  •    ,„a     ^       *• 

2  Be  VInfinito,  ed.  Wagner,  ii,  27:  Cena  de  la  Cenert,  ed.  Wagner,  i.  173;  Acrohsmus, 

*8  Cp°'^  Berti,  "pp.  187-88:  WTiittaker.  Essays  and  Notices,  1895,  p.  89:  and  Louis's 
Beciion,  Stellung  zu  Christmthum  und  Kirche.    .      ,      ^  .    *   ^  «*<.v,^;^„„« 

*  Berti,  pp.  297-98.  It  takes  nauch  searching  in  the  two  poems  to  find  any  of  the  ideas 
in  question,  and  Berti  has  attempted  no  collation ;  but.  allowing  for  distortions,  the 
Inquisition  has  sufficient  ground  for  outcry.  ^     t,  t  r^t  /i-««^^.,« 

5  Sigillus  Sigillorum :  De  duodecima  contractioms  Hpeciae.  Cp.  F.  J.  Clemens,  Qioroana 
Brww  und  Nicolaus  von  Cusa,  1847.  pp.  176. 183:  and  H.  Brunnhofer.  Qiordam  Bruiio  8 
Weltanschauung  und  Verhangnias,  1882.  pp.  227,  237. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


47 


and  free  speech.  Lihertas  philosophica  *  is  the  breath  of  his  nostrils ; 
and  by  his  life  and  his  death  alike  he  upholds  the  ideal  for  men  as 
no  other  before  him  did.  The  wariness  of  Kabelais  and  the  non- 
committal skepticism  of  Montaigne  are  alike  alien  to  him  ;  he  is  too 
lacking  in  reticence,  too  explosive,  to  give  due  heed  even  to  the 
common-sense  amenities  of  life,  much  more  to  hedge  his  meaning 
with  safeguarding  qualifications.  And  it  was  doubtless  as  much  by 
the  contagion  of  his  mood  as  by  his  lore  that  he  impressed  men. 

His  personal  and  literary  influence  was  probably  most  powerful 
in  respect  of  his  eager  propaganda  of  the  Copernican  doctrine,  which 
he  of  his  own  force  vitally  expanded  and  made  part  of  a  pantheistic 
conception  of  the  universe.^  Where  Copernicus  adhered  by  implica- 
tion to  the  idea  of  an  external  and  limitary  sphere — the  last  of  the 
eight  of  the  Ptolemaic  theory — Bruno  reverted  boldly  to  the  doctrine 
of  Anaximandros,  and  declared  firmly  for  the  infinity  of  space  and  of 
the  series  of  the  worlds.  In  regard  to  biology  he  makes  an 
equivalent  advance,  starting  from  the  thought  of  Empedocles  and 
Lucretius,  and  substituting  an  idea  of  natural  selection  for  that  of 
creative  providence.^  The  conception  is  definitely  thought  out,  and 
marks  him  as  one  of  the  renovators  of  scientific  no  less  than  of 
philosophic  thought  for  the  modern  world ;  though  the  special 
paralysis  of  science  under  Christian  theology  kept  his  ideas  on  this 
side  pretty  much  a  dead  letter  for  his  own  day.  And  indeed  it  was 
to  the  universal  and  not  the  particular  that  his  thought  chiefly  and 
most  enthusiastically  turned.  A  philosophic  poet  rather  than  a 
philosopher  or  man  of  science,  he  yet  set  abroad  for  the  modern 
world  that  conception  of  the  physical  infinity  of  the  universe  which, 
once  psychologically  assimilated,  makes  an  end  of  the  medieval 
theory  of  things.  On  this  head  he  was  eagerly  affirmative  ;  and  the 
merely  Pyrrhonic  skeptics  he  assailed  as  he  did  the  "  asinine " 
orthodox,  though  he  insisted  on  doubt  as  the  beginning  of  wisdom. 

Of  his  extensive  literary  output  not  much  is  stamped  with  lasting 
scientific  fitness  or  literary  charm ;  and  some  of  his  treatises,  as 
those  on  mnemonics,  have  no  more  value  than  the  product  of  his 
didactic  model,  Eaymond  Lully.  As  a  writer  he  is  at  his  best  in 
the  sweeping  expatiation  of  his  more  general  philosophic  treatises, 


\  In  the  treatise  De  Lampade  combinatoria  Ltdliana  (1587).  According  to  Berti  (p.  220) 
he  is  the  first  to  employ  this  phrase,  which  becomes  the  watchword  of  Spinoza  {lihertas 
Vhilomphandi)  a  century  later. 

2  Berti,  cap.  iv ;  Owen,  p.  249;  Ueberweg.  ii.  27;  PUnjer.  p.  93  sq.\  Whittaker.  Essays 
and  Notices,  X).  66.  As  to  Bruno's  debt  to  Nicolaus  of  Cusa  cp-.'Gustav  Louis,  as  cited, 
P- 11 ;  PUnjer,  as  cited  ;  Carriere.  Die philosophische  Weltanschauung  der  Beforniationszeit, 
P- 25;  and  Whittaker.  p.  68.  The  argument  of  Carriere's  second  edition  is  analysed  and 
rebutted  by  Mr.  Whittaker,  p.  253  sg. 

'  De  Immenso,  vii,  c.  18,  cited  by  Whittaker,  Essays  and  Notices,  p.  70. 


48 


THE  KISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


49 


where  he  attains  a  lifting  ardour  of  inspiration,  a  fervour  of  soaring 
outlook,  that  puts  him  in  the  front  rank  of  the  thinkers  of  his  age. 
And  if  his  literary  character  is  at  times  open  to  severe  criticism  in 
respect  of  his  lack  of  balance,  sobriety,  and  self-command,  his  final 
courage  atones  for  such  shortcomings. 

His  case,  indeed,  serves  to  remind  us  that  at  certain  junctures 
it  is  only  the  unbalanced  types  that  aid  humanity's  advance.     The 
perfectly  prudent  and  self-sutBcing  man  does  not  achieve  revolutions 
does  not  revolt  against  tyrannies ;    he  wisely  adapts  himself  and 
subsists,  letting  the  evil  prevail  as  it  may.     It  is  the  more  impatient 
and  unreticent.  the  eager  and  hot-brained^in  a  word,  the  faulty 
who  clash  with   oppression   and   break  a  way  ior   quieter   spirits 
through  the  hedges  of  enthroned  authority.     The  serenely  contem- 
plative spirit  is  rather  a  possession  than  a  possessor  for  his  fellows ; 
he  may  inform  and  enlighten,  but  is  not  in  himself  a  countering  or 
inspiriting   force:  a   Shelley   avails   more   than  a  Goethe   agamst 
tyrannous  power.     And  it  may  be  that  the  battling  enthusiast  in 
his  own  way  wins  Hberation  for  himself  from  "  fear  of  fortune  and 
death."  as   he   wins   for   others   liberty  of   action.'     Even  such  a 
liberator,  bearing  other  men's  griefs  and  taking  stripes  that  they 
might  be  kept  whole,  was  Bruno. 

And  though  he  quailed  at  the  first  shock  of  capture  and  torture, 
when  the  end  came  he  vindicated  human  nature  as  worthily  as 
could  any  quietist.  It  was  a  long-drawn  test.  Charged  on  the 
traitor's  testimony  with  many  "  blasphemies,"  he  denied  them  all. 
but  stood  to  his  pubHshed  writings'  and  vividly  expounded  his 
theories.*  professing  in  the  usual  manner  to  believe  in  conformity 
with  the  Church's  teachings,  whatever  he  might  write  on  philo- 
sophy. It  is  impossible  to  trust  the  Inquisition  records  as  to  his 
words  of  self-humiliation  ;'  though  on  the  other  hand  no  blame  can 
rationally  attach  to  anyone  who,  in  his  place,  should  try  to  deceive 
such  enemies,  morally  on  a  level  with  hostile  savages.  It  is  certain 
that  the  Inquisitors  frequently  wrung  recantations  by  torture. 

What  is  historically  certain  is  that  Bruno  was  not  released,  but 
sent  on  to  Rome,  and  was  kept  there  in  prison  for  seven  years.  He 
was  not  the  sort  of  heretic  Hkely  to  be  released;  though  the  fact  of 
his  being  a  Dominican,  and  the  desire  to  maintain   the   Church  s 

1  As  to  Bruno's  own  claim  in  the  Eroici  Furori  ci>.  Whittaker.  Essays,  p.  90. 
9  Documents  in  Berti.  PP- /.O^-IS ;  Mclntyre  p.  75  sq.  ^ 

8  See  the  document  m  Berti,  p.  398  sa.;  Frith.  PP-  f  ^^• 

8  See  Berti.  p.  396  ;  Owen.  pp.  285-86 ;  Frith,  pp.  ^2-«d.  ^^  torture  was 

6  The  controversy  as  to  whether  Galileo  ^astorti^ed  leaves  ic  ciear  iiua.u 
common.    See  Dr.  Parchappe,  Galilee,  sa  vie,  etc.,  1866,  Ptie.  u,  en.  i. 


intellectual  credit,  delayed  so  long  his  execution.  Certainly  not  an 
atheist  (he  called  himself  in  several  of  his  book-titles  Philotheus  ; 
he  consigns  insano  ateismo  to  perdition  ;  ^  and  his  quasi-pantheism 
or  monism  often  lapses  into  theistic  modes) ,^  he  yet  was  from  first 
to  last  essentially  though  not  professedly  anti-Christian  in  his  view 
of  the  universe.  If  the  Church  had  cause  to  fear  any  philosophic 
teaching,  it  was  his.  preached  with  the  ardour  of  a  prophet  and  the 
eloquence  of  a  poet.  His  doctrine  that  the  worlds  in  space  are 
innumerable  was  as  offensive  to  orthodox  ears  as  his  specific 
negations  of  Christian  dogma,  outgoing  as  it  did  the  later  idea  of 
Kepler  and  Galileo.  He  had,  moreover,  finally  refused  to  make  any 
fresh  recantation  ;  and  the  only  detailed  document  extant  concerning 
his  final  trial  describes  him  as  saying  to  his  judges  :  "  With  more 
fear,  perchance,  do  you  pass  sentence  on  me  than  I  receive  it."^ 
According  to  all  accessible  records,  he  was  burned  alive  at  Kome  in 
February,  1600,  in  the  Field  of  Flowers,  near  where  his  statue  now 
stands.  As  was  probably  customary,  they  tied  his  tongue  before 
leading  him  to  the  stake,  lest  he  should  speak  to  the  people  ;'  and 
his  martyrdom  was  an  edifying  spectacle  for  the  vast  multitude  of 
pilgrims  who  had  come  from  all  parts  of  Christendom  for  the  jubilee 
of  the  pope.*  At  the  stake,  when  he  was  at  the  point  of  death,  there 
was  duly  presented  to  him  the  crucifix,  and  he  duly  put  it  aside. 

An  attempt  has  been  made  by  Professor  Desdouits  in  a 
pamphlet  {La  Ugencle  tragique  de  Jordano  Bruno ;  Paris,  1885) 
to  show  that  there  is  no  evidence  that  Bruno  was  burned  ;  and 
an  anonymous  writer  in  the  Scottish  Bevieiv  (October,  1888, 
Art.  II),  rabidly  hostile  to  Bruno,  has  maintained  the  same 
proposition.  Doubt  on  the  subject  dates  from  Bayle.  Its  main 
ground  is  the  fewness  of  the  documentary  records,  of  which, 
further,  the  genuineness  is  now  called  in  question.  But  no 
good  reason  is  shown  for  doubting  them.     They  are  three. 

1.  The  Latin  letter  of  Caspar  Schopp  (Scioppius),  dated 
February  17, 1600.  is  an  eye- witness's  account  of  the  sentencing 
and  burning  of  Bruno  at  that  date.  (See  it  in  full,  in  the 
original  Latin,  in  Berti,  p.  461  sq.,  and  in  App.  V  to  Frith,  Life 

J  Spaccio  della  hestia  trioi\Jante,  ed.  Wagner,  ii.  120. 
P^of .  Carriere  has  contended  that  a  transition  from  pantheism  to  theism  marks  the 
growth  of  his  thought ;  but,  as  is  shown  by  Mr.  Whittaker,  he  is  markedly  pantheistic  in 
ms  latest  work  of  all.  though  his  pantheism  is  not  merely  naturalistic.    Essays  and 
Notices,  pp.  72,  253-58. 

8  Italian  versions  differ  verbally.  Cp.  Levi,  p.  379 ;  Berti,  p.  386.  That  inscribed  on  the 
liruno  statue  at  Rome  is  a  close  rendering  of  the  Latin  :  Majori  forsan  cum  titnore 
sententiam  in  me  fertis  quam  ego  accipiam,  preserved  by  Scioppius. 

*  Avviso,  in  Berti,  p.  329  ;  in  Levi,  p.  386. 

«*  Levi,  pp.  384-92.  Levi  relates  (p.  390)  that  Bruno  at  the  stake  was  heard  to  utter  the 
words :  O  Eterno,  io  fo  uno  sforzo  supremo  per  attrarre  in  me  auauto  vi  tra  di  piu  divino 
neii  universo."  He  cites  no  authority.  An  Avviso  reports  that  Bruno  said  his  soul  would 
rise  with  the  smoke  to  Paradise  (p.  386;  Berti,  p.  330),  but  does  not  state  that  this  was  said 
at  me  stake.    And  Levi  accepts  the  other  report  that  Bruno  was  gagged. 

VOL.  H  E 


50 


THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  EEEETHOUGHT 

of  Bruno,  and  partly  translated  in  Prof.  Aaamsons  lectures,  as 
cited.  It  was  rep.  by  Struvius  in  his  Acta  Ltteranaiom.y 
and  by  La  Croze  in  his  Entretienssr^r  divert  sujet  m  1711 
p.  287  )  It  was  not  printed  till  1621.  but  the  g^i^^^J'/gf 
For  its  rejection  are  totally  inadequate,  and  involve  assun  p- 
tions  which  are  themselves  entirely  unproved,  as  to  \Nhat 
Sppiusts  likely  to  do.  Finally,  no  intelligible  r^as^^^  - 
suggested  for  the  forging  of  such  a  document.  The  'emaiks  ot 
Prol.  Desdouits  on  this  head  have  no  force  ^Tljatcver^  The 
writer  in  the  Scottish  Bevieiv  (p  263,  and  note)  ^ugge,ts  as 
"  at  least  as  possible  an  hypothesis  as  any  other  that  he 
[Bruno]  was  the  author  of  the  forged  accounts  of  his  own 
death."     Comment  is  unnecessary.  ^^n^,.„ 

2.  There  are  preserved  two  extracts  from  ^-^^^^^^^^ 
iAvvis^)  of  the  time;  one.  elated  Fe  Wry  ^  2,  1600  com  men 

ng  on  the  case ;  the  other,  dated  February  1^,  relatmg  he 
execution  on  the  17th.  (See  both  in  S,  B.,W.  264--6o.  They 
were  first  printed  by  Berti  in  Docunienti  tntornoa  Mn^o 
Bnmo,  Eome.  1880.  and  are  reprmted  m  his  Vita,  ed.  IbbJ, 
can  xix  •  also  by  Levi,  as  cited.      Against  these  testimonies  the 

ole  piea  is  that  Ihey  mis-state  Bruno's  opinions  --^^^^^^^^ 
of  his  imprisonment^a  test  which  would  reduce  to  mythology 

the  contents  of  most  newspapers  i^.^.^^^'^^/^T^  Iw  ;' I^^^^ 
in  the  Scottish  Bevieiv  makes  the  smcidal  suggestion  that,  inas 
much  as  the  errors  as  to  dates  occur  ^^^^chopp  s  letter        he 
so-called  Schopp  was   fabricated   from  these  notices,  or  they 
from  Schopp  "—thus  admitting  one  to  be  historical. 

3  Theresas  been  found,  by  \ Catholic  mvestlgaol^  a 
double  entry  in  the  books  of  the  Lay  Brotherhood  of  ban 
Giovanni  Decollato,  whose  function  was  to  minister  to  1™^^^. 

under   capital   sentence,    giving   a   ^^^^^"^^^^^^^^^Q    2?of   In 
Bruno's  execution.     (See  it  in  S,  B    pp    266    269,  27a)     In 
this   case,   the    main    entry   bemg   dated      1600      Th™  * 
February  16th,"  the  anonymous  writer  argues  that     the  wnoie 
thing  resolves  itself  into  a  make-up."  because  February  lb  was 
the  Wednesday.     The   entry  refers   to   the   P^'ocedure   of   the 
Wednesday  night   and   the   Thursday  niorning ;  ^^^  such  an 
error  could  easily  occur  in  any  case.     AVhatever  may  be  one 
day  proved,  the  cavils  thus  far  count  for  nothing      Al    t  e 
while,  the  records  as  to  Bruno  remain  in  the  ^^^f^f  ^^^^ 
Catholic  authorities ;  but.  despite  the  discredit  constantly  cast 
on  the  Church  on  the  score  of  Bruno's  execution,  they  oil eio 
official  denial  of  the  common  statement ;  while  they  do  officially 
admit  (S.  E„  p.  252)  that  on  February  8  Bruno  was  sentenced  as 
an  ''  obstinate  heretic."  and     given  over  to  the  Becuto  ^^^^^^^ 
On  the  other  hand,  the  episode  is  well  vouched  ;  and  the  argunient 
from  the  silence  of  ambassadors'  letters  is  so  far  void.     No  pre- 
tence is  made  of  tracing  Bruno  anywhere  after  February,  IbUU. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


51 


Since  the  foregoing  note  appeared  in  the  first  edition  I  have 
met  with  the  essay  of  Mr.  K.  Copley  Christie,  "  Was  Giordano 
Bruno  Eeally  Burned?"  (Macmillari' s  Magazine,  October,  1885  ; 
rep.  in  Mr.  Christie's  Selected  Essays  and  Papers,  1902).  This 
is  a  crushing  answer  to  the  thesis  of  M.  Desdouits,  showing 
as  it  does  clear  grounds  not  only  for  affirming  the  genuineness 
of  the  letter  of  Scioppius,  but  for  doubting  the  dihgence  of 
M.  Desdouits.  Mr.  Christie  points  out  (1)  that  in  his  book 
Ecclesiasticus,  printed  in  1612,  Scioppius  refers  to  the  burning 
of  Bruno  almost  in  the  words  of  his  letter  of  1600 ;  (2)  that  in 
1607  Kepler  wrote  to  a  correspondent  of  the  burning  of  Bruno, 
giving  as  his  authority  J.  M.  Wacker,  who  in  1600  was  Hving 
at  Eome  as  the  imperial  ambassador ;  and  (3)  that  the  tract 
Machiayellizatio,  1621,  in  which  the  letter  of  Scioppius  was 
first  printed,  was  well  known  in  its  day,  being  placed  on  the 
Index,  and  answered  by  two  writers  without  eliciting  any 
repudiation  from  Scioppius.  w^ho  lived  till  1649.  As  M. 
Desdouits  staked  his  case  on  the  absence  of  allusion  to  the 
subject  before  1661  (overlooking  even  the  allusion  by  Mersenne, 
in  1624,  cited  by  Bayle).  his  theory  may  be  taken  as  exploded. 

Bruno  has  been  zealously  blackened  by  Catholic  writers  for  the 
obscenity  of  some  of  his  writing'  and  the  alleged  freedom  of  his 
life— piquant  charges,  when  we  remember  the  life  of  the  Papal 
Italy  in  which  he  was  born.  LuciLlO  Vanini  (otherwise  Juhus 
Caesar  Vanini),  the  next  martyr  of  freethought.  also  an  Itahan 
(b.  at  Taurisano,  1585),  is  open  to  the  more  relevant  charges  of  an 
inordinate  vanity  and  some  dupHcity.  Figuring  as  a  Carmelite 
friar,  w^hich  he  was  not,  he  came  to  England  (1612)  and  deceitfully 
professed  to  abjure  Catholicism,^  gaining,  how^ever,  nothing  by  the 
step,  and  contriving  to  be  reconciled  to  the  Church,  after  being 
imprisoned  for  forty-nine  days  on  an  unrecorded  charge.  Previously 
he  had  figured,  like  Bruno,  as  a  wandering  scholar  at  Amsterdam, 
Brussels,  Cologne,  Geneva,  and  Lyons  ;  and  afterwards  he  taught 
natural  philosophy  for  a  year  at  Genoa.  His  treatise.  AmpJiitheatrum 
^terncB  ProvidenticB  (Lyons,  1615),  is  professedly  directed  against 
"  ancient  philosophers.  Atheists,  Epicureans,  Peripatetics,  and  Stoics," 
and  is  ostensibly  quite  orthodox.^  In  one  passage  he  untruthfully 
tells  how,  when  imprisoned  in  England,  he  burned  with  the  desire 
to  shed  his  blood  for  the  CathoHc  Church.'  In  another,  after 
declaring   that   some   Christian  doctors   have  argued  very  weakly 

^  Notably  his  comedy  II  Candelaio. 

^  Owen,  Skeptics  of  the  Italian  Renaissance,  p.  357.  A  full  narrative,  from  the 
oocuments,  is  given  in  R.  C.  Christie's  essay.  "Vanini  in  England,"  in  the  English 
mstorical  Bevtew  of  April.  1895.  reprinted  in  his  Selected  Essays  and  Papers,  1902. 

bee  It  analysed  by  Owen,  pp.  361-68,  and  by  Carriere,  Weltanschauung,  pp.  496-504. 

•  Amphttheatrum,  1615,  Exercit.  six,  pp.  117-18. 


52  THE  EISE  OF  MODEKN  FBEETHOUGHT 

against  the  Epicureans  on  immortality,  he  avows  that  he,  "  Chris- 
tianus  nomine  cognomine  Catholicus."  could  hardly  have  held  the 
doctrine  if  he  had  not  learned  it  from  the  Church.  "  the  most  certain 
and  infallihle  mistress  of  truth."  '     As  usual,  the  attack  leaves  us  m 
doubt  as  to  the  amount  of  real  atheism  current  at  the  time.     The 
preface  asserts  that  "  'A^ccirr/ro  autem  secta  pestilentissima  quotidic, 
latins  et  latius  vires  acquirit  eunchr  and  there  are  various  hostile 
allusions  to  atheists  in  the  text ;'  but  the  arguments  cited  from  them 
are  such  as  might  be  brought  by  deists  against  miracles  and  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  sin ;  and  there  is  an  allusion  of  the  customary 
kind  to  ''Nicolaus  Machiavdlus  Atheorum  facile  pmicepsr    which 
puts  all  in  doubt.     Tlie  later  published  Dialogues,  De  Admiranchs 
Natum  Arcanis;'  while  showing  a  freer  critical  spirit,  would  seem  to 
be  in  part  earlier  in  composition,  if  we  can  trust  the  printer's  preface, 
which   represents   them   as    collected    from   various   quarters,    and 
published  only  with  the  reluctant  consent  of  the  author.'     This,  of 
course,  may  be  a  mystification  ;   in  any  case  the  Dialogues  twice 
mention  the  Amphitheatrum ;  and  the  fourth  book,  in  which  this 
mention  occurs,  may  be  taken  on  this  and  other  grounds  to  set  forth 
his  later  ideas.     Even  the  Dialogues,  however,  while  discussing  many 
questions  of  creed  and  science  in  a  free  fashion,  no  less  profess 
orthodoxy  ;  and,  while  one  passage  is  pantheistic,'  they  also  denounce 
atheism.'     And  whereas  one  passage  does  avow  that  the  author  in 
his  AmpJiitheatnim  had  said  many  things  he  did  not  beheve,  the 
context  clearly  suggests  that  the  reference  was  not  to  the  mam 
argument,  but  to  some  of  its  dubious  facts.'     In  any  case,  though 
the  title— chosen  by  the  editors— speaks  daringly  enough  of  "  Nature, 
the  queen  and  goddess  of  mortals."  Vanini  cannot  be  shown  to  be  an 

iAmphitheatrum,Bxercit.xxvn.v.m-    ,     ^  «  Iii.  pp.  72.  73.  78. 113.  etc. 

8  P  ■«     Machiavelli  is  elsewhere  atbackeo.    rp.  Jo,  ou.  t^„„*„^,o  ,1^ 

Scribing  tlie  matter  of  the  dialogues  to  Vanmi's  young  days,  Mr.  Owen  forgets  the 

references  to  the  ^mp^iit/jeafn/m.  r>„„,r.  onM  vpfcusti  Philosophi  existi- 

6  "Alex.    Sedinqua  nam  Rehgione  \cH  et  pi6  Deum  coli  ^etusti  1  iiuosopm  ca 
marunt?    Fa utni.     In  unica  Naturae  lege,  Q^^'"  jpsa  Natnra.  quffi  Deus  est  (es^^^^^^^ 

principium  motus) ■'    De  Arcanis,  as  cited,  p.  366.    Lib  iv  Dial.  50.    See  fo^sseioc  s 

FrSi  triSii    p   2-27.    This  passage  is  cited  by  Hallam  (Lit.  Hist,  u,  461)  as  avovym^ 
•^lirbiV^o/  «»  ?emm  except  BMch  as  Nature has  planted  in  the  mmds  of  men  -a 

^^T'^Df^^cSrs"  pp '  354-60,  420-22  (Dial.  50.  56) ;  Rousselot.  pp.  21J^23,  271-73. 

e  The  speS  ?eferent^  (lib.  iv.  dial.  .56.  p.  428)  is  to  a  story  of  an  infant  P^ophosy  ng 
when  only  twenty-four  hours  old,  Umi)/u<i<«itrwm.  Ef  •  vi.  P-  38  •  cp.  O^^on^V-^,  note.} 
On  this  and  on  other  points  Cous  n  cited  by  Owen.  pp.  .568. 371. 377)  and  Hallam  ^f:"- ^  ,?'; 
ii46U  make  high  y^ejud^  statements.  Quoting  the  final  pages  on  ^^ich  fhe  ^J^^logu  .t 
passes  SSm  serious  debate  to  a  profession  of  levity  and  ends  by  callmg  for  the  play-table, 
toe  English  historian  dismisses  him  as    the  wretched  man. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


53 


atheist ;    and  the  attacks  upon  him  as  an  immoral  writer  are  not  any 

better   supported.^     The   publication  of   the  dialogues  was  in  fact 

formally  authorized  by  the  Sorbonne,^  and  it  does  not  even  appear 

that  when  he  was  charged  with  atheism  and  blasphemy  at  Toulouse 

that  work  was  founded  on,  save  in  respect  of  its  title."*     The  charges 

rested  on  the  testimony  of  a  treacherous  associate  as  to  his  private 

conversation  ;  and,  if  true,  it  only  amounted  to  proving  his  pantheism, 

expressed  in  his  use  of  the  word  "  Nature."    At  his  trial  he  expressly 

avowed  and  argued  for  theism.     The  judges,  by  one  account,  did  not 

agree.     Yet  he  w^as  convicted,  by  the  voices  of  the  majority,  and 

burned  alive  (February  9,  1619)  on  the  day  of  his  sentence.     Drawn 

on  a  hurdle,  in  his  shirt,  with  a  placard  on  his  shoulders  inscribed 

Atheist  and  Blasphemer  of  the  name  of  God,"  he  w^ent  to  his  death 

with  a  high  heart,  rejoicing,  as  he  cried  in  Italian,  to  die  like  a 

philosopher.*     A    Catholic   historian,^   who   was    present,    says   he 

hardily  declared  that  "  Jesus  facing  death  sweated  with  fear  :  I  die 

undaunted."     But  before  burning  him  they  tore  out  his  tongue  by 

the  roots ;  and  the  Christian  historian  is  humorous  over  the  victim's 

long  cry  of   agony.'     No  martyr  ever   faced   death   with   a   more 

dauntless  courage  than  this 

Lonely  antagonist  of  Destiny 

That  went  down  scornful  before  many  spears ;  ® 

and  if  the  man  had  all  the  faults  falsely  imputed  to  him,®  his  death 
might  shame  his  accusers. 

Vanini,  like  Bruno,  can  now  be  recognized  and  understood  as 
an  Italian  of  vivacious  temperament,  studious  without  the  student's 
calm,  early   learned,  alert   in   debate,   fluent,    imprudent,    and   ill- 

1  Cp.  Carriere's  analysis  of  the  Dialogues,  pp.  505-59 ;  and  the  Apologia  pro  Jul.  CcEs<ire 
Vanino  (by  Arpe),  1712. 

■^  See  Owen's  vindication,  pp.  371-74.  Kenan's  criticism  {Averrohs,  pp.  420-23)  is  not 
quite  judicial.    See  many  others  cited  by  Carriere,  p.  516. 

^  It  is  difficult  to  understand  how  the  censor  could  let  pass  the  description  of  Nature 
in  the  title;  but  this  may  have  been  added  after  the  authorization.  The  book  is 
dedicated  by  Vanini  to  Marshal  Bassompierre,  and  the  epistle  dedicatory  makes  mention 
of  the  Serenissima  Begina  aeterni  nominis  Maria  Mediceea.  which  would  disarm  suspicion. 
In  any  case  the  permit  was  revoked,  and  the  book  condemned  to  be  burned. 

^  Owen.  p.  395. 

5  Mercure  Frangais,  1619,  torn,  v,  p.  64. 

^  Gramond  (Barthelemi  de  Grammont),  Historia  Gallics  ab  excessu  Henrici  IV,  1643, 
p.  209.  Carriere  translates  the  passage  in  full,  pp.  50&-12,  515;  as  does  David  Durand  in 
his  hostile  Vie  et  Seiitimeiis  tie  Lucilio  Vanini,  1717.  As  to  Gramond  see  the  Lettres  de 
Gui  Patin,  who  (Lett.  428,  ed.  Reveille-Parise)  calls  him  dme  foible  et  bigoie,  and  guilty  of 
falsehood  and  flattery. 

^  Gramond.  p.  210.  Of  Vanini,  as  of  Bruno,  it  is  recorded  that  at  the  stake  he  repelled 
the  proffered  crucifix.  Owen  and  other  writers,  who  justly  remark  that  he  well  might, 
overlook  the  once  received  belief  that  it  was  the  official  practice,  witli  obstinate  heretics, 
to  proffer  a  red-hot  crucifix,  so  that  the  victim  should  be  sure  to  spurn  it  with  open  anger. 

^  Stephen  Phillips,  Marpessa. 

^  Cp.  Owen,  pp.  389,  391,  and  Carriere,  pp.  512-13,  as  to  the  worst  calumnies.  It  is 
significant  that  Vanini  was  tried  solely  for  blasphemy  and  atheism.  W'hat  is  proved 
against  him  is  that  he  and  an  associate  practised  a  rather  gross  fraud  on  the  English 
ecclesiastical  authorities,  having  apparently  no  higher  motive  than  gain  and  a  free  life. 
Mr.  Christie  notes,  however,  that  Vanini  in  his  writings  always  speaks  very  kindly  of 
England  and  the  English,  and  so  did  not  add  ingratitude  to  his  act  of  imposture. 


64 


THE  KISE  OF  MODEKN  FREETHOUGHT 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


55 


balanced.     By   his   own   account   he   studied   theology   under   the 
Carmelite  Bartolomeo  Argotti,  phoenix  of  the  preachers  of  the  time ;' 
but  from  the  English  Carmelite,  John  Bacon,  "the  prince  of  Aver- 
roists,'"  he  declares,  he  "learned  to  swear  only  by  Ayerroes";  and 
of  Pomponazzi   he   speaks   as   his  master,  and  as  "prince  of  the 
philosophers  of  our  age.'"     He  has   criticized   both  freely  in  his 
Amphitheatrum ;  but  whereas  that  work  is  a  professed  vindication 
of  orthodoxy,  we  may  infer  from  the  De  Arcanis  that  the  arguments 
of  these  skeptics,  like  those  of  the  contemporary  atheists  whom  he 
had  met  in  his  travels,  had  kept  their  hold  on  his  thought  even 
while  he  controverted  them.     For  it  cannot  be  disputed  that  the 
long  passages  which  he  quotes  from  the  "  atheist  at  Amsterdam  " 
are  put  with  a  zest  and  cogency  which  are  not  infused  into  the 
professed  rebuttals,  and  are  in  themselves  quite  enough  to  arouse 
the  anger  and  suspicion  of  a  pious  reader.     A  writer  who  set  forth 
so  fully  the  acute  arguments  of  unbelievers,  unprintable  by  their 
authors,  might  well  be  suspected  of  writing  at  Christianity  when  he 
confuted  the  creeds  of  the  pagans.     As  was  noted  later  of  Fontenelle, 
he  put  arguments  against  oracles  which  endangered  prophecy ;  his 
dismissal  of  sorcery  as  the  dream  of   troubled   brains    appeals   to 
reason  and  not  to  faith  ;  and  his  disparagement  of  pagan  miracles 
logically  bore  upon  the  Christian. 

When  he  -comes  to  the  question  of  immortality  he  grows  overtly 
irreverent.  Asked  by  the  interlocutor  in  the  last  dialogue  to  give 
his  views  on  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  he  begs  to  be  excused, 
protesting:  "I  have  vowed  to  my  God  that  that  question  shall  not 
be  handled  by  me  till  I  become  old,  rich,  and  a  German."  And 
without  overt  irreverence  he  is  ever  and  again  unserious.  Perfectly 
transparent  is  the  irony  of  the  appeal,  "  Let  us  give  faith  to  the 
prescripts  of  the  Church,  and  due  honour  to  the  sacrosanct  Gregorian 
apparitions,'"  and  the  protestation,  "I  will  not  invalidate  the 
powers  of  holy  water,  to  which  Alexander,  Doctor  and  Pontifex  of  the 
Christians,  and  interpreter  of  the  divine  will,  accorded  such  countless 
privileges.'"'  And  even  in  the  Amphitheatrum,  with  all  the  parade 
of  defending  the  faith,  there  is  a  plain  balance  of  cogency  on  the 
side  of  the  case  for  the  attack,'  and  a  notable  disposition  to  rely 
finally  on  lines  of  argument  to  which  faith  could  never  give  real 
welcome.     The  writer's  mind,  it  is  clear,  was  familiar  with  doubt. 

1  De^rmmX  p.  2a5.    Lib.  iii.  dial.  30.  'i  AmvUtheatrumv.V!.       _.  _, 

8  De  Arcanis,  lib.  iv.  dial.  52,  p.  379;  dial.  51,  p.  373.    Cp.  Amphitheatrum,  p.  36.  and 

*  De  Arcanis,  dial.  50  and  58.    In  the  Amphitheatrum  he  adduces  an  equally  sluUui 

German  atheist  (p.  73).  -  ^     „  ,  *.       i- 

6  Dial.  11,  p.  371.  «  Dial,  liv,  p.  407.  ^  Cp.  RouBselot,  notice,  p.  xi. 


In  the  malice  of  orthodoxy  there  is  sometimes  an  instinctive  percep- 
tion of  hostility;  and  though  Vanini  had  written,  among  other 
things,*  an  Apologia  pro  lege  mosa'icd  et  christiand,  to  which  he  often 
refers,  and  an  Apologia  pro  concilio  Tridentino,  he  can  be  seen  even 
in  the  hymn  to  deity  with  which  he  concludes  his  Amphitheatrum 
to  have  no  part  in  evangelical  Christianity. 

He  was  in  fact  a  deist  with  the  inevitable  leaning  of  the  philo- 
sophic theist  to  pantheism;  and  whatever  he  may  have  said  to 
arouse  priestly  hatred  at  Toulouse,  he  was  rather  less  of  an  atheist 
than  Spinoza  or  Bruno  or  John  Scotus.  On  his  trial,^  pressed  as  to 
his  real  beliefs  by  judges  who  had  doubtless  challenged  his  identifi- 
cation of  God  with  Nature,  he  passed  from  a  profession  of  orthodox 
faith  in  a  trinity  into  a  flowing  discourse  which  could  as  well  have 
availed  for  a  vindication  of  pantheism  as  for  the  proposition  of  a 
personal  God.  Seeing  a  straw  on  the  ground,  he  picked  it  up  and 
talked  of  its  history  ;  and  when  brought  back  again  from  his  affirnia- 
tion  of  Deity  to  his  doctrine  of  Nature,  he  set  forth  the  familiar 
orthodox  theorem  that,  while  Nature  wrought  the  succession  of  seeds 
and  fruits,  there  must  have  been  a  first  seed  which  was  created.  It 
was  the  habitual  standing  ground  of  theism  ;  and  they  burned  him 
all  the  same.  It  remains  an  open  question  whether  personal  enmity 
on  the  part  of  the  prosecuting  official'  or  a  real  belief  that  he  had 
uttered  blasphemies  against  Jesus  or  Mary  was  the  determining  force, 
or  whether  even  less  motive  sufficed.  A  vituperative  Jesuit  of  that 
age  sees  intolerable  freethinking  in  his  suggestion  of  the  unreality 
of  demoniacal  possession  and  the  futility  of  exorcisms.^  And  for  that 
much  they  were  not  incapable  of  burning  men  in  Catholic  Toulouse 
in  the  days  of  Mary  de  Medici. 

There  are  in  fact  reasons  for  surmizing  that  in  the  cases  alike  of 
Bruno  and  of  Vanini  it  was  the  attitude  of  the  speculator  towards 
scientific  problems  that  primarily  or  mainly  aroused  distrust  and 
anger  among  the  theologians.  Vanini  is  careful  to  speak  equivocally 
of  the  eternity  of  the  universe;  and  though  he  makes  a  passing 
mention  of  Kepler,'  he  does  not  name  Copernicus.  He  had  learned 
something  from  the  fate  of  Bruno.  Yet  in  the  Dialogue  De  cosli 
forma  et  motore^  he  declares  so  explicitly  for  a  naturalistic  explana- 
tion of  the  movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies  that  he  must  have 
aroused  in  some  orthodox  readers  such  anger  as  was  set  up  in  Plato 

1  Durand  compiles  a  list  of  ten  or  eleven  works  of  Vanini  from  the  allusions  in  the 
Amphitheatrum  and  the  De  Arcanis.  005-04 

•2  Reported  by  Gramond,  as  cited.  ^  Owen,  pp.  393  94. 

*  Garasse,  Doctrine  curieuse  des  beaux  espnts,  1623.        -  ^.  ,   .  ,       „, 
6  De  Arcanis,  dial,  vii,  p.  36.  ^  Dial.  iv.  p.  21. 


I 


56 


THE  KISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


by  a  physical  theory  of  sun  and  stars.  After  an  k  priori  discussion 
on  Aristotelian  lines,  the  querist  in  the  dialogue  asks  what  may 
fitly  be  held,  with  an  eye  to  religion,  concerning  the  movements  of 
the  spheres.  "This,"  answers  Vanini,  "unless  I  am  in  error:  the 
mass  of  the  heaven  is  moved  in  its  proper  gyratory  way  by  the 
nature  of  its  elements."  **  How  then,"  asks  the  querist,  "are  the 
heavens  moved  by  certain  and  fixed  laws,  unless  divine  minds, 
participating  in  the  primal  motion,  there  operate?"  "Where  is 
the  wonder  ?  "  returns  Vanini.  "  Does  not  a  certain  and  fixed  law 
of  motion  act  in  the  most  paltry  clockwork  machines,  made  by  a 
drunken  German,  even  as  there  works  silently  in  a  tertian  and 
quartan  fever  a  motion  which  comes  and  goes  at  fixed  periods  with- 
out trangressing  its  line  by  a  moment  ?  The  sea  also  at  certain 
and  fixed  times,  by  its  nature,  as  you  peripatetics  affirm,  is  moved 
in  progressions  and  regressions.  No  less,  then,  I  affirm  the  heaven 
to  be  forever  carried  by  the  same  motion  in  virtue  of  its  nature 
{a  sua  pura  forma)  and  not  to  be  moved  by  the  will  of  intelligence." 
And  the  disciple  assents.  Kepler  had  seen  fit,  either  in  sincerity  or 
of  prudence,  to  leave  "  divine  minds  "  in  the  planets  ;  and  Vanini's 
negation,  though  not  accompanied  by  any  assertion  of  the  motion 
of  the  earth,  was  enough  to  provoke  the  minds  which  had  only 
three  years  before  put  Copernicus  on  the  Index,  and  challenged 
Galileo  for  venting  his  doctrine. 

It  is  at  this  stage  that  we  begin  to  realize  the  full  play  of  the 
Counter-Eeforniation,  as  against  the  spirit  of  science.  The  move- 
ment of  mere  theological  and  ecclesiastical  heresy  had  visibly  begun 
to  recede  in  the  world  of  mind,  and  in  its  stead,  alike  in  Protestant 
and  in  Catholic  lands,  there  was  emerging  a  new  activity  of  scientific 
research,  vaguely  menacing  to  all  theistic  faith.  Kepler  represented 
it  in  Germany,  Harriott  and  Harvey  and  Gilbert  and  Bacon  in 
England  ;  from  Italy  had  come  of  late  the  portents  of  Bruno  and 
Galileo ;  even  Spain  yielded  the  Examen  de  Ifigenios  of  Huarte 
(1575),  where  with  due  protestation  of  theism  the  physicist  insists 
upon  natural  causation ;  and  now  Vanini  was  exhibiting  the  same 
incorrigible  zest  for  a  naturalistic  explanation  of  all  things.  His 
dialogues  are  full  of  sucli  questionings ;  the  mere  metaphysic  and 
theosophy  of  the  Amphitheatrum  are  being  superseded  by  discus- 
sions on  physical  and  physiological  phenomena.  It  was  for  this, 
doubtless,  that  the  De  Arcanis  won  the  special  vogue  over  which 
the  Jesuit  Garasse  was  angrily  exclaiming  ten  years  later.*     Not 

1  Doctrine  curieuse  dea  beaux  esvrits  tie  ce  temps,  1623.  p.  848. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


57 


merely  the  doubts  cast  upon  sorcery  and  diaboHcal  possession,  but 
the  whole  drift,  often  enough  erratic,  of  the  inquiry  as  to  how  things 
in  nature  came  about,  caught  the  curiosity  of  the  time,  soon  to  be 
stimulated  by  more  potent  and  better-governed  minds  than  that  of 
the  ill-starred  Vanini.  And  for  every  new  inquirer  there  would  be 
a  hostile  zealot  in  the  Church,  where  the  anti-intellectual  instinct 
was  now  so  much  more  potent  than  it  had  been  in  the  days  before 
Luther,  when  heresy  was  diagnosed  only  as  a  danger  to  revenue. 

It  was  with  Galileo  that  there  began  the  practical  application 
of  the  Copernican  theory  to  astronomy,  and,  indeed,  the  decisive 
demonstration  of  its  truth.  With  him,  accordingly,  began  the 
positive  rejection  of  the  Copernican  theory  by  the  Church ;  for  thus 
far  it  had  never  been  officially  vetoed— having  indeed  been  generally 
treated  as  a  wild  absurdity.  Almost  immediately  after  the  publica- 
tion of  Galileo's  Sidereus  Nunciiis  (1610)  his  name  is  found  in  the 
papers  of  the  Inquisition,  with  that  of  Cremonini  of  Padua,  as  a 
subject  of  investigation.^  The  juxtaposition  is  noteworthy.  Cremonini 
was  an  Aristotelian,  with  Averroist  leanings,  and  reputed  an  atheist  ;^ 
and  it  was  presumably  on  this  score  that  the  Inquisition  was  looking 
into  his  case.  At  the  same  time,  as  an  Aristotehan  he  was  strongly 
opposed  to  Gahleo,  and  is  said  to  have  been  one  of  those  who  refused 
to  look  through  GaHleo's  telescope.'  Galileo,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
ostensibly  a  good  Catholic  ;  but  his  discovery  of  the  moons  of  Jupiter 
was  a  signal  confirmation  of  the  Copernican  theory,  and  the  new 
status  at  once  given  to  that  made  a  corresponding  commotion  in  the 
Church.  Thus  he  had  against  him  both  the  unbelieving  pedants  of 
the  schools  and  the  typical  priests. 

In  his  book  the  great  discoverer  had  said  nothing  explicitly  on 
the  subject  of  the  Copernican  theory  ;  but  in  lectures  and  conversa- 
tions he  had  freely  avowed  his  behef  in  it ;  and  the  implications  of 
the  published  treatise  were  clear  to  all  thinkers.^  And  though,  when 
ho  visited  Rome  in  1611,  he  was  well  received  by  Pope  Paul  V,  and 
his  discoveries  were  favourably  reported  of  by  the  four  scientific 
experts  nominated  at  the  request  of  Cardinal  Bellarmin  to  examine 
them,^  it   only   needed   that   the  Biblical  cry  should  be  raised  to 


\  h^^^  ^'^^  Gebler.  Galileo  Galilei  and  the  Roman  Curia,  Eng.  tr.  1879,  pp.  36-37. 

*  Inis  appears  from  the  letters  of  Sagredo  to  Galileo.    Gebler.  p.  37.    Cp.  Gui  Patin 
Lett.  816,  ed.  Reveill^-Parise,  1846,  iii,  758;  Bayle,  art.  Cremonin,  notes  C  and  D;  and 
liena^n,  Averroes,  3e  edit.  pp.  408-13.    Patin  writes  that  his  friend  Naude  "  avoit  ete  intime 
aim  de  Cremonin,  qui  n'6toit  point  moilleur  Chretien  que  Pomponace,  que  Machiavel  que 
Lardan  et  telles  autres dont  le  pays  abonde." 

3  Lange.  Gesch.  des  Materialismiis,  i,  183  (Eng.  tr.  i,  220) ;  Gebler,  p.  25.  Libri  actually 
made  the  refusal ;  but  all  that  is  proved  as  to  Cremonini  is  that  he  opposed  Galileo's 
mscovenes  ^priori.  As  to  the  attitude  of  such  opponents  see  Galileo's  letter  to  Kepler. 
J.  J.  Fahie,  Galileo  :  his  Life  and  Work,  1903.  pp.  101-102. 

*  Fahie,  Galileo,  p.  100.  s  jd.  p.  127. 


I 


58  THE  EISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

change  the  situation.  The  Church  still  contained  men  individually 
open  to  new  scientific  ideas ;  but  she  was  then  more  than  ever 
dominated  by  the  forces  of  tradition ;  and  as  soon  as  those  forces 
had  been  practicaUy  evoked  his  prosecution  was  bound  to  follow. 
The  cry  of  "religion  in  danger"  silenced  the  saner  men  at  Rome 

The  fashion  in  which  Galileo's  sidereal  discoveries  were  met  is 
indeed  typical  of  the  whole  history  of  freethought.     The  clergy 
pointed  to  the  story  of  Joshua  stopping  the  sun  and  moon ;   the 
average  layman  scouted  the  new  theory  as  plain  folly ;  and  typical 
schoolmen  insisted  that  "  the  heavens  are  unchangeable,"  and  tna,t 
there  was  no  authority  in  Aristotle  for  the  new  assertions.     With 
such  minds  the  man  of  science  had  to  argue,  and  in  deference  to  such 
he  had  at  length  to  affect  to  doubt  his  own  demonstrations       i  he 
Catholic  Reaction  had  finally  created  as  bitter  a  spirit  of  hostihty  to 
free  science  in  the  Church  as  existed  among  the  Protestants  ;  and  in 
Italy  even  those  who  saw  the  moons  of  Jupiter  through  his  telescope 
dared  not  avow  what  they  had  seen.^    It  was  therefore  an  unfortunate 
step  on  Galileo-s  part  to  go  from  Padua,  which  was  under  the  rule  of 
Venice,  then  anti-papal,'  to  Tuscany,  on  the  invitation  of  the  Grand 
Duke.     When  in  1613  he  published  his  treatise  on  the  solar  spots, 
definitely  upholding   Copernicus  against  Jesuits  and  Aristotelians, 
trouble   became   inevitable;    and   his   letter*    to   his   pupil.  Father 
CasteUi,  professor  of  mathematics  at  Pisa,  discussing  the  Biblical 
argument  with  which  they  had  both  been  met,  at  once  evoked  an 
explosion  when  circulated  by  CasteUi.     New  trouble   arose  when 
Galileo  in  1615  wrote  his  apology  in  the  form  of  a  letter  to  his 
patroness  the  Dowager  Grand  Duchess  Cristina  of  Tuscany,  extracts 
from  which   became   current.     An  outcry  of   ignorant   Dominican 
monks'  sufficed  to  set  at  work  the  machinery  of  the  hidcx,  the  first 
result  of  which  (1616)  was  to  put  on  the  list  of  condemned  books 
the   great  treatise   of    Copernicus,   published    seventy-three   years 
before.     Galileo  personally   escaped   for  the  present  through  the 
friendly  intervention  of  the  Pope,  Paul  V,  on  the  appeal  of   his 
patron,  the  Grand  Duke  of  Tuscany,  apparently  on  the  ground  that 
he  had  not  publicly  taught  the  Copernican  theory.     It  would  seem 

•  Gebler,  rp.  54, 139.  and  passim ;  The  Private  Life  of  Galileo  (by  Mrs.  Olney),  Boston, 
1870.  pp.  67-72.  ..    ,  t     ^   I ,  na 

aspicienten  in  coelum,"  making  a  pun  on  the  Scripture. 
6  See  this  summarized  by  Gebler,  pp.  64-70. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


69 


as  if  some  of  the  heads  of  the  Church  were  at  heart  Copernicans ;  ^ 
but  they  were  in  any  case  obliged  to  disown  a  doctrine  felt  by  so 
many  others  to  be  subversive  of  the  Church's  authority. 

See  the  details  of  the  procedure  in  Domenico  Berti,  II  Processo 
Originale  dc  Galileo  Galilei,  ed.  1878,  cap.  iv  ;  in  Fahie,  ch.  viii ; 
and  in  Gebler,  ch.  vi.    The  last-cited  writer  claims  to  show  that, 
of  two  records  of  the  "  admonition  "  to  Galileo,  one,  the  more 
stringent  in  its  terms,  was  false,  tJwugh  made  at  the  date  it  hears, 
to  permit  of  subsequent  proceedings  against  Gahleo.     But  the 
whole  thesis  is  otiose.    It  is  admitted  (Gebler,  p.  89)  that  Galileo 
was  admonished  **  not  to  defend  or  hold  the  Copernican  doctrine." 
Gebler  contends,  however,  that  this  was  not  a  command  to  keep 
entire  silence,"  and  that  therefore  GaHleo  is  not  justly  to  be 
charged  with  having  disobeyed  the  injunction  of  the  Inquisition 
when,  in  his  Dialogues  on  the  Two  Principal  Systems  of  the 
World,  the  Ptolemuic  and  Copernican  (1632),  he  dealt  dialectically 
with  the  subject,  neither  afiBrming  nor  denying,  but  treating  both 
theories  as   hypotheses.     But  the  real  issue  is  not   Galileo's 
cautious  disobedience  (see  Gebler's  own  admissions,  p.  149)  to 
an  irrational  decree,  but  the  crime  of  the  Church  in  silencing 
him.     It  is  not  likely  that  the  "  enemies  "  of  Gahleo,  as  Gebler 
supposes  (pp.  90,  338),  anticipated  his  later  dialectical  handling 
of  the  subject,  and  so  falsified  the  decision  of  the  Inquisition 
against  him  in  1616.     Gebler  had  at  first  adopted  the  German 
theory  that  the  absolute  command  to  silence  was  forged  in 
1632 ;  and,  finding  the  document  certainly  belonged  to  1616, 
framed  the  new  theory,  quite  unnecessarily,  to  save  Galileo's 
credit.     The  two  records  are  quite  in  the  spirit  and  manner  of 
Inquisitorial  diplomacy.     As  Berti  remarks,  "  the  Holy  OfiQce 
proceeded  with  much  heedlessness  (legerezza)  and  much  con- 
fusion "  in   1616.     Its  first  judgment,  in  either  form,  merely 
emphasizes  the  guilt  of  the  second.     Cp.  Fahie,  pp.  167-69. 

Thus  officially  "admonished"  for  his  heresy,  but  not  punished, 
in  1616,  Gahleo  kept  silence  for  some  years,  till  in  1618  he  published 
his  (erroneous)  theory  of  the  tides,  which  he  sent  with  an  ironical 
epistle  to  the  friendly  Archduke  Leopold  of  Austria,  professing  to  be 
propounding  a  mere  dream,  disallowed  by  the  official  veto  on  Coper- 
nicus.'^ This,  however,  did  him  less  harm  than  his  essay  II  Sag- 
giatore  ("  The  Scales  "),  in  which  he  opposed  the  Jesuit  Grassi  on 
the  question  of  comets.  Eeceiving  the  imprimatur  in  1623,  it  was 
dedicated  to  the  new  pope.  Urban  VIII,  who,  as  the  Cardinal 
Maffeo  Barberini,  had  been  Galileo's  friend.     The  latter  could  now 

*  See  The  Private  Life  of  Galileo,  pp.  86-87.  91,  99;  Gebler,  p.  44;  Fahie,  pp.  160-70; 
Berti.  II  Processo  Originale  de  Galileo  Galilei,  1878,  p.  53. 

■;*  Gebler  (p.  101)  solemnly  comments  on  this  letter  as  a  lapse  into  "servility"  on 
Galileo's  part. 


60 


THE  KISE  OF  MODEEN  FKEETHOUGHT 


hope  for  freedom  of  speech,  as  he  had  all  along  had  a  number  of 
friends  at  the  papal  com't,  besides  many  priests,  among  his  admirers 
and  disciples.     But   the   enmity  of   the  Jesuits   countervailed   all. 
They  did  not  succeed  in  procuring   a   censure   of   the    Saggiatore, 
though  that  subtly  vindicates   the   Copernican   system  while  pro- 
fessing to  hold  it  disproved  by  the  fiat  of  the  Church;'  but  when, 
venturing   further,  he   after   another   lapse  of  years  produced  his 
Dialogues  on  the  Tiuo  Systems,  for  which  he  obtained   the   papal 
imprimatur  in  1632,  they  caught  him  in  their  net.     Having  constant 
access  to  the  pope,  they  contrived  to  make  him  believe  that  Galileo 
had  ridiculed  him  in  one  of  the  personages  of  his  Dialogues.     It  was 
quite  false ;  but  one  of  the  pope's  anti-Copernican  arguments  was 
there  unconsciously  made  light  of ;  and   his  wounded  vanity  was 
probably  a  main  factor  in  the  impeachment  which  followed.'*     His 
Holiness  professed  to  have  been  deceived  into  granting  the  impri- 
matur ;""  a  Special  Commission  was  set  on  foot;  the  proceedings  of 
1616  were  raked  up ;  and  Galileo  was  again  summoned  to  Kome. 
He  was  old  and  frail,  and  sent  medical  certificates  of  his  unfitness 
for  such  travel ;  but  it  was  insisted  on,  and  as  under  the  papal 
tyranny  there  was  no  help,  he  accordingly  made  the  journey.     After 
many  delays  he  was  tried,  and,  on  his  formal  abjuration,  sentenced 
to  formal  imprisonment  (1633)  for  teaching  the  "  absurd  "  and  "  false 
doctrine  "  of  the  motion  of  the  earth  and  the  non-motion  of  the  sun 
from  east  to  west.     In  this  case  the  pope,  whatever  were  his  motives, 
acted  as  a  hot  anti-Copernican,  expressing  his  personal  opinion  on 
the  question  again  and  again,  and  always  in  an  anti-Copernican 
sense.     In  both  cases,  however,  the  popes,  while  agreeing  to  the 
verdict,  abstained  from  ofiicially  ratifying  it,*  so  that,  in  proceeding 
to  force  Gahleo  to  abjure  his  doctrine,  the  Inquisition  technically 
exceeded   its   powers— a    circumstance   in   which    some    Cathohcs 
appear   to   find   comfort.     Seeing   that  three  of   the  ten  cardinals 
named  in  the  preamble  to  the  sentence  did  not  sign,  it  has  been 
inferred  that  they  dissented  ;  but  there  is  no  good  reason  to  suppose 
that  either  the  pope  or  they  wilfully  abstained  from  signing.     They 
had  gained  their  point— the  humiliation  of  the  great  discoverer. 

Compare  Gebler,  p.  241  ;  Private  Life,  p.  257,  quoting 
Tiraboschi.  For  an  exposure  of  the  many  perversions  of  the 
facts  as  to  Gahleo  by  Catholic  writers  see  Parchappe,  Galilee, 
sa  vie,  etc.,  2e  Partie.  To  such  straits  has  the  Catholic  Church 
been  reduced  in  this  matter  that  part  of  its  defence  of   the 

1  Gebler  pp  11-2-13.  «  PHvateLife,vP.  216-18;  Gebler.  pp.  157-62. 

3  Berti,  pp.  61-64  ;  Private  Life,  pp.  212-13 ;  Gebler,  p.  162. 
*  Gebler,  p.  239 ;  Private  Life,  p.  256. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


61 


treatment  of  Galileo  is  the  plea  that  he  unwarrantably  asserted 
that  the  fixity  of  the  sun  and  the  motion  of  the  earth  were 
taught  in  the  Scriptures.     Sir  Eobert  Inglis  is  quoted  as  having 
maintained    this   view   in   England   in    1824    (Mendham,   The 
Literary  Policy  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  2nd  ed.  1830,  p.  176), 
and  the  same  proposition  was  maintained  in  1850  by  a  Eoman 
cardinal.      See  Galileo  e  V Liquisizione,  by  Monsignor  Marini 
Eoma,  1850,  pp.  1.  53-54,  etc.     Had  Gahleo  really  taught  as 
is  there  asserted,  he  would  only  have  been  assenting  to  what  his 
priestly  opponents  constantly  dinned  in  his  ears.     But  in  point 
of  fact  he  had  not  so  assented  ;  for  in  his  letter  to  Castelh  (see 
Gebler,  pp.  46-50)   he  had  earnestly  deprecated  the  argument 
from  the  Bible,  urging  that,  though  Scripture  could  not  err,  its 
interpreters  might  misunderstand  it ;  and  even  going  so  far  as 
to  argue,  with  much  ingenuity,  that  the  story  of  Joshua,  literally 
interpreted,  could  be  made  to  harmonize  with  the  Copernican 
theory,  but  not  at  all  with  the  Ptolemaic. 

The  thesis  revived  by  Monsignor  Marini  deserves  to  rank  as 
the  highest  flight  of  absurdity  and  effrontery  in  the  entire 
discussion  (cp.  Berti,  Giordano  Bruno,  1889,  p.  306,  7iote), 
Every  step  in  both  procedures  of  the  Inquisition  insists  on  the 
falsity  and  the  anti-scriptural  character  of  the  doctrine  that  the 
earth  moves  round  the  sun  (see  Berti,  II  Processo,  p.  115  sq.; 
Gebler,  pp.  76-77,  230-34)  ;  and  never  once  is  it  hinted  that 
Galileo's  error  lay  in  ascribing  to  the  Bible  the  doctrine  of  the 
earth's  fixity  In  the  Eoman  Lidex  of  1664  the  works  of 
Galileo  and  Copernicus  are  alike  vetoed,  with  all  other  writings 
afiirming  the  movement  of  the  earth  and  the  stability  of  the 
sun  ;  and  in  the  Lidex  of  1704  are  included  libri  omnes  docentes 
mohilitatem  terrae  et  immohilitatem  solis  (Putnam,  The  Censor- 
ship of  the  Church  of  Borne,  1906-1907,  i,  308,  312). 

The  stories  of  his  being  tortured  and  blinded,  and  saying  "  Still 
it  moves,"  are  indeed  myths.^  The  broken-spirited  old  man  was  in 
no  mood  so  to  speak ;  he  was,  moreover,  in  all  respects  save  his 
science,  an  orthodox  Catholic,^  and  as  such  not  likely  to  defy  the 
Church  to  its  face.  In  reality  he  was  formally  in  the  custody  of 
the  Inquisition— and  this  not  in  a  cell,  but  in  the  house  of  an 
official— for  only  twenty-two  days.  After  the  sentence  he  was  again 
formally  detained  for  some  seventeen  days  in  the  Villa  Medici,  but 
was  then  allowed  to  return  to  his  own  rural  home  at  Acatri,^  on 
condition  that  he  lived  in  sohtude,  receiving  no  visitors.     He  was 

ofot  ^.^^l^'^'  1?P'  24p-63 ;  Private  Life,  pp.  QSS-f^e ;  Marini,  pp.  55-57.  The  "  e  pur  si  muove  " 
vl^^J^/'^^V^^^^'^  °f  1°  l'^74.  As  to  the  torture,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  Galileo 
recanted  under  threat  of  it.  See  Berti,  pp.  93-101 ;  Marini.  p.  59 ;  Sir  O.  Lodge,  Pioneers 
Of  6cte)jce.  1893.  pp.  128-31.  Berti  argues  that  only  the  special  humanity  of  the  Com- 
missary-Cxeneral,  Macolano.  saved  him  from  the  torture.    Cp.  Gebler,  p.  259,  note 

uebler,  p.  281.  »  Private  Life,  pp.  265-60.  268 ;  Gebler,  p.  252. 


62 


THE  KISE  OF  MODERN  FEEETHOUGHT 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


63 


thus  much  more  truly  a  prisoner  than  the  so-called  "  prisoner  of  the 
Vatican  "  in  our  own  day.     The  worst  part  of  the  sentence,  however, 
was  the  placing  of  all  his  works,  published  and  unpublished,  on  the 
Index  Expurgatorius,  and   the   gag ,  thus   laid   on  all  utterance  of 
rational  scientific  thought  in  Italy—an  evil  of  incalculable  influence. 
"The   lack   of   liberty  and   speculation,"  writes    a   careful   Itahan 
student,  "  was  the  cause  of  the  death  first  of  the  Accademia  dei 
Lincei,  an  institution  unique  in  its  time ;  then  of  the  Accademia 
del  Cimento.     Thus  Italy,  after  the  marvellous  period  of  vigorous 
native  civilization  in  the  thirteenth  century,  after  a  second  period 
of  civilization  less  native  but  still  its  own,  as  being  Latin,  saw  itself 
arrested  on  the  threshold  of  a  third  and  not  less  splendid  period. 
Vexations    and    prohibitions    expelled    courage,    spontaneity,    and 
universality   from   the   national   mind;  literary   style   became   un- 
certain,   indeterminate;    and,    forbidden    to   treat    of    government, 
science,  or  religion,  turned  to  things  frivolous  and  fruitless.     For 
the  great  academies,  instituted  to  renovate  and  further  the  study  of 
natural  philosophy,  were  substituted  small  ones  without  any  such 
aim.     Intellectual   energy,  the   love   of   research    and   of   objective 
truth,  greatness  of  feeling  and  nobility  of  character,  all  suffered. 
Nothing  so  injures  a  people  as  the  compulsion  to  express  or  conceal 
its  thought  solely  from  motives  of  fear.     The  nation  in  which  those 
conditions  were  set  up  became  intellectually  inferior  to  those  in 
which   it   was   possible    to    pass    freely   in    the    vast    regions    of 
knowledge.      Her  culture    grew   restricted,    devoid    of    originahty, 
vaporous,    umbratile;    there  arose    habits    of    servility   and   dissi- 
mulation;   great  books,   great    men,   great    purposes    were    dena- 
turalized." ^ 

It  was  thus  in  the  other  countries  of  Europe  that  Galileo's 
teaching  bore  its  fruit,  for  he  speedily  got  his  condemned  Dialogues 
published  in  Latin  by  the  Elzevirs ;  and  in  1638,  also  at  the  hands 
of  the  Elzevirs,  appeared  his  Dialogues  of  the  New  Sciences  [i.e.,  of 
mechanics  and  motion] ,  the  "  foundation  of  mechanical  physics." 
By  this  time  he  was  totally  blind,  and  then  only,  when  physicians 
could  not  help  him  save  by  prolonging  his  life,  was  he  allowed  to  live 
under  strict  surveillance  in  Florence,  needing  a  special  indulgence 
from  the  Inquisition  to  permit  him  even  to  go  to  church  at  Easter. 
The  desire  of  his  last  blind  days,  to  have  with  him  his  best-beloved 
pupil.  Father  Castelli,  was  granted  only  under  rigid  limitation  and 
supervision,  though  even  the  papacy  could  not  keep  from  him  the 

>  Berti,  17  Processo  di  Galileo,  PP.  111-12. 


plaudits  of  the  thinkers  of  Europe.  Finally  he  passed  away  in  his 
rural  "prison  " — after  five  years  of  blindness — in  1642,  the  year  of 
Newton's  birth.  At  that  time  his  doctrines  were  under  anathema  in 
Italy,  and  known  elsewhere  only  to  a  few.  Hobbes  in  1634  tried  in 
vain  to  procure  for  the  Earl  of  Newcastle  a  copy  of  the  earlier  Dia- 
logues in  London,  and  wrote  :  "  It  is  not  possible  to  get  it  for  money. 
.....J  hear  say  it  is  called-in,  in  Italy,  as  a  book  that  will  do  more 
hurt  to  their  religion  than  all  the  books  of  Luther  and  Calvin,  such 
opposition  they  think  is  between  their  rehgion  and  natural  reason."  ^ 
Not  till  1757  did  the  papacy  permit  other  books  teaching  the  Coper- 
nican  system  ;  in  1765  GaHleo  w^as  still  under  ban  ;  not  until  1822 
was  permission  given  to  treat  the  theory  as  true ;  and  not  until  1835 
was  the  work  of  Copernicus  withdrawn  from  the  Index.^ 

While  modern  science  was  thus  being  placed  on  its  special  basis, 
a   continuous   resistance  was   being   made   in   the   schools   to   the 
dogmatism  which  held  the  mutilated  lore  of  Aristotle  as  the  sum  of 
human  wisdom.     Like  the  ecclesiastical  revolution,  this  had  been 
protracted  through  centuries.     Aristotelianism,  whether  theistic  or 
pantheistic,  whether  orthodox  or  heterodox,^  had  become  a  dogmatism 
like  another,  a  code  that  vetoed  revision,  a  fetter  laid  on  the  mind. 
Even  as  a  negation  of  Christian  superstition  it  had  become  impotent, 
for  the  Peripatetics  were  not  only  ready  to  make  common  cause  with 
the  Jesuits  against  Galileo,  as  w^e  have  seen  ;  some  of  them  were 
content  even  to  join  in  the  appeal  to  the  Bible.*     The  result  of  such 
uncritical  partisanship  was  that  the  immense  service  of  Aristotle  to 
mental   life — the  comprehensive  grasp  which   gave   him   his   long 
supremacy  as  against   rival   system-makers,  and   makes   him  still 
so  much   more   important  than  any  of   the  thinkers  who  in  the 
sixteenth   century   revolted   against   him — was   by   opponents   dis- 
regarded and  denied,  though  the  range  and  depth  of  his  influence 
are  apparent  in  all  the  polemic  against  him,  notably  in  that  of  Bacon, 
who  is  constantly  citing  him,  and  relates   his  reasoning  to  him, 
however  antagonistically,  at  every  turn. 

Naturally,  the  less  sacrosanct  dogmatism  was  the  more  freely 

1  Letter  of  Hobbes  to  Newcastle,  in  Beport  of  the  Hist.  Mss.  Comm.  on  the  DuJce  of 
Portland's  Papers,  li^,  ii.  Hobbes  explains  that  few  copies  were  brought  over,  "and 
they  that^  buy  such  books  are  not  such  men  as  to  part  with  them  again."  "  I  doubt  not," 
he  adds,  "  but  the  translation  of  it  will  here  be  publicly  embraced." 

^  Gebler,  pp.  312-15 ;  Putnam.  Censorship  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  i,  313-14. 

^  See  Ueberweg,  ii,  12.  as  to  the  conflicting  types.  In  addition  to  Cremonini,  several 
leading  Aristotelians  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  were  accused  of  atheism 
(Hallam,  Lit.  Hist,  ii,  101-102),  the  old  charge  against  the  Peripatetic  school.  Hallam 
(p.  102)  complains  that  Cesalpini  of  Pisa  "substitutes  the  barren  unity  of  pantheism  for 
religion."  Cp.  Ueberweg,  ii,  14;  Renan.  Averrods,  3e  6dit.  p.  417.  An  Averroist  on  some 
points,  he  believed  in  separate  immortality. 

*  Gebler,  pp.  37.  45.  Gebler  appears  to  surmise  that  Cremonini  may  have  escaped  the 
attack  upon  himself  by  turning  suspicion  upon  Galileo,  but  as  to  this  there  is  no  evidence. 


64 


THE  RISE  OF  MODEEN  FREETHOUGHT 


assailed ;  and  in  the  sixteenth  century  the  attacks  became  numerous 
and  vehement.    Luther  was  a  furious  anti-Aristotelian,   as  were  also 
some  Calvinists  ;  but  in  1570  we  find  Beza  declaring  to  Ramus   that 
"  the  Genevese  have  decreed,  once  and  for  ever,  that  they  wiU  never, 
neither  in  logic  nor  in  any  other  branch  of  learning,  turn  away^from 
the  teaching  of  Aristotle."     At  Oxford  the  same  code  held.      In 
Italy,  Telesio,  who  notably  anticipates  the  tone  of   Bacon  as  to 
natural  science,  and  is  largely  followed  by  him.  influenced  Bruno 
in  the  anti-Aristotelian  direction,'  though  it  was  in  a  long  hne  from 
Aristotle  that  he  got  his  principle  of  the  eternity  of  the  universe- 
The  Spaniard   Ludovicus  Vives,  too   (1492-1540).  pronounced  by 
Lange  one  of  the  clearest  heads  of  his  age,  had  insisted  on  progress 
beyond  Aristotle  in  the  spirit  of  naturalist  science.'     But  the  typical 
anti-Aristotelian  of  the  century  was  RAMUS  (Pierre  de  la  Ramee, 
1515-1572),  whose   long   and   strenuous   battle  against  the  ruling 
school   at   Paris   brought   him   to   his   death   in   the   Massacre   of 
St.  Bartholomew.'     Ramus  hardily  laid  it  down  that  "  there  is  no 
authority  over  reason,  but  reason  ought  to  be  queen  and  ruler  over 
authority." '     Such  a  message  was  of  more  value  than  his  imperfect 
attempt  to  supersede  the  Aristotelian  logic.     Bacon,  who  carried  on 
in  England   the  warfare  against   the  Aristotelian  tradition,  never 
ventured  so  to  express  himself  as  against  the  theological  tyranny  in 
particular,  though,  as  we  have  seen,  the  general  energy  and  vividness 
of  his  argumentation  gave  him  an  influence  wiiich  undermined  the 
orthodoxies  to  which  he  professed  to  conform.     On  the  other  hand, 
he  did  no  such  service  to  exact  science  as  was  rendered  in  his  day  by 
Kepler  and  Galileo  and  their  English  emulators  ;  and  his  full  didactic 
influence  came  much  later  into  play. 

Like  fallacies  to  Bacon's  may  be  found  in  DESCARTES,  whose 
seventeenth-century  reputation  as  a  champion  of  theism  proved 
mainly  the  eagerness  of  theists  for  a  plausible  defence.  Already  m 
bis  own  day  his  arguments  were  logically  confuted  by  both  Gassendi 
and  Hobbes  ;  and  his  partial  success  with  theists  was  a  success  of 
partisanism.  It  was  primarily  in  respect  of  his  habitual  appeal 
to  reason  and  argument,  in  disregard  of  the  assumptions  of  faith, 
and  secondarily  in  respect  of  his  real  scientific  work,  that  he  counts 

1  Ueberweg,  ii.  17.  ^  Epist.  36.  ^  See  above,  p.  45. 

s  Lange.  Gesch.  des  Mater,  i.  189-90  (Eng.  tr.  i,  2-28).  Born  in  Valencia  and  trained  at 
Paris.  Vives  became  a  humanist  teacher  at  Louvain.  and  was  called  to  England  Uj^j  lo 
be  tutor  to  the  Princess  Mary.  Durint?  his  stay  he  taught  at  Oxford.  Being  opposed  to 
the  divorce  of  Henry  VIII.  he  was  imprisoned  for  a  time,  afterwards  living  at  Bruges. 

6  See  the  monograph.  EatnuH,  sa  vie,  sen  ecrits,  et  ses  opintms,  par  On.  Waaamgioii, 
1855     Owen  has  a  good  account  of  Ramus  in  his  Fre7ich  Skeptics. 

7  Sclwlie  math.  1.  iii.  p.  78.  cited  by  Waddington.  p.  343. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


65 


for  freethought.  Ultimately  his  method  undermined  his  creed ; 
and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  of  him  that,  next  to  Copernicus, 
Kepler,  and  Galileo,^  he  laid  a  good  part  of  the  foundation  of  modern 
philosophy  and  science,^  Gassendi  largely  aiding.  Though  he  never 
does  justice  to  Galileo,  from  his  fear  of  provoking  the  Church,  it  can 
hardly  be  doubted  that  he  owes  to  him  in  large  part  the  early 
determination  of  his  mind  to  scientific  methods  ;  for  it  is  difficult  to 
believe  that  the  account  he  gives  of  his  mental  development  in  the 
Discours  de  la  Methode  (1637)  is  biographically  true.  It  is  rather 
the  schemed  statement,  by  a  ripened  mind,  of  how  it  might  best 
have  been  developed.  Nor  did  Descartes,  any  more  than  Bacon,  live 
up  to  the  intellectual  idea  he  had  framed.  All  through  his  life  he 
anxiously  sought  to  propitiate  the  Church  ;^  and  his  scientific  as  well 
as  his  philosophic  work  was  hampered  in  consequence.  In  England 
Henry  More,  who  latterly  recoiled  from  his  philosophy,  still  thought 
his  physics  had  been  spoiled  by  fear  of  the  Church,  declaring  that 
the  imprisonment  of  Galileo  "  frighted  Des  Cartes  into  such  a 
distorted  description  of  motion  that  no  man's  reason  could  make 
good  sense  of  it,  nor  modesty  permit  him  to  fancy  anything  nonsense 
in  so  excellent  an  author."  ^ 

But  nonetheless  the  unusual  rationalism  of  Descartes's  method, 
avowedly  aiming  at  the  uprooting  of  all  his  own  prejudices'^  as  a 
first  step  to  truth,  displeased  the  Jesuits,  and  could  not  escape  the 
hostile  attention  of  the  Protestant  theologians  of  Holland,  where 
Descartes  passed  so  many  years  of  his  life.  Despite  his  constant 
theism,  accordingly,  he  had  at  length  to  withdraw.^  A  Jesuit,  Pere 
Bourdin,  sought  to  have  the  Discours  de  la  Mdthode  at  once  con- 
demned by  the  French  clergy,  but  the  attempt  failed  for  the  time 
being.  France  was  just  then,  in  fact,  the  most  freethinking  part  of 
Europe  i"^  and  Descartes,  though  not  so  unsparing  with  his  prejudices 
as  he  set  out  to  be,  was  the  greatest  innovator  in  philosophy  that 
had  arisen  in  the  Christian  era.     He  made  real  scientific  discoveries, 


^  In  many  respects  Galileo  deserves  to  be  ranked  with  Descartes  as  inaugurating 
modern  philosophy."  Prof.  Adamson.  Development  of  Mod.  Philo,^.  1903,  i,  5.  "We  may 
compare  his  [Hobbes's]  thought  with  Descartes's,  but  the  impulse  came  to  him  from  the 
Pbysjcal  reasonings  of  Galileo."    Prof.  Groom  Robertson,  Hobbes,  1886,  p.  42. 

J  Buckle.  1-vol.  ed.  pp.  327-36  ;  3-vol.  ed.  ii,  77-85.    Op.  Lange,  i.  425  (Eng.  tr.  i.  248,  note) ; 
Adamson.  Philosophy  of  Kant,  1879.  p.  194. 

]  Cp.  Lange,  i,  4-25  (Eng.  tr.  i.  248-19.  note);  Bouillier,  Hist,  de  la  philos.  cartesiemie, 
1H54,  1,  40-47,  185-86;  Bartholm^ss,  Jordano  Bruno,  i,  354-55;  Memoir  in  Garnier  ed.  of 
^uvres  Choisies,  p.  v,  also  pp.  6,  17,  19.  21.  Bossuet  pronounced  the  precautions  of 
Descartes  excessive.    But  cp.  Dr.  Land's  notes  in  Spinoza  :  Four  Essays,  1832,  p.  55. 

*  Coll.  of  Philos.  WHtings,  ed.  1712,  pref .  p.  xi. 
^Discours  de  la  Methode,  pties.  i,  ii,  iii.  iv  {(Euvres  Choisies,  pp.  8,  10,  11,  22,  24); 
Meditation  I  {id.  pp.  73-74). 

6  Full  details  in  Kuno  Fischer's  Descartes  and  his  School,  Eng.  tr.  1890,  bk.  i,  ch.  vi; 
Bouilher,  i,  chs.  xii,  xiii. 

7  Buckle,  1-vol.  ed.  pp.  337-39;  3-voI.  ed.  ii,  94,  97. 


VOL.  II 


F 


66 


THE  KISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


too,  where  Bacon  only  inspired  an  approach  and  schemed  a  wandering 
road  to  them.  He  first  effectively  applied  algebra  to  geometry  ;  he 
first  scientifically  explained  the  rainbow ;  he  at  once  accepted  and 
founded  on  Harvey's  discovery  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood  which 
most  physiologists  of  the  day  derided ;  and  he  welcomed  Aselli  s 
discovery  of  the  lacteals,  which  was  rejected  by  Harvey.  ^  And 
though  as  regards  religion  his  timorous  conformities  deprive  him  of 
any  heroic  status,  it  is  perhaps  not  too  much  to  pronounce  him 
*'  the  great  reformer  and  liberator  of  the  European  intellect." '  One 
not  given  to  warm  sympathy  with  freethought  has  avowed  that 
"the  common  root  of  modern  philosophy  is  the  doubt  which  is 
alike  Baconian  and  Cartesian."  * 

Only  less  important,  in  some  regards,  was  the  influence  of 
Pierre  Gassend  or  Gassendi  (1592-1655),  who,  living  his  life  as 
a  canon  of  the  Church,  reverted  in  his  doctrine  to  the  philosophy 
of  Epicurus,  alike  in  physics  and  ethics.*  It  seems  clear  that  he 
never  had  any  religious  leanings,  but  simply  entered  the  Church  on 
the  advice  of  friends  who  pointed  out  to  him  how  much  better  a 
provision  it  gave,  in  income  and  leisure,  than  the  professorship  he 
held  in  his  youth  at  the  university  of  Aix."  Professing  like 
Descartes  a  strict  submission  to  the  Church,  he  yet  set  forth  a 
theory  of  things  which  had  in  all  ages  been  recognized  as  funda- 
mentally irreconcilable  with  the  Christian  creed  ;  and  his  substantial 
exemption  from  penalties  is  to  be  set  down  to  his  position,  his 
prudence,  and  his  careful  conformities.  The  correspondent  of 
Galileo  and  Kepler,  he  was  the  friend  of  La  Mothe  le  Vayer  and 
Naud^;  and  Gui  Patin  was  his  physician  and  intimate.^  Strong 
as  a  physicist  and  astronomer  where  Descartes  was  weak,  he  divides 
with  him  and  GaHleo  the  credit  of  practically  renewing  natural  philo- 
sophy ;  Newton  being  Gassendist  rather  than  Cartesian.'  Indeed, 
Gassendi's  youthful  attack  on  the  Aristotelian  physics  (1624)  makes 
him  the  predecessor  of  Descartes ;  and  he  expressly  opposed  his 
contemporary  on  points  of  physics  and  metaphysics  on  which  he 
thought  him  chimerical,  and  so  promoted  unbelief  where  Descartes 

1  Buckle,  pp.  327-30 ;  ii.  81.  2  jj.  p.  330 ;  ii.  82.    The  process  is  traced  hereinafter. 

8  Kuno  Fischer.  Fra?ict5  Baron,  EDg.  tr.  1857,  p.  74.  „f^^i,.  „inr.n 

*  For  an  exact  summary  and  criticism  of  Gassendi's  positions  see  the  masterly  mono 
graphof  Prof  Brett  of  Lahore.  The  Philosophy  of  Gassendi.  1908-a  real  contribution  to 

the  Mstory  of^pMos^opb^^^       0/  Nations,  bk.  v.  ch.  i  (McCuUoch's  ed.  !«?.  PP- 364"^^;,  " 
is  told  of  him.  with  doubtful  authority,  that  when  dying  he  said :      I  ^^^w  no*^,^*^^'? 
brought  me  into  the  world,  neither  do  I  know  what  was  to  do  '^fJ^'.^SJ^^/. J^^^^^^^^^ 
it."    Befl,ecti07is  on  the  Death  of  Freethinkers,  by  Deslandes  (Eng.  te.  of  the  Mejlexions  sur 
les  grands  hommes  qui  sont  morts  en  plaisaiitant),  1713.  p.  105.  t-«-»  i  iU  /.fi    f^  R«e 

6  For  a  good  account  of  Gassendi  and  his  group  (founded  on  Lange.  8  iil.  en.  i)  see 
"Soury,  BrSviaire  de  Vhist.  de  mate rialisme,  ptie.  iii,  ch.  ii. 

^  Voltaire. Elements  de  philoa.  de  Newtm, ch.  ii;  Lange.  i.  232  (Eng.  tr.  i.  267)  and  269. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT 


67 


made  for  orthodoxy.*     Of  the  criticisms  on  his  Meditations  to  which 
Descartes  published  replies,  those  of  Gassendi  are,  with  the  partial 
exception  of  those  of  Hobbos,   distinctly  the  most  searching   and 
sustained.     The  later  position  of  Hume,  indeed,  is  explicitly  taken 
up  in  the  first  objection  of  Crat^rus  ;^  but  the  persistent  pressure  of 
Gassendi  on  the  theistic  and  spiritistic  assumptions  of  Descartes 
reads  like  the  reasoning  of  a  modern  atheist.^     Yet  the  works  of 
Descartes  were  in  time  placed  on  the  Index,  condemned   by  the 
king's  council,  and  even  vetoed  in  the  universities,  while  those  of 
Gassendi  were  not,  though  his  early  work  on  Aristotelianism  had  to 
be  stopped  after  the  first  volume  because  of  the  anger  it  aroused.^ 
Himself  one   of    the   most   abstemious   of    men,^  like   his   master 
Epicurus  (of  whom  he  wrote  a  Life,  1647),  he  attracted  disciples  of 
another  temperamental  cast  as  well  as  many  of  his  own ;  and  as 
usual  his  system  is  associated  with  the  former,  who  are  duly  vilified 
by  orthodoxy,  although  certainly  no  worse  than  the  average  orthodox. 
Among  his  other  practical  services  to  rationalism  was  a  curious 
experiment,  made  in  a  village  of  the  Lower  Alps,  by  way  of  investi- 
gating the  doctrine  of  witchcraft.     A  drug  prepared  by  one  sorcerer 
was  administered  to  others  of  the  craft  in  presence  of  witnesses.     It 
threw  them   into   a   deep   sleep,  on   awakening   from   which   they 
declared  that  they  had  been  at  a  witches'  Sabbath.     As  they  had 
never  left  their  beds,  the  experiment  went  far  to  discredit  the  super- 
stition.^    One  significant  result  of  the  experiment  was  seen  in  the 
course  later  taken  by  Colbert  in  overriding  a  decision  of  the  Parle- 
ment  of  Kouen  as  to  witchcraft  (1670).     That  Parlement  proposed 
to    burn    fourteen    sorcerers.      Colbert,    who   had   doubtless    read 
Montaigne  as  well  as  Gassendi,  gave  Montaigne's  prescription  that 
the  culprits  should  be  dosed  with  hellebore — a  medicine  for  brain 
disturbance.^     In  1672,  finally,  the  king  issued  a  declaration  for- 
bidding the  tribunals  to  admit  charges  of  mere  sorcery;®  and  any 
future  condemnations  were  on  the  score  of  blasphemy  and  poison- 
ing.    Yet  further,  in  the  section  of  his  posthumous  Syntagma  Philo- 
sophicim  (1658)  entitled  De  Effectihis  Siderum,^  Gassendi  dealt  the 


,  ^  Bayle,  art.  Pomponack,  Notes  F.  and  G.    The  complaint  was  made  by  Arnauld,  who 
with  the  rest  of  the  Jansenists  was  substantially  a  Cartesian. 

*  See  it  in  Garnier's  ed.  of  Descartes's  (Euvres  Choisies,  p.  145. 
3  Id.  pp.  158-64. 

*  Apparently  just  because  the  Jansenists  adopted  Descartes  and  opposed  Gassendi. 
But  Gassendi  is  extremely  guarded  in  all  his  statements,  save,  indeed,  in  his  objections  to 
the  Meditations  of  Descartes. 

I  See  Soury,  pp.  397-98.  as  to  a  water-drinking  "debauch  "  of  Gassendi  and  his  friends. 
«  Rambaud.  as  cited,  p.  154.  7  jci,  p.  155. 

®  Voltaire.  Siecle  de  Louis  XIV,  ed.  Didot,  p.  366.    "On  ne  I'elit  pas  ose  sous  Henri  IV 
et  sous  Louis  XIII,"  adds  Voltaire.    Cp.  Michelet.  La  Sorciere,  ed.  Seailles,  1903,  p.  302. 
»  Tr.  into  English  in  1659,  under  the  title  The  Vanity  of  Judiciary  Astrology. 


68 


THE  BISE  OF  MODEEN  FREETHOUGHT 


first  great  blow  on  the  rationalist  side  to  the  venerable  creed  of 
astrology,  assailed  often,  but  to  little  purpose,  from  the  side  of  faith ; 
bringing  to  his  task,  indeed,  more  asperity  than  he  is  commonly 
credited  with,  but  also  a  stringent  scientific  and  logical  method, 
lacking  in  the  polemic  of  the  churchmen,  who  had  attacked  astrology 
mainly  because  it  ignored  revelation.  It  is  sobering  to  remember, 
however,  that  he  was  one  of  those  who  could  not  assimilate  Harvey's 
discovery  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  which  Descartes  at  once 
adopted  and  propounded. 

Such  anomalies  meet  us  many  times  in  the  history  of  scientific 
as  of  other  lines  of  thought ;  and  the  residual  lesson  is  the  recogni- 
tion that  progress  is  infinitely  multiplex  in  its  causation.  Nothing 
is  more  vital  in  this  regard  than  scientific  truth,  which  is  as  a  light- 
house in  seas  of  speculation;  and  those  who,  like  Galileo  and 
Descartes,  add  to  the  world's  exact  knowledge,  perform  a  specific 
service  not  matched  by  that  of  the  Bacons,  who  urge  right  method 
without  applying  it.  Yet  in  that  kind  also  an  incalculable  influence 
has  been  wielded.  Many  minds  can  accept  scientific  truths  without 
being  thereby  led  to  scientific  ways  of  thought ;  and  thus  the 
reasoners  and  speculators,  the  Brunos  and  the  Vaninis,  play  their 
fruitful  part,  as  do  the  mentors  who  turn  men's  eyes  on  their  own 
vices  of  intellectual  habit.  And  in  respect  of  creeds  and  philosophies, 
finally,  it  is  not  so  much  sheer  soundness  of  result  as  educativeness 
of  method,  effectual  appeal  to  the  thinking  faculty  and  to  the  spirit 
of  reason,  that  determines  a  thinker's  influence.  This  kind  of  impact 
we  shall  find  historically  to  be  the  service  done  by  Descartes  to 
European  thought  for  a  hundred  years. 

From  Descartes,  then,  as  regards  philosophy,  more  than  from 
any  professed  thinker  of  his  day,  but  also  from  the  other  thinkers 
we  have  noted,  from  the  reactions  of  scientific  discovery,  from  the 
terrible  experience  of  the  potency  of  religion  as  a  breeder  of  strife 
and  its  impotence  as  a  curber  of  evil,  and  from  the  practical  free- 
thinking  of  the  more  open-minded  of  that  age  in  general,  derives 
the  great  rationalistic  movement,  which,  taking  clear  literary  form 
first  in  the  seventeenth  century,  has  with  some  fluctuations  broadened 
and  deepened  down  to  our  own  day. 


Chapter  XIV 

BEITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH 

CENTURY 

§  1 

The  propagandist  literature  of  deism  begins  with  an  EngHsh  diplo- 
matist. Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  the  friend  of  Bacon,  who  stood 
in  the  full  stream  of  the  current  freethought  of  England  and  France' 
in  the  first  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century.     English  deism,  as 
literature,  is  thus  at  its  very  outset  affiliated  with  French ;  all  of 
its  elements,  critical  and  ethical,  are  germinal  in  Bodin,  Montaigne, 
and  Charron,  each  and  all  of  whom  had  a  direct  influence  on  English 
thought ;  and  wo  shall  find  later  French  thought,  as  in  the  cases 
of  Gassendi,  Bayle,  Simon,  St.  Evremond,  and  Voltaire,  alternately 
influenced  by  and  reacting  on  English.     But,  apart  from  the  unde- 
veloped rationalism  of  the  Elizabethan  period,  which  never  found 
literary  expression,  the  French  ferment  seems  to  have  given  the 
first  effective  impulse  ;  though  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  about 
the  same  time  the  wars  of  religion  in  Germany,  following  on  an  age 
of    theological    uproar,    had   developed   a   common   temper   of  in- 
differentism  which  would  react  on  the  thinking  of  men  of  affairs 
in  France. 

We  have  seen  the  state  of  upper-class  and  middle-class  opinion 
in  France  about  1624.  It  was  in  Paris  in  that  year  that  Herbert 
published  his  De  Veritate,  after  acting  for  five  years  as  the  English 
ambassador  at  the  French  court— an  office  from  which  he  was 
recalled  in  the  same  year.^  By  his  own  account  the  book  had  been 
"  begun  by  me  in  England,  and  formed  there  in  all  its  principal 
parts," 'but  finished  at  Paris.  He  had,  however,  gone  to  France 
in  1608,  and  had  served  in  various  continental  wars  in  the  years 
following ;  and  it  was  presumably  in  these  years,  not  in  his  youth 
in  England,  that  he  had  formed  the  remarkable  opinions  set  forth  in 
his  epoch-making  book. 

#1 J  £®PV°'^^°™^^^"^  ^"  ^^^  Historia  Atheinmi  (1692)  joins  Herbert  with  Bodin  as  having 
nve  points  in  common  with  him  (ed.  1709.  ch.  ix,  §  2.  pp.  76-77). 

nnf  ™'Sht  have  been  supposed  that  he  was  recalled  on  account  of  his  book  ;  but  it  was 
^?o  K^'  1  ^1^  ^'^^  recalled  by  letter  in  April,  returned  home  in  July,  and  seems  to  have  sent 
nis  DooK  thence  to  Pans  to  be  printed. 

"  Autobiography,  Sir  S.  Lee'a  2nd  ed.  p.  132. 

69 


70    BEITISH  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUEY 

Hitherto  deism  had  been  represented  by  unpublished  arguments 
disingenuously  dealt  with  in  published  answers ;  henceforth  there 
slowly  grows  up  a  deistic  literature.     Herbert  was  a  powerful  and 
audacious  nobleman,  with  a  weak  king;  and  he  could  venture  on 
a  publication  which  would  have  cost  an  ordinary  man  dear      Yet 
even  he  saw  fit  to  publish  in  Latin  ;  and  he  avowed  hesitations 
The  most  puzzling  thing  about  it  is  his  declaration  that  ^rotms  and 
the   German   theologian  Tielenus.   having  read  the   book  in   Mb 
exhorted  him  ''  earnestly  to  print  and  publish  it."     It  is  diflicult  to 
believe  that  they  had  gathered  its  substance.     Herbert  s  work  has 
two   aspects,   a  philosophical   and   a   political,    and   in   both   it   is 
remarkable.^     Like  the  Discoiirs  de  la  Methode  of  Descartes,  which 
was  to  appear  thirteen  years  later,  it  is  inspired  by  an  original 
determination  to  get  at  the  rational  grounds  of  conviction;  and  m 
Herbert's  case  the  overweening   self-esteem   which   disfigures    his 
Autobiography  seems  to  have  been  motive  force  for  the  production 
of  a  book  signally  recalcitrant  to  authority.     Where  Bacon  attacks 
Aristotelianism  and  the  habits  of  mind  it  had  engendered.  Herbert 
counters  the  whole  conception  of  revelation  in  rehgion.     Rejecting 
tacitly  the  theological  basis  of  current  philosophy,  he  divides  the 
human  mind  into  four  faculties^Natural  Instinct.  Internal  Sense. 
External  Sense,  and  the  Discursive  faculty-through  one  or  other 
of  which  allour  knowledge  emerges.     Of  course,  hke  Descartes  he 
makes  the  first  the  verification  of  his  idea  of  God.  pronouncmg  that 
to  be  primary,  independent,  and  universally  entertained,  and  there- 
fore not  lawfully  to  be  disputed  (already  a  contradiction  in  terms) ; 
but,  inasmuch  as  scriptural  revelation  has  no  place  in  the  process, 
the  position  is  conspicuously  more  advanced  than  that  of  Bacon  m 
the  De  Augmentis,  published  the  year  before,  and  even  than  that  of 
Locke,    sixty   years   later.     On   the   question   of  ^concrete   religion 
Herbert  is  still  more  aggressive.     His  argument'  is,  in  brief,  that 
no    professed    revelation   can   have   a   decisive    claim   to   rational 
acceptance;  that  none  escapes  sectarian  dispute  in  its  own  field; 
that,  as  each  one  misses  most  of  the  human  race,  none  seems  to  be 
divine  ;  and  that  human  reason  can  do  for  morals  all  that  any  one  of 
them  does.     The  negative  generalities  of  Montaigne  here  pass  into 
a  positive    anti-Christian    argument;    for    Herbert    goes     on     to 
pronounce  the  doctrine  of  forgiveness  for  faith  immoral 

1  The  book  was  reprinted  at  London  in  Latin  in  1633:  »S*if^.**^^f  {f.^VSiJ^E^ne^^^^^^ 
at  London  in  1645.    It  was  translated  and  Published  in  French  in  1639  but  never  in  English. 

a  Compare  the  verdict  of  Hamilton  in  his  ed.  of  Reid,  note  A,  §  6.  35  (p.  7S1J. 

8  Fof  a  gSod  analysis  see  Ftinjer.  Hist,  of  the  Christ  Philos  of  Relxouyii  Eng.  trans^ 
1887.  pp»2-^ ;  also  Noack.  Die  Freidenker  ind^r  Beligion,  Bern,  1853.  i.  17  40.  ana 
Lechler,  Oeschichte  des  englischeii  Deismus,  pp.  3&-i64. 


BEITISH  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUEY    71 

Like  all  pioneers,  Herbert  falls  into  some  inconsistencies  on  his 
own  part ;  the  most  flagrant  being  his  claim  to  have  had  a  sign  from 
heaven — that  is,  a  private  and  special  revelation — encouraging  him 
to  publish  his  book.^  But  his  criticism  is  nonetheless  telling  and 
persuasive  so  far  as  it  goes,  and  remains  valid  to  this  day.  Nor  do 
his  later  and  posthumous  works ^  add  to  it  in  essentials,  though  they 
do  much  to  construct  the  deistic  case  on  historical  lines.  The  De 
religione  gentilium  in  particular  is  a  noteworthy  study  of  pre-Christian 
religions,  apparently  motived  by  doubt  or  challenge  as  to  his  theorem 
of  the  universality  of  the  God-idea.  It  proves  only  racial  universality 
without  agreement ;  but  it  is  so  far  a  scholarly  beginning  of  rational 
hierology.  The  English  Dialogue  betwee?i  a  Teacher  and  his  Pupil, 
which  seems  to  have  been  the  first  form  of  the  Beligio  Gentiliicm^  is 
a  characteristic  expression  of  his  whole  way  of  thought,  and  was 
doubtless  left  unpublished  for  the  prudential  reasons  which  led  him 
to  put  all  his  published  works  in  Latin.  But  the  fact  that  the  Latin 
quotations  are  translated  shows  that  the  book  had  been  planned  for 
pubhcation — a  risk  which  he  did  wisely  to  shun.  The  remarkable 
thing  is  that  his  Latin  books  were  so  little  debated,  the  De  Veritate 
being  nowhere  discussed  before  Culverwel.*  Baxter  in  1672  could 
say  that  Herbert,  **  never  having  been  answered,  might  be  thought 
unanswerable  ";^  and  his  own  "  answer"  is  merely  theological. 

The  next  great  freethinking  figure  in  England  is  THOMAS 
HOBBES  (1588-1679),  the  most  important  thinker  of  his  age, 
after  Descartes,  and  hardly  less  influential.  But  the  purpose  of 
Hobbes  being  always  substantially  political  and  regulative,  his 
unfaith  in  the  current  religion  is  only  incidentally  revealed  in  the 
writings  in  which  he  seeks  to  show  the  need  for  keeping  it  under 
monarchic  control.^  Hobbes  is  in  fact  the  anti-Presbyterian  or  anti- 
Puritan  philosopher  ;  and  to  discredit  anarchic  religion  in  the  eyes 
of  the  majority  he  is  obliged  to  speak  as  a  judicial  Churchman.  Yet 
nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  he  was  no  orthodox  Christian ; 

*  See  his  Autobiography,  as  cited,  pp.  133-34. 

2  De  causis  errorum,  una  cum  tractate  de  religione  laid  et  ax>pendice  ad  sacerdotes 
(1645) ;  De  religione  gentilium  (1663).  The  latter  was  translated  into  English  in  1705.  The 
former  are  short  appendices  to  the  De  Veritate.  In  1768  was  published  for  the  fli'st  time 
from  a  manuscript,  A  Dialogue  between  a  Tutor  and  his  Pupil,  which,  despite  the  doubts 
of  Lechler,  may  confidently  be  pronounced  Herbert's  from  internal  evidence.  See  the 
Advertisement "  by  the  editor  of  the  volume,  and  cp.  Lee,  p.  xxx,  and  notes  there  referred 
to.  The  "five  points,"  in  particular,  occur  not  only  in  the  Beligio  Gentilium,  but  in  the 
De  Veritate.    The  style  is  clearly  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

^  Sir  Sidney  Lee  can  hardly  be  right  in  taking  the  Dialogue  to  be  the  "little  treatise" 
which  Herbert  proposed  to  write  on  behaviour  {Autobiography.  Lee's  2nd  ed.  p.  43).  It 
does  not  answer  to  that  description,  being  rather  an  elaborate  discussion  of  the  themes  of 
Herbert's  main  treatises,  running  to  272  quarto  pages. 

*  See  below,  p.  80.  ^  More  Reaso^is  for  the  Christian  Beligion,  1672,  p.  79. 

f  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  doctrine  of  the  supremacy  of  the  civil  power  in 
religious  matters  (Erastianism)  was  maintained  by  some  of  the  ablest  men  on  the 
Parliamentary  side,  in  particular  Selden. 


72    BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUBY 

and  even  his  professed  theism  resolves  itself  somewhat  easily  into 
virtual  agnosticism  on  logical  pressm-e.  No  thought  of  prudence 
could  withhold  him  from  showing,  in  a  discussion  on  words,  that 
he  held  the  doctrine  of  the  Logos  to  be  meaningless/  Of  atheism  he 
was  repeatedly  accused  by  both  royalists  and  rebels  ;  and  his  answer 
was  forensic  rather  than  fervent,  ahke  as  to  his  scripturalism,  his 
Christianity,  and  his  impersonal  conception  of  Deity.''  Revivmg  as 
he  did  the  ancient  rationalistic  doctrine  of  the  eternity  of  the  world, 
he  gave  a  clear  footing  for  atheism  as  against  the  Judseo-Christian 
view.  In  afBrming  "  one  God  eternal "  of  whom  men  "  cannot  have 
any  idea  in  their  mind,  answerable  to  his  nature,"  he  was  negating 
all  creeds.  He  expressly  contends,  it  is  true,  for  the  principle  of 
a  Providence ;  but  it  is  hard  to  beheve  that  he  laid  any  store  by 
prayer,  public  or  private;  and  it  would  appear  that  whatever 
thoughtful  atheism  there  was  in  England  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
century  looked  to  him  as  its  philosopher,  insofar  as  it  did  not  derive 
from  Spinoza.'  Nor  could  the  Naturalist  school  of  that  day  desire 
a  better,  terser,  or  more  drastic  scientific  definition  of  religion  than 
Hobbes  gave  them:  "Fear  of  power  mVi'sMeJeigned  by  the  mind 
or  imagined  from  tales  publicly  allowed,  RELIGION  ;  7iot  alloived, 
Superstition."^  As  the  Churchmen  readily  saw,  his  insistence 
on  identifying  the  religion  of  a  country  with  its  law  plainly  implied 
that  no  religion  is  any  more  "  revealed  "  than  another.  With  him 
too  begins  (1651)  the  pubHc  criticism  of  the  Bible  on  literary  or 
documentary  grounds;^  though,  as  we  have  seen,  this  had  already 
gone  far  in  private;"^  and  he  gave  a  new  lead,  partly  as  agamst 
Descartes,  to  a  materialistic  philosophy,^  His  replies  to  the  theistic 
and  spiritistic  reasonings  of  Descartes's  M6ditations  are,  like  those  of 
Gassendi,  unrefuted  and  irrefutable  ;  and  they  are  fundamentally 
materiahstic  in  their  drift."  He  was,  in  fact,  in  a  special  and 
pecuHar  degree  for  his  age,  a  freethinker;  and  so  deep  was  his 
intellectual  hostility  to  the  clergy  of  all  species  that  he  could  not 
forego  enraging  those  of  his  own  political  side  by  his  sarcasms. 

»  Leviathan,  cli.  iv.  H.  Morley's  ed.  p.  26.  T>.„,-*^*,-n«   ^f^    nf  Thnma^ 

a  Cp.  his  letter  to  an  opponent.  Comtderahons  npoyi  tlie  Eepiitatton,  etc  of  Thoman 
Hohbes  1680  with  chs.  xi  and  xii  of  Leviathan,  and  De  Corpore  Pohftco,  pt.  ii.  c.  6.  une 
of  his  most  eTp  cit  declarations  for  theism  is  in  the  De  Hcmiine,  c  1.  where  he  employs 
the  desSHrgument.  declaring  that  he  who  will  not  see  that  the  bodily  organs  are  a  mente 
a^uacomlitas  ordinatasQue  ad  sua  QuasQue  oMeia  must  he  ^^^^i^^]^  ^^'^^^^l^l''^^ 
This  ascription  of  "mind,"  however,  he  tacitly  neg&tesm  Leviathan,  ch.  xi,  BMd  De 
rnrnnrp  Politico  nt  ii  c  6.  -^e  Corpore,  pt.  ii.  c.  8.  S  JU. 

4  CD  Bentley's  letter  to  Bernard.  1692.  cited  in  Dynamics  of  Religion,  pp.  8^-83. 

5  Le^iathaf^Vi  UGh.  vi.    Morley's  ed.  p.  34.  «  Leviathan,  pt.  iii,  ch  xxxih. 
7  Ab?»ve.  p  24                    »  On  this  see  Lange.  Hist,  of  Materialisin  sec.  iii.  ch.  n. 

9  Molyneux.  an  anti-Hobbesian.  in  translating  Hobbes  s  objections  along  with  tie 
Meditatio^is  (680)  claims  that  the  slightness  of  Descartes's  replies  was  due  to  us 
unacouaintance  with  Hobbes's  works  and  philosophy  in  general  (trans,  cited,  p.  114). 
S  is  aL  olS'iouIly  lame  defence.  Descartes  does  parry  Bome  o  the  thrusts  of  Hobbes , 
others  he  simply  cannot  meet.  '"  -^-ff ••  Leviathan,  pt.  iv.  ch.  xlvu. 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUEY    73 

Here  he  is  in  marked  contrast  with  Descartes,  who  dissembled 
his  opimon  about  Copernicus  and  Galileo  for  peace'  sake,^  and  was 
the  close  friend  of  the  apologist  Mersenne  down  to  his  death.' 

With   the  partial  exception  of   the  more  refined  and  graceful 
Pecock,  Hobbes  has  of   all  EngHsh  thinkers  down  to  his  period 
the  clearest  and  hardest  head  for  all  purposes  of  reasoning,  save  in 
the  single  field  of  mathematics,  where  he  meddled  without  mastery ; 
and  against  the  theologians  of  his  time  his  argumentation  is  as  a 
two-edged  sword.     That  such  a  man  should  have  been  resolutely  on 
the  side  of  the  king  in  the  Civil  War  is  one  of  the  proofs  of  the 
essential  fanaticism  and  arbitrariness  of  the  orthodox  Puritans,  who 
plotted   more   harm   to  the  heresies  they  dishked  than  was  ever 
wreaked  on  themselves.     Hobbes  came  near  enough  being  clerically 
ostracized  among  the  royalists ;  but  among  the  earlier  Puritans,  or 
under  an  Independent  Puritan  Parliament  at  any  time,  he  would 
have  stood  a  fair  chance  of  execution.     It  was  doubtless  largely  due 
to  the  anti-persecuting  influence   of   Cromwell,  as  well  as  to  his 
having  ostensibly  deserted  the  royalists,  that  Hobbes  was  allowed 
to  settle  quietly  in  England  after  making  his  submission  to  the 
Kump  Parliament  in  1651.     In  1666  his  Leviathaji  and  De  Give 
were   together   condemned   by  the   Eestoration   Parhament  in  its 
grotesque  panic  of  piety  after  the  Great  Fire  of  London ;  and  it 
was  actually  proposed  to  revive  against  him  the  writ  de  heretico 
comhirejido ;'  but  Charles  II  protected  and  pensioned  him,  though 
he  was  forbidden  to  publish  anything  further  on  burning  questions, 
and  Leviathan  was  not  permitted  in  his  lifetime  to  be  republished  in 
English.'     He  was  thus  for  his  generation  the  typical  "  infidel,"  the 
royalist  clergy  being  perhaps  his  bitterest  enemies.    His  spontaneous 
hostility  to  fanaticism  shaped  his  literary  career,  which  began  in 
1628   with   a   translation   of  Thucydides,   undertaken   by  way   of 
showing    the    dangers    of    democracy.     Next   came    the   De    Give 
(Pans,  1642),  written  when  he  was  already  an  elderly  man;  and 
thenceforth  the  Civil  War  tinges  his  whole  temper. 

It  is  in  fact  by  way  of  a  revolt  against  all  theological  ethic,  as 
demonstrably  a  source  of  civil  anarchy,  that  Hobbes  formulates 

hI  hHo^yil'feSet^^^^^^^  VX^'"^"''  '"'•  '"'"''•  ^^-  '''°"'^'  ^''''''^'  '''  ^"'^*«'^ 
in  1647°HnMfi«^tr??  °/-  Mersenne's  acquaintance,  but  only  as  a  man  of  science.  W^hen. 
thor^iL  •..  1^^^  believed  to  be  dying.  Mersenne  for  the  first  time  sought  to  discuss 
&  He^'tl  us  dS,'  nnt'r''^  r^  man  instantly  changed  the  subj^S  In  1648  MersennI 
Frenchnnii««Hi"H     i     1-  ?  "i"^^'  the  strain  of  Leviathan  (1&51) ,  vihich  enraged  the 

8  HnhHol  r  ^  ^1  ^^"^  Epehsh  clergy.    (Groom  Robertson's  Hobbes,  pp.  63-65.) 
diction^f  n   ^\''-^?  '"^  see  this  law  abolished  (1677).     There  was  left,  however,  the  juris- 

aidrhifn?^\t?o7trd'eS^lrai^;^  ^^"^'^  °-^  --« ^'  ^^^--'  *^i-p^^-^.  ^-/sy. 

Croom  Bobertson.  Hobbes,  p.  196 ;  Pepys's  Diary,  Sept.  3. 1668. 


74    BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 

a  strictly  civic  or  legalist  ethic,  denying  the  supremacy  of  an  abstract 
or  h  priori  natural  moral  law  (though  he  founded  on  natural  law)  as 
well  as  rejecting  all  supernatural  illumination  of  the  conscience  In 
the  Church  of  Rome  itself  there  had  inevitably  arisen  the  practice  ot 
Casuistry,  in  which  to  a  certain  extent  ethics  had  to  be  rationally 
studied ;  and  early  Protestant  Casuistry,  repudiating  the  authority 
of  the  priest,  had  to  rely  still  more  on  reason. 

Compare  Whewell,  Lectures  on  the  History  "/ .■^^'■«;.,  f;"'" 
sophy,  ed.  1862,  pp.  25-38.  where  it  is  affirmed  that  after  the 
Reformation    "  Since  the   assertions   of  the  teacher   had  no 
inherent  authority,  he  was  obliged  to  give  his  P'^o^J^^^.^S 
as  his  results,"  and  "the  determination  of  '^'^' ^"-fl^^^^^ 
by  the  discipline  ot  comcieiu^e  "  (p.  29).    There  is  an  mteiestn 
progression  in  English  Protestant  casuistry  fr^mW^  Perkins 
(1558-1602)  and  W.  Ames  (pub.  1630).  through  Bishops  Hal 
and  Sanderson,  to  Jeremy  Tay  or      Mosheim  (f?  Cent- sec^^>^ 
pt.  ii.  §  9)  pronounces  Ames     the  first  among  the  Beformed 
who  attempted  to  elucidate  and  arrange  the  science  of  moxals 
as  distinct  from  that  of  dogmatics."    See  biog- notes  on  Perkins 
and  Ames  in  WheweU,  pp.  27-29.  and  Eeid's  Mosheim,  p.  681. 
But   Hobbes  passed  in  two  strides  to  the  position  that  natural 
morality  is  a  set  of  demonstrable  inferences  as  to  what  adjustments 
promote  general  well-being ;  and  further  that  there  is  no  prac  icai 
code  of  right  and  wrong  apart  from  positive  social  law       He  ti  u. 
practicaUy  introduced  once  for  all  into  modem  Christendom  the 
fundamental  dilemma  of  rationalistic  ethics,  not  only  positing  the 
problem  for  his  age,'  but  anticipating  it  as  handled  in  later  times. 

How  far  his  rationalism  was  ahead  of  that  of  his  age  may  be 
realized  by  comparing  his  positions  with  those  of  John  Selden  the 
most  learned  and.  outside  of  philosophy,  one  of  the  shrewdest  of  the 
men  of  that  generation.  Selden  was  sometimes  spoken  of  by  the 
Hobbists  as  a  freethinker  ;  and  his  Tahh  Talk  contains  some  sallies 
which  would  startle  the  orthodox  if  publicly  delivered ;  but  not  only 
is  there  explicit  testimony  by  his  associates  as  to  his  orthodoxy : 
his  own  treatise.  Be  Jure  Naturali  et  Gentium  juxta  dzscipUnam 
Ehrc2onm,  maintains  the  ground  that  the  "  Law  of  Nature  which 
underlies  the  variants  of  the  Laws  of  Nations  is  limited  to  the 

1  L^viaihan.  ch.  ii ;  Morley'a  ed.  p.  19:  cha.  xiv.  XT.  PP.  66.  71.  72.  78;  ch.  xxix. 

^^2  Leviaihan,  chs.  xv.  xvii,  xviii.    Morley'g  ed.  w^^^  ^^^^^  ^^^^ 

8  "  For  two  generations  the  e*Y«^*J^°*,^°S^^5  "'A^^^^^^  the  History  of  Ethics, 

more  or  less  the  form  of  answers  to  Hobbes    (Sidgwick,  uuutnes  tu  t«e 

3rd  ed.  p.  169).  xiof,,^**  na  'Miptfttinfi  neace.  for  a  means  of  the 

*  As  when  he  presents  the  law  of  Nature  as     ^i*^'^^""^ J*;.*  "^  „  771 

conservation  of  men  in  multitudes"  iLeviathun,  ch.  xv.    Morley  s  ed.  p.  77). 
5  See  the  headings.  Council  Religion,  etc. 
«  Q.  W.  Johnson.  Memoirs  of  John  SeUU7i,  183o.  PP.  Ma.  do/. 


-    BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUEY    75 

precepts  and  traditions  set  forth  in  the  Talmud  as  delivered   by 
Noah  to  his  posterity/     Le  Clerc  said  of  the  work,  justly  enough, 
that   in    it      Selden   only   copies   the   Eabbins,  and   scarcely  ever 
reasons."     It   is   likely   enough    that    the   furious   outcry    against 
Selden  for  his  strictly  historical  investigation  of   tithes,  and   the 
humiliation  of  apology  forced  upon  him  in  that  connection  in  1618,^ 
made  him  specially  chary  ever  afterwards  of  any  semblance  of  a 
denial  of  the  plenary  truth  of  theological  tradition  ;  but  there  is  no 
reason  to  think  that  he  had  ever  really  transcended  the  Biblical 
view  of  the  world's  order.     He  illustrates,  in  fact,  the  extent  to 
which  a  scholar  could  in  that  day  be  anti-clerical  without  being 
rationalistic.    Like  the  bulk  of  the  Parliamentarians,  though  without 
their  fanaticism,  he  was  thoroughly  opposed  to  the  political  preten- 
sions of  the  Church,^  desiring  however  to  leave  episcopacy  alone,  as 
a   matter   outside   of    legislation,    when   the   House   of   Commons 
abolished  it.     Yet  he  spoke  of  the  name  of  Puritan  as  one  which 
he  "trusted  he  was  not  either  mad  enough  or  foolish  enough  to 
deserve."*     There  were  thus  in  the  Parliamentary  party  men  of 
very  different  shades  of  opinion.     The  largest  party,  perhaps,  was 
that  of   the  fanatics  who,  as    Mrs.  Hutchinson— herself   fanatical 
enough— tells  concerning  her  husband,  "would  not  allow  him  to 
be  religious  because  his  hair  was   not   in   their   cut."^     Next   in 
strength  were  the  more  or  less  orthodox  but  anti-clerical  and  less 
pious  Scripturalists,  of  whom  Selden  was  the  most  illustrious.     By 
far  the  smallest  group  of  all  were  the  freethinkers,  men  of  their  type 
being  as  often  repelled  by  the  zealotry  of  the  Puritans  as  by  the 
sacerdotahsm  of  the  State  clergy.     The  EebelHon,  in  short,  though 
it  evoked  rationalism,  was  not  evoked   by  it.     Like  all  rehgious 
strifes— like  the  vaster  Thirty  Years'  War  in  contemporary  Germany 
— it  generated  both  doubt  and  indifferentism  in  men  who  would 
otherwise  have  remained  undisturbed  in  orthodoxy. 


§2 

When,  however,  we  turn  from  the  higher  literary  propaganda  to 
the  verbal  and  other  transitory  debates  of  the  period  of  the 
EebelHon,  we  realize  how  much  partial  rationalism  had  hitherto 
subsisted  without  notice.  In  that  immense  ferment  some  very 
advanced  opinions,  such  as  quasi- Anarchism  in  politics^  and  anti- 

\  G.  W.  Johnson,  p.  264.  «  Above,  p.  20.  »  G.  W.  Johnson,  pp.  258.  302 

•  Id.  p.  302.    Cp.  in  the  Table  Talk,  art.  Trinity,  his  view  of  the  Roundheads. 
I  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  ed.  1810.  i.  181.    Cp.  i,  292  ;  ii,  44. 
tu     Cp.  Overton's  pamphlet.  An  Arrow  against  all  Tyrants  and  Tyranny  (1646),  cited  in 
me  History  of  Passive  Obedience  since  the  Reformation,  1689.  i,  59;  pt.  ii  of  Thomas 


76    BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUEY 

Scripfcuralism  in  religion,  were  more  or  less  directly  professed. 
In  January,  1646  (n.S.),  the  authorities  of  the  City  of  London, 
alarmed  at  the  unheard-of  amount  of  discussion,  petitioned 
Parliament  to  put  down  all  private  meetings;^  and  on  February  6, 
1646  (n.S.),  a  solemn  fast,  or  "  day  of  publique  humiliation,"  was 
proclaimed  on  the  score  of  the  increase  of  "errors,  heresies,  and 
blasphemies."  On  the  same  grounds,  the  Presbyterian  party  in 
ParHament  pressed  an  "  Ordinance  for  the  suppression  of  Blas- 
phemies and  Heresies,"  which,  long  held  back  by  Vane  and 
Cromwell,  was  carried  in  their  despite  in  1648,  by  large  majorities, 
when  the  royahsts  renewed  hostilities.  It  enacted  the  death 
penalty  against  all  who  should  deny  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity, 
the  divinity  of  Christ,  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible,  a  day  of 
judgment,  or  a  future  state;  and  prescribed  imprisonment  for 
Arminianism,  rejection  of  infant  baptism,  anti- Sabbatarianism, 
anti-Presbyterianism,  or  defence  of  the  doctrine  of  Purgatory  or 
the  use  of  images.^  And  of  aggressive  heresy  there  are  some  note- 
worthy traces.  In  a  pamphlet  entitled  ''Hell  Broke  Loose:  a 
Catalogue  of  the  many  spreading  Errors,  Heresies,  and  Blasphemies 
of  these  Times,  for  which  we  are  to  be  humbled  "  (March  9,  1646, 
N.S.),  the  first  entry— and  in  the  similar  Catalogue  in  Edwards's 
Gangrcena,  the  second  entry — is  a  citation  of  the  notable  thesis, 
"That  the  Scripture,  whether  a  true  manuscript  or  no,  whether 
Hebrew,  Greek,  or  English,  is  but  humane,  and  not  able  to  discover 
a  divine  God."'  This  is  cited  from  "  The  Pilgrimage  of  the  Saints, 
by  Lawrence  Clarkson,"  presumably  the  Lawrence  Clarkson  who  for 
his  book  The  Single  Eye  was  sentenced  by  resolution  of  Parliament 
on  September  27,  1650,  to  be  imprisoned,  the  book  being  burned  by 
the  common  hangman.*  He  is  further  cited  as  teaching  that  even 
unbaptized  persons  may  preach  and  baptize.  Of  the  other  heresies 
cited  the  principal  is  the  old  denial  of  a  future  life,  and  especially  of 
a  physical  and  future  hell.  In  general  the  heresy  is  pietistic  or 
antinomian  ;  but  we  have  also  the  declaration  "  that  right  Eeason 
is  the  rule  of  Faith,  and  that  we  are  to  beheve  the  Scriptures  and 
the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  Incarnation,  Besurrection,  so  far  as  we 


Edwards's  Gangrcsna  :  or  a  Catalogue  ami  Discovery  of  many  of  the  Errorirft  S^resies, 
Blas^phemiea,  and  vemicious  Practices  of  the  Sectaries  of  thia  tittle^  etc..  2nd  ed.  1646,  pp. 
33-34  (Nos.  151-53). 

1  Lord8  Journals,  January  16.  1645-1646;    Gangrcena,  as  cited,  p.  150;  cp.  Gardiner, 

Hist,  of  the  Civil  War,  ed.imi,  in  Al.  „.  ^     ,.^    ^.   .,  „-       •     no 

2  Green.  Short  Hist.  ch.  viii.  §  8.  pp.  551-52  ;  Gardiner,  Hist.  0/  the  Civil  MVar,  iv,  22. 

8  Gangrcena,  p.  18.  ..     -,   ,i.  ,     *4.^» 

<  In  1644  he  bad  been  imprisoned  at  Bury  St.  Edmunds  for    dippmg"  adults,  and  after 

six  months'  durance  had  been  released  on  a  recantation  and  promise  of  amendment. 

Gangrctna,  as  cited,  pp.  104-105. 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUEY    77 

see  them  to  be  agreeable  to  reason  and  no  further."  Concerning 
Jesus  there  are  various  heresies,  from  simple  Unitarianism  to 
contemptuous  disparagement,  with  the  stipulation  for  a  "Christ 
formed  in  us."  But  though  there  are  cases  of  unquotable  or  ribald 
blasphemy  there  is  Httle  trace  of  scholarly  criticism  of  the  Bible,  of 
reasoning  against  miracles  or  the  inconsistencies  of  Scripture,  as 
apart  from  the  doctrine  of  deity.     Nonetheless,  it  is  very  credible 

that  I' multitudes,   unsettled have  changed  their  faith,  either  to 

Scepticisme,  to  doubt  of  everything,  or  Atheisme,  to  believe  nothing."  ^ 
Against  the  furious  intolerance  of  the  Puritan  legislature  some 
pleaded  with  new  zeal  for  tolerance  all  round  ;  arguing  that  certainty 
on  articles  of  faith  and  points  of  rehgion  was  impossible— a  doctrine 
promptly  classed  as  a  bad  heresy.'     The  plea  that  toleration  would 
mean  concord  was  met  by  the  confident  and  not  unfounded  retort 
that  the  "sectaries"  would  themselves   persecute   if  they  could.' 
But  this  could  hardly  have  been  true  of  all.     Notable  among  the 
new  parties  were  the  Levellers,  who  insisted  that  the  State  should 
leave  religion   entirely  alone,  tolerating  all  creeds,  including  even 
atheism  ;  and  who  put  forward  a  new  and  striking  ethic,  grounding 
on  "universal  reason"  the  right  of  all  men  to  the  soil'     In  the 
strictly  theological  field  the  most  striking  innovation,  apart  from 
simple    Unitarianism,  is   the  denial   of   the   eternity  or  even   the 
existence  of  future  torments— a  position  first  taken  up,  as  we  have 
seen,  either  by  the  continental  Socinians  or  by  the  unnamed  EngHsh 
heretics  of  the  Tudor  period,  who  passed  on  their  heresy  to  the 
time  of  Marlowe.'     In  this  connection  the  learned  booklet'  entitled 
Of  the  Torments  of  Hell :  the  fomidations  and  pillars  thereof  dis- 
cover'd,  searched,  shaken,  and  removed  (1658)  was  rightly  thought 
worth  translating  into  French  by  d'Holbach  over  a  century  later.'     It 
is  an  argument  on  scriptural  lines,  denying  that  the  conception  of 
a  place   of    eternal  torment  is  either  scriptural  or   credible  ;    and 
pointing  out  that  many  had  explained  it  in  a  "spiritual"  sense. 

Humane  feeling  of  this  kind  counted  for  much  in  the  ferment ; 
but  a  contrary  hate  was  no  less  abundant.  The  Presbyterian 
Thomas  Edwards,  who  in  a  vociferous  passion  of  fear  and  zeal  set 


\  gev.  Japaes  Cranford,  Ha^reseo-Machia,  a  Sermon,  1646,  p.  10. 

4  &  }?^''^''''V','^'^.- ,     ,  r.  .,  ^  Cranford.  as  cited,  p.  11  sq. 

bee  G.  P.  Gooch  s  Hisf .  of  Democ.  Ideas  in  England  in  the  17th  Century,  1898.  ch.  vi. 
"  ADove,  pp.  4  and  8. 

v,o«i°  the  British  Museum  copy  the  name  Richardson  is  penned,  not  in  a  contemporary 
fhr?;«  V  ®-®°^  °^-  <^^e  preface ;  and  in  the  preface  to  vol.  ii  of  the  Phsnix,  1708,  in  which 
rm^rVf  1  !®  *^  reprinted  the  same  name  is  given,  but  with  uncertainty.  The  Richardson 
pointed  at  was  the  author  of  The  Necessity  of  Toleration  in  Matters  of  Religion  (1647). 
i^.  15  Underhill,  in  his  coUection  of  that  and  other  Tracts  on  Liberty  of  Conscience  for 
tr«pr^«^i?^^,  ^^<>l^ys  Society.  1846.  remains  doubtful  (p.  247)  as  to  the  authorship  of  the 
tract  on  hell.  7  The  fourth  English  edition  appeared  in  175i. 


78    BBITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUEY 

himself  to  catalogue  the  host  of  heresies  ^^^'  ''^'f^;'f'l°Z 
whelm  the  times,  speaks   of  "monsters"  ^J^^''^''^-"^  '!l'^^l°l^'^ 
"now  common  among  us-as  denying  the  Scnpture.  pleading  for 
a  toleration  of  all  religions   and  worships,  yea  tor  blasphemy   and 
denying  there  is  a  God."'     "A  Toleration  "  he  decbres     _is    he 
grand  design  of  the  Devil,  his  masterpiece  and  chief  engme   .every 
Ty  now  brings  forth  books  for  a  Toleration."'     Among    he  180 
sects  nled  by  him'  there  were  "  Libertines,"     Antiscnptm-.sts, 
••Skeptics  and  Questionists.-  who  held  nothing  s-  ^eJoeU- 
of  free  speech  and  Uberty  of   conscience;'  as  weU  as  Socinians 
lians  and  Anti-trinitarians  ;  and  he  speaks  of  serious  men  who 
^dnot  only  abandoned  their  religious  beliefs,  but  sought  to  pe^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
others  to  do  the  same.'    Under  the  rule  of  Cromwell,  tolerant  as    e 
was  of  Christian  sectarianism,  and  even  of  Unitarianism  as  repre 
Tented  by  Biddle,  the  more   advanced   heresies   would  get   sma 
Hberty  •  though  that  of  Thomas  Muggleton  and  John  Keeve,  which 
took  shape  about  1651  as  the  Muggletonian  -ct,  does  no^seemjo 
have  been  molested.     Muggleton.  a  mystic,  could  teach  that  there 
was  no  devil  or  evil  spirit  save  in  "  man's  spirit  of  -c  -n  -a^on 
and  cursed  imagination";'  but  it  was  only  privately  that  such  men 
as  Henry  Marten  and  Thomas  Chaloner,  the  regicides,  could  avow 
themselves  to   be  of   "  the  natural  religion."     The  statement   of 
Bfshop  Burnet,  following  Clarendon,  that  "  many  of  the  repubhcans 
began  to   profess  deism."  cannot  be  taken  hteraUy    though  it  . 
b  oadly  intelligible  that  "  almost  all  of  them  were  for  des  roying 
all  clergymen.  ....and  for  leaving  .religion^  free,  as  they  called  it. 
without  either  encouragement  or  restraint." 

See  Burnet's  History  of  His  Own  Time,  bk.  i.  ed.  1838  p.  43. 
The  Jhrase,  "  They  were  for  pulling  down.the  churches,    again 

cannot  be  taken  literally      Of  those  who  . ^f  !fefvi    1  Sy  '' 
no  religion  and  acted  only  upon  the  princi^es  of  ^ml  hberty, 
Burnet  goes  on  to  name  Sidney.  Henry  Nevill  Marten.  Wild 
Sarancl  Harrington.     The  last  was  certainly  of  Hobbes  s  way 
of  thinking  in  philosophy   (Groom  Eobertson   Sofcfc^s    P-  223 
note)  ■  but  Wildman  was  one  of  the  signers  of  the  AnabapUst 
Sition  to  Charles  II  in  1658  (Clarendon,  mst.  of  the  Bebelbon, 

.   ^   i     r\     n«    T.r,   17   T>1    178-79:  and  Bailie's  I/C«er8,  ed.  1841.  ii. 
1  Qangrmia,  ep.  ded.  (p.  5).    Cp.  PP-  yv^^Vnifiration  seems  to  have  been  the  book 

above  mentioned,  does  not  contain  one  of  that  title.  ,  ^^  ^^^^ 

I  irp".T"A??oo1v;?r  sects  men«oned  by  him  cp^^^^^^^^^^^  ^^^  Tayler.  K.(ro- 

^:.°?kri<;e^o;s."p"'irTe^£tfdys       ^  «>«  »>=-»'-•- 

"TLTtSfif^irs'lnlu'J.e  3-vo.  ed.  i  MT ;  l-vol.  ed.  P.  196. 
7  Alex.  Ross,  Pansebeta,  4th  ed.  1672,  p.  d'«- 


BEITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY     79 

bk.  XV,  ed.  1843,  p.  855).  As  to  Marten  and  Chaloner,  see 
Carlyle's  Cromwell,  iii,  194 ;  and  articles  in  Nat,  Diet,  of  Biog 
Vaughan  {Hist,  of  E7igland,  1840,  ii,  477,  note)  speaks  of 
Walwyn  and  Overton  as  "  among  the  freethinkers  of  the  times 
of  the  Commonwealth."  They  were,  however,  Bibhcists,  not 
unbelievers.  Prof.  Gardiner  (Hist,  of  the  Comvwnwealth  and 
Protectorate,  11,  253,  citing  a  News-letter  in  the  Clarendon  MSS  ) 
finds  record  in  1653  of  "  a  man  [who]  preached  flat  atheism  in 
Westminster  Hall,  uninterrupted  by  the  soldiers  of  the  guard  "• 
but  this  obviously  counts  for  little.  ' 

Between  the  advance  in  speculation  forced  on  by  the  disputes 
themselves,  and  the  usual  revolt  against  the  theological  spirit  after 
a  long  and  ferocious   display  of  it,  there  spread  even   under  the 
Commonwealth  a  new  temper  of  secularity.      On  the    one   hand, 
the  temperamental  distaste  for  theology,  antinomian  or  other,  took 
form  in  the  private  associations  for  scientific  research  which  were 
the  antecedents  of  the  Royal  Society.     On  the  other  hand,  the  spirit 
of  religious  doubt  spread  widely  in  the  middle  and  upper  classes  ; 
and  between  the  dislike  of  the  Roundheads  for  the  established  clergy 
and  the  anger  of  the  Cavaliers  against  all  Puritanism  there  was 
fostered  that  "  contempt  of  the  clergy  "  which  had  become  a  clerical 
scandal  at  the  Restoration  and  was  to  remain  so  for  about  a  century.* 
Their  social  status  was  in  general  low,  and  their  financial  position 
bad  ;^  and  these  circumstances,  possible  only  in  a  time  of  weakened 
religious  belief,  necessarily  tended  to  further  the  process  of  mental 
change.     Within  the  sphere  of  orthodoxy,  it  operated  openly.     It 
IS  noteworthy  that  the  term  "rationalist"  emerges  as  the  label  of 
a  sect  of  Independents  or  Presbyterians  who  declare  that  "  What 
their  reason  dictates  to  them  in  church  or  State  stands  for  good, 
until  they  be  convinced  with  better." '     The  "  rationalism,"  so-called,' 
of  that   generation   remained   ostensibly  scriptural;  but   on   other 
lines  thought  went  further.     Of  atheism  there  are  at  this  stage  only 
dubious  biographical  and  controversial  traces,  such  as  Mrs.  Hutchin- 
son's characterization  of  a  Nottingham  physician,  possibly  a  deist, 
as  a  ''  horrible  atheist,"'  and  the  Rev.  John  Dove's  Confutation  of 
Atheism  (1640),  which  does  not  bear  out  its  title.     Ephraim  Pagitt, 
in  his  Heresiography  (1644),  speaks  loosely  of  an  "  atheistical  sect 
who  affirm  that  men's  soules  sleep  with   them  U7itil   the  day   of 
judgment'';  and   tells    of    some    alleged    atheist    merely  that    he 
mocked  and  jeared  at  Christ's  Incarnation."*     Similarly  a  work, 

'  Cp.  the  present  writer's  Buckle  and  his  Critics.  1895,  ch.  viii,  §  2. 
^  See  above,  vol.  i,  p.  5. 

8  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  3rd  ed.  i,  200. 
Heresiography :  The  Heretics  and  Sectaries  of  these  Times,  16ii.    Epist  Ded 


80    BKITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 

entitled  Dispute  betwixt  an  Atlieist  and  a  Christian  (1646),  shows 
the  existence  not  of   atheists  but  of    deists,  and  the  deist  in  the 

dialogue  is  a  Fleming. 

More  trustworthy  is  the  allusion  in  Nathaniel  Culverwel's 
Discourse  of  the  Light  of  Nature  (written  in  1646,  pubhshed  posthu- 
mously in  1652)  to  "  those  lumps  and  dunghills  of  all  sects that 

young  and  upstart  generation  of  gross  anti-scripturaUsts.  that  have 
a  powder-plot  against  the  Gospel,  that  would  very  compendiously 
behead  all  Christian  rehgion  at  one  blow,  a  device  which  old  and 
ordinary  heretics  were  never  acquainted  withal."^  The  reference  is 
presumably  to  the  followers  of  Lawrence  Clarkson.  Yet  even  here 
we  have  no  mention  of  atheism,  which  is  treated  as  something 
almost  impossible.  Indeed,  the  very  course  of  arguing  in  favour  of 
a  "  Light  of  Nature  "  seems  to  have  brought  suspicion  on  Culverwel 
himself,  who  shows  a  noticeable  liking  for  Herbert  of  Cherbury.^  He 
is,  however,  as  may  be  inferred  from  his  angry  tone  towards  anti- 
scripturaUsts,  substantially  orthodox,  and  not  very  important. 

It  is  contended  for  Culverwel  by  modern  admirers  (ed.  cited, 
p.  xxi)  that  he  deserves  the  praise  given  by  Hallam  to  the  later 
Bishop  Cumberland  as  "  the  first  Christian  writer  who  sought  to 
establish  systematically  the  principle  of  moral  right  independent 
of  revelation."     [See  above,  p.  74,  the  similar  tribute  of  Mosheim 
to  Ames  J    But  Culverwel  does  not  really  make  this  attempt.   His 
proposition  is  that  reason,  "  the  candle  of  the  Lord,"  discovers 
"that  all  the  moral  law  is  founded  in  natural   and  common 
light,  in  the  light  of  reason,  and  that  there  is  nothing  in  the 
mysteries  of  the  Gospel  contrary  to  the  light  of  reason  "  (Introd. 
end) ;  yet  he  contends  not  only  that  faith  transcends  reason, 
but   that   Abraham's    attempt  to   slay  his  son  was  a  dutiful 
obeying  of  "  the  God  of  nature  "  (pp.  225-26).     He  does  not 
achieve  the  simple  step  of  noting  that  the  recognition  of  revela- 
tion as  such  must  be  performed  by  reason,  and  thus  makes  no 
advance  on  the  position  of  Bacon,  much  less  on  those  of  Pecock 
and  Hooker.     His  object,  indeed,  was  not  to  justify  orthodoxy 
by  reason  against  rationahstic  unbelief,  but  to  make  a  case  for 
reason   in   theology  against   the   Lutherans    and   others  who. 
"  because    Socinus  has  burnt  his  wings  at  this  candle  of  the 
Lord,"  scouted  all  use  of  it  (Introd.).     Culverwel,  however,  was 
one  of  the  learned  group  in  Emanuel  College,  Cambridge,  whose 
tradition  developed  in  the  next  generation  into  Latitudinarian- 
ism ;  and  he  may  be  taken  as  a  learned  type  of  a  number  of  the 
clergy  who  were  led  by  the  abundant  discussion  all  around  them 
into  professing  and  encouraging  a  ratiocinative  habit  of  mmd. 


1  Discourse,  ed.  1857,  p.  226. 


a  Dr.  J.  Brown's  pref.  to  ed.  of  1857,  p.  xxii. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY    81 

Thus  we  find  Dean  Stuart,  Clerk  of  the  Closet  to  Charles  I, 
devoting  one  of  his  short  homilies  to  Jerome's  text,  Tentermis 
animas  quae  deficiunt  a  fide  naturalibus  rationibus  adjurare. 
It  is  not  enough,"  he  writes,  **  for  you  to  rest  in  an  imaginary 
faith,  and  easiness  in  beleeving,  except  yee  know  also  what  and 
why  and  how  you  come  to  that  beleef.  Implicite  beleevers, 
ignorant  beleevers,  the  adversary  may  swallow,  but  the  under- 
standing beleever  hee  must  chaw,  and  pick  bones  before  hee 
come  to  assimilate  him,  and  make  him  like  himself.  The 
implicite  beleever  stands  in  an  open  field,  and  the  enemy  will 
ride  over  him  easily:  the  understanding  beleever  is  in  a  fenced 
town."  {Catholique  Divinity,  1657,  pp.  133-34— a  work  written 
many  years  earHer.) 

The  discourse  on  Atheism,  again,  in  the  posthumous  works  of 
John  Smith  of  Cambridge  (d.  1652),  is  entirely  retrospective  ;  but 
soon  another  note  is  sounded.  As  early  as  1652,  the  year  after  the 
issue  of  Hobbes's  Leviathan,  the  prolific  Walter  Charleton,  who  had 
been  physician  to  the  king,  published  a  book  entitled  The  Darkness 
of  Atheism  Expelled  by  the  Light  of  Nature,  wherein  he  asserted 

that   England    "hath  of  late   produced   and   doth foster  more 

swarms  of  atheistical  monsters than  any  age,  than  any  Nation 

hath  been  infested  withal."     In  the  following  year  Henry  More,  the 
Cambridge  Platonist,  published  his  Antidote  against  Atheism.     The 
flamboyant   dedication    to   Viscountess    Conway    affirms   that   the 
existence  of  God  is  "  as  clearly  demonstrable  as  any  theorem  in 
mathematicks  ";    but,  the  reverend  author  adds,  "  considering  the 
state  of  things  as  they  are,  I  cannot  but  pronounce  that  there  is 
more  necessity  of  this  my  Antidote  than  I  could  wish  there  were." 
At  the  close  of  the  preface  he  pleasantly  explains  that  he  will  use 
no  Biblical  arguments,  but  talk  to  the  atheist  as  a  "  mere  NaturaHst '[; 
inasmuch  as  "  he  that  converses  with  a  barbarian  must  discourse  to 
him  in  his  own  language,"  and  "  he  that  would  gain  upon  the  more 
weak  and  sunk  minds  of  sensual  mortals  is  to  accommodate  himself 
to  their  capacity,  who,  like  the  bat  and  owl,  can  see  nowhere  so  well 
as  in  the  shady  glimmerings  of  their  twilight."     Then,  after  some 
elementary  play  with  the  design  argument,  the  entire  Third  Book  of 
forty-six  foho  pages  is  devoted  to  a  parade  of  old  wives'  tales  of 
witches  and  witchcraft,  witches'  sabbaths,  apparitions,  commotions 
by  devils,  ghosts,  incubi,  polter-geists— the  whole  vulgar  medley  of 
the  peasant  superstitions  of  Europe. 

It  is  not  that  the  Platonist  does  violence  to  his  own  philosophic 
tastes  by  way  of  influencing  the  "  bats  and  owls  "  of  atheism.     This 
mass  of  superstition  is  his  own  special  pabulum.     In  the  preface 
VOL.  n  G 


82    BRITISH  PREETHOUGHT  IK  THE  17th  CENTURY 

he  has  announced  that,  while  he  may  abstain  from  the  use  of  the 
Scriptures,  nothing  shaU  restrain  him  from  telhng  what  he  knows 
of  spirits.     "  I  am  so  cautious  and  circumspect,"  he  claims,     that 
I  make  use  of  no  narrations  that  either  the  avarice  of  the  priest 
or  the  credulity  and  fancitulness  of  the  melancholist  may  render 
suspected."     As   for   the   unbelievers,    "their   confident   ignorance 
shall  never  dash   me  out   of   confidence  with    my   well-grounded 
knowledge  ;  for  I  have  been  no  careless  inquirer  into  these  things. 
It  is  after  a  polter-geist  tale  of  the  crassest  description  that  he 
announces  that  it  was  strictly  investigated  and  attested  by     that 
excellently-learned  and  noble  gentleman,  Mr.  R.  Boyle,'  who  avowed 
"  that  all  his  settled  indisposedness  to  beUeve  strange  things  was 
overcome  by  this  special  conviction."'    And  the  section  ends  with 
the  proposition  :  "  Assuredly  that  saying  is  not  more  true  in  politick. 
No  Bishop,  no  King,  than  this  in  metaphysicks.  No  Spirit  no  God 
Such  was  the  mentality  of  some  of  the  most  eminent  and  scho  ariy 
Christian  apologists  of  the  time.     It  seoms  safe  to  conclude  that  the 
Platonist  made  few  converts. 

More   avowed    that  he   wrote  without    having  read    previous 
apologists ;  and  others  were  similarly  spontaneous  in  the  defence 
of  the  faith.     In  1654  there  is  noted^  a  treatise  called  AtJmsmus 
Vapulans.   by  William   Towers,   whose    message   can   in  part   be 
inferred    from    his    title;'     and    in    1657    Charleton    issued    his 
Immortality   of  the    Human   Soid   dmmmtrated    by  the    Light   of 
Nature,  wherein  the  argument,  which   says   nothing  of  revelation, 
is   so   singularly   unconfident,    and   so   much    broken   in   upon    by 
excursus,  as  to  leave   it  doubtful  whether  the   author  was  more 
lacking  in  dialectic  skill  or  in  conviction.     And  s  ill  the  traces  o 
unbeUef  multiply.     Baxter  and  Howe  were  agreed,  m  1658,  that 
there  were   both   "infidels  and   papists"  at  work   around   them; 
and  in  1659  Howe  writes :  "  I  know  some  leading  men  are  no 
Christians."'     "  Seekers,  Vanists,  and  Behmenists  "    are   specified 
as  groups  to  which   both   infidels  and  papists  attach  themselves. 
And  Howe,  recognizing  how  religious  strifes  promote  unbe  lef.  bears 
witness  "  What  a  cloudy,  wavering,  uncertain,  lank,  spiritless  thin„ 

is   the   faith  of   Christians  in  this  age  become! Most  content 

themselves  to  profess  it  only  as  the  religion  of  their  country. 

«  More,  CMectimi  of  Philosovhical  WHIi.iBS.  4th  e*!.- >SrSnf  1725  P.  SU. 
2  Fabricius.  Delectus  ArguineiUorum  et  SylUibas  Scnvtorum.  na.  p.  mi. 

s  No  copy  in  British  Museum.  ii„wo'b  Select  Works,  pp.  liii.  t''^- 

V^J^!^L^&  ^.a'S'«1fie?l';Tuu7Sn.\?s%^*e  pfes^nT o,  ^L.''  on  h^oth  .dee  iu 
the  politics  of  the  time.  .  ,^..„  r»^..*,eMii/«    pd   cited   pp.  146. 156, 158.    In  tlie 

pr:fa^nrSfs  t^^t?sT?^/^ree;rrT?^^^^  Howe  complains  of 


BEII^ISH  FREIiTHOUGHT^  IN  THE  17th  CENTUBY    83 

Alongside  of  all  this  vindication  of  Christianity  there  was  going 
on  constant  and  cruel  persecution  of  heretic  Christians.  The 
Unitarian  John  Biddle,  master  of  the  Gloucester  Grammar  School, 
was  dismissed  for  his  denial  of  the  Trinity ;  and  in  1647  he  was 
imprisoned,  and  his  book  burned  by  the  hangman.  In  1654  he  was 
again  imprisoned;  and  in  1655  he  was  banished  to  the  Scilly 
Islands.  Returning  to  London  after  the  Restoration,  he  was  again 
arrested,  and  died  in  gaol  in  1662.^  Under  the  Commonwealth 
(1656)  James  Naylor,  the  Quaker,  narrowly  escaped  death  for 
blasphemy,  but  was  whipped  through  the  streets,  pilloried,  bored 
through  the  tongue  with  a  hot  iron,  branded  in  the  forehead,  and 
sent  to  hard  labour  in  prison.  Many  hundreds  of  Quakers  were 
imprisoned  and  more  or  less  cruelly  handled. 

From  the  Origines  SacrcB  (1662)  of  Stillingfleet,  nevertheless,  it 
would  appear  that  both  deism  and  atheism  were  becoming  more  and 
more  common."^  He  states  that  "the  most  popular  pretences  of 
the  atheists  of  our  age  have  been  the  irreconcilableness  of  the 
account  of  times  in  Scripture  with  that  of  the  learned  and  ancient 
heathen  nations,  the  inconsistency  of  the  behef  of  the  Scriptures 
with  the  principles  of  reason  ;  and  the  account  which  may  be  given 
of  the  origin  of  things  from  the  principles  of  philosophy  without  the 
Scriptures."  These  positions  are  at  least  as  natural  to  deists  as  to 
atheists ;  and  StiUingfleet  is  later  found  protesting  against  the  poKcy 
of  some  professed  Christians  who  give  up  the  argument  from  miracles 
as  valueless.^  His  whole  treatise,  in  short,  assumes  the  need  for 
meeting  a  very  widespread  unbeHef  in  the  Bible,  though  it  rarely 
deals  with  the  atheism  of  which  it  so  constantly  speaks.  After  the 
Restoration,  naturally,  all  the  new  tendencies  were  greatly  reinforced,* 
ahke  by  the  attitude  of  the  king  and  his  companions,  all  influenced 
by  French  culture,  and  by  the  general  reaction  against  Puritanism. 
Whatever  ways  of  thought  had  been  characteristic  of  the  Puritans 
were  now  in  more  or  less  complete  disfavour ;  the  belief  in  witchcraft 
was  scouted  as  much  on  this  ground  as  on  any  other  i*^   and  the 

"J}^^  atheism  of  some  the  avowed  mere  theism  of  others,"  and  of  a  fashionable  habit  of 
ria  cuimg  religion.  This  sermon,  however,  appears  to  have  been  first  published  in  1684 : 
and  the  date  of  its  application  is  uncertain. 

^  Wallace,  Antitrinitarian  Biography,  Art.  285. 

«vo,J2l%^,'^®^*^®-^^^^'i^.-,"^*  ^^  neither  to  satisfie  the  importunity  of  friends,  nor  to 
prevent  false  copies  (which  and  such  like  excuses  I  know  are  expected  in  usual  prefaces), 
r^f^hi  y®  *  ^^^i^"*®.^  abroad  this  following  treatise:  but  it  is  out  of  a  just  resentment 
o  r,.  ff^  *^^^^"^  indignities  which  have  been  cast  on  religion,  by  such  who  account  it 
onf  ^f  fu  judgment  to  disbelieve  the  Scriptures,  and  a  piece  of  wit  to  dispute  themselves 
out  of  the  possibility  of  being  happy  in  another  world." 
»  See  bk.  ii,  ch.  x.    Page  338,  3rd  ed.  1666. 

Wz.^f'^i/^^^^^U''  ^^^^-  ^^dress  to  his  Scepsis  Scientifica.  Owen's  ed.  1885,  pp.  Iv-lvii:  and 
Henry  More's  Divine  Dialogues,  Dial,  i,  ch.  xxxii. 
^  Cp.  Lecky,  Rationalism  in  Europe,  i,  109. 


U    BEITISH  FIlEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CEKTUEY 

deistic  doctrines  found  a  ready  audience  among  royalists,  whose 
enemies  had  been  above  all  things  Bibliolaters. 

There  is  evidence  that  Charles  II,  at  least  up  to  the  time  of 
his  becoming  a  Catholic,  and  probably  even  to  the  end  was 
at  heart  a  deist.  See  Burnet's  History  of  his  Own  lime, 
ed.  1838,  pp.  61,  175,  and  notes  ;  and  cp.  refs.  m  Buck  e. 
3-vol.  ed.  i.  362,  note ;  1-vol.  ed.  p.  205.  St.  Evremond,  who 
knew  him  and  many  of  his  associates,  affirmed  expressly  that 
Charles's  creed  "  6toit  seulement  ce  qui  passe  vulgairement, 
quoiqu'  injustement,  pour  une  extinction  totale  de  Kehgion : 
je  veux  dire  le  D^isme"  {CEuvres  mdUes:  t.  viii  of  CEuvres, 
ed.  1714,  p.  354).  His  opinion,  St.  Evremond  admits,  was 
the  result  of  simple  recognition  of  the  actualities  of  religious 
life,  not  of  reading,  or  of  much  reflection.  And  his  adoption 
of  Catholicism,  in  St.  Evremond's  opinion,  was  purely  political. 
He  saw  that  CathoHcism  made  much  more  than  Protestantism 
for  kingly  power,  and  that  his  Catholic  subjects  were  the  most 
subservient. 

We  gather  this,  however,  still  from  the  apologetic  treatises  and 
the  historians,  not  from  new  deistic  literature  ;  for  in  virtue  of  the 
Press  Licensing  Act,  passed  on  behalf  of  the  Church  in  1662,  no 
heretical  book  could  be  printed  ;  so  that  Herbert  was  thus  far  the 
only  professed  deistic  writer  in  the  field,  and  Hobbes  the  only 
other  of  similar  influence.  Baxter,  writing  in  1655^  on  The 
Unreasonableness  of  Infidelity,  handles  chiefly  Anabaptists;  and 
in  his  Beformed  Pastor  (1656),  though  he  avows  that  "  the  common 
ignorant  people,"  seeing  the  endless  strifes  of  the  clergy,  "are 
hardened  by  us  against  all  religion,"  the  only  specific  unbelief  he 
mentions  is  that  of  "  the  devil's  own  agents,  the  unhappy  Socinians," 

who  had  written  "so  many  treatises  for unity  and  peace."  ^    But 

in  his  Reasons  of  the  Christian  Beligion,  issued  in  1667,  he  thinks 
fit  to  prove  the  existence  of  God  and  a  future  state,  and  the  truth 
and  the  supernatural  character  of  the  Christian  religion.  Any  deist 
or  atheist  who  took  the  trouble  to  read  through  it  would  have  been 
rewarded  by  the  discovery  that  the  learned  author  has  annihilated 
his  own  case.  In  his  first  part  he  affirms  :  "  If  there  were  no  fife 
of  Retribution  after  this.  Obedience  to  God  would  be  finally  men's 
loss  and  ruine  :  But  Obedience  to  God  shall  not  be  finally  men's 
loss  and  ruine  :  Ergo,  there  is  another  life."  *  In  the  second  part 
he  writes  that  "  Man's  personal  interest  is  an  unfit  rule  and  measure 
of  God's  goodness";"  and,  going  on  to   meet  the  new  argument 


1  The  Beformed  Pastor,  abr.  ed.  1826.  pp.  236,  239. 

a  Work  cited,  ed.  1667.  p.  136.    The  proposition  is  reiterated. 


»  Id.  p.  388. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY    85 

against  Christianity  based  on  the  inference  that  an  infinity  of  stars 
are  inhabited,  he  writes  : — 

Ask  any  naan  who  knoweth  these  things  whether  all  this  earth 
be  any  more  in  comparison  of  the  whole  creation  than  one  Prison 
is  to  a  Kingdom  or  Empire,  or  the  paring  of  one  nail in  com- 
parison of  the  whole  body.  And  if  God  should  cast  off  all  this  earth, 
and  use  all  the  sinners  in  it  as  they  deserve,  it  is  no  more  sign  of 
a  want  of  benignity  or  mercy  in  him  than  it  is  for  a  King  to  cast 

one  subject  of  a  inillion  into  a  jail or  than  it  is  to  pare  a  man's 

nails,  or  cut  off  a  wart,  or  a  hair,  or  to  pull  out  a  rotten  aking  tooth.* 

Thus  the  second  part  absolutely  destroys  one  of  the  fundamental 
positions  of  the  first.     No  semblance  of  levity  on  the  part  of  the 
freethinkers  could  compare  with  the  profound  intellectual  insincerity 
of  such  a  propaganda  as  this  ;  and  that  deism  and  atheism  continued 
to  gain  ground  is  proved  by  the  multitude  of  apologetic  treatises. 
Even  in  church-ridden  Scotland  they  were  found  necessary  ;  at  least 
the  young  advocate  George  Mackenzie,  afterwards  to  be  famous  as 
the  "bluidy  Mackenzie"  of   the   time   of   persecution,   thought   it 
expedient  to  make  his  first  appearance  in  Hterature  with  a  Beligio 
Stoici  (1663),  wherein  he  sets  out  with  a  refutation  of  atheism.     It 
is  difficult  to  believe  that  his  counsel  to  Christians  to  watch  the 
"horror-creating  beds  of  dying  atheists  "'^— a  false  pretence  as  it 
stands — represented  any  knowledge  whatever  of  professed  atheism 
in  his  own  country ;  and  his  discussion  of  the  subject  is  wholly  on 
the  conventional  lines — notably  so  when   he   uses  the  customary 
plea,  later  associated  with  Pascal,  that  the  theist  runs  no  risk  even 
if  there  is  no  future  life,  whereas  the  atheist  runs  a  tremendous  risk 
if  there  is  one;'  but  when  he  writes  of  "that  mystery  why  the 
greatest  wits  are  most  frequently  the  greatest  atheists,"*  he  must  be 
presumed  to  refer  at  least  to  deists.     And  other  passages  show  that 
he  had    listened  to  freethinking    arguments.     Thus  he  speaks^  of 
those  who  "  detract  from  Scripture  by  attributing  the  production  of 
miracles  to  natural  causes  ";  and  again  %f  those  who  "  contend  that 
the  Scriptures  are  written  in  a  mean  and  low  style ;  are  in  some 
places  too  mysterious,  in  others  too  obscure  ;  contain  many  things 
incredible,  many  repetitions,  and  many  contradictions."     His  own 
answers  are  conspicuously  weak.     In  the  latter  passage  he  continues  : 
But  those  miscreants  should  consider  that  much  of  the  Scripture's 
native  splendour  is  impaired  by  its  translators  ";  and  as  to  miracles 

'  Reasons  of  the  Christian  Religion,  pp.  388-89. 
i«  \^^^^^  Stoici,  Edinburgh.  1663.  p.  19.    The  essay  was  reprinted  in  1665,  and  in  Londou 
in  1693  under  the  title  of  The  Beliaious  Stoic. 

»  Id.  p.  18.  *  Id.  p.  121.  «  Id.  p.  76.  6  Id.  p.  69. 


linffiawiitt  Tir^  J""..-"*".-  "■■Mimiym  te,  ari 


86    BEITISH  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 

he  makes  the  inept  answer  that  if  secondary  causes  were  in  opera- 
tion they  acted  by  God's  will ;  going  on  later  to  suggest  on  his  own 
part  that  prophecy  may  be  not  a  miraculous  gift,  but     a  natural 
(though  the  highest)  perfection  of  our  human  nature."       Apart  from 
his  weak  dialectic,  he  writes  in  general  with  cleverness  and  literary 
finish,  but  without  any  note  of  sincerity ;    and  his  profession  of 
concern  that  reason  should  be  respected  in  theology     is  as  little 
acted  on  in  his  later  life  as  his  protest  against  persecution.      The 
inference  from  the  whole  essay  is  that  in  Scotland,  as  in  England, 
the    civil  war    had   brought   up  a   considerable   crop   of   reasoned 
unbelief ;  and  that  Mackenzie,  professed  defender  of  the  faith  as  he 
was  at  twenty-five,  and  official  persecutor  of  nonconformists  as  he 
afterwards  became,  met  with  a  good  deal  of  it  in  his  cultured  circle. 
In  his  later  booklet.  Beason  :  an  Essay  (1690),  he  speaks  of  the 

"  ridiculous  and  impudent  extravagance  of  some  who take^pams 

to  persuade  themselves  and  others  that  there  is  not  a  God."  He 
further  coarsely  asperses  all  atheists  as  debauchees.'  though  he  avows 
that  "  Infidelity  is  not  the  cause  of  false  reasoning,  because  such  as 

are  not  atheists  reason  falsely."  ,     •     .•    i 

When  anti-theistic  thought  could  subsist  in  the  ecclesiastical 
climate  of  Puritan  Scotland,  it  must  have  flourished  somewhat  in 
England.  In  1667  appeared  A  Philosophicall  Essay  towards  an 
eviction  of  tlie  Being  and  Attributes  of  God,  etc.,  of  which  the 
preface  proclaims  "the  bold  and  horrid  pride  of  Atheists  and 
Epicures  "  who  "  have  laboured  to  introduce  into  the  world  a  general 
Atheism,  or  at  least  a  doubtful  Skepticisme  in  matters  of  Religion." 
In  1668  was  published  Meric  Casaubon's  treatise.  Of  Credulity  and 
Incredulity  in  things  Natural,  Civil,  and  Divine,  assailing  not  only 
"  the  Sadducism  of  these  times  in  denying  spirits,  witches,"  etc.,  but 

"  Epicurus and  the  juggUng  and  false  dealing  lately  used  to  bring 

Atheism  into  Credit  "—a  thrust  at  Gassendi.  A  similar  polemic  is 
entombed  in  a  ponderous  folio  "  romance  "  entitled  Bcntivolio  and 
Urania,  by  Nathaniel  Ingelo,  D.D..  a  fellow  first  of  Emanuel 
College,  and  afterwards  of  Queen's  College,  Cambridge  (1660 ;  4th 
ed.  amended,  1682).  The  second  part,  edifyingly  dedicated  to  the 
Earl  of  Lauderdale,  one  of  the  worst  men  of  his  day,  undertakes 

3  Si^lasf^'^interelung  fts  a  probable  echo  of  opinions  hflmd  heard  from  some  of 
his  older  cSntrmpo?^^^^^  kept  within  its  proper  bounds  is  an  [="^6  ScotUsh 

"inA-1  rmre  aTbf  the^^^  ;  and  so  it  would  appear  that  to  punish  the  body  for  that 
which  isTfiuilt  of  the  soiU  as  unjust  as  to  punish  one  relation  for  another"  (pref. 
pp5S-ll).  He  adds  that  ■•the  Almight>-  hath  left  no  warrand  vU>on  ho  y  record  for  perse- 
«,;Hr,VanPh  RR  dissent  from  us."  *  Reason :  an  Essay,  ed- 1590.  p.  21.    Cp.  P- 15f • 

'"nil'p'82"    tus'Soterr^^^^^ 
and  Infallibility,  those  great  tyrants  over  Reason"  Ip.  «b).    But  the  essay  as  a  wuoie  w 

ill-planned  and  unimpressive. 


BRITISH  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY    87 

to  handle  the  "Atheists,  Epicureans,  and  Skepticks ";  and  in 
the  preface  the  atheists  are  duly  vituperated;  while  Epicurus  is 
described  as  a  gross  sensualist,  in  terms  of  the  legend,  and  the 
skeptics  as  "  resigned  to  the  slavery  of  vice."  In  the  sixth  book 
the  atheists  are  allowed  a  momentary  hearing  in  defence  of  their 
"horrid  absurdities,"  from  which  it  appears  that  there  were  current 
arguments  alike  anthropological  and  metaphysical  against  theism. 
The  most  competent  part  of  the  author's  own  argument,  which  is 
unlimited  as  to  space,  is  that  which  controverts  the  thesis  of  the 
invention  of  religious  beliefs  by  "  politicians  "  ^— a  notion  first  put 
in  currency,  as  we  have  seen,  by  those  who  insisted  on  the  expediency 
and  value  of  such  inventions  ;  as,  Polybius  among  the  ancients,  and 
Machiavelli  among  the  moderns  ;  and  further  by  Christian  priests, 
who  described  all  non-Christian  religions  as  human  inventions. 

Dr.  Ingelo's  folio  seems  to  have   had   many  readers  ;    but  he 
avowedly  did  not  look  for  converts ;  and  defences  of  the  faith  on 
a  less  formidable  scale  were  multiplied.     A  *'  Person  of  Honour " 
(Sir    Charles    Wolseley)    produced    in    1669    an    essay    on    The 
Unreasonableness     of    Atheism    made     Manifest,    which,    without 
supplying    any  valid    arguments,    gives    some    explanation    of    the 
growth  of  unbelief  in  terms  of  the  political  and  other  antecedents  ',^ 
and    in    1670    appeared     Richard     Barthogge's    Divine    Goodness 
Explicated   and  Vindicated  from    the   Exceptions   of  the   Atheists. 
Baxter  in  1671'  complains  that  "infidels  are  grown  so  numerous 
and  so  audacious,  and  look  so  big  and  talk  so  loud";  and  still  the 
process  continues.     In  1672  Sir  William  Temple  writes  indignantly 
of  "those  who  would  pass  for  wits  in  our  age  by  saying  things 
svhich,  David  tells  us,  the  fool  said  in  his  heart."'     In  the  same 
year  appeared  The  Beasonableness  of  Scripture-Belief,  by  Sir  Charles 
Wolseley,  and  The  Atheist  Silenced,  by  one  J.  M. ;  in  1674,  Dr.  Thomas 
Good's  Firmianus  et  Dubitantius,  or  Dialogues  concerni^ig  Atheism, 
Infidelity,  and  Popery;  in  1675,  the  posthumous  treatise  of  Bishop 
Wilkins  (d.  1672),  Of  the  Principles  and  Duties  of  Natural  Beligion, 
with  a  preface  by  Tillotson  ;  and  a  Brevis  Demonstratio,  with  the 
modest  sub-title,  "The  Truth  of  Christian  Religion  Demonstrated 
by  Reasons  the  best  that  have  yet  been  out  in  English";  in  1677, 
Bishop  Stillingfleet's  Letter  to  a  Deist ;  and  in  1678  the  massive 
work  of  Cudworth  on  The  True  Intellectual  System  of  the  Universe 


I  c'p' P^^ami?? o/il^^^^^^^^^  explanation  is  also  given  by  Bishop 

^^^aYe^y^iS^Vo^Ht^^^^^^^^  to  ^-e -a.  before 

*  Pref  to  Obs.  upon  the  United  Prov.  of  tJw  Netherlands,  in  Works,  ed.  1814,  i.  36. 


88    BEITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUBY 

attacking  atheism  (not  deism)  on  philosophic  lines  which  sadly 
compromised  the  learned  author/  English  dialectic  being  found 
insufificient,  there  was  even  produced  in  1679  a  translation  by  the 
Rev.  Joshua  Bonhome  of  the  French  L'AtMsme  Convaincu  of 
David  Dersdon,  published  twenty  years  before. 

All  of  these  works  explicitly  avow  the  abundance  of  unbelief ; 
Tillotson,  himself  accused  of  it,  pronounces  the  age  **  miserably 
overrun  with  Skepticism  and  InMelity";  and  Wilkins,  avowing 
that  these  tendencies  are  common  '*  not  only  among  sensual  men 
of  the  vulgar  sort,  but  even  among  those  who  pretend  to  a  more 
than  ordinary  measure  of  wit  and  learning,"  attempts  to  meet  them 
by  a  purely  deistic  argument,  with  a  claim  for  Christianity  appended, 
as  if  he  were  concerned  chiefly  to  rebut  atheism,  and  held  his  own 
Christianity  on  a  very  rationalistic  tenure.  The  fact  was  that  the 
orthodox  clergy  were  as  hard  put  to  it  to  repel  religious  antinomianism 
on  the  one  hand  as  to  repel  atheism  on  the  other ;  and  no  small  part 
of  the  deistic  movement  seems  to  have  been  set  up  by  the  reaction 
against  pious  lawlessness.^  Thus  we  have  Tillotson,  writing  as 
Dean  of  Canterbury,  driven  to  plead  in  his  preface  to  the  work  of 
Wilkins  that  "it  is  a  great  mistake"  to  think  the  obligation  of 
moral  duties  "  doth  solely  depend  upon  the  revelation  of  God's  will 
made  to  us  in  the  Holy  Scriptures."  It  was  such  reasoning  that 
brought  upon  him  the  charge  of  freethinking. 

If  it  be  now  possible  to  form  any  accurate  picture  of  the  state  of 
belief  in  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  it  may  perhaps 
be  done  by  recognizing  three  categories  of  temperament  or  mental 
proclivity.  First  we  have  to  reckon  with  the  great  mass  of  people 
held  to  religious  observance  by  hebetude,^  devoid  of  the  deeper 
mystical  impulse  or  psychic  bias  which  exhibited  itself  on  the  one 
hand  among  the  dissenters  who  partly  preserved  the  "  enthusiasms  " 
of  the  Commonwealth  period,  and  on  the  other  among  the  more 
cultured  pietists  of  the  Church  who,  banning  "  enthusiasm  "  in  its 
stronger  forms,  cultivated  a  certain  "  enthusiasm "  of  their  own. 
Religionists  of  the  latter  type  were  ministered  to  by  superstitious 
mystics  like  Henry  More,  who,  even  w^hen  undertaking  to  "  prove" 
the  existence  of  God  and  the  separate  existence  of  the  soul  by 
argument  and  by  demonology,  taught  them  to  cultivate  a  "  warranted 
enthusiasm,"  and  to  "  endeavour  after  a  certain  principle  more  noble 


1  Cp.  Dynamics  of  Beligion,  pp.  87,  94-98,  111,  112. 

2  As  to  the  religious  immoralism  see  Mosheim,  17  Cent.  sec.  ii,  pt.  U.  cli.  ii,  §  23,  and 
Murdock's  notes. 

8  Compare  the  picture  of  average  Protestant  deportment  given  by  Benjamin  Bennet  in 
his  Discourses  against  Fopery,  1714,  p.  377. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY    89 


and  inward  than  reason  itself,  and  without  which  reason  will  falter,  or 

at  least  reach  but  to  mean  and  frivolous  things" "something  in 

me  while  I  thus  speak,  which  I  must  confess  is  of  so  retruse  a  nature 
that  I  want  a  name  for  it,  unless  I  should  adventure  to  term  it 
divine  sagacity,  which  is  the  first  rise  of  successful  reason,  especially 
in  matters  of  great  comprehension  and  moment."^  There  was  small 
psychic  difference  between  this  dubiously  draped  affirmation  of  the 
"  inner  light "  and  the  more  orotund  proclamations  of  it  by  the 
dissenters  who,  for  a  considerable  section  of  the  people,  still  carried 
on  the  tradition  of  rapturous  pietism  ;  and  the  dissenters  were  not 
always  at  a  disadvantage  in  that  faculty  for  rhetoric  which  has 
generally  been  a  main  factor  in  doctrinal  religion.^ 

From  the  popular  and  the  eclectic  pietist  alike  the  generality  of 
the  Anglican  clergy  stood  aloof ;  and  among  them,  in  turn,  a  ration- 
alistic and  anti-mythical  habit  of  mind  in  a  manner  joined  men  who 
were  divided  in  their  beliefs.  The  clergymen  who  wrote  lawyer-like 
treatises  against  schism  were  akin  in  psychosis  to  those  who,  in 
their  distaste  for  the  parade  of  inspiration,  veered  towards  deism. 
Tillotson  was  not  the  only  man  reputed  to  have  done  so :  fervid 
dissenters  declared  that  many  of  the  established  clergy  paid  "  more 
respect  to  the  light  of  reason  than  to  the  light  of  the  Scriptures," 
and  further  "left  Christ  out  of  their  religion,  disowned  imputed 
righteousness,  derided  the  operations  of  the  holy  spirit  as  the  empty 
pretences  of  enthusiasts."^  Of  men  of  this  temperament,  some 
would  open  dialectic  batteries  against  dissent ;  while  others,  of  a 
more  searching  proclivity,  would  tend  to  construct  for  themselves 
a  rationalistic  creed  out  of  the  current  medley  of  theological  and 
philosophic  doctrine.  The  great  mass  of  course  maintained  an 
allegiance  of  habit  to  the  main  formulas  of  the  faith,  putting 
quasi-rational  aspects  on  the  trinity,  providence,  redemption,  and 
the  future  life,  very  much  as  the  adherents  of  political  parties 
normally  vindicate  their  supposed  principles  ;  and  there  was  a  good 
deal  of  surviving  temperamental  piety  even  in  the  Restoration 
period/    But  the  outstanding  feature  of  the  age,  as  contrasted  with 


1  More,  Coll.  of  Philos.  Writings,  4th  ed.  1712,  gen.  pref.  p.  7. 

2  Compare  some  of  the  extracts  in  Thomas  Bennet's  Defence  of  the  Discourse  of  Schism, 
etc..  2nd  ed.  1704,  from  the  sermons  of  R.  Gouge  (1688).  The  description  of  men  as  "  mortal 
crumbling  bits  of  dependency,  yesterday's  start-ups,  that  come  out  of  the  abyss  of  nothing, 
hastening  to  the  bosom  of  their  mother  earth"  (work  cited,  p.  93)  is  a  reminder  that  the 
resonant  and  cadenced  rhetoric  of  the  Brownes  and  Taylors  and  Cudworths  was  an  art  of 
the  age,  at  the  command  of  different  orders  of  propaganda. 

8  Cited  by  Bennet,  A  Defence  of  the  Discourse  of  Schism,  etc.,  as  cited,  p.  41. 

*  Thus  Henry  More's  biographer,  the  Rev.  Richard  Ward,  says  "  the  late  Mr.  Chiswel 
told  a  friend  of  mine  that  for  twenty  years  together  after  the  return  of  King  Charles  the 
Second  the  Mystery  of  Godliness,  and  Dr.  More's  other  works,  ruled  all  the  booksellers  in 
London"  (Life  cf  More,  1710,  pp.  162-63).  We  have  seen  the  nature  of  some  of  More's 
"  other  works." 


90    BKITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 


previous  periods,  was  the  increasing  commonness  of  the  skeptical  or 
rationalistic  attitude  in  general  society.  Sir  Charles  Wolseley 
protests'  that  "  Irreligion,  'tis  true,  in  its  practice  hath  still  been 
the  companion  of  every  age,  but  its  open  and  public  defence  seems 
the  peculiar  of  this"  ;  adding  that  "  most  of  the  bad  principles  of  this 
age  are  of  no  earlier  a  date  than  one  very  ill  book,  and  indeed  but 
the  spawn  of  the  Leviathan^  This,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a  delusion ; 
but  the  influence  of  Hobbes  was  a  potent  factor. 

All  the  while,  the  censorship  of  the  press,  which  was  one  of  the 
means  by  which  the  clerical  party  under  Charles  combated  heresy, 
prevented  any  new  and  outspoken  writing  on  the  deistic  side.     The 
Treatise  of  Humane  [i.e.  Human]  Eeason  (1674)'  of  Martin  Clifford, 
a  scholarly  man-about-town,^  who  was  made  Master  of  the  Charter- 
house, went  indeed  to  the  bottom  of  the  question  of  authority  by 
showing,  as  Spinoza  had  done  shortly  before,*  that  the  acceptance  of 
authority  is  itself  in  the  last  resort  grounded  in  reason.     The  author 
makes  no  overt  attack  on  religion,  and  professes  Christian  belief ,  but 
points  out  that  many  modern  wars  had  been  on  subjects  of  religion, 
and  elaborates  a  skilful  argument  on  the  gain  to  be  derived  from 
toleration.     Reason  alone,  fairiy  used,  will   bring   a   man   to   the 
Christian  faith  :  he  who  denies  this  cannot  be  a  Christian.     As  for 
schism,  it  is  created  not  by  variation  in  belief,  but  by  the  refusal  to 
tolerate  it.    This  ingenious  and  well-written  treatise  speedily  elicited 
three  replies,  all  pronouncing  it  a  pernicious  work.     Dr.  Laney, 
Bishop  of  Ely,  is  reported  to  have  declared  that  book  and  author 
might  fitly  be  burned  together ;'  and  Dr.  Isaac  Watts,  while  praising 
it  for  "  many  useful  notions,"  found  it  "  exalt  reason  as  the  rule  of 
religion  as  well  as  the  guide,  to  a  degree  very  dangerous."*     Its 
actual   effect   seems   to  have  been  to  restrain  the  persecution  of 
dissenters.'     In   1680,   three   years    after    CUfford's    death,   there 
appeared  An  Apology  for  a  Treatise  of  Iliumne  Eeason,  by  Albertus 
Warren,  wherein  one  of  the  attacks,  entitled  Flain  Dealing,  by  a 
Cambridge  scholar,  is  specially  answered.'    This  helped  to  evoke 


1  The  Beasonahleness  of  Scripture  Belief,  \m,'E.i>\B%.^ed. 

2  ReD  1675  ■  2nd  ed.  1691 ;  rep.  in  the  Fhcentx.  vol.  u.  1708 ;  3rd  ed.  1736. 

3  A  very  hostile  account  of  him  is  given  in  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.  He  J^as  however,  the 
friend  of  Cowley,  and  the  "  M.  Clifford"  to  whom  Sprat  addressed  his  sketch  of  Cowley  s 
Lijl  He  walalso  a  foe  of  Dryden-the  '*  malicious  Matt  Clifford"  of  Dryden's  S6««t07,s  of 
the  Poets  ;  and  he  attacked  the  poet  in  Notes  on  Dryden's  Poems  (published  1687),  and  is 
supposed  to  have  had  a  hand  in  the  Beliearsal.    He  was  befriended  by  Shaftesbury. 

*  Tract.  Theol.  Polit.  c.  15.  -rr-  ^     ^  r>     i      7  c*v>  ^-1  xr  ooq 

5  W^ood.  Athe7UB  Oxcmienses,  ii,  381-82;  Granger.  Biog.  Hist,  of  England,  5th  ed.  v,  293. 

6  Johnson's  Li/«  c/ Dr.  IFatts.  1785,  App.i.  /  n^  xir^**. 

7  Toulmin,  Hist,  of  the  Trot.  Dissenters,  1814.  citing  Johnson  s  i^e  0/  Dr.  Watts. 

8  It  has  been  suggested  that  this  was  really  written  by  Clifford,  for  posthumous 
publication.  The  humorous  sketch  of  "  His  Character"  at  the  close,  suggesting  that  his 
vices  seem  to  the  writer  to  have  outweighed  hia  virtues,  hints  of  ironical  mystification. 


BKITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY    91 

the  anonymous  Discourse  of  Things  above  Eeason  (1681),  by  Robert 
Boyle,  the  distinguished  author  of  The  Sceptical  Chemist,  whom  we 
have  seen  backing  up  Henry  More  in  acceptance  of  the  grossest  of 
ignorant  superstitions.  The  most  notable  thing  about  the  Discourse 
is  that  it  anticipates  Berkeley's  argument  against  freethinking 
mathematicians/ 

The  stress  of  new  discussion  is  further  to  be  gathered  from  the 
work  of  Howe,  On  the  Eeconcilahleness  of  God's  Prescience  of  the 
Sins  of  Men  with  the  Wisdom  and  Sincerity  of  his  Counsels  and 
Exhortations,  produced  in  1677  at  Boyle's  request.  As  a  modern 
admirer  admits  that  the  thesis  was  a  hopeless  one,^  it  is  not  to  be 
supposed  that  it  did  much  to  lessen  doubt  in  its  own  day.  The 
preface  to  Stillingfleet's  Letter  to  a  Deist  (1677),  which  for  the  first 
time  brings  that  appellation  into  prominence  in  English  controversy, 
tacitly  abandoning  the  usual  ascription  of  atheism  to  all  unbelievers, 
avows  that  "  a  mean  esteem  of  the  Scriptures  and  the  Christian 
Religion  "  has  become  very  common  "  among  the  Skepticks  of  this 
Age,"  and  complains  very  much,  as  Butler  did  sixty  years  later,  of 
the  spirit  of  "  Raillery  and  Buffoonery  "  in  which  the  matter  was 
too  commonly  approached.  The  "  Letter  "  shows  that  a  multitude 
of  the  inconsistencies  and  other  blemishes  of  the  Old  Testament 
were  being  keenly  discussed  ;  and  it  cannot  be  said  that  the  Bishop's 
vindication  was  well  calculated  to  check  the  tendency.  Indeed,  we 
have  the  angry  and  reiterated  declaration  of  Archdeacon  Parker, 
writing  in  1681,  that  "the  ignorant  and  the  unlearned  among 
ourselves  are  become  the  greatest  pretenders  to  skepticism  ;  and 
it  is  the  common  people  that  nowadays  set  up  for  Skepticism  and 
Infidelity";  that  *' Atheism  and  Irreligion  are  at  length  become  as 
common  as  Vice  and  Debauchery";  and  that  "  Plebeans  and 
Mechanicks  have  philosophized  themselves  into  Principles  of 
Impiety,  and  read  their  Lectures  of  Atheism  in  the  Streets  and 
Highways.  And  they  are  able  to  demonstrate  out  of  the  Leviathan 
that  there  is  no  God  nor  Providence,"  and  so  on.^  As  the  Arch- 
deacon's method  of  refutation  consists  mainly  in  abuse,  he  doubtless 
had  the  usual  measure  of  success.  A  similar  order  of  dialectic  is 
employed  by  Dr.  Sherlock  in  his  Practical  Discourse  of  Eeligious 
Assemblies  (1681).  The  opening  section  is  addressed  to  the  "  specu- 
lative atheists,"  here  described  as  receding  from  the  principles  of 

»  Work  cited,  pp.  10. 14,  30.  55.  2  Dr.  Urwick.  Life  of  Howe,  as  cited,  p.  xxxii. 

»  A  Demonstration  of  tlie  Divine  Authority  of  the  Law  of  Nature  and  of  the  Christian 
Beligion,  by  Samuel  Parker,  D.D.,  1681,  pref .  The  first  part  of  this  treatise  is  avowedly  a 
popularization  of  the  argument  of  Cumberland's  Disquisitio  de  Legibus  Natures,  1672. 
Parker  had  previously  published  in  Latin  a  Disputatio  de  Deo  et  Providentta  Divina,  in 
which  he  raised  the  question.  An  Philosophorum  ulli,  et  quitiam  Atheifuerunt  (1678). 


I 


92    BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUEY 

their  "  great  Master.  Mr.  Hobbs."  who,  "  though  he  had  no  great 
opinion  of  religion  in  itself,  yet  thought  it  something  considerable 
when  it  became  the  law  of  the  nation."  Such  atheists,  the  reverend 
writer  notes,  when  it  is  urged  on  them  that  all  mankind  worship 
"  some  God  or  other,"  reply  that  such  an  argument  is  as  good  for 
polytheism  and  idolatry  as  for  monotheism ;  so,  after  formally 
inviting  them  to  "  cure  their  souls  of  that  fatal  and  mortal  disease, 
which  makes  them  beasts  here  and  devils  hereafter,"  and  lamenting 
that  he  is  not  dealing  with  "reasonable  men,"  he  bethinks  him 
that  "  the  laws  of  conversation  require  us  to  treat  all  men  with  just 
respects,"  and  admits  that  there  have  been  "some  few  wise  and 
cautious  atheists."  To  such,  accordingly,  he  suggests  that  the 
atheist  has  already  a  great  advantage  in  a  world  morally  restrained 
by  religion,  where  he  is  under  no  such  restraint,  and  that,  "  if  he 
should  by  his  wit  and  learning  proselyte  a  whole  nation  to  atheism, 
Hell  would  break  loose  on  Earth,  and  he  might  soon  find  himself 
exposed  to  all  those  violences  and  injuries  which  he  now  securely 
practises."  For  the  rest,  they  had  better  not  affront  God,  who 
may  after  all  exist,  and  be  able  to  revenge  himself.^     And  so  forth. 

Of  deists  as  such.  Sherlock  has  nothing  to  say  beyond  treating  as 
"  practical  atheists  "  men  who  admit  the  existence  of  God,  yet  never 
go  to  church,  though  "  religious  worship  is  nothing  else  but  a  public 
acknowledgment  of  God."  Their  non-attendance  "is  as  great,  if 
not  a  greater  affront  to  God,  and  contempt  of  him.  than  atheism 
itself/"*  But  the  reverend  writer's  strongest  resentment  is  aroused 
by  the  spectacle  of  freethinkers  asking  for  liberty  of  thought. 

"  It  is  a  fulsome  and  nauseous  thing,"  he  breathlessly  protests,  "  to 
see  the  atheists  and  infidels  of  our  days  to  turn  great  reformers  of 
religion,  to  set  up  a  mighty  cry  for  liberty  of  conscience.  For  whatever 
reformation  of  religion  may  be  needful  at  this  time,  whatever  liberty 
of  conscience  may  be  fit  to  be  granted,  yet  what  have  these  men  to 
do  to  meddle  with  it ;  those  who  think  religion  a  mere  fable,  and 
God  to  be  an  Utopian  prince,  and  conscience  a  man  of  clouts  set  up 
for  a  scarecrow  to  fright  such  silly  creatures  from  their  beloved 
enjoyments,  and  hell  and  heaven  to  be  forged  in  the  same  mint  with 
the  poet's  Styx  and  Acheron  and  Elysian  Fields  ?  We  are  hke^  to 
see  blessed  times,  if  such  men  had  but  the  reforming  of  religion." 
Dr  Sherlock  was  not  going  to  do  good  if  the  devil  bade  him. 

The  faith  had  a  wittier  champion  in  South ;  but  he,  in  a  West- 
minster Abbey  sermon  of  1684-5,*  mournfully  declares  that 

"  The  weakness  of   our  church  discipline  since  its  restoration, 

1  Work  cited,  2nd  ed.  1682,  pp.  32,  38-40,  45-48.  n.^nJ^^il'mm'S^  iqft-^Q 

8  Id" p.  62.  *  Twelve  Sermons  Preached  upmi  Several  Occasions,  1692,  pp.  43&-3y. 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUEY    93 

whereby  it  has  been  scarce  able  to  get  any  hold  on  men's  consciences, 
and  much  less  able  to  keep  it ;  and  the  great  prevalence  of  that 
atheistical  doctrine  of  the  Leviathan ;  and  the  unhappy  propagation 
of  Erastianism  ;  these  things  (I  say)  with  some  others  have  been 
the  sad  and  fatal  causes  that  have  loosed  the  bands  of  conscience 
and  eaten  out  the  very  heart  and  sense  of  Christianity  among  us,  to 
that  degree,  that  there  is  now  scarce  any  rehgious  tye  or  restraint 
upon  persons,  but  merely  from  those  faint  remainders  of  natural 
conscience,  which  God  will  be  sure  to  keep  alive  upon  the  hearts  of 
men,  as  long  as  they  are  men,  for  the  great  ends  of  his  own  provi- 
dence, whether  they  will  or  no.  So  that,  were  it  not  for  this  sole 
obstacle,  religion  is  not  now  so  much  in  danger  of  being  divided  and 
torn  piecemeal  by  sects  and  factions,  as  of  being  at  once  devoured 
by  atheism.  Which  being  so,  let  none  wonder  that  irreligion  is 
accounted  policy  when  it  is  grown  even  to  a  fashion ;  and  passes  for 
wit,  with  some,  as  well  as  for  wisdom  with  others." 

How  general  was  the  ferment  of  discussion  may  be  gathered  from 
Dryden's  Eeligio  Laid  (1682),  addressed  to  the  youthful  Henry 
Dickinson,  translator  of  P^re  Eichard  Simon's  Critical  History  of  the 
Old  Testament  (Fr.  1678).  The  French  scholar  was  suspect  to  begin 
with;  and  Bishop  Burnet  tells  that  Eichard  Hampden  (grandson 
of  the  patriot),  who  was  connected  with  the  Eye  House  Plot  and 
committed  suicide  in  the  reign  of  William  and  Mary,  had  been 
"  much  corrupted  "  in  his  rehgious  principles  by  Simon's  conversa- 
tion at  Paris.  In  the  poem,  Dryden  recognizes  the  upsetting 
tendency  of  the  treatise,  albeit  he  terms  it  "  matchless  ": — 

For  some,  who  have  his  secret  meaning  guessed, 
Have  found  our  author  not  too  much  a  priest ; 

and  his  flowing  disquisition,  which  starts  from  poetic  contempt  of 
reason  and  ends  in  prosaic  advice  to  keep  quiet  about  its  findings,  leaves 
the  matter  at  that.     The  hopelessly  confused  but  musical  passage  : 

Dim  as  the  borrowed  beams  of  moon  and  stars. 

To  lonely,  weary,  wandering  travellers, 

Is  Reason  to  the  soul, 

begins  the  poem ;  but  the  poet  thinks  it  necessary  both  in  his 
preface  and  in  his  piece  to  argue  with  the  deists  in  a  fashion  which 
must  have  entertained  them  as  much  as  it  embarrassed  the  more 
thoughtful  orthodox,  his  simple  thesis  being  that  all  ideas  of  deity 
were  ddbris  from  the  primeval  revelation  to  Noah,  and  that  natural 
reason  could  never  have  attained  to  a  God-idea  at  all.  And  even  ^t 
that,  as  regards  the  Herbertian  argument : 

No  supernatural  worship  can  be  true. 

Because  a  general  law  is  that  alone 

Which  must  to  all  and  everywhere  be  known  : 


94    BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUBY 


he  confesses  that  ...    , .    , .  . 

Of  all  objections  this  indeed  is  chief 

To  startle  reason,  stagger  frail  belief ; 
and  feebly  proceeds  to  argue  away  the  worst  meaning  of  the  creed 
of  "the  good  old  man"  Athanasius.     Finally,  we  have  a  fatherly 
appeal  for  peace  and  quietness  among  the  sects  :— 

And  after  hearing  what  our  Church  can  say, 
If  still  our  reason  runs  another  way, 
That  private  reason  'tis  more  just  to  curb 
Than  by  disputes  the  public  peace  disturb ; 
For  points  obscure  are  of  small  use  to  learn, 
But  common  quiet  is  mankind's  concern. 

It  must  have  been  the  general  disbelief  in  Dryden's  sincerity  on 
religious  matters  that  caused  the  ascription  to  him  of  various  free- 
thinking  treatises,  for  there  is  no  decisive  evidence  that  he  was 
ever  pronouncedly  heterodox.  His  attitude  to  rationaUsm  in  the 
Beligio  Laid  is  indeed  that  of  one  who  either  could  not  see  the 
scope  of  the  problem  or  was  determined  not  to  indicate  his  recogni- 
tion of  it ;  and  on  the  latter  view  the  insincerity  of  both  poem  and 
preface  would  be  exorbitant.  By  his  nominal  hostility  to  deism, 
however,  Dryden  did  freethought  a  service  of  some  importance. 
After  his  antagonism  had  been  proclaimed,  no  one  could  plausibly 
associate  freethinking  with  licentiousness,  in  which  Dryden  so  far 
exceeded  nearly  every  poet  and  dramatist  of  his  age  that  the  non- 
juror Jeremy  Collier  was  free  to  single  him  out  as  the  representative 
of  theatrical  lubricity.  But  in  simple  justice  it  must  also  be  avowed 
that  of  all  the  opponents  of  deism  in  that  day  he  is  one  of  the  least 
embittered,  and  that  his  amiable  superficiality  of  argument  must 
have  tended  to  stimulate  the  claims  of  reason. 

The  late  Dr.  Verrall,  a  keen  but  unprejudiced  critic,  sums  up 
as  regards  Dryden's  religious  poetry  in  general  that  "  What  is 
clear  is  that  he  had  a  marked  dishke  of  clergy  of  all  sorts,  as 
such  ";  that  "  the  main  points  of  Deism  are  noted  in  Religio 
Laid  (46-61) ;  and  that  **  his  creed  was  presumably  some  sort 
of  Deism  "  {Lectures  on  Dryden,  1914,  pp.  148-50).  Further, 
*'  The  State  of  Innocence  is  really  deistic  and  not  Christian  in 
tone  :  in  his  play  of  Tyrannic  Love,  the  religion  of  St.  Catharine 
may  be  mere  philosophy  "  ;  and  though  the  poet  in  his  preface  to 
that  play  protests  that  his  "  outward  conversation  shall  never 
be  justly  taxed  with  the  note  of  atheism  or  profaneness,"  the 
disclaimer  "  proves  nothing  as  to  his  positive  beHef :  Deism  is 
not  profane."  In  Absalom  and  Achitophel,  again,  the  coarse 
satire  on  Transubstantiation  (118  ff.)  shows  rather  religious  in- 
sensibiHty  than  hostile  theology,"  though  "  the  poem  shows  his 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  11^  THE  17th  CENTURt    95 

dislike  of  liberty  and  private  judgment  (49-50)."  Of  the  Religio 
Laid  the  critic  asks :  "  Now  in  all  this,  is  there  any  reUgion  at 
all  ?  "  The  poem  **  might  well  be  dismissed  as  mere  politics  but 
for  its  astounding  commencement "  (p.  155).  The  critic  un- 
expectedly fails  to  note  that  the  admired  commencement  is  an 
insoluble  confusion  of  metaphors. 

How  far  the  process  of  reasoning  had  gone  among  quiet  thinking 
people  before  the  Revolution  may  be  gathered  from  the  essay  entitled 
Miracles  no  Violations  of  the  Laivs  of  Nature,  published  in  1683.^ 
Its  thesis  is  that  put  expHcitly  by  Montaigne  and  impHcitly  by 
Bacon,  that  Ignorance  is  the  only  worker  of  miracles  ;  in  other  words, 
"that  the  power  of  God  and  the  power  of  Nature  are  one  and  the 
same  " — a  simple  and  straightforward  way  of  putting  a  conception 
which  Cudworth  had  put  circuitously  and  less  courageously  a  few 
years  before.  No  Scriptural  miracle  is  challenged  qua  event.  **  Among 
the  many  miracles  related  to  be  done  in  favour  of  the  Israelites,"  says 
the  writer,  '*  there  is  (I  think)  no  one  that  can  be  apodictically 
demonstrated  to  be  repugnant  to  th'  estabhsht  Order  of  Nature";* 
and  he  calmly  accepts  the  Biblical  account  of  the  first  rainbow, 
explaining  it  as  passing  for  a  miracle  merely  because  it  was  the  first. 
He  takes  his  motto  from  PHny :  "  Quid  non  miraculo  est,  cum  primum 
in  notitiam  venit  ?  "  ^     This  is,  however,  a  preUminary  strategy ;  as  is 

the  opening  reminder  that  "most  of  the  ancient  Fathers and  of 

the  most  learned  Theologues  among  the  moderns  "  hold  that  the 
Scriptures  as  regards  natural  things  do  not  design  to  instruct  men  in 
physics  but  **  aim  only  to  excite  pious  affections  in  their  breasts." 

We  accordingly  reach  the  position  that  the  Scripture  "many 
times  speaks  of  natural  things,  yea  even  of  God  himself,  very 
improperly,  as  aiming  to  affect  and  occupy  the  imagination  of  men, 
not  to  convince  their  reason."  Many  Scriptural  narratives,  there- 
fore, "are  either  deHvered  poetically  or  related  according  to  the 
preconceived  opinions  and  prejudices  of  the  writer."  "Wherefore 
we  here  absolutely  conclude  that  all  the  events  that  are  truly 
related  in  the  Scripture  to  have  come  to  pass,  proceeded  necessarily 
according  to  the  immutable  Laws  of  Nature;  and  that  if  any- 
thing be   found   which   can   be   apodictically   demonstrated   to   be 

repugnant  to  those  laws we  may  safely  and  piously  believe  the 

same  not  to  have  been  dictated  by  divine  inspiration,  but  impiously 
added  to  the  sacred  volume  by  sacrilegious  men  ;  for  whatever  is 


*  This  has  boen  ascribed,  without  any  good  ground,  to  Charles  Blount.    It  does  not 
seem  to  me  to  be  in  his  style.  „         ..  , 

*  Premonition  to  the  Candid  Reader.  ^  Hist.  Nat,  vii,  1. 


96    BBITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUBY 

against  Nature  is  against  Reason ;  and  whatever  is  against  Reason 
is  absurd,  and  therefore  also  to  be  rejected  and  refuted." 

Lest  this  should  be  found  too  hard  a  doctrine  there  is  added, 
Apropos  of  Joshua's  staying  of  the  sun  and  moon,  a  literary  solution 
which  has  often  done  duty  in  later  times.  '*  To  interpret  Scripture- 
miracles,  and  to  understand  from  the  narrations  of  them  how  they 
really  happened,  'tis  necessary  to  know  the  opinions  of  those  who 

first  reported  them otherwise  we  shall  confound things  which 

have  really  happen'd  with  things  purely  imaginary,  and  which  were 
only  prophetic  representations.  For  in  Scripture  many  things  are 
related  as  real,  and  which  were  also  believ'd  to  be  real  even  by  the 
relators  themselves,  that  notwithstanding  were  only  representations 
form'd   in   the   brain,    and   merely   imaginary — as    that    God,   the 

Supreme  Being,  descended  from  heaven upon  Mount  Sinai ; 

that  Ehas  ascended   to   heaven  in  a  fiery  chariot which  were 

only  representations  accommodated  to  their  opinions  who  delivered 
them  down  to  us."  ^  Such  argumentation  had  to  prepare  the  way 
for  Hume's  Essay  0/  Miracles,  half  a  century  later  ;  and  concerning 
both  reasoners  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  their  thought  was  to  be 
"infidelity"  for  centuries  after  them.  It  needed  real  freethinking, 
then,  to  produce  such  doctrine  in  the  days  of  the  Rye  House  Plot. 

Meanwhile,  during  an  accidental  lapse  of  the  press  laws,  the 
deist  Charles  Blount^  (1654-1693)  had  produced  with  his 
father's  help  his  Ayiima  Mundi  (1679),  in  which  there  is  set  forth 
a  measure  of  cautious  unbelief ;  following  it  up  (1680)  by  his  much 
more  pronounced  essay.  Great  is  Diana  of  the  Ephesians,  a  keen 
attack  on  the  principle  of  revelation  and  clericalism  in  general,  and 
bis  translation  [from  the  Latin  version]  of  Philostratus's  Life  of 
Apollonius  of  Tyana,  so  annotated*  as  to  be  an  ingenious  counter- 
blast to  the  Christian  claims,  and  so  prefaced  as  to  be  an  open 
challenge  to  orthodoxy.  The  book  was  condemned  to  be  burnt; 
and  only  the  influence  of  Blount's  family,*  probably,  prevented  his 


1  Pamphlet  cited,  pp.  20.  21. 


■  Jd.  p.  23. 


»  Concerning  whom  see  Macaulay's  History,  ch.  six,  ed.  1877.  li.  411-12— a  very  pre- 
judiced accoimt.  Blount  is  there  spoken  of  as  'one  of  the  most  unscrupulous  plagiaries 
that  ever  lived."  and  as  having  "stolen  "  from  Milton,  because  he  issued  a  pamphlet  By 
Philopatris."  largely  made  up  from  the  Areopagiticu.  Compare  Macaulay's  treatment  of 
Locke,  who  adopted  Dudley  North's  currency  scheme  (ch.  xxi,  vol.  ii.  p.  547). 

*  Bayle  (art.  Apollonius,  note),  who  is  followed  by  the  French  translator  of  Philos- 
tratus  with  Blount's  notes  in  1779  (J.  F.  Salvemini  de  Castillon).  says  the  notes  were  drawn 
from  the  papers  of  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury ;  but  of  this  Blount  says  nothing. 

6  As  to  these  see  the  Dtct.  of  Nat.  Biog.  The  statements  of  Anthony  Wood  as  to  the 
writings  of  Blount's  father,  relied  on  in  the  author's  Dynamics  of  Religion,  appear  to  be 
erroneous.  Sir  Thomas  Pope  Blount,  Charles's  eldest  brother,  shows  a  skeptical  turn  of 
mind  in  his  Essays  (3rd  cd.  1697.  Essay  7).  Himself  a  learned  man.  he  disparages  learning 
as  checking  thought ;  and,  professing  belief  in  the  longevity  of  the  patriarchs  (p.  Itil), 
pronounces  popery  and  pagan  religion  to  be  mere  works  of  priestcraft  (Essay  1).  He 
detested  theological  controversy  and  intolerance,  and  seems  to  have  been  a  Lockian. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY    97 

being    prosecuted.     The    propaganda,   however,    was    resumed    by 
Blount   and  his  friends  in  small  tracts,  and  after  his  suicide^  in 
1693   these  were   collected   as   the   Oracles   of  Beason  (1693),  his 
collected  works  (without  the  Apollonius)    appearing  in  1695.     By 
this  time  the  political  tension  of  the  Revolution  of  1688  was  over ; 
Le  Clerc's  work  on  the  inspiration  of  the  Old  Testament,  raising 
many  doubts  as  to   the   authorship   of   the   Pentateuch,  had  been 
translated  in  1690 ;  Spinoza's  Tractatus  Theologico-Politicus  (1670) 
had  been  translated  into  Enghsh  in  1689,  and  had  impressed  in 
a  similar  sense  a  number  of  scholars  ;  his  Ethica  had  given  a  new 
direction  to  the  theistic  controversy;  the  Boyle  Lecture  had  been 
established  for  the  confutation  of  unbelievers  ;  and  after  the  poHtical 
convulsion  of  1688  has  subsided  it  rains  refutations.     Atheism  is 
now  so  fiercely  attacked,  and  with  such  specific  arguments — as  in 
Bentley's  Boyle  Lectures  (1692),  Edwards's    Thoughts   coyicerning 
the  Causes  of  Atheism  (1695),  and  many  other  treatises— that  there 
can  be  no  question  as  to  the  private  vogue  of  atheistic  or  agnostic 
opinions.     If  we  are  to  judge  solely  from  the  apologetic  literature, 
it  was  more  common  than  deism.     Yet  it  seems  impossible  to  doubt 
that  there  were  ten  deists  for  one  atheist.     Bentley's  admission  that 
he  never  met  an  explicit  atheist^  suggests  that  much  of  the  atheism 
warred  against  was  tentative.     It  was  only  the  deists  who  could, 
venture  on  open  avowals  ;  and  the  replies  to  them  were  most  discussed. 
Much  account  was  made  of  one  of  the  most  compendious,  the 
Short  and  Easy  Method  loith  the  Deists   (1697),  by  the  nonjuror 
Charles  Leslie ;  but  this  handy  argument  (which  is  really  adopted 
without  acknowledgment  from  an  apologetic  treatise  by  a  French 
Protestant  refugee,  published  in  1688^)  was  not  only  much  bantered 
by  deists,  but  was  sharply  censured  as  incompetent  by  the  French 
Protestant  Le  Clerc;^  and  many  other  disputants  had  to  come  to 
the  rescue.     A  partial  list  will  suffice  to  show  the  rate  of  increase 
of  the  ferment : — 

1683.    Dr.  Eust,  Discourse  on  the  Use  of  Reason  in Religion,  against  Enthu- 
siasts and  Deists. 

1685.    Duke  of  Buckingham,  A  Short  Discourse  upon  the  Reasonableness  of  men's 
having  a  religion  or  ivorship  of  Ood. 
„        The  Atheist  Unmask' d.    By  a  Person  of  Honour. 

_  ^  All  that  is  known  of  this  tragedy  is  that  Blount  loved  his  deceased  wife's  sister  and 
wished  to  marry  her;  but  she  held  it  unlawful,  and  he  was  in.  despair.  According  to 
Pope,  a  sufficiently  untrustworthy  authority,  he  "gave  himself  a  stab  in  the  arm,  as 
pretending  to  kill  himself,  of  the  consequence  of  which  he  really  died  "  (note  to  Epilogue 
to  the  Satires,  i,  123).    An  overstrung  nervous  system  may  be  diagnosed  from  his  writing. 

*  Boyle  Lectures  on  Atheism,  ed.  1721,  p.  4. 

^  Reflexions  upon  the  Books  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  to  establish  the  Truth  of  the 
Christian  Religion,  by  Peter  Allix,  D.D..  1688,  i,  6-7. 

*  As  cited  by  Leslie,  Truth  of  Christianity  Demonstrated,  1711,  pp.  17-21. 

VOL.   II  H 


98 

1688. 
1691. 

ft 
n 

1692. 

1693. 

1694. 

1695. 
II 


1696. 

f> 

II 

II 

II 

II 
1697. 

If 

II 

1698. 

1699. 
II 

1700. 


n 

1701. 

»i 
1702. 

II 

1704. 
1705. 

fi 

It 

tf 

1706. 
ft 


tt 

II 
1707 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUKY 

Peter  AUix,  D.D.    Reflexions,  etc.,  as  above  cited. 

Archbishop  Tenison,  The  Folly  of  AtJieisfn, 

Discourse  of  Natural  and  Revealed  Religion. 

John  Ray,   Wisdom  of  God  manifested  m  the  WarJa  of  tU  Creation. 

(Many  reprints.) 
C.  Ellis,  The  Folly  of  Atheism  Demonstrated. 
Bentley's  Sermons  on  AtJieism.     (First  Boyle  Lectures.) 
Archbishop  Davies,  An  Anatomy  of  Atheism.     A  poem, 
A  Conference  between  an  Atheist  and  his  Friend 
J.  Goodman,  A  Winter  Evening  Conference  between  Neighbours. 
Bishop  Kidder,  A  Demonstration  of  the  Messias.     (Boyle  Lect.) 
John  Locke,  TJie  Reasonableness  of  Christianity. 
John  Edwards,  B.D.,  Some  Thoughts  coficermng  the  Several  Causes  and 

occasions  of  Atheism.     (Directed  against  Locke.) 
An  Account  of  tJie  Growth  of  Deism  in  England. 

Reflections  on  a  Pamphlet,  etc.  (the  last  named). 

Sir  C.  Wolseley,  The  Unreasonableness  of  Atlieism  Demonstrated.      (Rep.) 

Dr.  Nichols'  Cmiference  with  a  Theist.     Pt.  I.     (Answer  to  Blount.) 

J.  Edwards,  D.D.,  A  Demonstration  of  the  Evidence  arid  Providence  of  God. 

E.  Pelling,  Discourse on  the  Existence  of  God  (Pt.  TT  in  1705). 

Stephen  Eye,  A  Discourse  concerning  Natural  and  Revealed  Religion. 

Bishop  Gastrell,  TJie  Certainty  and  Necessity  of  Religion.     (Boyle  Lect.) 

H.  Pridcaux,  Discourse  vindicating  Christianity,  etc. 

C.  Leslie,  A  Short  and  Easy  Method  with  the  Deists. 

Dr.  J.  Harris,  A  Refutation  of  Atheistical  Objections.     (Boyle  Lect.) 

Thos.  Emes,  The  Atheist  turned  Deist,  and  the  Deist  turned  Christian. 

G.  Lidgould,  Proclamation  against  Atheism,  etc. 

J.  Bradley,  An  Impartial  View  of  the  Truth  of  Christianity.     (Answer  to 

Blount.) 
Bishop  Bradford,  The  Credibility  of  the  Christian  Revelation.     (Boyle 

Lect.) 
Rgv.  p.  Berault,  Discourses  on  the  Trinity,  Atheism,  etc. 
T.  Knaggs,  Against  Atheism. 
W.  Scot,  Discourses  concerning  the  wisdom  and  goodness  of  God. 

A  Confutation  of  Atlieism. 

Dr.  Stanhope,   TJie   Truth  and  Excellency  of   the   Christian  Religion. 

(Boyle  Lect.) 
An  Antidote  of  Atheism  (?  Reprint  of  More). 
Translation  of  Herbert's  Ancient  Religion  of  the  Gentiles. 
Charles  Gildon,  The  Deist's  Manual  (a  recantation). 
Ed.  Pelling,  Discourse  concerning  the  existence  of  God.     Part  TI. 
Dr.  Samuel  Clarke,  A  Demonstraiim  of  the  Being  and  Attributes  of  God, 

etc.     (Boyle  Lect.  of  1704.) 
A  Preservative  against  AtJwism  and  Infidelity. 
Th.  Wise,  B.D.,  A  Confutation  of  the  Reason  and  Philosophy  of  Atheism 

(recast  and  abridgment  of  Cud  worth). 
T.  Oldfield,  Mille  Testes;  against  the  Atheists,  Deists,  and  SJiCpticJcs. 
The  Case  of  Deism  fully  and  fairly  stated,  with  Dialogue,  etc. 
Dr.  J.  Hancock,  Argutnents  to  prove  the  Being  of  a  God.     (Boyle  Lect.) 


Still  there  was  no  new  deistic  literature  apart  from  Toland's 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUEY    99 

Christianity  not  Mysterious  (1696)  and  his  unauthorized  issue  (of 
course  without  author's  name)  of  Shaftesbury's  Inquiry  Concerning 
Virtue  in  1699 ;  and  in  that  there  is  little  direct  conflict  with 
orthodoxy,  though  it  plainly  enough  implied  that  scripturalism 
would  injuriously  affect  morals.  It  seems  at  that  date,  perhaps 
through  the  author's  objection  to  its  circulation,  to  have  attracted 
little  attention ;  but  he  tells  that  it  incurred  hostility.^  Blount's 
famous  stratagem  of  1693^  had  led  to  the  dropping  of  the  official 
censorship  of  the  press,  the  Licensing  Act  having  been  renewed  for 
only  two  years  in  1693  and  dropped  in  1695  ;  but  after  the  prompt 
issue  of  Blount's  collected  works  in  that  year,  and  the  appearance 
of  Toland's  Christianity  not  Mysterious  in  the  next,  the  new  and 
comprehensive  Blasphemy  Law  of  1697^  served  sufficiently  to 
terrorize  writers  and  printers  in  that  regard  for  the  time  being.* 
Bare  denial  of  the  Trinity,  of  the  truth  of  the  Christian  religion,  or 
of  the  divine  authority  of  the  Scriptures,  was  made  punishable  by 
disability  for  any  civil  office ;  and  on  a  second  offence  by  three 
years*  imprisonment,  with  withdrawal  of  all  legal  rights.  The 
first  clear  gain  from  the  freedom  of  the  press  was  thus  simply  a 
cheapening  of  books  in  general.  By  the  Licensing  Act  of  Charles  II, 
and  by  a  separate  patent,  the  Stationers'  Company  had  a  monopoly 
of  printing  and  selling  all  classical  authors ;  and  while  their  editions 
were  disgracefully  bad,  the  importers  of  the  excellent  editions  printed 
in  Holland  had  to  pay  them  a  penalty  of  6s.  8d.  on  each  copy.^  By 
the  same  Act,  passed  under  clerical  influence,  the  number  even  of 
master  printers  and  letter-founders  had  been  reduced,  and  the 
number  of  presses  and  apprentices  strictly  limited ;  and  the  total 
effect  of  the  monopolies  was  that  when  Dutch-printed  books  were 
imported  in  exchange  for  English,  the  latter  sold  more  cheaply  at 
Amsterdam  than  they  did  in  London,  the  English  consumer,  of 
course,  bearing  the  burden.^  The  immediate  effect,  therefore,  of  the 
lapse  of  the  Licensing  Act  must  have  been  to  cheapen  greatly  all 

*  Clmracteristics,  ii,  i263  (Moralists,  pt.  ii,  §  3).  One  of  the  most  dangerous  positions 
from  the  orthodox  point  of  view  would  be  the  thesis  that  while  religion  could  do  either 
Rreat  good  or  great  harm  to  morals,  atheism  could  do  neither.  (Bk.  I,  pt.  iii,  §  1.) 
Cp.  Bacon's  Essay,  Of  Atheism. 

2  Blount,  after  assailing  in  anonymous  pamphlets  Bohun  the  licenser,  induced  him  to 
license  a  work  entitled  Kivg  William  and  Queen  Mary  Conquerors,  which  infuriated  the 
nation.  Macaulay  calls  the  device  "  a  base  and  wicked  scheme."  It  was  almost  innocent 
in  comparison  with  Blount's  promotion  of  the  "  Popish  plot"  mania.  See  Who  Killed  Sir 
Edmund  Godfrey  Berry?  by  Alfred  Marks.  ]9a5,  pp.  133-35, 1.50. 

*  See  the  text  in  Mrs.  Bradlaugh  Bonner's  Penalties  upon  Opinion,  pp.  19-21.  Macaulay 
does  not  mention  this  measure. 

*  The  Act  had  been  preceded  by  a  proclamation  of  the  king,  dated  Feb.  24, 1697. 

^  As  to  an  earlier  monopoly  of  the  London  booksellers,  see  George  Herbert's  letters  to 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  to  Bacon,  Jan,  29. 1620.  In  Works  of  George  Herbert, 
ed.  1841,  i.  217-18. 

^  See  Locke's  notes  on  the  Licensing  Act  in  Lord  King's  Life  of  Locke,  1829,  pp.  203-206 ; 
Fox  Bourne's  Life  of  Locke,  ii,  313-14 ;  Macaulay's  History,  ii,  504. 


100     BKITISH  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 

foreign  books  by  removal  of  duties,  and  at  the  same  time  to  cheapen 
English  books  by  leaving  printing  free.  It  will  be  seen  above  that 
the  output  of  treatises  against  freethought  at  once  increases  in  1696. 
But  the  revolution  of  1688,  like  the  Great  Rebellion,  had  doubtless 
given  a  new  stimulus  to  freethinking ;  and  the  total  effect  of  freer 
trade  in  books,  even  with  a  veto  on  "  blasphemy,"  could  only  be  to 
further  it.     This  was  ere  long  to  be  made  plain. 

§3 

Alongside  of  the  more  popular  and  native  influences,  there  were 
at  work  others,  foreign  and  more  academic  ;  and  even  in  professedly 
orthodox  writers  there  are  signs  of  the  influence  of  deistic  thought. 
Thus  Sir  Thomas  Browne's   Beligio   Medici  (written  about  1634, 
pubhshed  1642)  has  been  repeatedly  characterized^  as  tending  to 
promote   deism   by  its   tone   and   method ;    and   there   can   be  no 
question  that  it  assumes  a  great  prevalence  of  critical  unbelief,  to 
which  its   attitude  is   an  odd  combination  of    humorous  cynicism 
and  tranquil  dogmatism,  often  recaUing  Montaigne,'  and  at  times 
anticipating  Emerson.     There  is  little  savour  of  confident  belief  in 
the  smiling  maxim  that  '*  to  confirm  and  establish  our  behef  'tis 
best  to  argue  with  judgments  below  our  own";  or  in  the  avowal, 
'*  In  divinity  I  love  to  keep  the  road  ;  and  though  not  in  an  implicit 
yet  an  humble  faith,  follow  the  great  wheel  of  the  Church,  by  which 
I  move."^     The  pose  of  the  typical  believer:  "  I  can  answer  all  the 
objections  of  Satan  and  my  rebellious  reason  with  that  odd  resolution 
I  learned  of  TertuUian,  Certum  est  quia  impossibile  est,"*  tells  in  his 
case  of  no  anxious  hours  ;  and  such  smiling  incuriousness  is  not 
conducive  to  conviction  in  others,  especially  when  followed  by  a 
recital  of  some  of  the  many  insoluble  dilemmas  of  Scripture.     When 
he  reasons  he  is  merely  self-subversive,  as  in  the  saying,  "  'Tis  not 
a  ridiculous  devotion  to  say  a  prayer  before  a  game  at  tables  ;  for 
even  in  sortileges  and  matters  of  greatest  uncertainty  there  is  a 
settled  and  pre-orderecl  course  of  effects";*    and  after  remarking 
that  the  notions  of  Fortune  and  astral  influence  "  have  perverted 
the  devotion  of  many  into  atheism,"  he  proceeds  to  avow  that  his 

»  Triniiis,  FreydevTcer-Lexicon,  1759.  p.  120;  PUnjer.  i.  291.  300-301.  Browne  was  even 
called  an  atheist.  Arpe.  Apologia  pro  Vaniyw,  1712.  p.  27.  citing  Welschius.  Mr.  A.  H. 
Bullen.  in  his  introduction  to  his  ed.  of  Marlowe  (1885,  vol.  i,  p.  Ivni).  remarks  that 
Browne,  who  "kept  the  road"  in  divinity,  "exposed  the  vulnerable  points  in  the 
Scriptural  narratives  with  more  acumen  and  gusto  than  the  whole  army  of  freethinkers, 
from  Anthony  Collins  downwards."  This  is  of  course  an  extravagance,  but,  as  Mr.  Bullen 
remarks  in  the  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.  vii.  66,  Browne  discusses  "with  evident  relish"  the 
"  seeming  absurdities  in  the  Scriptural  narrative."  .  .  ..  .^   ^  „     i. 

^  Browne's  Annotator  points  to  the  derivation  of  his  skepticism  from  that  excellent 
French  writer  Monsieur  Mountaign,  in  whom  I  often  trace  him"  (Sayle's  ed.  1904,  i, 
p.  xviii).  ^  Belioio  Medici,  i,  6.  *  Id.  i.  9.  *  Id.  i,  18. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY    101 


many  doubts  never  inclined  him  to  any  point  of  infidelity  or 
desperate  positions  of  atheism  ;  for  I  have  been  these  many  years 
of  opinion  there  never  was  any."  Yet  in  his  later  treatise  on 
Vulgar  Errors  (1645)  he  devotes  a  chapter^  to   the   activities  of 

Satan  in  instilling  the  belief  that  "  there  is  no  God  at  all that 

the  necessity  of    his  entity  dependeth   upon   ours ;    that  the 

natural  truth  of  God  is  an  artificial  erection  of  Man,  and  the 
Creator  himself  but  a  subtile  invention  of  the  Creature."  He 
further  notes  as  coming  from  the  same  source  "  a  secondary  and 
deductive  Atheism — that  although  men  concede  there  is  a  God,  yet 
should  they  deny  his  providence.  And  therefore  assertions  have 
flown  about,  that  he  intendeth  only  the  care  of  the  species  or 
common  natures,  but  letteth  loose  the  guard  of  individuals,  and 
single  existences  therein."^  Browne  now  asserts  merely  that 
"  many  there  are  who  cannot  conceive  that  there  was  ever  any 
absolute  Atheist,"  and  does  not  clearly  affirm  that  Satan  labours 
wholly  in  vain.  The  broad  fact  remains  that  he  avows  **  reason  is 
a  rebel  unto  faith  ";  and  in  the  Vulgar  Errors  he  shows  in  his  own 
reasoning  much  of  the  practical  play  of  the  new  skepticism."*  Yet 
it  is  finally  on  record  that  in  1664,  on  the  trial  of  two  women  for 
witchcraft,  Browne  declared  that  the  fits  suffered  from  by  the 
children  said  to  have  been  bewitched  "  were  natural,  but  heightened 
by  the  devil's  co-operating  with  the  malice  of  the  witches,  at  whose 
instance  he  did  the  villainies."  *  This  amazing  deliverance  is  believed 
to  have  "  turned  the  scale  "  in  the  minds  of  the  jury  against  the  poor 
women,  and  they  were  sentenced  by  the  sitting  judge.  Sir  Matthew 
Hale,  to  be  hanged.  It  would  seem  that  in  Browne's  latter  years 
the  irrational  element  in  him,  never  long  dormant,  overpowered  the 
rational.  The  judgment  is  a  sad  one  to  have  to  pass  on  one  of  the 
greatest  masters  of  prose  in  any  language.  In  other  men,  happily, 
the  progression  was  different. 

The  opening  even  of  Jeremy  Taylor's  Ductor  Dubitantium,  so  far 
as  it  goes,  falls  little  short  of  the  deistic  position.®  A  new  vein  of 
rationalism,  too,  is  opened   in  the   theological  field  by  the  great 


1  Beligio  Medici,  i,  20.  ^  Bk.  I,  ch.  x. 

8  Here  we  have  a  theorem  independently  reached  later  (with  the  substitution  of  Nature 
for  God)  by  Mary  Wollstouecraft  and  Tennyson  in  turn.  Browne  cites  yet  another  :  "that 
he  looks  not  below  the  moon,  but  hath  resigned  the  regiment  of  sublunary  affairs  unto 
inferior  deputations  " — a  thesis  adopted  in  effect  by  Cudworth. 

*  By  an  error  of  the  press,  Browne  is  made  in  Mr,  Sayle's  excellent  reprint  (i,  108)  to 
begin  a  sentence  in  the  middle  of  a  clause,  with  an  odd  result :— "  I  do  confess  I  am  an 
Atheist.  I  cannot  persuade  myself  to  honour  that  the  world  adores."  The  passage 
should  obviously  read :  "  to  that  subterraneous  Idol  [avaricej  and  God  of  the  Earth  I  do 
confess  I  am  an  Atheist,"  etc. 

^  Hutchinson,  Histor.  Essay  Cone.  Witchcraft,  1718,  p.  118  ;  2nd  ed.  1720,  p.  151. 

^  Cp.  Whewell,  Lectures  on  the  History  of  Moral  Philosophy,  ed.  1862,  p,  33. . 


102    BEITISH  FBEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUKY 

Cambridge  scholar  John  Spencer,  whose  Discourse  co7icerning 
Prodigies  (1663;  2nd  ed.  1665).  though  quite  orthodox  in  its 
main  positions,  has  in  part  the  effect  of  a  plea  for  naturalism  as 
against  supernaturalism.  Spencer's  great  work,  De  legihis 
HebrcEorum  (1685),  is,  apart  from  Spinoza,  the  most  scientific 
view  of  Hebrew  institutions  produced  before  the  rise  of  German 
theological  rationalism  in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Holding  most  of  the  Jewish  rites  to  have  been  planned  by  the  deity 
as  substitutes  for  or  safeguards  against  those  of  the  Gentiles  which 
they  resembled,  he  unconsciously  laid,  with  Herbert,  the  foundations 
of  comparative  hierology,  bringing  to  the  work  a  learning  which  is 
still  serviceable  to  scholars.'  And  there  were  yet  other  new  depar- 
tures by  clerical  writers,  who  of  course  exhibit  the  difficulty  of 
attaining  a  consistent  rationalism. 

One  clergyman,  Joseph  Glanvill.is  founa  publishing  a  treatise  on 
The  Vafiitij  of  Dogmatizing  (1661  ;  amended  in  1665  under  the  title 
Scepsis  Scientifica)^  wherein,  with  careful  reservation  of  religion,  the 
spirit  of   critical  science  is  applied  to  the  ordinary  processes   of 
opinion  with  much  energy,  and  the  "mechanical  philosophy"  of 
Descartes  is  embraced  with  zeal     Following  Kaleigh  and  Hobbes, 
Glanvill  also  puts  the  positive  view  of  causation'  afterwards  fully 
developed  by   Hume."     Yet  he  not  only  vetoed  all  innovation  in 
*'  divinity,"  but  held  stoutly  by  the  crudest  forms  of  the  belief  in 
witchcraft,  and  was  with  Henry  More  its  chief  English  champion  in 
his  day  against  rational  disbelief.'    In  religion  ho  had  so  little  of  the 
skeptical  faculty  that  he  declared  "  Our  religious  foundations  are 
fastened   at   the   pillars   of   the  intellectual  world,  and  the  grand 
articles  of  our  belief  as  demonstrable  as  geometry.     Nor  will  ever 
either  the  subtile  attempts  of  the  resolved  Atheist,  or  the  passionate 
hurricanes  of  the  wild  enthusiast,  any  more  be  able  to  prevail  against 
the  reason  our  faith  is  built  on,  than  the  blustering  winds  to  blow  out 
the  Sun."  '^     He  had  his  due  reward  in  being  philosophically  assailed 
by  the  Catholic  priest  Thomas  White  as  a  promoter  of  skepticism,' 


1  Robertson  Smith.  The  Religion  of  the  Semites,  1889.  pref.  p.  vi;  Rev.  Dr.  Duff.  Hist,  of 

^^^^  TWs  SpeSra^ain^  much  cu^rtai^^  and  "  so  altered  as  to  be  in  a  manner  new."  in  its 
author's  collected  stsays  cyfi  Several  Important  Subjects  in  Belioion  and  Philosophy  (lb7b). 
under  the  title  Against  Confidence  in  Philosophy.  .  «v,  wi  8  i 

8  See  the  Hurnane  Nature  (1640).  eh.  iv.  §§  7-9.  J^  Sj-«p«t«  Sctmttfica,  ch.  23.  §  1. 

5  See  the  passages  compared  by  Lewes.  History  of  Phtlosophy,  4th  ed.  ii.  ddb. 

6  In  hL  Blow  at  Modehi  Sad^iticis^n  (4th  ed.  1668).  Sadductsmus  Trxumphatus  (1681. 
3rd  ed  1689)  and  A  Whip  to  the  Droll,  Fidler  to  the  Atheist  (168&-a  letter  to  Henry  More, 
who  was  zealous  on  the  same  lines).  These  works  seem  to  have  been  mucli  more  widely 
circul&ted  th9,n  the  Scepsis  Scientifica.  ,,,„,,  ■,,'^^^!:^,.TTn/^r^^^tiri<^m 

«  See  Glanvill  s  reply  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  (1665).  re-written  as  Essay  II,  Of  Scepttctf^m 
and  Certainty :  in  A  short  Reply  to  the  learned  Mr.  Thomas  miite  in  his  collected  Essays 
mi  Several  Important  Sukiects,  1676. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY    103 

and  by  an  Anglican  clergyman,  wroth  with  the  Royal  Society  and 
all  its  works,  as  an  infidel  and  an  atheist. 

This  was  as  true  as  clerical  charges  of  the  kind  usually  were  in 
the  period.     But  without  any  animus  or  violence  of  interpretation,  a 
reader  of  Glanvill's  visitation  sermon  on  The  Agreement  of  Beason 
and  Religion^  might  have  inferred  that  he  was  a  deist.    It  sets  forth 
that  "  religion  primarily  and  mainly  consists  in  worship  and  vertue," 
and  that  it  "  in  a  secondary  sense  consists  in  some  principles  relating 
to  the  worship  of  God,  and  of  his  Son,  in  the  ways  of  devout  and 
vertuous  living";   Christianity  having  "superadded"  baptism   and 
the  Lord's  Supper  to  "  the  religion  of  mankind."     Apart  from  his 
obsession  as  to  witchcraft— and  perhaps  even  as  to  that — Glanvill 
seems  to  have  grown  more  and  more  rationalistic  in  his  later  years. 
The  Scepsis  omits  some  of  the  credulous  flights  of  the  Vanity  of 
Dogmatizing  ;*  the  re- written  version  in  the  collected  Essays  omits 
such   dithyrambs    as   that    above  quoted;    and   the  sermon  in  its 
revised  form  sets  out  with  the  emphatic  declaration :  '*  There  is  not 
anything  that  I  know  which  hath  done  more  mischief  to  religion 
than  the  disparaging  of  reason  under  pretence  of  respect  and  favour 
to  it ;  for  hereby  the  very  foundations  of  Christian  faith  have  been 
undermined,  and  the  world  prepared  for  atheism.     And  if  reason 
must   not   be   heard,  the   Being   of   a   God   and   the   authority  of 
Scripture  can  neither  be  proved  nor  defended;   and   so  our  faith 
drops  to  the  ground  like  an  house  that  hath  no  foundation."     Such 
reasoning  could  not  but  be  suspect  to  the  orthodoxy  of  the  age. 

'Apart  from  the  influence  of  Hobbes,  who,  like  Descartes,  shaped 
fiis  thinking  from  the  starting-point  of  Galileo,  the  Cartesian  philo- 
sophy played  in  England  a  great  transitional  part.  At  the  university 
of  Cambridge  it  was  already  naturalized;'  and  the  influence  of 
Glanvill,  who  was  an  active  member  of  the  Royal  Society,  must  have 
carried  it  further.  The  remarkable  treatise  of  the  anatomist  Glisson,"^ 
De  natura  suhstantice  energetica  (1672),  suggests  the  influence  of 
either  Descartes  or  Gassendi ;  and  it  is  remarkable  that  the  clerical 
moralist  Cumberland,  writing  his  Disqnisitio  de  legibus  Natures  (1672) 
in  reply  to  Hobbes,  not  only  takes  up  a  utilitarian  position  akin  to 
Hobbes's  own,  and  expressly  avoids  any  appeal  to  the  theological 

1  Spe  the  renlv  in  Plus  Ultra:  or,  the  Progress  and  Advancement  of  Knowledge  since 
the  d^ysof  Ir^ltolZ  1^  Epist.  Ded.*  Pref.  ch.  xviii.  and  Conclusion.  [The  re-writteu 
treatise,  in  the  collected  iJssai/s.  eliminates  the  controyersia  matter.] 

colleSet^Sr  "^'^  ^^^^^"'^  '^^''STe!i:irfnoV^lk  vT^^-l^^  "^'' 

J  8fTho^n;^L^^etr?^a1fS^^ 
sunk  in  realism"  (that  is.  metaphysical  aprionsm).    Prof.  T.  Clifford  AUbutt,  uarveian 
Oration  on  Science  and  Medieval  Thought,  1901,  P.  44. 


104     BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUEY 

doctrine  of  future  punishments,  but  introduces  physiology  into  his 
ethic  to  the  extent  of  partially  figuring  as  an  ethical  materialist/ 
In  regard  to  Gassendi's  direct  influence  it  has  to  be  noted  that  in 
1659  there  appeared  The  Vanity  of  Judiciary  Astrology,  translated 
by  "  A  Person  of  Quality,"  from  P.  Gassendus ;  and  further  that,  as 
is  remarked  by  Eeid,  Locke  borrowed  more  from  Gassendi  than  from 
any  other  writer.^ 

[It  is  stated  by  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  {English  Thought  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  2nd  ed.  i,  32)  that  in  England  the  philo- 
sophy of  Descartes  made  no  distinguished  disciples ;  and  that 
John  Norris  "seems  to  be  the  only  exception  to  the  general 
indifference."  This  overlooks  (1)  Glanvill,  who  constantly  cites 
and  applauds  Descartes  {Scepsis  Scientifica,  passim).  (2)  In 
Henry  More's  Divine  Dialogues,  again  (1668),  one  of  the  dispu- 
tants is  made  to  speak  {Dial,  i,  ch.  xxiv)  of  **  that  admired  wit 
Descartes";  and  he  later  praises  him  even  when  passing 
censure  (above,  p.  65).  More  had  been  one  of  the  admirers 
in  his  youth,  and  changed  his  view  (cp.  Ward's  Life  of  Dr. 
Henry  More,  pp.  63-6i).  But  his  first  letter  to  Descartes 
begins :  "  Quanta  voluptate  perfusus  est  animus  mens,  Vir 
clarissime,  scriptis  tuis  legendis,  nemo  quisquam  praeter  te  unum 
potest  conjectare."  (3)  There  was  published  in  1670  a  translation 
of  Des  Fourneillis's  letter  in  defence  of  the  Cartesian  system, 
with  Fran(jois  Bayle's  General  System  of  the  Cartesian  Philo- 
sophy. (4)  The  continual  objections  to  the  atheistic  tendency 
of  Descartes  throughout  Cudworth's  True  Intellectual  System 
imply  anything  but  "general  indifference";  and  (5)  Barrow's  tone 
in  venturing  to  oppose  him  (cit.  in  Whewell's  Philosophy  of 
Discovery,  1860,  p.  179)  pays  tribute  to  his  great  influence. 
(6)  Molyneux,  in  the  preface  to  his  translation  of  the  Six  Meta- 
physical Meditations  of  Descartes  in  1680,  speaks  of  him  as 
"  this  excellent  philosopher  "  and  "  this  prodigious  man."  (7) 
Maxwell,  in  a  note  to  his  translation  (1727)  of  Bishop  Cumber- 
land's Disquisitio  de  legibus  Naturce,  remarks  that  the  doctrine 
of  a  universal  plenum  was  accepted  from  the  Cartesian  philo- 
sophy by  Cumberland,  "  in  whose  time  that  philosophy  prevailed 
much"  (p.  120).  See  again  (8)  Clarke's  Answer  to  Butler's 
Fifth  Letter  (1718)  as  to  the  "universal  prevalence"  of 
Descartes's  notions  in  natural  philosophy.  (9)  The  Scottish 
Lord  President  Forbes  (d.  1747)  summed  up  that  "  Descartes's 
romance  kept  entire  possession  of  men's  belief  for  fully  fifty 
years"  {Works,  ii,  132).  (10)  And  his  fellow-judge.  Sir  WilHam 
Anstruther,  in  his  "  Discourse  against  Atheism "  {Essays, 
Moral  and  Divi7ie,  1701,  pp.  6,  8,  9),  cites  with  much  approval 

1  Cp.  Whewell,  as  last  cited,  pp.  75-83 ;  Hallam,  Literature  of  Europe,  iv,  159-71. 

2  Reid.  Intellectual  Powers,  Essay  I.  ch.  i;  Hamilton's  ed.  of  Works,  p.  226.    Glanvill 
calls  Gassendi  'that  noble  wit."    (Scepsis  Scientijicat  Owena  ed.  p.  151.) 


BEITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY    105 

the  theistic  argument  of  "  the  celebrated  Descartes  "  as  "  the 
last  evidences  which  appeared  upon  the  stage  of  learning  "  in 
that  connection. 

Cp.  Berkeley,  Siris,  §  331.     Of  Berkeley  himself,  Professor 
Adamson  writes  {Encyc.  Brit,  iii,  589)  that  "  Descartes    and 

Locke are  his  real  masters  in  speculation."     The  Cartesian 

view  of  the  eternity  and  infinity  of  matter  had  further  become 
an  accepted  ground  for  "  philosophical  atheists  "  in  England 
before  the  end  of  the  century  (Molyneux,  in  Fayniliar  Letters  of 
Locke  and  his  Friends,  1708,  p.  46).  As  to  the  many  writers 
who  charged  Descartes  with  promoting  atheism,  see  Mosheim's 
notes  in  Harrison's  ed.  of  Cudworth's  Intellectual  System,  i, 
275-76  ;  Clarke,  as  above  cited ;  Leibnitz's  letter  to  Philip,  cited 
by  Latta,  Leibnitz,  1898,  p.  8,  note  ;  and  Brewster's  Memoirs  of 
Neivton,  ii,  315. 

Sir  Leslie  Stephen  seems  to  have  followed,  under  a  misappre- 
hension, Whew^ell,  who  contends  merely  that  the  Cartesian 
doctrine  of  vortices  was  never  widely  accepted  in  England 
{Philos.  of  Discovery,  pp.  177-78 ;  cp.  Hist,  of  the  hiduct. 
Sciences,  ed.  1857,  ii,  107,  147-48).  Buckle  w^as  perhaps 
similarly  misled  when  he  wrote  in  his  note-book :  "  Descartes 
was  never  popular  in  England  "  {Misc.  Works,  abridged  ed.  i, 
269).  Whewell  himself  mentions  that  Clarke,  soon  after  taking 
his  degree  at  Cambridge,  "  w^as  actively  engaged  in  introducing 
into  the  academic  course  of  study,  first,  the  philosophy  of 
Descartes  in  its  best  form,  and,  next,  the  philosophy  of  Newton  " 
{Lectures  on  Moral  Philosophy,  ed.  1862,  pp.  97-98).  And 
Professor  Fowler,  in  correcting-  his  first  remarks  on  the  point, 
decides  that  "  many  of  the  mathematical  teachers  at  Cambridge 
continued  to  teach  the  Cartesian  system  for  some  time  after  the 
pubhcation  of  Newton's  Principia"  (ed.  of  Nov,  Org.,  p.  xi). 

It  is  clear,  how^ever,  that  insofar  as  new  science  set  up  a  direct 
conflict  with  Scriptural  assumptions  it  gained  ground  but  slowly  and 
indirectly.  It  is  difficult  to-day  to  realize  with  what  difficulty  the 
Copernican  and  Galilean  doctrine  of  the  earth's  rotation  and  move- 
ment round  the  sun  found  acceptance  even  among  studious  men. 
We  have  seen  that  Bacon  finally  rejected  it.  And  as  Professor 
Masson  points  out,^  not  only  does  Milton  seem  uncertain  to  the  last 
concerning  the  truth  of  the  Copernican  system,  but  his  friends  and 
literary  associates,  the  "  Smectymnuans,"  in  their  answer  to  Bishop 
Hall's  Humble  Bemonstrance  (1641),  had  pointed  to  the  Copernican 
doctrine  as  an  unquestioned  instance  of  a  supreme  absurdity. 
Glanvill,  remarking  in  1665  that  "  it  is  generally  opinion'd  that  the 
Earth  rests  as  the  world's  centre,"  avows  that  "  for  a  man  to  go 


>  :Poet.  Works  of  Milton,  1874.  Introd.  i.  92  sq. 


106    BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 


about  to  counter-argue  this  belief  is  as  fruitless  as  to  whistle  against 
the  winds,  I  shall  not  undertake  to  maintain  the  paradox  that  con- 
fronts this  almost  Catholic  opinion.  Its  assertion  would  be  enter- 
tained with  the  hoot  of  the  rabble  ;  the  very  mention  of  it  as 
possible,  is  among  the  most  ridiculous."*  All  he  ventures  to  do  is 
to  show  that  the  senses  do  not  really  vouch  the  ordinary  view.  Not 
till  the  eighteenth  century,  probably,  did  the  common  run  of  educated 
people  anywhere  accept  the  scientific  teaching. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  there  was  growing  up  not  a  little 
Socinian  and  other  Unitarianism,  for  some  variety  of  which  we 
have  seen  two  men  burned  in  1612.  Church  measures  had  been 
taken  against  the  importation  of  Socinian  books  as  early  as  1610. 
The  famous  Lord  Falkland,  slain  in  the  Civil  War,  is  supposed  to 
have  leant  to  that  opinion  ;  ^  and  Chilling  worth,  whose  Beligion  of 
Protestants  (1637)  was  already  a  remarkable  application  of  rational 
tests  to  ecclesiastical  questions  in  defiance  of  patristic  authority,* 
seems  in  his  old  age  to  have  turned  Socinian.*  Violent  attacks  on 
the  Trinity  are  noted  among  the  heresies  of  1616.*  Colonel  John  Fry, 
one  of  the  regicides,  who  in  Parliament  was  accused  of  rejecting  the 
Trinity,  cleared  himself  by  explaining  that  he  simply  objected  to  the 
terms  "  persons  "  and  "  subsistence,"  but  was  one  of  those  who  sought 
to  help  the  persecuted  Unitarian  Biddle.  In  1652  the  Parliament 
ordered  the  destruction  of  a  certain  Socinian  Catechism  ;  and  by 
1655  the  heresy  seems  to  have  become  common.**  It  is  now  certain 
that  Milton  was  substantially  a  Unitarian,^  and  that  Locke  and 
Newton  were  at  heart  no  less  so.^ 

The  temper  of  the  Unitarian  school  appears  perhaps  at  its  best 
in  the  anonymous  Eational  Catechism  published  in  1686.  It 
purports  to  be  "an  instructive  conference  between  a  father  and 
his  son,"  and  is  dedicated  by  the  father  to  his  two  daughters. 
The  "  Catechism  "  rises  above  the  common  run  of  its  species  in 
that  it  is  really  a  dialogue,  in  which  the  rdles  are  at  times  reversed, 
and  the  catechumen  is  permitted  to  think  and  speak  for  himself. 
The  exposition  is  entirely  unevangelical.  Right  religion  is  declared 
to  consist  in  right  conduct ;  and  while  the  actuality  of  the  Christian 
record  is  maintained  on  argued  grounds,  on  the  lines  of  Grotius  and 

1  Scepsis  Scientifica,  Owen's  ed.  p.  66-     In  the  condensed  version  of  the  treatise  in 
Glanvill's  coUected  Essays  (1676.  p.  '20).  the  language  is  to  the  same  effect. 

2  J.  J,  Tayler,  Retrospect  of  the  Beligious  Life  of  England,  Martineau's  ed.  p.  204; 
WaUace.  Aniitrinitarian  Biography,  iii,  152-53. 

8  Cp.  Buckle,  3-vol.  ed.  ii.  347-51 ;  1-vol.  ed.  pp.  196-99. 

*  Tayler,  Eetroapect.  pp.  204-205;  Wallace,  iii,  154-56.  *  Oangreena.  pt.  i,  p.  38. 

6  Tayler.  p.  221.    As  to  Biddle.  the  chief  propagandist  of  the  sect,  see  pp.  221-24,  and 
Wallace.  Art.  285.  ,  «...  # 

7  Macaulay,  Essay  on  Milton.     Cp.  Brown's  ed.  (Clarendon  Press)  of  the  poems  oi 
Milton,  ii.  30.  ^  Cp.  Dynaynics  of  Beligion,  ch.  v. 


BKITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY    107 

Parker,  the  doctrine  of  salvation  by  faith  is  strictly  excluded,  future 
happiness  being  posited  as  the  reward  of  good  life,  not  of  faith. 
There  is  no  negation,  the  author's  object  being  avowedly  peace  and 
conciliation  ;  but  the  Epistle  Dedicatory  declares  that  religious 
reasoners  have  hitherto  "  failed  in  their  foundation- work.  They 
have  too  much  slighted  that  philosophy  which  is  the  natural 
religion  of  all  men  ;  and  which,  being  natural,  must  needs  be 
universal  and  eternal :  and  upon  which  therefore,  or  at  least  in 
conformity  with  which,  all  instituted  and  revealed  religion  must 
be  supposed  to  be  built."  We  have  here  in  effect  the  position 
taken  up  by  Toland  ten  years  later ;  and,  in  germ,  the  principle 
which  developed  deism,  albeit  in  connection  with  an  affirmation 
of  the  truth  of  the  Christian  records.  Of  the  central  Christian 
doctrine  there  is  no  acceptance,  though  there  is  laudation  of  Jesus ; 
and  reprints  after  1695  bore  the  motto,  from  Locke  :^  ''As  the 
foundation  of  virtue,  there  ought  very  earnestly  to  be  imprinted  on 
the  mind  of  a  young  man  a  true  notion  of  God,  as  of  the  independent 
supreme  Being,  Author,  and  Maker  of  all  things :  And,  consequent 
to  this,  instil  into  him  a  love  and  reverence  of  this  supreme  Being." 
We  are  already  more  than  half-way  from  Unitarianism  to  deism. 

Indeed,  the  theism  of  Locke's  Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding 
undermined  even  his  Unitarian  Scripturalism,  inasmuch  as  it  denies, 
albeit  confusedly,  that  revelation  can  ever  override  reason.  In  one 
passage  he  declares  that  '*  reason  is  natural  revelation,"  while 
"  revelation  is  natural  reason  enlarged  by  a  new  set  of  discoveries 
communicated  by  God  immediately,  which  reason  vouchsafes  the 
truth  of."^  This  compromise  appears  to  be  borrowed  from 
Spinoza,  who  had  put  it  with  similar  vagueness  in  his  great 
Tractatus^  of  which  pre-eminent  work  Locke  cannot  have  been 
ignorant,  though  he  protested  himself  little  read  in  the  works  of 
Hobbes  and  Spinoza,  '*  those  justly  decried  names."  *  The  Tractatus 
being  translated  into  English  in  the  same  year  with  the  pubhcation 
of  the  Essay,  its  influence  would  concur  with  Locke's  in  a  widened 
circle  of  readers  ;  and  the  substantially  naturalistic  doctrine  of  both 
books  inevitably  promoted  the  deistic  movement.  We  have  Locke's 
own  avowal  that  he  had  many  doubts  as  to  the  Biblical  narratives  ;* 
and  he  never  attempts  to  remove  the  doubts  of  others.  Since, 
however,  his  doctrine  provided  a  sphere  for  revelation  on  the 
territory  of   ignorance,  giving  it  prerogative  where  its   assertions 


»  Of  Education,  §  136.  ^  Essay,  bk.  iv.  ch.  xix.  §  4. 

8  Tractatus  Theologico-Politicus,  c.  15.  *  Third  Letter  to  the  Bishop  of  Worcester. 

^  Some  Familiar  Letters  between  Mr.  LocJce  and  Several  of  his  Friends,  1708,  pp.  302-304. 


108    BBITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  I7th  CENTUEY 


were  outside  knowledge,  it  counted  substantially  for  Unitarian] sm 
insofar  as  it  did  not  lead  to  deism. 

See  the  Essay,  bk.  iv,  ch.  xviii.  Locke's  treatment  of 
revelation  may  be  said  to  be  the  last  and  most  attenuated 
form  of  the  doctrine  of  "  two-fold  truth."  On  his  principle, 
any  proposition  in  a  professed  revelation  that  was  not  provable 
or  disprovable  by  reason  and  knowledge  must  pass  as  true. 
His  final  position,  that  "  whatever  is  divine  revelation  ought 
to  overrule  all  our  opinions  "  (bk.  iv,  ch.  xviii,  §  10),  is  tolerably 
elastic,  inasmuch  as  he  really  reserves  the  question  of  the 
actuality  of  revelation.  Thus  he  evades  the  central  issue. 
Naturally  he  was  by  critical  foreigners  classed  as  a  deist. 
Cp.  Gostwick,  German  Culture  and  Christianity,  1882,  p.  36. 
The  German  historian  Tennemann  sums  up  that  Clarke  wrote 
his  apologetic  works  because  **  the  consequences  of  the 
empiricism  of  Locke  had  become  so  decidedly  favourable  to 
the  cause  of  atheism,  skepticism,  materialism,  and  irreligion  " 
(Manual  of  the  Hist,  of  Philos.  Eng.  tr.  Bohn  ed.  §  349). 

In  his  "practical"  treatise  on  The  Beasonahleness  of  Christianity 
(1695)  Locke  played  a  similar  part.  It  was  inspired  by  the  genuine 
concern  for  social  peace  which  had  moved  him  to  write  an  essay  on 
Toleration  as  early  as  1667,*  and  to  produce  from  1685  onwards  his 
famous  Letters  on  Toleration,  by  far  the  most  persuasive  appeal  of 
the  kind  that  had  yet  been  produced;'^  all  the  more  successful  so 
far  as  it  went,  doubtless,  because  the  first  Letter  ended  with  a 
memorable  capitulation  to  bigotry :  "  Lastly,  those  are  not  at  all 
to  be  tolerated  who  deny  the  being  of  God.  Promises,  covenants, 
and  oaths,  which  are  the  bonds  of  human  society,  can  have  no  hold 
upon  an  atheist.  The  taking  away  of  God,  though  but  even  in 
thought,  dissolves  all.  Besides,  also,  those  that  by  their  atheism 
undermine  and  destroy  all  religion  can  have  no  pretence  of  religion 
whereupon  to  challenge  the  privilege  of  a  toleration^  This  handsome 
endorsement  of  the  religion  which  had  repeatedly  "dissolved  aU  " 
in  a  pandemonium  of  internecine  hate,  as  compared  with  the  one 
heresy  which  had  never  broken  treaties  or  shed  blood,  is  presumably 
more  of  a  prudent  surrender  to  normal  fanaticism  than  an  expression 
of  the  philosopher's  own  state  of  mind  ;^  and  his  treatise  on  The 
Beasonahleness  of  Christianity  is  an  attempt  to  limit  religion  to  a 

*  Fox  Bourne,  Life  of  Locke,  1876,  ii.  34. 

2  The  first  Letter,  written  while  he  was  hiding  in  Holland  in  1685,  was  in  Latin,  but 
was  translated  into  French.  Dutch,  and  English. 

^  Mr.  Fox  Bourne,  in  his  biography  (ii.  41),  apologizes  for  the  lapse,  so  alien  to  his  own 
ideals,  by  the  remark  that  "  the  atheism  then  in  vogue  was  of  a  very  violent  and  rampant 
sort."  It  is  to  be  feared  that  this  palliation  will  not  hold  good— at  least,  the  present 
writer  has  been  unable  to  trace  the  atheism  in  question.  For  "'atheism"  we  had  better 
read  "religion." 


BEITISH  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY    109 

humane  ethic,  with  sacraments  and  mysteries  reduced  to  ceremonies, 
while  claiming  that  the  gospel  ethic  was  "  now  with  divine  authority 
established  into  a  legible  law,  far  surpassing  all  that  philosophy  and 
human  reason  had  attained  to."  ^  Its  effect  was,  however,  to  promote 
rationalism  without  doing  much  to  mitigate  the  fanaticism  of  belief. 

Locke's  practical  position  has  been  fairly  summed  up  by 
Prof.  Bain  :  "  Locke  proposed,  in  his  Beasonahleness  of 
Christianity,  to  ascertain  the  exact  meaning  of  Christianity, 
by  casting  aside  all  the  glosses  of  commentators  and  divines, 
and   applying   his   own   unassisted   judgment   to  spell  out  its 

teachings The  fallacy  of    his    position  obviously  was  that 

he    could    not    strip   himself    of    his    education  and  acquired 

notions He  seemed  unconscious  of  the  necessity  of  trying 

to  make  allowance  for  his  unavoidable  prepossessions.  In 
consequence,  he  simply  fell  into  an  old  groove  of  received 
doctrines  ;  and  these  he  handled  under  the  set  purpose  of 
simpHfying  the  fundamentals  of  Christianity  to  the  utmost. 
Such  purpose  was  not  the  result  of  his  Bible  study,  but  of  his 
wish  to  overcome  the  political  difficulties  of  the  time.  He 
found,  by  keeping  close  to  the  Gospels  and  making  proper 
selections  from  the  Epistles,  that  the  belief  in  Christ  as  the 
Messiah  could  be  shown  to  be  the  central  fact  of  the  Christian 
faith  ;  that  the  other  main  doctrines  followed  out  of  this  by  a 
process  of  reasoning ;  and  that,  as  all  minds  might  not  perform 
the  process  alike,  these  doctrines  could  not  be  essential  to  the 
practice  of  Christianity.  He  got  out  of  the  difficulty  of  framing 
a  creed,  as  many  others  have  done,  by  simply  using  Scripture 
language,  without  subjecting  it  to  any  very  strict  definition  ; 
certainly  without  the  operation  of  stripping  the  meaning  of  its 
words,  to  see  what  it  amounted  to.  That  his  short  and  easy 
method  was  not  very  successful  the  history  of  the  deistical 
controversy  sufficiently  proves"  {Practical  Essays,  pp.  226-27). 

That  Locke  was  felt  to  have  injured  orthodoxy  is  further  proved 
by  the  many  attacks  made  on  him  from  the  orthodox  side.  Even 
the  first  Letter  on  Toleration  elicited  retorts,  one  of  which  claims  to 
demonstrate  '*  the  Absurdity  and  Impiety  of  an  Absolute  Toleration."  ^ 
On  his  positive  teachings  he  was  assailed  by  Bishop  Stillingfleet ;  by 
the  Rev.  John  Milner,  B.D.;  by  the  Rev.  John  Morris;  by  WiUiam 
Carrol;  and  by  the  Rev.  John  Edwards,  B.D.;'  his  only  assailant 
with  a  rationalistic  repute  being  Dr.  Thomas  Burnet.  Some  attacked 
him  on  his  Essays ;  some  on  his  Beasonahleness  of  Christianity ; 
orthodoxy  finding  in  both  the  same  tendency  to  "  subvert  the  nature 

\  Second  Vindication  of  "  The  BeaaonaUeness  of  Christianity,"  1697.  pref . 

^  Fox  Bourne,  Life  of  Locke,  ii,  181. 

^  Son  of  the  Presbyterian  author  of  the  famous  Gangrcena, 


110    BRITISH  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 

and  use  of  divine  revelation  and  faith."  '  In  the  opinion  of  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Bolde,  who  defended  him  in  Some  Considerations  published  in 
1699.  the  hostile  clericals  had  treated  him  "  with  a  rudeness  peculiar 
to  some  who  make  a  profession  of  the  Christian  religion,  and  seem 
to  pride  themselves  in  being  the  clergy  of  the  Church  of  England." 
This  is  especially  true  of  Edwards,  a  notably  ignoble  type ;  but 
hardly  of  Milner,  whose  later  Account  of  Mr.  Lock's  Religion  out  of 
his  Own  Writings,  and  in  his  Own  Words  (1700).  pressed  him 
shrewdly  on  the  score  of  his  "  Socinianism."  In  the  eyes  of  a 
pietist  like  William  Law,  again.  Locke's  conception  of  the  infant 
mind  as  a  tabida  rasa  was  ''dangerous  to  reUgion,"  besides  bemg 
philosophically  false.*  Yet  Locke  agreed  with  Law'  that  moral 
obligation  is  dependent  solely  on  the  will  of  God— a  doctrmo 
denounced  by  the  deist  Shaftesbury  as  the  negation  of  morality. 

See  the  Inquiry  concerning  Virtm  of  Merit,  pt.  iii,  §  2  ;  and 

the  Letters  to  a  Student,  under  date  June  3,  1709  (p.  403  in 

Rand's  Life,  Letters,  etc.,  of  Shaftesbury,  1900).     The  extra- 

ordinary  letter  of  Newton  to  Locke,  written  just  after  or  during 

a  spell  of  insanity,  first  apologizes  for  having  believed   that 

Locke  "  endeavoured  to  embroil  me  with  women  and  by  other 

means,"  and  goes  on  to  beg  pardon  "  for  representing  that  you 

struck  at  the  root  of  morality,  in  a  principle  you  laid  down  in 

your  book  of  ideas."     In  his  subsequent  letter,  replying  to  that 

of  Locke  granting  forgiveness  and  gently  asking  for  details,  he 

writes  :  **  What  I  said  of  your  book  I  remember  not."    (Letters 

of  September  16  and  October  5.  1693,  given  in  Fox  Bourne's 

Life  of  Locke,  ii,  226-27,  and  Sir  D.  Brewster's  Memoirs  of  Sir 

Isaac  Newton,  1855,  ii,  148-51.)     Newton,  who  had  been  on 

very  friendly  terms  with  Locke,  must  have  been  repeating,  when 

his  mind  was  disordered,  criticisms  otherwise  current.     After 

printing  in  full  the  letters  above  cited,  Brewster  insists,  on  his 

principle   of   sacrificing   all   other   considerations  to  Newton's 

glory  (cp.  De  Morgan,  Newto7i :   his  Friend  :   and^  his  Niece, 

1885,  pp.  99-111),  that  all  the  while  Newton  was  *'in  the  full 

possession  of  his  mental  powers."     The  whole  diction  of  the 

first  letter  tells  the  contrary.     If  we  are  not  to  suppose  that 

Newton  had  been  temporarily  insane,  we  must  think   of  his 

judgment  as  even  less  rational,  apart  from  physics,  than  it  is 

1  Said  by  Carrol.  Dusertation  on  Mr.  Lock's  Essay,  1706.  cited  by  Anthony  Collins, 
Essay  Concerving  the  Use  of  Beason,  1709.  p.  30. 

2  Cited  by  Fox  Bourne,  Lt/eo/iocfee.ii.  438.  ,  ^r,     ■     ry       -^  ^:i  ^i^r-.nn 

3  Whose  calibre  may  be  gathered  from  his  eSreglous  doctoral  thesis.  Concto  ad  clernm 
de  dtemonum  malo'nim  existentia  et  txatura  (1700).  After  a  list  of  the  deniers  of  evil 
spirifs  from  thTsadducees  and  Sallustius  to  Bekker  and  Van  Dale,  he  addresses  to  Ins 
"dUectissimi  in  Christo  fratres"  the  exordium:  "En.  Academici.  T^tereR  ac  hodiern^ 
Sadducffios!  quibuscum  tota  Atheorum  cohors  amicissim^  congruit,  nam  qui  divinum 
numen,  iidem  ipsi  infernales  spiritus  acriter  negant."  .    ^^    ,     ,„-,q  ,-  oac-oaq 

4  Confutation  of  Warhurioii  (1757)  in  Extracts  from  Laiv's  Works,  1768,  i.  208-209. 

fi  Cp.  the  Essay,  bk.  i,  ch.  iii.  §  6.  with  Law's  Case  of  Reason,  in  Extracts,  as  cited,  p.  6b. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY     111 

seen  to  be  in  his  dissertations  on  prophecy.  Certainly  Newton 
was  at  all  times  apt  to  be  suspicious  of  his  friends  to  the  point 
of  moral  disease  (see  his  attack  on  Montague,  in  his  letter  to 
Locke  of  January  26,  1691-1692  :  in  Fox  Bourne,  ii,  218;  and 
cp.  De  Morgan,  as  cited,  p.  146)  ;  but  the  letter  to  Locke 
indicates  a  point  at  which  the  normal  malady  had  upset  the 
mental  balance.  It  remains,  nevertheless,  part  of  the  evidence 
as  to  bitter  orthodox  criticism  of  Locke. 

On  the  whole,  it  is  clear,  the  effect  of  his  work,  especially  of  his 
naturalistic  psychology,  was  to  make  for  rationalism  ;  and  his  com- 
promises furthered  instead  of  checking  the  movement  of  unbelief. 
His  ideal  of  practical  and  undogmatic  Christianity,  indeed,  was 
hardly  distinguishable  from  that  of  Hobbes,^  and,  as  previously  set 
forth  by  the  Rev.  Arthur  Bury  in  his  Naked  Gospel  (1690),  was  so 
repugnant  to  the  Church  that  that  book  was  burned  at  Oxford  as 
heretical.  Locke's  position  as  a  believing  Christian  was  indeed 
extremely  weak,  and  could  easily  have  been  demolished  by  a 
competent  deist,  such  as  Collins,^  or  a  skeptical  dogmatist  who 
could  control  his  temper  and  avoid  the  gross  misrepresentation  so 
often  resorted  to  by  Locke's  orthodox  enemies.  But  by  the  deists 
he  was  valued  as  an  auxiliary,  and  by  many  latitudinarian  Christians 
as  a  helper  towards  a  rationalistic  if  not  a  logical  compromise. 

Rationalism  of  one  or  the  other  tint,  in  fact,  seems  to  have 
spread  in  all  directions.  Deism  was  ascribed  to  some  of  the  most 
eminent  public  men.  Bishop  Burnet  has  a  violent  passage  on  Sir 
William  Temple,  to  the  effect  that  "  He  had  a  true  judgment  in 
affairs,  and  very  good  principles  with  relation  to  government,  but  in 
nothing  else.  He  seemed  to  think  that  things  are  as  they  were  from 
all  eternity ;  at  least  he  thought  religion  was  only  for  the  mob.  He 
was  a  great  admirer  of  the  sect  of  Confucius  in  China,  who  were 
atheists  themselves,  but  left  religion  to  the  rabble."  *  The  praise  of 
Confucius  is  the  note  of  deism  ;  and  Burnet  rightly  held  that  no 
orthodox  Christian  in  those  days  would  sound  it.  Other  prominent 
men  revealed  their  religious  liberahsm.  The  accompHshed  and 
influential  George  Savile,  Marquis  of  Halifax,  often  spoken  of  as 


J  Cp.  Dynamics  of  Beligion,  p.  122.  2  pox  Bourne,  ii,  404-405. 

8  An  ostensibly  orthodox  Professor  of  our  own  day  has  written  that  Locke's  doctrine 
as  to  religion  and  ethics  "  shows  at  once  the  sincerity  of  his  religious  convictions  and  the 
inadequate  conception  he  had  formed  to  himself  of  the  grounds  and  nature  of  moral 
philosophy"  (Fowler,  Locke.  1880,  p.  76). 

*  Burnet.  History  of  his  Own  Time,  ed.  1838,  p.  251.  Burnet  adds  that  Temple  "was  a 
corrupter  of  all  that  came  near  him."  The  1838  editor  protests  against  the  whole  attack 
as  the  most  unfair  and  exaggerated"  of  Burnet's  portraits  ;  and  a  writer  in  The  Present 
State  of  the  Bepublick  of  Letters,  Jan.,  1736,  p.  26,  carries  the  defence  to  claiming  orthodoxy 
^or  Temple.  But  the  whole  cast  of  his  thought  is  deistic,  Cp.  the  Essay  xtipon  the  Origin 
am,  Nature  of  Government,  and  ch.  v  of  the  Observations  upon  tJie  United  Provinces 
(Works,  ed.  1770,  i,  29,  36, 170-74). 


112    BKITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUKY 

a  deist,  and  even  as  an  atheist,  by  his  contemporaries/  appears 
clearly  from  his  own  writings  to  have  been  either  that  or  a  Unitarian  ]^ 
and  it  is  not  improbable  that  the  similar  gossip  concerning  Lord 
Keeper  Somers  was  substantially  true. 

That  Sir  Isaac  Newton  was  '*  some  kind  of  Unitarian  "  *  is  proved 
by  documents  long  withheld  from  publication,  and  disclosed  only  in 
the  second  edition  of  Sir  David  Brewster's  Memoirs.  There  is  indeed 
no  question  that  he  remained  a  mere  scripturalist,  handling  the  texts 
as  such,*  and  wasting  much  time  in  vain  interpretations  of  Daniel 
and  the  Apocalypse.^  Temperamentally,  also,  he  was  averse  to  any- 
thing like  bold  discussion,  declaring  that  "  those  at  Cambridge  ought 
not  to  judge  and  censure  their  superiors,  but  to  obey  and  honour 
them,  according  to  the  law  and  the  doctrine  of  passive  obedience 
— this  after  he  had  sat  on  the  Convention  which  deposed  James  II. 
In  no  aspect,  indeed,  apart  from  his  supreme  scientific  genius,  does 
he  appear  as  morally  ^  or  intellectually  pre-eminent ;  and  even  on  the 
side  of  science  he  was  limited  by  his  theological  presuppositions,  as 
when  he  rejected  the  nebular  hypothesis,  writing  to  Bentley  that 
"  the  growth  of  new  systems  out  of  old  ones,  without  the  mediation 
of  a  Divine  power,  seems  to  me  apparently  absurd."  There  is 
therefore  more  than  usual  absurdity  in  the  proclamation  of  his  pious 
biographer  that  "  the  apostle  of  infidelity  cowers  beneath  the  implied 
rebuke '"%f  his  orthodoxy.  The  very  anxiety  shown  by  Newton 
and  his  friends"  to  checkmate  "the  infidels"  is  a  proof  that  his 
religious  work  was  not  scientific  even  in  inception,  but  the  expression 
of  his  neurotic  side ;  and  the  attempt  of  some  of  his  scientific 
admirers  to  show  that  his  religious  researches  belong  solely  to  the 
years  of  his  decline  is  a  corresponding  oversight.  Newton  was 
always  pathologically  prepossessed  on  the  side  of  his  religion,  and 
subordinated  his  science  to  his  theology  even  in  the  Principia.  It 
is  therefore  all  the  more  significant  of  the  set  of  opinion  in  his  day 
that,  tied  as  he  was  to  Scriptural  interpretations,  he  drew  away 
from  orthodox  dogma  as  to  the  Trinity.  Not  only  does  he  show 
himself  a  destructive  critic  of  Trinitarian  texts  and  an  opponent  of 
Athanasius^^    he    expressly  formulates    the   propositions  (1)  that 

"there  is  one  God  the  Father and  one  mediator  between  God 

and   man,  the  man  Christ  Jesus  ";    (2)  that  "  iho  Father  is  the 

J  Cp.  Macaulay.  History,  ch.  ii.    Student's  ed.  i,  120.  ^  ,...    , 

•2  Compare  his  Advice  to  a  Daughter,  §  1  (in  Mif^cellanies,  1700),  and  his  Pohtical 
Thoughts  and  Bejlections :  Religion.  »  gee  Macaulay.  ch.  xx.    Student's  ed.  ii.  459. 

<  De  Morgan,  as  cited,  p.  107.  «  See  Brewster,  ii,  318.  331-22, 323.  331  sa.,342  SQ. 

6  Id.  p.  327  »q.  '^  Id.  p.  115.  «  Cp.  De  Morgan,  pp.  133-45. 

9  Four  Letters  from  Sir  Isaac  Newtmi  to  Dr.  Bentley,  ed.  1756,  p.  25.  Cp.  Dynamics  of 
Meligion,  pp.  97-102.  lO  Brewster,  ii.  314.  "  Id.  pp.  31&-16.  "  j^,  pp.  342-46. 


BKITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY     113 

invisible  God  whom  no  eye  hath  seen  or  can  see.  All  other  beings 
are  sometimes  visible";  and  (3)  that  "the  Father  hath  life  in 
himself,  and  hath  given  the  Son  to  have  life  in  himself."^  Such 
opinions,  of  course,  could  not  be  published :  under  the  Act  of  1697 
they  would  have  made  Newton  liable  to  loss  of  office  and  all  civil 
rights.  In  his  own  day,  therefore,  his  opinions  were  rather 
gossipped-of  than  known  ;^  but  insofar  as  his  heresy  was  realized, 
it  must  have  wrought  much  more  for  unbelief  than  could  be  achieved 
for  orthodoxy  by  his  surprisingly  commonplace  strictures  on  atheism, 
which  show  the  ordinary  inability  to  see  what  atheism  means(. 

The  argument  of  his  Short  Scheme  of  Trice  Beligion  brackets 
atheism  with  idolatry,  and  goes  on :  *'  Atheism  is  so  senseless  and 
odious  to  mankind  that  it  never  had  many  professors.  Can  it  lie  by 
accident  that  all  birds,  beasts,  and  men  have  their  right  side  ^d 
left  side  alike  shaped  (except  in  their  bowels),  and  just  two  eyes,  i 
no  more,  on  either  side  of  the  face?"  etc.  (Brewster,  ii,  347).  The 
logical  implication  is  that  a  monstrous  organism,  with  the  sides 
unlike,  represents  "  accident,"  and  that  in  that  case  there  has  either 
been  no  causation  or  no  "purpose"  by  Omnipotence.  It  is  only 
fair  to  remember  that  no  avowedly  "  atheistic  "  argument  could  in 
Newton's  day  find  publication  ;  but  his  remarks  are  those  of  a  man 
who  had  never  contemplated  philosophically  the  negation  of  his  own 
religious  sentiment  at  the  point  in  question.  Brewster,  whose 
judgment  and  good  faith  are  alike  precarious,  writes  that  "  When 
Voltaire  asserted  that  Sir  Isaac  explained  the  prophecies  in  the  same 
manner  as  those  who  went  before  him,  he  only  exhibited  his 
ignorance  of  what  Newton  wrote,  and  what  others  had  written  " 
(ii,  331,  7iote ;  355).  The  writer  did  not  understand  what  he 
censured.  Voltaire  meant  that  Newton's  treatment  of  prophecy  is 
on  the  same  plane  of  credulity  as  that  of  his  orthodox  predecessors. 

Even  within  the  sphere  of  the  Church  the  Unitarian  tendency, 
with  or  without  deistic  introduction,  was  traceable.  Archbishop 
Tillotson  (d.  1694)  was  often  accused  of  Socinianism  ;  and  in  the  next 
generation  was  smilingly  spoken  of  by  Anthony  Collins  as  a  leading 
Freethinker.  The  pious  Dr.  Hickes  had  in  fact  declared  of  the 
Archbishop  that  "  he  caused  several  to  turn  atheists  and  ridicule  the 
priesthood  and  religion."^  The  heresy  must  have  been  encouraged 
even  within  the  Church  by  the  scandal  which  broke  out  when  Dean 
Sherlock's  Vindication  of  Trinitarianism  (1690),  written  in  reply  to 

1  Brewster,  p.  349.    See  the  remaining  articles,  and  App.  XXX,  p.  532.  ^  y^.  p.  359. 

*  Discourse  on  Tillotson  and  Burnet,  pp.  38,  40.  74,  cited  by  Collins,  Discourse  of 
Freethinking,  1713,  pp.  171-72. 

VOL.  II  I 


i 

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\ 


HttH 


114    BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 

a  widely-circulated  antitrinitarian  compilation/  was  attacked  by 
Dean  South'  as  the  work  of  a  Tritheist.  The  plea  of  Dr.  Wallis, 
Locke's  old  teacher,  that  a  doctrine  of  "three  somewhats "— he 
objected  to  the  term  *'  persons  "—in  one  God  was  as  reasonable  as 
the  concept  of  three  dimensions.'  was  of  course  only  a  heresy  the 
more.  Outside  the  Church,  William  Penn,  the  great  Quaker,  held 
a  partially  Unitarian  attitude;'  and  the  first  of  his  many  imprison- 
ments was  on  a  charge  of  "blasphemy  and  heresy"  in  respect  of 
his  treatise  The  Sandy  Foundation  Shaken,  which  denied  (1)  that 
there  were  in  the  One  God  "three  distinct  and  separate  persons"; 
(2)  the  doctrine  of  the  need  of  "  plenary  satisfaction  ";  and  (3)  the 
justification  of  sinners  by  "an  imputative  righteousness."  But 
though  many  of  the  early  Quakers  seem  to  have  shunned  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  Penn  really  affirmed  the  divinity  of  Christ, 
and  was  not  a  Socinian  but  a  SabelHan  in  his  theology.  Positive 
Unitarianism  all  the  while  was  being  pushed  by  a  number  of  tracts 
which  escaped  prosecution,  being  prudently  handled  by  Locke's 
friend,  Thomas  Firmin.'  A  new  impulse  had  been  given  to 
Unitarianism  by  the  learning  and  critical  energy  of  the  Prussian 
Dr.  Z wicker,  who  had  settled  in  Holland  ;^  and  among  those  English- 
men whom  his  works  had  found  ready  for  agreement  was  Gilbert 
Gierke  (b.  1641),  who,  like  several  later  heretics,  was  educated  at 
Sidney  College,  Cambridge.  In  1695  he  pubhshed  a  Unitarian 
work  entitled  Anti-Nicenismus,  and  two  other  tracts  in  Latin,  all 
replying  to  the  orthodox  polemic  of  Dr.  Bull,  against  whom  another 
Unitarian  had  written  Considerations  on  the  Explications  of  the 
Doctrine  of  the  Trinity  in  1694,  bitterly  resenting  his  violence.'^  In 
1695  appeared  yet  another  treatise  of  the  same  school,  The  Judg- 
ment of  the  Fathers  concerning  the  Doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  Much 
was  thus  done  on  Unitarian  lines  to  prepare  an  audience  for  the 
deists  of  the  next  reign.'  But  the  most  effective  influence  was 
probably  the  ludicrous  strife  of  the  orthodox  clergy  as  to  what 
orthodoxy  was.     The  fray  over  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  waxed  so 


1  The  BHef  Notes  on  the'Creed  of  St.  Athanasius  (author  «°l^°oyy°\P',^°*!.?  wpV« °Sho 
Firmin.  Late  in  1693  appeared  another  antitrmitarian  tract,  by  \\  illiam  I?  reKe.  wno 
was Tosecuted,  fined  £.500.  and  ordered  to  make  a  recantation  m  the  Four  Courts  of 
Westminster  Hall.  The  book  was  burnt  >y  the  hangman  .Wallace  Art  354  There  had 
also  been  "two  quarto  volumes  of  tracts  in  support  of  Unitarianism.  Published  in  1691 
(Dr.  W.  H.  Drummond,  An  Explanation  and  Defence  of  the  Frtnciples  of  Protestant 

^2^"^oc^' 8  ribald  schoolfellow  of  nearly  fifty  years  ago  "  (Fox  Bourne,  ii,  405). 

*  Tayler,  Retrospect,  p.  226 ;  Wallace.  Antitrinitarian  Biography,  i.  l«)-69. 
«  Fox  Fourne.  ii.  405;  Wallace,  art.  353.  ^  Above,  pp.  35-36. 

7  Nelson's  Life  of  Bishop  Bull,  2nd  ed.  1714,  p.  398.  „,;„^i„  „„^^i«/i   nn   in 

8  "  Perhaps  at  no  period  was  the  Unitarian  controversy  so  actively  carried  on  in 
England  as  between  1690  and  1720."  History,  Opinions,  etc..  of  the  English  Fresbytertans. 
1834.  p.  22. 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTUEY    115 

furious,  and  the  discredit  cast  on  orthodoxy  was  so  serious/  that  in 
the  year  1700  an  Act  of  Parliament  was  passed  forbidding  the  publi- 
cation of  any  more  works  on  the  subject. 

Meanwhile  the  so-called  Latitudinarians,^  all  the  while  aiming 
as  they  did  at  a  non-dogmatic  Christianity,  served  as  a  connecting 
medium  for  the  different  forms  of  liberal  thought ;  and  a  new  element 
of  critical  disintegration  was  introduced  by  a  speculative  treatment 
of  Genesis  in  the  ArchceologicB  PhilosophiccB  (1692)  of  Dr.  Thomas 
Burnet,  a  professedly  orthodox  scholar,  Master  of  the  Charterhouse 
and  chaplain  in  ordinary  to  King  WiUiam,  who  nevertheless  treated 
the  Creation  and  Fall  stories  as  allegories,  and  threw  doubt  on  the 
Mosaic  authorship  of  parts  of  the  Pentateuch.     Though  the  book 
was  dedicated  to  the  king,  it  aroused  so  much  clerical  hostility  that 
the  king  was  obliged  to  dismiss  him  from  his  post  at  court.^     His 
ideas  were  partly  popularized  through   a  translation  of  two  of  his 
chapters,  with  a  vindicatory  letter,  in  Blount's  Oracles  of  Beason 
(1695) ;  and  that  they  had  considerable  vogue  may  be  gathered  from 
the  Essay  towards  a  Vindication  of  the  Vulgar  Exposition  of  the 
Mosaic  History  of  the  Fall  of  Adam,  by  John  Witty,  published  in 
1705.     Burnet,  who  published  three  sets  of  anonymous  Remarks  on 
the  philosophy  of   Locke    (1697-1699),  criticizing   its   sensationist 
basis,  figured  after  his  death  (1715),  in  posthumous  pubHcations,  as 
a  heretical  theologian  in  other  regards ;  and  then  played  his  part  in 
the  general  deistic  movement ;  but  his  allegorical  view  of  Genesis 
does  not  seem  to  have  seriously  affected  speculation  in  his  time,  the 
bulk  of  the  debate  turning  on  his  earlier  Telluris   Theoria  Sacra 
(1681;  trans.   1684),  to  which  there  were  many  rejoinders,  both 
scientific  and  orthodox.     On  this  side  he  is  unimportant,  his  science 
being   wholly   imaginative;    and   in   the   competition   between   his 
Theory  and  J.  Woodward's  Essay  towards  a  Natural  History  of  the 
Earth  (1695)  nothing  was  achieved  for  scientific  progress. 

Much  more  remarkable,  but  outside  of  popular  discussion,  were 
the  Evangelium  medici  (1697)  of  Dr.  B.  CONNOB,  wherein  the  gospel 


1  Cv.Dviiamtcs  of  Religion,  pp.  113-15  --Tayler,  Retrospect,  p.  227. 
.  T  ♦■.*°3^!?P^.?^®  Tayler.  Retrospect,  ch.  v,  §  4.  They  are  spoken  of  as  "the  new  sect 
of  r.atitude-Men  in  1662  ;  and  in  1708  are  said  to  be  "at  this  day  Low  Churchmen."  See 
d^?^^,^^''^-""^  ^i  *-^^  ^^^  -^^^^  ^^  Latitude-Men,  by  "S.  P."  of  Cambridge,  1662.  reprinted 
in  TJie  Phentx.vol  n,  1708.  and  pref.  to  that  vol.  From  "  S.  P.'s"  account  it  is  clear  that 
iney  connected  with  the  new  scientific  movement,  and  leant  to  Cartesianism.  As  above 
noted,  they  included  such  prelates  as  Wilkins  and  Tillotson.  The  work  of  E.  A.  George 
Seventeenth  Century  Men  of  Latitude  (1908).  deals  with  Hales,  Chilling  worth.  Whichcote, 
H.  More.  Taylor.  Browne,  and  Baxter. 

/M»^««°"*  °?^°'  ■^*«^^-  ^*«'^  of  the  Prot.  Dissenters.  1814,  p.  270.  A  main  ground  of  the 
cfll  ^  •  ^®-^Y?'^  a  somewhat  trivial  dialogue  in  Burnet's  book  between  Eve  and  the 
serpent,  indicating  the  popular"  character  of  the  tale.  This  was  omitted  from  a  Dutch 
fn  hI^°  }-^  author's  request,  and  from  the  3rd  ed.  1733  (Toulmin,  as  cited).  It  is  given 
m  the  partial  translation  m  Blount's  Oracles  of  Beason. 


116    BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 

miracles  were  explained  away,  on  lines  later  associated  with  German 
rationalism,  as  natural  phenomena;    and   the   curious   treatise   of 
Newton's  friend,  John  Craig,^  TheologicB  christianm  principia  mathe- 
matica  (1699),  wherein  it  is  argued  that  all  evidence  grows  progres- 
sively  less   valid   in   course  of   time;"   and   that   accordingly  the 
Christian  religion  will  cease  to  be  believed  about  the  year  3144, 
when   probably   will   occur   the   Second    Coming.      Connor,   when 
attacked,   protested   his   orthodoxy;    Craig   held    successively   two 
prebends   of   the   Church   of   England ;'  and   both   lived  and  died 
unmolested,  probably  because  they  had  the  prudence  to  write  in 
Latin,  and  maintained  gravity  of  style.     About  this  time,  further, 
the  title  of  "Rationalist"  made  some  fresh  headway  as  a  designa- 
tion, not  of  unbelievers,  but  of  believers  who  sought  to  ground  them- 
selves on  reason.     Such  books  as  those  of  Clifford  and  Boyle  tell 
of  much  discussion  as  to  the  efficacy  of  **  reason  "  in  religious  things ; 
and  in  1686,  as  above  noted,  there  appears  A  Rational  Catechism!' 
a  substantially  Unitarian  production,  notable  for  its  aloofness  from 
evangelical  feeling,  despite  its  many  references  to  BibHcal  texts  in 
support  of  its  propositions.     In  the  Essays  Moral  and  Divine  of  the 
Scotch  judge.  Sir  William  Anstruther,  pubHshed  in  1701,  there  is 
a  reference  to  **  those  who  arrogantly  term  themselves  Rationalists 
in  the  sense  of  claiming  to  find  Christianity  not  only,  as  Locke  put 
it,  a  reasonable   religion,  but   one   making   no   strain   upon   faith. 
Already  the  term  had  become  potentially  one  of  vituperation,  and 
it  is  applied  by  the  learned  judge  to  "  the  wicked  reprehended  by 
the  Psalmist."^     Forty  years  later,  however,  it  was  still   applied 
rather  to  the  Christian  who  claimed  to  believe  upon  rational  grounds 
than  to  the  deist  or  unbeHever ;  ^  and  it  was  to  have  a  still  longer 
lease  of  life  in  Germany  as  a  name  for  theologians  who  beheved  in 
"  Scripture  "  on  condition  that  all  miracles  were  explained  away. 


1  See  Brewster'8  Memoirs  of  Newton,  1855,  ii.  315-16.  for  a  letter  indicating  Craigs 
religious  attitude.     He  contributed  to  Dr.  George  Cheyne's  Philosophical  Principles  of 
Beligion,  Natural  and  Revealed,  1705.    (Pref.  to  pt.  1.  ed.  1725.) 

2  See  the  note  of  Pope  and  Warburton  on  the  Dunciad.  iv.  462.  „, 
8  See  arts,  in  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.                           *  Keprinted  at  Amsterdam,  1713. 

5  £8«ai/8  as  cited,  p.  84.  * /u    i  ^' ^"n«^,.r«>n    W\  1741    nn   11    34. 

7  See  Christianity  not  Founded  on  Argument  (by  Henry  Dodwell,  Jr.).  1741  •PP.  ii.  o*- 
Waterland.  as  cited  by  Bishop  Hurst,  treats  the  terms  Beascmut  ^nd  f  «^tonah^^^^^^^^^ 
or  nicknames  of  those  who  untruly  profess  to  reason  more  scrupulously  than  ot^ei  PeoPie. 
The  former  term  may,  however,  have  been  set  up  as  a  result  of  Le  Clerc  s  rendermg  oi 
"  the  Logosr  in  John  i.  1.  by  "  Reason  "-an  argument  to  which  Waterland  repeatedly  refers. 


Chapter  XV 

FEENCH  AND  DUTCH  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 
SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY 

1.  We  have  seen  France,  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  pervaded  in  its  upper  classes  by  a  freethought  partly  born 
of  the  knowledge  that  rehgion  counted  for  little  but  harm  in  public 
affairs,  partly  the  result  of  such  argumentation  as  had  been  thrown 
out  by  Montaigne  and  codified  by  Charron.  That  it  was  not  the 
freethinking  of  mere  idle  men  of  the  world  is  clear  when  we  note  the 
names  and  writings  of  La  Mothe  LE  Vayer  (1588-1672),  GUI 
Patin  (1601-1671),  and  Gabriel  Naude  (1600-1653),  all  scholars, 
all  heretics  of  the  skeptical  and  rationalistic  order.  The  last  two 
indeed,  sided  with  the  Cathohcs  in  poUtics,  Patin  approving  of  the 
Fronde,  and  Naud6  of  the  Massacre,  on  which  ground  they  are 
sometimes  claimed  as  believers/  But  though  in  the  nature  of  the 
case  their  inclusion  on  the  side  of  freethought  is  not  to  be  zealously 
contended  for,  they  must  be  classed  in  terms  of  the  balance  of 
testimony.  Patin  was  the  admiring  friend  of  Gassendi ;  and  though 
he  was  never  expHcitly  heretical,  and  indeed  wrote  of  Socinianism  as 
a  pestilent  doctrine,"*  his  habit  of  irony  and  the  risk  of  written 
avowals  to  correspondents  must  be  kept  in  view  in  deciding  on  his 
cast  of  mind.  He  is  constantly  anti- clerical;'  and  the  germinal 
skepticism  of  Montaigne  and  Charron  clearly  persists  in  him. 

It  is  true  that,  as  one  critic  puts  it,  such  rationahsts  were  not 
"  quite  clear  whither  they  were  bound.    At  first  sight,"  he  adds, 

"  no  one  looks  more  negative  than  Gui  Patin He  was  always 

congratulating  himself  on  being  '  delivered  from  the  nightmare '; 
and  he  rivals  the  eighteenth  century  in  the  scorn  he  pours  on 
priests,  monks,  and  especially  *  that  black  Loyohtic  scum  from 
Spain  '  which  called  itself  the  Society  of  Jesus.     Yet  Patin  was 


»  Prof.  Strowski.  who  is  concerned  to  prove  that  the  freethmkers  of  the  Period  were 
mostly  men-about-town.  claims  Patin  as  a  Frondeur  {De  Montaigne  d  Pascal,  p.  215).  But 
Patin's  attitude  in  this  matter  was  determined  by  his  detestation  of  Mazarin,  whom  he 
regarded  as  an  arch-scoundrel.     Naud^'s  defence  of  the  Massacre  is  forensic. 

a  Lettres  de  Oui  Patin,  No.  188,  6dit.  Reveill6-Parise.  1846,  i.  364. ^    -d     i 

8  Cp.  Reveill6-Pari8e,  as  cited.  Notice  sur  Gui  Patin,  pp.  xxiu-xxvii,  ana  uayie, 
art.  Patin. 

117 


118 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY 


no  freethinker.  Skeptics  who  made  game  of  the  kernel  of 
religion  came  quite  as  much  under  the  lash  of  his  tongue  as 
bigots  who  dared  defend  its  husks.  His  letters  end  with  the 
characteristic  confession :  '  Credo  in  Deimi,  Christum  crucifixum, 

etc.; De  7ninimis  non  curat  prcztor'  "  (Viscount  St.  Gyres  in 

Cambridge  Modern  History,  v,  73).  But  the  last  statement  is 
an  error,  and  Patin  did  not  attack  Gassendi,  though  he  did 
Descartes.  He  says  of  Eabelais:  **C'6toit  un  homme  qui  se 
moquoit  de  tout ;  en  verity  il  y  a  bien  des  choses  dont  on  doit 

raisonnablement  se  moquer elles  sont  presque  tons  remplies 

de  vanit6,  d'imposture  et  d'ignorance:  ceux  qui  sont  un  peu 
philosophes  ne  doivent-ils  pas  s'en  moquer  ?  "  (Lett.  485,  6d. 
cited,  iii,  148).  Again  he  writes  that  ''la  vie  humaine  n'est 
qu'un  bureau  de  rencontre  et  un  theatre  sur  lesquels  domine  la 
fortune  "  (Lett.  726,  iii,  620).  This  is  pure  Montaigne.  The 
formula  cited  by  Viscount  St.  Gyres  is  neither  a  general  nor 
a  final  conclusion  to  the  letters  of  Patin.  It  occurs,  I  think, 
only  once  (18  juillet,  1642,  k  M.  Belin)  in  the  836  letters,  and 
not  at  the  end  of  that  one  (Lett.  55,  6d.  cited,  i,  90). 

Concerning  his  friend  Naud6,  Patin  writes:  "Je  suis  fort  de 
I'avis  de  feu  M.  Naud6,  qui  disoit  qu'il  y  avait  quatre  choses 
dont  11  se  fallait  garder,  afin  de  n'6tre  point  tromp6,  savoir,  de ' 
proph^ties,  de  miracles,  de  revelations,  et  d'apparitions  "  (Lett. 
353,  6d.  cited,  ii,  490).  Again,  he  writes  of  a  symposium  of 
Naud6,  Gassendi,  and  himself :  "  Peut-^tre,  tons  trois,  gu6ris  de 
loup-garou  et  delivr^s  du  mal  des  scrupules,  qui  est  le  tyran  des 
consciences,  nous  irons  peut-^tre  jusque  fort  pr^s  du  sanctuaire. 
Je  fis  I'an  pass6  ce  voyage  de  Gentilly  avec  M.  Naude,  moi  seul 
avec  lui  t6te-^-t6te ;  il  n'y  avait  point  de  t6moins,  aussi  n'y  en 
falloit-il  point :  nous  y  parlsLmes  fort  librement  de  tout,  sans 
que  personne  en  ait  et6  scandalise  "  (Lett.  362,  ii,  508).  This 
seems  tolerably  freethinking. 

All  that  the  Christian  editor  cares  to  claim  upon  the  latter 
passage  is  that  assuredly  "  I'unite  de  Dieu,  Timmortalite  de  I'^me, 
regalite  des  hommes  devant  la  loi,  ces  Veritas  fondamentales  de 
la  raison  et  consacrSes  par  le  Christianisme,  y  etaient  placees  au 
premier  rang  "  in  the  discussion.  As  to  the  skepticism  of  Naude 
the  editor  remarks  :  "  Ge  qu'il  y  a  de  remarquable,  c'est  que  Gui 

Patin  soutenait  que  son  ami avait  puise  son  opinion,  en 

general  tres  peu  orthodoxe,  en  Italie,  pendant  le  long  sejour  qu'il 
fit  dans  ce  pays  avec  le  cardinal  Bagni  "  (ii,  490  ;  cp.  Lett.  816 ; 
iii,  758,  where  Naude  is  again  cited  as  making  small  account 
of  religion). 

Certainly  Patin  and  Naude  are  of  less  importance  for  freethought 
than  La  Mothe  le  Vayer.  That  scholar,  a  "  Gonseiller  d'Estat 
ordinaire,"  tutor  of  the  brother  of  Louis  XIV,  and  one  of  the  early 
members  of  the  new  Academy  founded  by  Richelieu,  is  an  interesting 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  EEANGE 


119 


figure'  in  the  history  of  culture,  being  a  skeptic  of  the  school  of 
Sextus  Empiricus,  and  practically  a  great  friend  of  tolerance. 
Standing  in  favour  with  Eichelieu,  he  wrote  at  that  statesman's 
suggestion  a  treatise  On  the  Virtue  of  the  Heathen,^  justifymg 
toleration  by  pagan  example— a  course  which  raises  the  question 
whether  Eichelieu  himself  was  not  strongly  touched  by  the 
rationalism  of  his  age.  If  it  be  true  that  the  great  Cardinal 
"believed  as  all  the  world  did  in  his  time,'"  there  is  little  more 
to  be  said ;  for  unbelief,  as  we  have  seen,  was  already  abundant,  and 
even  somewhat  fashionable.  Certainly  no  ecclesiastic  in  high  power 
ever  followed  a  less  ecclesiastical  policy  ;*  and  from  the  date  of  his 
appointment  as  Minister  to  Louis  XIII  (1624),  for  forty  years,  there 
was  no  burning  of  heretics  or  unbelievers  in  France.  If  he  was 
orthodox,  it  was  very  passively. 

And  Le  Vayer's  way  of  handling  the  dicta  of  St.  Augustine  and 
Thomas  Aquinas  as  to  the  virtues  of  unbelievers  being  merely  vices 
is  for  its  time  so  hardy  that  the  Cardinal's  protection  alone  can 
explain  its  immunity  from  censure.  St.  Augustine  and  St.  Thomas, 
says  the  critic  calmly,  had  regard  merely  to  eternal  happiness, 
which  virtue  alone  can  obtain  for  no  one.  They  are,  therefore,  to 
be  always  interpreted  in  this  special  sense.  And  so  at  the  very 
outset  the  ground  is  summarily  cleared  of  orthodox  obstacles.^  The 
Petit  discours  chretien  sur  Vimmortalit&  de  Vdme,  also  addressed  to 
Eichelieu,  tells  of  a  good  deal  of  current  unbelief  on  that  subject ; 
and  the  epistle  dedicatory  professes  pain  over  the  "philosopher  of 
our  day  [Vanini]  who  has  had  the  impiety  to  write  that,  unless  one 
is  very  old,  very  rich,  and  a  German,  one  should  never  expatiate  on 
this  subject."  But  on  the  very  threshold  of  the  discourse,  again, 
the  skeptic  tranquilly  suggests  that  there  would  be  "  perhaps  some- 
thing unreasonable  "  in  following  Augustine's  precept,  so  popular  in 
later  times,  that  the  problem  of  immortality  should  be  solved  by  the 
dictates  of  religion  and  feeling,  not  of  "  uncertain  "  reason.  "  Why," 
he  asks,  "should  the  soul  be  her  own  judge?"'  And  he  shows  a 
distinct  appreciation  of  the  avowal  of  Augustine  in  his  Betractationes 
that  his  own  book  on  the  Immortality  of  the  Soul  was  so  obscure  to 
him  that  in  many  places  he  himself  could  not  understand  it.^     The 

1  See  the  notices  of  bim  in  Owen's  Skeptics  of  the  French  Renaissance;  and  in  Sainte- 
Beuve,  Port  Boyal,  iii,  180.  etc. 

^  Dela  Vertu  des  Payens,  in  t.  v.  of  the  12mo  ed.  of  (Euvres,  1669. 

8  Hanotaux.  Hist,  du  Cardinal  de  Eichelieu,  1893,  i,  pref .  p.  7. 

<  Cp.  Buckle,  ch.  viii,  1-vol.  ed.  pp.  305-10.  325-28. 

6  See  the  good  criticism  of  M.  Hanotaux  in  Perrens,  Les  Liberiins  en  France  au  xvii. 
siicle,  p.  95  s<z. 

6  (Euvres,  ed.  1669,  v.  4  SQ.  Bellarmin,  as  Le  Vayer  shows,  had  similarly  explained 
away  Augustine.  But  the  doctrine  that  heathen  virtue  was  not  true  virtue  had  remained 
orthodox.  7  Ed.  cited,  iv,  125.  «  Id.  pp.  123-24. 


120 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY 


"  Little  Christian  Discourse  "  is,  in  fact,  not  Christian  at  all ;  and  its 
arguments  are  but  dialectic  exercises,  on  a  par  with  those  of  the 
Discours  sceptique  sur  la  musique  which  follows.  He  was,  in  short, 
a  skeptic  by  temperament ;  and  his  Preface  d'une  histoire^  shows  his 
mind  to  have  played  on  the  "  Mississippi  of  falsehood  called  history  " 
very  much  as  did  that  of  Bayle  in  a  later  generation. 

Le  Vayer's  Dialogues  of  Oratius  Tubero  (1633)  is  philosophically 
his  most  important  work;'*  but  its  tranquil  Pyrrhonism  was  not 
calculated  to  affect  greatly  the  current  thought  of  his  day  ;  and  he 
ranked  rather  as  a  man  of  all-round  learning*  than  as  a  polemist, 
being  reputed  "  a  little  contradictory,  but  in  no  way  bigoted  or 
obstinate,  all  opinions  being  to  him  nearly  indifferent,  excepting 
those  of  which  faith  does  not  permit  us  to  doubt."  *  The  last  phrase 
tells  of  the  fact  that  it  affects  to  negate :  Le  Vayer's  general 
skepticism  was  well  known.*  He  was  not  indeed  an  original 
thinker,  most  of  his  ideas  being  echoes  from  the  skeptics  of 
antiquity;^  and  it  has  been  not  unjustly  said  of  him  that  he  is 
rather  of  the  sixteenth  century  than  of  the  seventeenth.' 

2.  On  the  other  hand,  the  resort  on  the  part  of  the  Catholics  to 
a  skeptical  method,  as  against  both  Protestants  and  freethinkers, 
which  we  have  seen  originating  soon  after  the  issue  of  Montaigne's 
Essais,  seems  to  have  become  more  and  more  common ;  and  this 
process  must  rank  as  in  some  degree  a  product  of  skeptical  thought 
of  a  more  sincere  sort.  In  any  case  it  was  turned  vigorously,  even 
recklessly,  against  the  Protestants.  Thus  we  find  Daill6,  at  the 
outset  of  his  work  On  the  True  Use  of  the  Fathers,^  complaining  that 
when  Protestants  quote  the  Scriptures  some  Komanists  at  once  ask 
"  whence  and  in  what  way  those  books  may  be  known  to  be  really 
written  by  the  prophets  and  apostles  whose  names  and  titles  they 
bear."  This  challenge,  rashly  incurred  by  Luther  and  Calvin  in 
their  pronouncements  on  the  Canon,  later  Protestants  did  not  as 
a  rule  attempt  to  meet,  save  in  the  fashion  of  La  Placette,  who  in 
his  work  Be  insanibili  EcclesicB  BomancR  Scepticismo  (1688)^  under- 


1  Tom.  iii.  251. 

2  He  wrote  very  many,  the  final  collection  filling  three  volumes  folio,  and  fifteen  m 
duodecimo.  The  Cincq  Dialogues  faita  d  V imitation  des  Anciens  were  pseudonymous,  and 
are  not  included  in  the  collected  works. 

^  "On  le  regarde  comme  le  Plutarque  de  notre  sificle"  (Perrault.  Les  Homines  Illustres 
du  XVIIe  Sidcle,  M.  1701.  ii.  131).  *  Perrault.  ii,  13-2. 

5  Bayle,  Diet.  art.  La  Mothe  le  Vaykr.  Cp.  introd.  to  L' Esprit  de  la  Mothe  le  Vayer, 
parM.  deM.C.D.  S.  P.D.L.  (i.e.  De  Montlinot.  chanoine  de  Saint  Pierre  de  Lille  {1763. 
pp.  xviii,  xxi,  xxvi. 

6  M.  Perrens.  who  endorses  this  criticism,  does  not  note  that  some  passages  he  quotes 
from  the  Dialogues,  as  to  atheism  being  less  disturbing  to  States  than  superstition,  are 
borrowed  from  Bacon's  essay  Of  Atheism,  of  which  Le  Vayer  would  read  the  Latin  version. 

7  Perrens.  p.  132.  »  In  French.  1631 ;  in  Latin.  1656,  amended. 

9  Translated  into  English  in  1688.  and  into  French,  under  the  title  Traits  du  Pyrrhmiisme 
de  I'iglise  romaiiie,  by  N.  Chalaire,  Amsterdam,  1721. 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  FEANCE 


121 


takes  to  show  that  Komanists  themselves  are  without  any  grounds 
of  certitude  for  the  authority  of  the  Church.  It  was  indeed  certain 
that  the  Catholic  method  would  make  more  skeptics  than  it  won. 

3.  Between  the  negative  development  of  the  doctrine  of 
Montaigne  and  the  vogue  of  upper-class  deism,  the  philosophy 
of  Descartes,  with  its  careful  profession  of  submission  to  the 
Church,  had  at  J&rst  an  easy  reception  ;  and  on  the  appearance  of 
the  Discours  de  la  MHhode  (1637)  it  speedily  affected  the  whole 
thought  of  France;  the  women  of  the  leisured  class,  now  much  given 
to  literature,  being  among  its  students.^  From  the  first  the  Jansenists, 
who  were  the  most  serious  religious  thinkers  of  the  time,  accepted 
the  Cartesian  system  as  in  the  main  soundly  Christian  ;  and  its 
founder's  authority  had  some  such  influence  in  keeping  up  the 
prestige  of  orthodoxy  as  had  that  of  Locke  later  in  England. 
Boileau,  who  wrote  a  satire  in  defence  of  the  system  when  it  was 
persecuted  after  Descartes's  death,  is  named  among  those  whom  he 
so  influenced.**  But  a  merely  external  influence  of  this  kind  could 
not  counteract  the  fundamental  rationalism  of  Descartes's  thought, 
and  the  whole  social  and  intellectual  tendency  towards  a  secular 
view  of  life.  Soon,  indeed,  Descartes  became  suspect,  partly  by 
reason  of  the  hostile  activities  of  the  Jesuits,  who  opposed  him 
because  the  Jansenists  generally  held  by  him,  though  he  had  been 
a  Jesuit  pupil,  and  had  always  some  adherents  in  that  order ;  ^  partly 
by  reason  of  the  inherent  naturalism  of  his  system.  That  his 
doctrine  was  incompatible  with  the  eucharist  was  the  standing  charge 
against  it,*  and  his  defence  was  not  found  satisfactory,^  though  his 
orthodox  followers  obtained  from  Queen  Christina  a  declaration  that 
he  had  been  largely  instrumental  in  converting  her  to  Catholicism.^ 
Pascal  reproached  him  with  having  done  his  best  to  do  without  God 
in  his  system;'  and  this  seems  to  have  been  the  common  clerical 
impression.  Thirteen  years  after  his  death,  in  1663,  his  work  was 
placed  on  the  Index  Lihrorum  Prohihitorum,  under  a  modified 
censure,"^  and  in  1671  a  royal  order  was  obtained  under  which  his 
philosophy  was  proscribed  in  all  the  universities  of  France.® 
Cartesian    professors   and    cur6s   were  persecuted   and   exiled,   or 


1  BouiUier,  Hist,  de  la  Fhilos.  carUsienne,  1854.  i.  410  sq.,  420  sq.;  Lanson,  Hist  de  la  litt. 
frav^aise,  5e  6dit.  p.  396 :  Bruneti6re.  Etudes  Critiques,  3e  s6rie,  p.  2 ;  Buckle,  1-vol.  ed. 
p.  338.    Bouillier  notes  (i.  426)  that  the  femmes  savantes  ridiculed  by  Moli^re  are  Cartesians. 

2  BouUlier.  i.  456 :  Lanson.  p.  397.  »  Bouillier,  i.  411  sq.  *  Id.  p.  431  sq. 
J  Id.  JK  437  sq.                                                   6  Id,  pp.  449-50. 

7  II  disait  tr^s  souvent."  said  Pascal's  niece:— "Je  ne  puis  pardonner  k  Descartes  :  il 
aurait  bien  voulu.  dans  toute  sa  philosophie.  pouvoir  se  passer  de  Dieu ;  mais  il  n'a  pu 
B'empdcher  de  lui  accorder  une  chiquenade.  pour  mettro  le  monde  en  mouvement ;  aprds 
cela  il  n'a  plus  que  faire  de  Dieu."  B^cit  de  Marguerite  Perier  ("De  ce  que  j'ai  oui  dire 
par  M,  Pascal,  mon  oncle  "),  rep.  with  Fensies,  ed.  1863.  pp.  38-39. 

8  Bouillier.  p.  463.  5  Id.  p.  465  sq. 


122 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY 


compelled  to  recant ;  among  the  victims  being  P6re  Lami  of  the 
Congregation  of  the  Oratory  and  P6re  Andr6  the  Jesuit ;'  and  the 
Oratorians  were  in  1678  forced  to  undergo  the  humiliation  of  not 
only  renouncing  Descartes. and  all  his  works,  but  of  abjuring  their 
former  Cartesian  declarations,  in  order  to  preserve  their  corporate 
existence.''  Precisely  in  this  period  of  official  reaction,  however, 
there  was  going  on  not  merely  an  academic  but  a  social  development 
of  a  rationalistic  kind,  in  which  the  persecuted  philosophy  played  its 
part,  even  though  some  freethinkers  disparaged  it. 

4.  The  general  tendency  is  revealed  on  the  one  hand  by  the 
series  of  treatises  from  eminent  Churchmen,  defending  the  faith 
against  unpublished  attacks,  and  on  the  other  hand  by  the  prevailing 
tone  in  belles  lettres.  Malherbe,  the  literary  dictator  of  the  first 
quarter  of  the  century,  had  died  in  1628  with  the  character  of  a 
scoffer  ;'  and  the  fashion  now  lasted  till  the  latter  half  of  the  reign 
of  Louis  XIV.  In  1621,  two  years  after  the  burning  of  Vanini,  a 
young  man  named  Jean  Fontanier  had  been  burned  alive  on  the 
Place  de  Gr^ve  at  Paris,  apparently  for  the  doctrines  laid  down  by 
him  in  a  manuscript  entitled  Le  Trtsor  Inestimable,  written  on 
deistic  and  anti-Catholic  lines.*  He  was  said  to  have  been  succes- 
sively Protestant,  CathoHc,  Turk,  Jew,  and  atheist ;  and  had  con- 
ducted himself  like  one  of  shaken  mind.*"  But  the  cases  of  the  poet 
Th^ophile  de  Viau,  who  about  1623  suffered  prosecution  on  a  charge 
of  impiety,®  and  of  his  companions  Berthelot  and  Colletet— who  Uke 
him  were  condemned  but  set  free  by  royal  favour— appear  to  be  the 
only  others  of  the  kind  for  over  a  generation.  Frivolity  of  tone 
sufficed  to  ward  off  legal  pursuit.  It  was  in  1665,  some  years  after 
the  death  of  Mazarin,  who  had  maintained  Eichelieu's  policy  of 
tolerance,  that  Claude  Petit  was  burnt  at  Paris  for  "impious 
pieces";'  and  even  then  there  was  no  general  reversion  to  orthodoxy, 
the  upper-class  tone  remaining,  as  in  the  age  of  Kichelieu  and 
Mazarin,  more  or  less  unbelieving.  When  Corneille  had  introduced 
a  touch  of  Christian  zeal  into  his  Polyeucte  (1643)  he  had  given 
general  offence  to  the  dilettants  of  both  sexes.^    Moli^re,  again,  the 

»  See  Bouillier.  i.  460  sa.;  ii.  373  sg.;  and  introd.  to  (Bttvres  philos.  du  Fire  Buffier,  1846. 
p.  4 :  and  cp.  Rambaud.  Hist.  lU  la  dvilisatimi  frangaise,  6e  6dit.  ii.  336.  • 

a'Bouillier.  i.  465.  »  Ferrens,  pp.  84-85.  *  Cp.  Perrens.  pp.  68-69.  and  refs. 

8  Cp.  Strowski,  De  Montaigjie  d  Pascal,  p.  141. 

6  See  Duvernet.  Vie  de  Voltaire,  ch.  i,  and  note  1 :  and  Perrens.  pp.  74-80. 

7  For  all  that  is  known  of  Petit  see  the  Avertissement  to  Bibliophile  Jacob  s  edition  or 
Paris  ridicule  et  burlesque  au  17itme  siMe.  and  refs.  in  Perrens,  p.  153.,  After  Pet iis 
death,  his  friend  Du  Pelletier  defended  hini  as  being  a  deist :  .^.^^^  ^J^  ^ffj^f.^"  ^jf/f  ^^^^ 
writings  to  have  blasphemed  at  large,  and  he  had  been  guilty  of  assassinating  a  young 
monk.    Hewasburned.  however,  for  blaspheming  the  Virgin.  tta^  i  worv^HnniilPt 

8  Guizot.  Corfieille  et  son  temps,  ed.  1880.  p.  200.  The  circle  of  the  Hdtel  Rambomllet 
were  especially  hostile.  Cp.  Palissofs  note  to  Polyeucte,  end.  On  the  other  hana. 
Corneille  found  it  prudent  to  cancel  four  skeptical  lines  which  he  had  originally  pui  in 
the  mouth  of  the  pagan  Severus,  the  sage  of  the  piece.    Perrens.  Lea  Lihertms,  p.  14U. 


EEEETHOUGHT  IN  FEANCE 


123 


disciple  of  Gassendi^  and  "the  very  genius  of  reason,"  was 
unquestionably  an  unbeliever  ;^  and  only  the  personal  protection  of 
Louis  XIV,  which  after  all  could  not  avail  to  support  such  a  play 
as  Tartufe  against  the  fury  of  the  bigots,  enabled  him  to  sustain 
himself  at  all  against  them. 

5.  Equally  freethinking  was  his  brilliant  predecessor  and  early 
comrade,  CYRANO  DE  Bergerac  (1620-1655),  who  did  not  fear  to 
indicate  his  frame  of  mind  in  one  of  his  dramas.  In  La  Mort 
d'Agrippine  he  puts  in  the  mouth  of  Sejanus,  as  was  said  by  a  con- 
temporary, "  horrible  things  against  the  Gods,"  notably  the  phrase, 
"whom  men  made,  and  who  did  not  make  men,"*  which,  however, 
generally  passed  as  an  attack  on  polytheism ;  and  though  there  was 
certainly  no  blasphemous  intention  in  the  phrase,  Frappons,  voild 
Vhostie  [  =  hostia,  victim] ,  some  pretended  to  regard  it  as  an  insult  to 
the  Catholic  host.'^  At  times  Cyrano  writes  like  a  deist  ;^  but  in  so 
many  other  passages  does  he  hold  the  language  of  a  convinced 
materialist,  and  of  a  scoffer  at  that,"^  that  he  can  hardly  be  taken 
seriously  on  the  former  head.*^  In  short,  he  was  one  of  the  first 
of  the  hardy  freethinkers  who,  under  the  tolerant  rule  of  Eichelieu 
and  Mazarin,  gave  clear  voice  to  the  newer  spirit.  Under  any  other 
government,  he  would  have  been  in  danger  of  his  life :  as  it  was,  he 
was  menaced  with  prosecutions ;  his  Agrippine  was  forbidden ;  the 
first  edition  of  his  Pddant  joud  was  confiscated;  during  his  last 
illness  there  was  an  attempt  to  seize  his  manuscripts ;  and  down  till 
the  time  of  the  Eevolution  the  editions  of  his  works  were  eagerly 
bought  up  and  destroyed  by  zealots.®  His  recent  literary  rehabilita- 
tion thus  hardly  serves  to  realize  his  importance  in  the  history  of 
freethought.  Between  Cyrano  and  Moli^re  it  would  appear  that 
there  was  little  less  of  rationalistic  ferment  in  the  France  of  their 
day  than  in  England.  Bossuet  avows  in  a  letter  to  Huet  in  1678 
that  impiety  and  unbelief  abound  more  than  ever  before.^" 


1  Under  whom  he  studied  in  his  youth  with  a  number  of  other  notably  independent 
spirits,  among  them  Cyrano  de  Bergerac.  See  Sainte-Beuve's  essay  on  Moli^re.  prefixed 
to  the  Hachette  edition.  Moli^re  held  by  Gassendi  as  against  Descartes.   Bouillier.  i,  542  sq. 

2  Constant  Coquelin,  art.  "  Don  Juan  "  in  the  International  Review,  September.  1903. 
p.  61— an  acute  and  scholarly  study. 

^  "  Moli^re  is  a  freethinker  to  the  marrow  of  his  bones  "  (Perrens.  p.  280).  Cp.  Lanson, 
p.  520;  Fournier,  Etudes  sur  Molidre,  1885.  pp.  122-23;  Soury.  Brev.  de  I'hist.  du  maUr. 
p.  384.  Ginguene,"  writes  Sainte-Beuve,  "a  publie  une  brochure  pour  montrer  Rabelais 
precurseur  de  la  revolution  frangaise  ;  c'6toit  inutile  k  prouver  sur  Moli^re"  (essay  cited). 

•  Act  II.  sc.  iv.  in  CEuvres  Comiques,  etc..  ed.  Jacob,  rep.  by  Gamier,  pp.  426-27. 

»  See  Jacob's  note  in  loc,  ed.  cited,  p.  455. 

u-  ^'^i:  ^^^  -^e«re  contre  un  Pidant  (No.  13  of  the  Lettres  Satiriques  in  ed.  cited,  p.  181), 
which,  however,  appears  to  have  been  mutilated  in  some  editions  ;  as  one  of  the  deistic 
sentences  cited  by  M.  Perrens.  p.  247.  does  not  appear  in  the  reprint  of  Bibliophile  Jacob. 

7  £.cr.  the  Histoire  des  Oiseaux  in  the  Histoire  Coniique  des  Hats  et  empires  du  Soleil, 
ed.  Jacob  (Gamier),  p.  278 ;  and  the  Fragment  de  Physique  (same  vol.). 

«  See  the  careful  criticism  of  Perrens,  pp.  248-50. 

»  Bibliophile  .Jacob,  pref.  to  ed.  cited,  pp.  i-ii. 
10  Perrens,  p.  302.    Compare  Bossuet'a  earlier  sermon  for  the  Second  Sunday  of  Advent. 


124 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY 


6.  Even  in  the  apologetic  reasoning  of  the  greatest  French  prose 
writer  of  that  age,  Pascal,  we  have  the  most  pregnant  testimony  to 
the  prevalence  of  unbelief;  for  not  only  were  the  fragments 
preserved  as  Pens&es  (1670).  however  originated/  developed  as  part 
of  a  planned  defence  of  religion  against  contemporary  rationahsm," 
but  they  themselves  show  their  author  profoundly  unable  to  believe 
save  by  a  desperate  abnegation  of  reason,  though  he  perpetually 
commits  the  gross  fallacy  of  trusting  to  reason  to  prove  that  reason 
is  untrustworthy.  His  work  is  thus  one  continuous  paralogism,  in 
which  reason  is  disparaged  merely  to  make  way  for  a  parade  of  bad 
reasoning.  The  case  of  Pascal  is  that  of  Berkeley  with  a  difference : 
the  latter  suffered  from  hypochondria,  but  reacted  with  nervous 
energy;  Pascal,  a  physical  degenerate,  prematurely  profound,  was 
prematurely  old  ;  and  his  pietism  in  its  final  form  is  the  expression 
of  the  physical  collapse. 

This  is  disputed  by  M.  Lanson,  an  always  weighty  authority. 
He  writes  (p.  464)  that  Pascal  was  **  neither  mad  nor  ill  "  when 
he  gave  himself  up  wholly  to  religion.  But  ill  he  certainly 
was.  He  had  chronically  suffered  from  intense  pains  in  the 
head  from  his  eighteenth  year;  and  M.  Lanson  admits  (p.  451) 
that  the  Pens^es  were  written  in  intervals  of  acute  suffering. 
This  indeed  understates  the  case.  Pascal  several  times  told  his 
family  that  since  the  age  of  eighteen  he  had  never  passed 
a  day  without  pain.  His  sister,  Madame  Perier,  in  her  bio- 
graphical sketch,  speaks  of  him  as  suffering  "continual  and 
ever-increasing  maladies,"  and  avows  that  the  four  last  years 
of  his  life,  in  which  he  penned  the  fragments  called  Pens&es, 
"  were  but  a  continual  languishment."  The  Port  Koyal  preface 
of  1670  says  the  same  thing,  speaking  of  the  "  four  years  of 
languor  and  malady  in  which  he  wrote  all  we  have  of  the  book 
he  planned,"  and  calling  the  PeJisdes  '*  the  feeble  essays  of  a  sick 
man."  Cp.  Pascal's  PrUre  pour  demander  d  Dieu  le  hon  usage 
des  maladies :  and  Owen  French  Skeptics,  pp.  746,  784. 

Doubtless  the  levity  and  licence  of  the  libertiiis  in  high  places 
confirmed  him  in  his  revolt  against  unbehef ;  but  his  own  credence 
was  an  act  rather  of  despairing  emotion  than  of  rational  conviction. 
The  man  who  advised  doubters  to  make  a  habit  of  causing  masses 
to  be  said  and  following  religious  rites,  on  the  score  that  cela  vans 

1665.  cited  by  Perrens.  pp.  253-54.  where  he  speaks  with  something  like  fury  of  the  free 
discussion  around  him.  ,  ,      ..      •  «       „«  «f 

1  Cousin  plausibly  argues  that  Pascal  began  writing  Penates  under  the  mtluence  oi 
a  practice  set  up  in  her  circle  by  Madame  de  Sabl6.    Mme.  de  SabU.  56  6dit.  p.  124  «</. 

2  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  work  as  published  contained  matter  not  Pascal  s. 
Cp.  Bruneti^re.  Etudes,  iii.  46-47 ;  and  the  editions  of  the  Pens^es  by  Faug^re  and  Ha  vet. 

8  As  to  some  of  these  see  Perrens.  pp.  158-69.    They  included  the  great  Conde  and  some 
of  the  women  in  his  circle ;  aU  of  them  unserious  in  their  skepticism,  and  all    converiea 
when  the  physique  gave  the  required  cue. 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  FKANCE 


125 


fera  croire  et  vous  ahetira—''  that  will  make  you  believe  and  will 
stupefy  you  "  *— was  a  pathological  case  ;    and   though  the  whole 
Jansenist   movement    latterly   stood    for   a  reaction   against   free- 
thinking,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  Pensdes  generally  acted 
as  a  solvent  rather  than  as  a  sustainer  of  religious  beliefs.^  ^  This 
charge  was  made  against  them  immediately  on  their  publication  by 
the  Abb6  de  Villars,  who  pointed  out  that  they  did  the  reverse  of 
what  they  claimed  to  do  in  the  matter  of  appealing  to  the  heart 
and  to  good  sense,  since  they  set  forth  all  the  ordinary  arguments 
of  Pyrrhonism,  denied  that  the  existence  of  God  could  be  established 
by  reason  or  philosophy,  and  staked  the  case  on  a  "  wager"  which 
shocked  good  sense  and  feeUng  alike.    "  Have  you  resolved,"  asks  this 
critic  in  dialogue,  "to  make  atheists  on  pretext  of  combatting  them  ?  "^ 
The  same  question  arises  concerning  the  famous  Lettres  Provin- 
ciales  (1656),  written  by  Pascal  in  defence  of  Arnauld  against  the 
persecution  of  the  Jesuits,  who  carried  on  in  Arnauld's  case  their 
campaign  against  Jansen,  whom  they  charged  with  mis-stating  the 
doctrine  of  Augustine  in  his  great  work  expounding  that  Father. 
Once  more  the  Catholic  Church  was  swerving  from  its  own  estab- 
lished doctrine  of  predestination,  the  Spanish  Jesuit  Molina  having 
set  up  a  new  movement  in  the  Pelagian  or  Arminian  direction.    The 
cause  of  the  Jansenists  has  been  represented  as  that  of  freedom  of 
thought  and  speech  ;*  and  this  it  relatively  was  insofar  as  Jansen 
and  Arnauld  sought  for  a  hearing,  while  the  Jesuit-ridden  Sorbonne 
strove  to  silence  and  punish  them.     Pascal  had  to  go  from  printer 
to  printer  as  his  Letters  succeeded  each  other,  the  first  three  being 
successively  prosecuted  by  the  clerical  authorities  ;    and   in   their 
collected  form  they  found  publicity  only  by  being  printed  at  Kouen 
and  published  at  Amsterdam,  with  the  rubric  of  Cologne.     All  the 
while  Jansenism  claimed  to  be  strict  orthodoxy  ;    and  it  was  in 
virtue  only  of  the  irreducible  element  of  rationalism  in  Pascal  that 
the  school  of  Port  Koyal  made  for  freethought  in  any  higher  or 
more  general  sense.     Indeed,  between  his  own  reputation  for  piety 
and  that  of  the  Jansenists   for  orthodoxy,  the  Provincial  Letters 
have   a   conventional   standing   as   orthodox    compositions.      It   is 
strange,  however,  that  those  who  charge  upon   the  satire  of  the 
later  philosophers  the  downfall  of  Catholicism  in  France  should 


*  PensSes.  ed.  Faug^re.  ii.  168-69.    The  "ab^tira  "  comes  from  Montaigne. 

3  Thus  Mr.  Owen  treats  Pascal  as  a  skeptic,  which  philosophically  he  was,  insofar  as 
he  really  philosophized  and  did  not  merely  catch  at  pleas  for  his  emotional  beliefs.  Les 
Pensees  de  Pascal,"  writes  Prof.  Le  Dantec,  "  sont  a  mon  avis  le  livre  le  plus  capable  de 
renforcer  I'atheisme  chez  un  athee"  {L'AthHsyne,  1906,  pp.  24-25).  They  have  in  fact 
always  had  that  effect.  ^  j)g  la  Delicatesse,  1671,  dial,  v,  p.  329,  etc. 

*  Vinet,  J^tudes  sur  Blaise  Pascal,  3e  6dit.  p.  267  sa- 


126 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY 


not  realize  the  plain  tendency  of  these  brilliant  satires  to  discredit 
the  entire  authority  of  the  Church,  and,  further,  by  their  own 
dogmatic  weaknesses,  to  put  all  dogma  alike  under  suspicion.^ 
Few  thoughtful  men  can  now  read  the  Provinciales  without  being 
impressed  by  the  utter  absurdity  of  the  problem  over  which  the 
entire  religious  intelligence  of  a  great  nation  was  engrossed. 

It  was,  in  fact,  the  endless  wrangles  of  the  religious  factions 
over  unintelligible  issues  that  more  than  any  other  single  cause 
fostered  the  unbelief  previously  set  up  by  religious  wars  ;'  and 
Pascal's  writings  only  deepened  the  trouble.  Even  Bossuet,  in  his 
History  of  the  Variations  of  the  Protestant  Churches  (1688),  did  but 
throw  a  new  light  on  the  hollowness  of  the  grounds  of  religion; 
and  for  thoughtful  readers  gave  a  lead  rather  to  atheism  than  to 
Catholicism.  The  converts  it  would  make  to  the  Catholic  Church 
would  be  precisely  those  whose  adherence  was  of  least  value,  since 
they  had  not  even  the  temperamental  basis  which,  rather  than 
argument,  kept  Bossuet  a  believer,  and  were  Catholics  only  for  lack 
of  courage  to  put  all  religion  aside.  When  "variation"  was  put  as 
a  sign  of  error  by  a  Churchman  the  bulk  of  whose  life  was  spent  in 
bitter  strifes  with  sections  of  his  own  Church,  critical  people  were 
hardly  likely  to  be  confirmed  in  the  faith.  Within  ten  years  of 
writing  his  book  against  the  Protestants,  Bossuet  was  engaged  in 
an  acrid  controversy  with  F6nelon,  his  fellow  prelate  and  fellow 
demonstrator  of  the  existence  and  attributes  of  God,  accusing  him 
of  holding  unchristian  positions ;  and  both  prelates  were  always 
fighting  their  fellow-churchmen  the  Jansenists.  If  the  variations 
of  Protestants  helped  Catholicism,  those  of  Catholics  must  have 
helped  unbelief. 

7.  A  similar  fatahty  attended  the  labours  of  the  learned  Huet, 
Bishop  of  Avranches,  whose  Demonstratio  Evangelica  (1678)  is 
remarkable  (with  Boyle's  Discourse  of  Things  above  Reason)  as 
anticipating  Berkeley  in  the  argument  from  the  arbitrariness  of 
mathematical  assumptions.  He  too,  by  that  and  by  his  later  works, 
made  for  sheer  philosophical  skepticism,^  always  a  dangerous  basis 
for    orthodoxy.*     Such   an   evolution,   on  the  part  of   a   man  of 


1  Cp.  the  ^oge  de  Pascal  by  Bordas  Demoulin  in  IMdot  ed.  of  the  Lettres,  1854, 
pp.  xxii-xxiii.  and  cit.  from  Saint-Beuve.  Mark  Pattison,  it  seems,  held  that  the  Jesuits 
had  the  best  of  the  argument.  See  the  Letters  of  Lord  Acton  to  Mary  Gladstone,  1904. 
p.  207.^    As  regards  the  effect  of  Jansenism  on  belief,  we  find  De  Tocqueville  pronouncing 

that  "  Le  Jansenisme  ouvrit la  brdche  par  laquelle  la  philosophie  du  18e  si^cle  devait 

faire  irruption  "  {Hist,  philos.  dii  rhgne  de  Louis  XV,  1849.  i.  2).    This  could  truly  be  said 
of  Pascal.  a  cp.  Voltaire's  letter  of  1768,  cited  by  Morley,  Voltaire,  4th  ed.  p.  159. 

8  Cp.  Owen,  French  Skeptics,  pp.  762-63,  767. 

*  This  was  expressly  urged  against  Huet  by  Arnauld.  See  the  Notice  in  Jourdain's  ed 
of  the  Logique  de  Fort  Boyal,  1854,  p.  xi ;  Perrens.  Les  Libertins,  p.  301 :  and  Bouillier 
Hiat.  de  la  philos.  cart^sienne,  1854.  i,  595-96.  where  are  cited  the  letters  of  Arnauld  (Nos. 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  FKANCE 


127 


uncommon  intellectual  energy,  challenges  attention,  the  more  so 
seeing  that  it  typifies  a  good  deal  of  thinking  within  the  Catholic 
pale,  on  lines  already  noted  as  following  on  the  debate  with 
Protestantism.  Honestly  pious  by  bent  of  mind,  but  always 
occupied  with  processes  of  reasoning  and  research,  Huet  leant 
more  and  more,  as  he  grew  in  years,  to  the  skeptical  defence 
against  the  pressures  of  Protestantism  and  rationalism,  at  once 
following  and  furthering  the  tendency  of  his  age.  That  the  skeptical 
method  is  a  last  weapon  of  defence  can  be  seen  from  the  temper  in 
which  the  demonstrator  assails  Spinoza,  whom  he  abuses,  without 
naming  him,  in  the  fashion  of  his  day,  and  to  whose  arguments 
concerning  the  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch  he  makes  singularly 
feeble  answers.^  They  are  too  worthless  to  have  satisfied  himself  ; 
and  it  is  easy  to  see  how  he  was  driven  to  seek  a  more  plausible 
rebuttal.'^  A  distinguished  English  critic,  noting  the  general  move- 
ment, pronounces,  justly  enough, that  Huet  took  up  philosophy  "not 
as  an  end,  but  as  a  means — not  for  its  own  sake,  but  for  the  support 
of  rehgion";  and  then  adds  that  his  attitude  is  thus  quite  different 
from  Pascal's.^  But  the  two  cases  are  really  on  a  level.  Pascal 
too  was  driven  to  philosophy  in  reaction  against  incredulity;  and 
though  Pascal's  work  is  of  a  more  bitter  and  morbid  intensity,  Huet 
also  had  in  him  that  psychic  craving  for  a  supernatural  support 
which  is  the  essence  of  latter-day  religion.  And  if  we  credit  this 
spirit  to  Pascal  and  to  Huet,  as  we  do  to  Newman,  we  must  suppose 
that  it  partly  touched  the  whole  movement  of  pro- Catholic  skepticism 
which  has  been  above  noted  as  following  on  the  Eeformation.  It  is 
ascribing  to  it  as  a  whole  too  much  of  calculation  and  strategy  to 
say  of  its  combatants  that  "they  conceived  the  desperate  design  of 
first  ruining  the  territory  they  were  prepared  to  evacuate;  before 
philosophy  was  handed  over  to  the  philosophers  the  old  Aristotelean 
citadel  was  to  be  blown  into  the  air."  *  In  reality  they  caught,  as 
religious  men  will,  with  passion  rather  than  with  policy,  at  any  plea 
that  might  seem  fitted  to  beat  down  the  presumption  of  the  wild, 
living  intellect  of  man  ";^  and  their  skepticism  had  a  certain  sincerity 
inasmuch  as,  trained  to  uncritical  belief,  they  had  never  found  for 
themselves  the  grounds  of  rational  certitude. 

830,  834,  and  837  in  (Euvres  Compl.  iii,  396,  404,  424)  denouncing  Huet's  Pyrrhonism  as 
"impious"  and  perfectly  adapted  to  the  purposes  of  the  freethinkers. 

1  Cp.  Alexandre  Westphal.  Les  Sources  du  Pentateuque,  i  (1888),  pp.  64-68. 

^  Huet  himself  incurred  a  charge  of  temerity  in  his  handling  of  textual  questions. 
Id.  p.  66. 

8  Pattison,  Essays,  1889.  i,  303-304.  *  Pattison.  as  cited. 

*»  "  After  all,  a  book  [the  Bible]  cannot  make  a  stand  against  the  wild,  living  intellect  of 
man."  Newman,  Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua,  Ist  ed.  p.  382  ;  ed.  1875,  p.  245.  The  same  is  said 
by  Newman  of  religion  in  general  (p.  243) 


128 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY 


Inasmuch  too  as  Protestantism  had  no  such  ground,  and 
rationalism  was  still  far  from  having  cleared  its  bases,  Huet,  as 
things  went,  was  within  his  moral  rights  when  he  set  forth  his 
transcendentahst  skepticism  in  his  Qumstiones  Alnetancz  in  1690. 
Though  written  in  very  limpid  Latin,*  that  work  attracted  practically 
no  attention ;  and  though,  having  a  repute  for  provincialism  in  his 
French  style,  Huet  was  loth  to  resort  to  the  vernacular,  he  did 
devote  his  spare  hours  through  a  number  of  his  latter  years  to 
preparing  his  TraiU  Philosophique  de  lafaiblesse  de  V esprit  humain, 
which,  dying  in  1722,  he  left  to  be  published  posthumously  (1723). 
The  outcry  against  his  criticism  of  Descartes  and  his  Demonstratio 
had  indisposed  him  for  further  personal  strife;  but  he  was  deter- 
mined to  leave  a  completed  message.  Thus  it  came  about  that  a 
sincere  and  devoted  Catholic  bishop  "  left,  as  his  last  legacy  to  his 
fellow-men,  a  work  of  the  most  outrageous  skepticism."  ^ 

8.  Meanwhile  the  philosophy  of  Descartes,  if  less  strictly 
propitious  to  science  at  some  points  than  that  of  Gassendi,  was 
both  directly  and  indirectly  making  for  the  activity  of  reason.  In 
virtue  of  its  formal  "  spiritualism,"  it  found  access  where  any  clearly 
materialistic  doctrine  would  have  been  tabooed  ;  so  that  we  find  the 
Cartesian  ecclesiastic  K6gis  not  only  eagerly  listened  to  and  acclaimed 
at  Toulouse  in  1665,  but  offered  a  civic  pension  by  the  magistrates' 
— this  within  two  years  of  the  placing  of  Descartes's  works  on  the 
Index.  After  arousing  a  similar  enthusiasm  at  Montpellier  and  at 
Paris,  K6gis  was  silenced  by  the  Archbishop,  whereupon  he  set  him- 
self to  develop  the  Cartesian  philosophy  in  his  study.  The  result 
was  that  he  ultimately  went  beyond  his  master,  openly  rejecting  the 
idea  of  creation  out  of  nothing,^  and  finally  following  Locke  in 
rejecting  the  innate  ideas  which  Descartes  had  affirmed.*^  Another 
young  Churchman,  Desgabets,  developing  from  Descartes  and  his 
pupil  Malebranche,  combined  with  their  "  spiritist "  doctrine  much 
of  the  virtual  materialism  of  Gassendi,  arriving  at  a  kind  of  pan- 
theism, and  at  a  courageous  pantheistic  ethic,  wherein  God  is 
recognized  as  the  author  ahke  of  good  and  evil  ^ — a  doctrine  which 
we  find  even  getting  a  hearing  in  general  society,  and  noticed  in  the 
correspondence  of  Madame  de  S6vign6  in  1677.^ 

Malebranche's  treatise  De  la  Becherche  de  la  VSriU  (1674)  was 

1  Pattison  disparageg  it  as  colourless,  a  fault  he  charges  on  Jesnit  Iiatin  in  general. 
But  by  most  moderne  the  Latin  style  of  Huet  will  be  found  pure  and  pleasant. 

2  Pattison,  Esmys,  i,  299.    Cp.  Bouillier.  i.  595. 

8  Fontenelle.  Eloge  atir  Regis;  Bouillier.  Philos.  carUs.  i.  507. 

*  R^ponse  to  Huet's  Censura  vhilosophics  cartes.  1691 ;  Bouillier,  i,  515. 

«  Usage  de.  la  raison  et  de  lafoi.  1704,  liv.  i,  ptie.  i.  ch.  vii ;  Bouillier,  P- 511.    „^ ,.  ^ 

6  Bouillier.  i,  521-25.  7  Lettre  de  10  aotit,  1677.  No.  591.  6d.  Nodier. 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  FEANCE 


129 


in  fact  a  development  of  Descartes  which  on  the  one  hand  sought  to 
connect  his  doctrine  of  innate  ideas  with  his  God-idea,  and  on  the 
other   hand  headed  the  whole   system  towards  pantheism.     The 
tendency  had  arisen  before  him  in  the  congregation  of  the  Oratory, 
to  which  he  belonged,  and  in  which  the  Cartesian  philosophy  had  so 
spread  that  when,  in  1678,  the  alarmed  superiors  proposed  to  eradicate 
it,  they  were  told  by  the  members  that,  "  If  Cartesianism  is  a  plague, 
there  are  two  hundred  of  us  who  are  infected."  '    But  if  Cartesianism 
alarmed  the  official  orthodox,  Malebranche  wrought  a  deeper  disinte- 
gration of  the  faith.     In  his  old  age  his  young  disciple  De  Mairan, 
who  had  deeply  studied  Spinoza,  pressed  him  fatally  hard  on  the 
virtual  coincidence  of  his  philosophy  with  that  of  the  more  thorough- 
going pantheist ;  and  Malebranche  indignantly  repudiated  all  agree- 
ment with  "  the  miserable  Spinoza,"'  "  the  atheist," 'whose  system 
he  pronounced  "  a  frightful  and  ridiculous  chimera."'     "  Neverthe- 
less, it  was  towards  this  chimera  that  Malebranche  tended."'     On 
all  hands  the  new  development  set  up  new  strife  ;  and  Malebranche, 
who  disliked  controversy,  found  himself  embroiled  ahke  with  Jansenists 
and  Jesuits,  with  orthodox  and  with  innovating  Cartesians,  and  with 
his  own  Spinozistic  disciples.     The  Jansenist  Arnauld  attacked  his 
book  in  a  long  and  stringent  treatise,  Des  vrayes  et  des  fausses  iddes 
(1683),^  accumulating  denials  and  contradictions  with  a  cold  tenacity 
of  ratiocination  which  never  lapsed  into  passion,  and  was  all  the 
more  destructive.     For  the  Jansenists  Malebranche  was  a  danger  to 
the  faith  in  the  ratio  of  his  exaltation  of  it,  inasmuch  as  reference  of 
the  most  ordinary  beliefs  back  to  "  faith  "  left  them  no  ground  upon 
which  to  argue  up  to  faith.'     This  seems  to  have  been  a  common 
feeling  among  his  readers.     For  the  same  reason  he  made  no  appeal 
to  men  of  science.     He  would  have  no  recognition  of  secondary 
causes,  the  acceptance  of   which  he  declared  to  be  a  dangerous 
relapse  into  paganism.**    There  was  thus  no  scientific  principle  in  the 
new  doctrine  which  could  enable  it  to  solve  the  problems  or  absorb 
the  systems  of  other  schools.     Locke  was  as  Httle  moved  by  it  as 
were  the  Jansenists.     Malebranche  won  readers  everywhere  by  his 

1  Bouillier,  ii.  10.  ^  Meditations  chHtiennes,  ix,  §  13. 

8  Entretieiis  metaphysiques,  viii.  ..  *  Id.  viii.  ix.     ,    ,     ^  .         .^^+1,,  „„^«*. 

6  Bouillier.  ii.  33.  So  Kuno  Fischer :  *  In  brief.  Malebranche's  doctrine,  rightly  under- 
stood, is  Spinoza's  "  (Descartes  and  his  School,  Eng.  tr.  1890,  p.  569.    Cp.  p.  542). 

6  The  work  of  Arnauld  was  reprinted  in  1724  with  a  remarkable  Approbatimi  bj' Clayel. 
in  which  he  eulogizes  the  style  and  the  dialectic  of  Arnauld,  and  expresses  the  bope  tbat  tne 
book  may  *'gu6rir,  s'ilse  pent,  d'une  etrange  preoccupation  et  d'une  excessive  conbance. 
ceux  qui  enseignent  ou  soutiennent  comme  evident  ce  qu'il  y  a  de  plus  dangereux  pans  la 
nouvelle  philosophie  non-obstant  les  defenses  faites  par  le  feu  Roi  Louis  XIV  a  1  Uniyersite 
d' Angers  en  I'ann^e  1675  et  k  l'Universit6  de  Paris  aux  ann6es  1691  et  1704  de  le  laisser 
enseigner  ou  soutenir." 

■^  Des  vrayes  et  des  fausses  idSes,  ch.  xxviii. 

8  Recherche  de  la  Virit^,  liv.  vi,  ptie  ii,  ch.  iii. 


VOL.  II 


K 


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131 


charm  of  style  ;^  but  he  was  as  much  of  a  disturber  as  of  a  reconciler. 
The  very  controversies  which  he  set  up  made  for  disintegration  ;  and 
F^nelon  found  it  necessary  to  "  refute  "  Malebranche  as  well  as 
Spinoza,  and  did  his  censure  with  as  great  severity  as  Arnauld's.^ 
The  mere  fact  that  Malebranche  put  aside  miracles  in  the  name  of 
divine  law  was  fatal  from  the  point  of  view  of  orthodoxy. 

9.  Yet  another  philosophic  figure  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV, 
the  Jesuit  P^re  Bufifier  (166I-I737),  deserves  a  passing  notice  here 
— out  of  his  chronological  order — though  the  historians  of  philo- 
sophy have  mostly  ignored  him."  He  is  indeed  of  no  permanent 
philosophic  importance,  being  a  precursor  of  the  Scottish  school  of 
Eeid,  nourished  on  Locke,  and  somewhat  on  Descartes  ;  but  he  is 
significant  for  the  element  of  practical  rationalism  which  pervades 
his  reasoning,  and  which  recommended  him  to  Voltaire,  Eeid,  and 
Destutt  de  Tracy.  On  the  question  of  *'  primary  truths  in  theology  " 
he  declares  so  boldly  for  the  authority  of  revelation  in  all  dogmas 
which  pass  comprehension,  and  for  the  non-concern  of  theology 
with  any  process  of  rational  proof,*  that  it  is  hardly  possible  to 
suppose  him  a  believer.  On  those  principles,  Islam  has  exactly 
the  same  authority  as  Christianity.  In  his  metaphysic  "  he  rejects 
all  the  ontological  proofs  of  the  existence  of  God,  and,  among  others, 
the  proof  of  Descartes  from  infinitude :  he  maintains  that  the  idea 
of  God  is  not  innate,  and  that  it  can  be  reached  only  from  con- 
sideration of  the  order  of  nature."^  He  is  thus  as  much  of  a  force 
for  deism  as  was  his  master,  Locke  ;  and  he  outgoes  him  in  point 
of  rationalism  when  he  puts  the  primary  ethic  of  reciprocity  as  a 
universally  recognized  truth,^  where  Locke  had  helplessly  fallen  back 
on  "  the  will  of  God."  On  the  other  hand  he  censures  Descartes 
for  not  admitting  the  equal  validity  of  other  tests  with  that  of 
primary  consciousness,  thus  in  effect  putting  himself  in  line  with 
Gassendi.  For  the  rest,  his  Examen  des  prdjugis  vulgaires,  the 
most  popular  of  his  works,  is  so  full  of  practical  rationalism,  and 
declares  among  other  things  so  strongly  in  favour  of  free  discussion, 
that  its  influence  must  have  been  wholly  in  the  direction  of  free- 
thought.  "  Give  me,"  he  makes  one  of  his  disputants  say,  "  a 
nation  where  they  do  not  dispute,  do  not  contest :  it  will  be,  I  assure 

1  This  was  the  main  theme  of  the  finished  tloge  of  Fontenelle.  and  was  acknowledged 
by  Bayle,  Daguesseau,  Arnauld,  Bossuet,  Voltaire,  and  Diderot,  none  of  whom  agreed  with 
him.  Bouillier,  ii.  19.  Fontenelle  opposed  Malebranche's  philosophy  in  his  Doutes  sur  le 
sysUme  physique  des  causes  occasionelles.    Id.  p.  575.  '■*  Cp.  Bouillier.  ii,  260-61. 

^  He  is  not  mentioned  by  Ueberweg,  Lange,  or  Lewes.  His  importance  in  sesthetics, 
however,  is  recognized  by  some  moderns,  though  he  is  not  named  in  Mr.  Bosanquet's 
History  of  JEstlietic.  *  Traits  des  premieres  viriUs,  1724,  §S  521-31. 

s  Bouillier.  introd.  to  Buffier's  CEuvres  philosophiques,  1846.  p.  xiii. 

6  Bemarques  sur  lesprincipes  de  la  metaphysique  de  Locke,  passages  cited  by  Bouillier. 


you,  a  very  stupid  and  a  very  ignorant  nation."  *  Such  reasoning 
could  hardly  please  the  Jesuits,^  and  must  have  pleased  freethinkers. 
And  yet  Buffier,  like  Gassendi,  in  virtue  of  his  clerical  status  and 
his  purely  professional  orthodoxy,  escaped  all  persecution. 

While  an  evolving  Cartesianism,  modified  by  the  thought  of 
Locke  and  the  critical  evolution  of  that,  was  thus  reacting  on 
thought  in  all  directions,  the  primary  and  proper  impulse  of 
Descartes  and  Locke  was  doing  on  the  Continent  what  that  of 
Bacon  had  already  done  in  England — setting  men  on  actual 
scientific  observation  and  experiment,  and  turning  them  from 
traditionalism  of  every  kind.  The  more  religious  minds,  as 
Malebranche,  set  their  faces  almost  fanatically  against  erudition, 
thus  making  an  enemy  of  the  all-learned  Huet,^  but  on  the  other 
hand  preparing  the  way  for  the  scientific  age.  For  the  rest  we  find 
the  influence  of  Descartes  at  work  in  heresies  at  which  he  had  not 
hinted.  Finally  we  shall  see  it  taking  deep  root  in  Holland,  further- 
ing a  rationalistic  view  of  the  Bible  and  of  popular  superstitions. 

10.  Yet  another  new  departure  was  made  in  the  France  of 
Louis  XIV  by  the  scholarly  performance  of  ElCHARD  SiMON 
(1638-1712),  who  was  as  regards  the  Scriptural  texts  what  Spencer 
of  Cambridge  was  as  regards  the  culture-history  of  the  Hebrews, 
one  of  the  founders  of  modern  methodical  criticism.  It  was  as  a 
devout  Catholic  refuting  Protestants,  and  a  champion  of  the  Bible 
against  Spinoza,  that  Simon  began  his  work ;  but,  more  sincerely 
critical  than  Huet,  he  reached  views  more  akin  to  those  of  Spinoza 
than  to  those  of  the  Church.*  The  congregation  of  the  Oratory, 
where  Simon  laid  the  foundations  of  his  learning,  was  so  little 
inclined  to  his  critical  views  that  he  decided  to  leave  it ;  and  though 
persuaded  to  stay,  and  to  become  for  a  time  a  professor  of  philosophy 
at  Julli,  he  at  length  broke  with  the  Order.  Then,  from  his  native 
town  of  Dieppe,  came  his  strenuous  series  of  critical  works — 
L'histoire  critique  du  Vieux  Testament  (1678),  which  among  other 
things  decisively  impugned  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch  ; 
the  Histoire  critique  du  texte  du  Nouveau  Testament  (Kotterdam, 
1689) ;  numerous  other  volumes  of  critical  studies  on  texts,  versions, 
and  commentators ;  and  finally  a  French  translation  of  the  New 
Testament  with  notes.  His  Bibliothdque  Critique  (4  vols,  under  the 
name  of  Saint-Jore)  was  suppressed  by  an  order  in  council ;  the 
translation  was  condemned  by  Bossuet  and  the  Archbishop  of  Paris  ; 

\  (Euvres,  6d.  Bouillier.  p.  329.  2  Cp.  Bouillier,  Hist,  de  la  philos.  carUs.  ii.  391. 

»  Malebranche,  Traite  de  Morale,  liv.  ii,  ch.  10.    Cp.  Bouillier.  i,  582.  588-90 ;  ii,  23. 
•  Cp.  Weatphal,  Le*  Sources  du  Fentateuque,  1888,  i.  67  sq. 


132 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 


and  the  two  first-named  works  were  suppressed  by  the  Parlement  of 
Paris  and  attacked  by  a  host  of  orthodox  scholars  ;  but  they  were 
translated  promptly  into  Latin  and  English  ;  and  they  gave  a  new 
breadth  of  footing  to  the  deistic  argument,  though  Simon  always 
wrote  as  an  avowed  believer. 

Before  Simon,  the  Protestant  Isaac  la  Peyr^re,  the  friend  of 
La  Mothe  le  Vayer  and  Gassendi,  and  the  librarian  of  Cond6,  had 
fired  a  somewhat  startling  shot  at  the  Pentateuch  in  his  Prcsadamitcz' 
and  Systema  Theologica  ex  Pra-adamitarum  Hypothesi  (both  1655 : 
printed  in  Holland'),  for  which  he  was  imprisoned  at  Brussels,  with 
the  result  that  he  recanted  and  joined  the  Church  of  Rome,  going 
to  the  Pope  in   person  to  receive   absolution,  and  publishing  an 
Epistola  ad  Philotimum  (Frankfort,  1658),  in  which  he  professed  to 
explain   his  reasons   for  abjuring  at  once   his  Calvinism   and   his 
treatise.     It  is  clear  that  all  this  was  done  to  save  his  skin,  for 
there  is  explicit  testimony  that  he  held  firmly  by  his  Preadamite 
doctrine  to  the  end  of  his  life,  despite  the  seven  or  eight  confutations 
of  his  work  published  in  1656/     Were  it  not  for  his  constructive 
theses— especially  his  idea  that  Adam  was  a  real  person,  but  simply 
the  father  of  the  Hebrews  and  not  of  the  human  race— he  would 
deserve   to   rank   high   among    the   scientific   pioneers   of    modern 
rationalism,  for  his  negative  work  is  shrewd  and  sound.     Like  so 
many  other  early  rationalists,  collectively  accused  of  "  destroying 
without  replacing,"  he  erred  precisely  in  his  eagerness  to  build  up, 
for  his  negations  have  all  become  accepted  truths.*     As  it  is,  he 
may  be   ranked,    after   Toland,    as   a   main    founder   of   the   older 
rationalism,  developed  chiefly  in  Germany,  which  sought  to  reduce 
as  many  miracles  as  possible  to  natural  events  misunderstood.     But 
he  was  too  far  before  his  time  to  win  a  fair  hearing.     Where  Simon 
laid  a  cautious  scholarly  foundation,  Peyr^re  suddenly  challenged 
immemorial  behefs,  and  failed  accordingly. 

11.  Such  an  evolution  could  not  occur  in  France  without  affecting 
the  neighbouring  civilization  of  Holland.     We  have  seen  Dutch  Hfe 

*  Fr^adamitce,  sive  Exercitatio  super  versibus  12,  13,  14  cap.  5,  Epist.  D.  Fault  ad 
Bomanos,  Quibus  inducuntur  Primi  Homines  ante  Adamum  conditi.  The  notion  or  a 
pre-Adamite  human  race,  as  we  saw.  had  been  held  by  Bruno,    (Above,  p.  46.)      .... 

2  My  copies  of  the  PrceadamittB  and  Systema  bear  no  place-imprint,  but  simply  Anno 
Salutis  MDCLV."    Both  books  seem  to  have  been  at  once  reprinted  in  12mo. 

8  Bayle.  DictionJiaire,  art.  Peykebe.  A  correspondent  of  Bayle's  concludes  ms 
account  of  "le  Preadamite"  thus:  "Le  Pereire  6toit  le  meilleur  homme  du  monde.ie 
plus  doux,  et  qui  tranquillement  croyoit  fort  peu  de  chose."  There  is  a  satirical  accounn 
of  him  in  the  Lettres  de  Qui  Fatin.  April  5, 1658  (No.  454,  ed.  Reveill^-Parise.  1846,  m.  w^. 
cited  bv  lifliVlcs  .      ■ 

*  See  the  account  of  his  bookt)y  Mr.  Lecky.  Bationalism  in  Europe, i,W5-m.  Rejecting 
as  he  did  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  he  ranks  with  Hobbes  and  bpinoza 
among  the  pioneers  of  true  criticism.  Indeed,  as  his  book  seems  to  have  been  in  J^o-  "^ 
1645.  he  may  precede  Hobbes.  Patin  had  heard  of  Peyr^re's  FrcBadamtt<B  as  ready  lor 
printing  in  1643.    Let.  169,  ed.  cited,  i.  297. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  HOLLAND 


133 


at  the  beginning  of   the   seventeenth   century   full  of   Protestant 
fanaticism  and  sectarian  strife  ;  and  in  the  time  of  Descartes  these 
elements,   especially   on   the   Calvinist    side,    were    strong   enough 
virtually  to  drive  him  out  of  Holland  (1647)  after  nineteen  years' 
residence.'     He   had,  however,  made   disciples;    and   his   doctrine 
bore  fruit,  finding  doubtless  some  old  soil  ready.     Thus  in  1666  one 
of  his  disciples,  the  Amsterdam  physician  Louis  Meyer^  published 
a  work  entitled  Philosophia  Sacrae  Scripturae  Interpres,^  in  which, 
Lfter  formally  affirming  that  the  Scripture  is  the  infallible  Word  of 
God,  he  proceeds  to  argue  that  the  interpretation  of  the  Word  must 
be  made  by  the  human  reason,  and  accordingly  sets  aside  all  meanings 
which  are  irreconcilable  therewith,  reducing  them  to  allegories  or 
tropes.     Apart  from  this,  there  is  somewhat  strong  evidence  that  in 
Holland  in  the  second  half  of  the  century  Cartesianism  was  in  large 
part  identified  with   a  widespread  movement  of  rationalism,   of   a 
sufficiently   pronounced   kind.     Peter   von  Mastricht,  Professor   of 
Theology  at  Utrecht,  published  in  1677  a  Latin  treatise,  Novitatum 
Gartesianarum  Gangrcsna,  in  which  he  made  out  a  list  of  fifty-six 
anti-Christian  propositions  maintained  by  Cartesians.     Among  them 
are  these :  That  the  divine  essence,  also  that  of  angels,  and  that  of 
the  soul,  consists  only  in  Cogitation  ;  That  philosophy  is  not  sub- 
servient to  divinity,  and  is  no  less  certain  and  no  less  revealed ; 
That  in  things  natural,  moral,  and  practical,  and  also  in  matters  of 
faith,  the  Scripture  speaks  according  to  the  erroneous  notions  of  the 
vulgar ;  That  the  mystery  of  the  Trinity  may  be  demonstrated  by 
natural  reason  ;  That  the  first  chaos  was  able  of  itself  to  produce  all 
things  material ;  That  the  world  has  a  soul ;  and  that  it  may  be 
infinite   in   extent.'     The   theologian  was   thus  visibly  justified  in 
maintaining  that  the  "  novelties  "   of  Cartesianism   outwent  by  a 
long  way  those  of  Arminianism.'     It  had  in  fact  estabHshed  a  new 
point  of  view  ;  seeing  that  Arminius  had  claimed  for  theology  all  the 
supremacy  ever  accorded  to  it  in  the  Church. 

12.  As  Meyer  was  one  of  the  most  intimate  friends  of  Spinoza, 
being  with  him  at  death,  and  became  the  editor  of  his  posthumous 
works,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  his  treatise,  which  preceded 
Spinoza's  Tractattis  by  four  years,  influenced  the  great  Jew,  who 
speedily  eclipsed  him.'     Spinoza,  however  (1632-1677),  was  first  led 

^  Knno  Fischer,  Descartes  and  his  School,  jiv-'^i-^-       ,  ^,     ^ ^„  ^i„  ^wii 

2  Colerus  (i.e.,  Kohler),  Vie  de  Spinoza,  in  Gfrorer's  ed.  of  the  Opera,  pp.  xlvxivu 

3  Cited  by  George  Sinclar  in  pref.  to  Satan's  Invisible  World  Discovered,  1685. rep.  1871. 
I  have  been  unable  to  meet  with  a  copy  of  Mastricht's  book. 

*  "  Novitates  Cartesianee  multis  parasangas  superunt  Arminianas. 
6  Nichols.  Works  of  Arminius,  1824,  i,  257  b  (paging  partly  duplicated). 
6  Cp.  Bouillier,  i,  293-94. 


134 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY 


to  rationalize  by  his  Amsterdam  friend  and  teaclier,  Van  den  Ende, 
a  scientific  materialist,  hostile  to  all  religion;*  and  it  was  while 
under  his  influence  that  he  was  excommunicated  by  his  father's 
synagogue.  From  the  first,  apparently,  Spinoza's  thought  was 
shaped  partly  by  the  medieval  Hebrew  philosophy  ^  (which,  as  we 
have  seen,  combined  Aristotelean  and  Saracen  influences),  partly  by 
the  teaching  of  Bruno,  though  he  modified  and  corrected  that  at 
various  points.^  Later  he  was  deeply  influenced  by  Descartes,  whom 
he  specially  expounded  for  a  pupil  in  a  tractate/  Here  he  endorses 
Descartes's  doctrine  of  freewill,  which  he  was  later  to  repudiate  and 
overthrow.  But  he  drew  from  Descartes  his  retained  principle  that 
evil  is  not  a  real  existence.  In  a  much  less  degree  he  was  influenced 
by  Bacon,  whose  psychology  he  ultimately  condemned ;  but  from 
Hobbes  he  took  not  only  his  rationalistic  attitude  towards  '*  revela- 
tion," but  his  doctrine  of  ecclesiastical  subordination.*^  Finally 
evolving  his  own  conceptions,  he  produced  a  philosophic  system 
which  was  destined  to  affect  all  European  thought,  remaining  the 
while  quietly  occupied  with  the  handicraft  of  lens-grinding  by  which 
he  earned  his  livelihood.  The  Grand  Pensionary  of  the  Nether- 
lands, John  de  Witt,  seems  to  have  been  in  full  sympathy  with  the 
young  heretic,  on  whom  he  conferred  a  small  pension  before  he  had 
published  anything  save  his  Cartesian  Principia  (1663). 

The  much  more  daring  and  powerful  TractatusTheologico-Politicus 
(1670^)  was  promptly  condemned  by  a  Dutch  clerical  synod,  along 
with  Hobbes's  Leviathan,  which  it  greatly  surpassed  in  the  matter 
of  criticism  of  the  scriptural  text.  It  was  the  most  stringent  censure 
of  supernaturalism  that  had  thus  far  appeared  in  any  modern 
language ;  and  its  preface  is  an  even  more  mordant  attack  on 
popular  religion  and  clericalism  than  the  main  body  of  the  work. 
What  seems  to-day  an  odd  compromise — the  reservation  of  supra- 
rational  authority  for  revelation,  alongside  of  unqualified  claims  for 
the  freedom  of  reason ' — was  but  an  adaptation  of  the  old  scholastic 
formula  of  **  twofold  truth,"  and  was  perhaps  at  the  time  the 
possible  maximum  of  open  rationalism  in  regard  to  the  current  creed, 
since  both  Bacon  and  Locke,  as  we  have  seen,  were  fain  to  resort  to 
it.     As  revealed  in  his  letters,  Spinoza  in  almost  all  things  stood  at 

1  Colerus,  Vie  de  Spinoza,  in  GfrSrer's  ed.  of  Opera,  p.  xxv;  Martineau,  Study  of 
Spirioza,  1882.  pp.  20-22 ;  Pollock.  Spinoza,  2nd  ed.  1899.  pp.  10-14. 

2  As  set  forth  by  Joel,  Beitrcige  zur  Gesch.  der  PJiilos.,  Breslau.  1876.    See  citations  in 
Land's  note  to  his  lecture  in  Spinoza :  Four  Essays,  1882.  pp.  51-53. 

3  Land.  "In  Memory  of  Spinoza."  in  Spinoza:  Four  Essays,  pp.  57-58;  Sigwart,  as  there 
cited :  Pollock.  Spinoza,  p.  12.    Cp.  however,  Martineau,  p.  101,  note. 

*  Renati  Des  Cartes  Princip.  Philos.  more  geometrico  demanstratcB,  1663. 

5  Cp.  Martineau.  pp.  46,  57. 

6  Reprinted  in  1674,  without   place-name,  and  with  the  imprint   of   an    imagmary 
Hamburg  publisher.  7  Tractatus,  c.  15. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  HOLLAND 


135 


the  point  of  view  of  the  cultivated  rationalism  of  two  centuries  later. 
He  believed  in  a  historical  Jesus,  rejecting  the  Eesurrection  ;*  dis- 
behevedin  ghosts  and  spirits;^  rejected  miracles;'*  and  refused  to 
think  of  God  as  ever  angry;*  avowing  that  he  could  not  understand 
the  Scriptures,  and  had  been  able  to  learn  nothing  from  them  as  to 
God's  attributes.''     The  Tractatus  could  not  go  so  far ;  but  it  went 
far  enough  to  horrify  many  who  counted  themselves  latitudinarian. 
It  was  only  in  Holland  that  so  aggressive  a  criticism  of  Christian 
faith   and   practice   could   then   appear;    and   even    there    neither 
pubHsher   nor   author  dared  avow   himself.     Spinoza  even  vetoed 
a  translation   into  Dutch,  foreseeing  that  such  a  book  would  be 
placed  under  an  interdict.^     It  was  as  much  an  appeal  for  freedom 
of  thought  {libertas  philosophandi)  as  a  demonstration  of  rational 
truth  ;  and  Spinoza  dexterously  pointed  (c.  20)  to  the  social  effects 
of  the  religious  liberty  already  enjoyed  in  Amsterdam  as  a  reason 
for  carrying   liberty  further.     There   can   be  no   question   that  it 
powerfully  furthered  alike  the  deistic  and  the  Unitarian  movements 
in  England  from  the  year  of  its  appearance ;  and,  though  the  States- 
General  felt  bound  formally  to  prohibit  it  on  the  issue  of  the  second 
edition  in  1674,  its   effect  in  Holland  was  probably  as  great  as 
elsewhere :  at  least  there  seems  to  have  gone  on  there  from  this 
time  a  rapid  modification  of  the  old  orthodoxy. 

Still  more  profound,  probably,  was  the  effect  of  the  posthumous 
Ethica  (1677),  which  he  had  been  prevented  from  publishing  in  his 
lifetime,'  and  which  not  only  propounded  in  parts  an  absolute 
pantheism  (  =  atheism'),  but  dej&nitely  grounded  ethics  in  human 
nature.  If  more  were  needed  to  arouse  theological  rage,  it  was  to 
be  found  in  the  repeated  and  insistent  criticism  of  the  moral  and 
mental  perversity  of  the  defenders  of  the  faith  ^— a  position  not 
indeed  quite  consistent  with  the  primary  teaching  of  the  treatise  on 
the  subject  of  Will,  of  which  it  denies  the  entity  in  the  ordinary 
sense.  Spinoza  was  here  reverting  to  the  practical  attitude  of 
Bacon,  which,  under  a  partial  misconception,  he  had  repudiated ; 
and  he  did  not  formally  solve  the  contradiction.  His  purpose  was 
to  confute  the  ordinary  orthodox  dogma  that  unbelief  is  wilful  sin  ; 


»  Ep.  xxiv.  to  Oldenburg.  ^  Epp.  lyni.  Ix,  to  Boxel. 

8  Ep.  xxiii,  to  Oldenburg.  *  Ep.  xxiv. 

6  Ep.  xxxiv,  to  W.  van  Bleyenberg.  .  rti^«„i.„^rt 

6  Ep.  xlvii.  to  Jellis.  Feb.  1671.  .    ^  Ep.  xix,  1675.  to  P^df  nburg.         . 

8  "  Spinozism  is  atheistic,  and  has  no  valid  ground  for  retaining  the  word    God 
(Martineau.  p.  349).    This  estimate  is  systematically  made  good  by  Prpt.iu.  iu.i  oweli  ot 
Miami  University  in  his  Spinoza  and  Beligimi  (1906).     See  in  Particular  ch.  v.     The 
Bumming-up  is  that  "the  right  name  for  Spinoza's  philosophy  is  Atheistic  Monism 
(pp  339-40) 

9  Ethica,  pt.  i.  App.;  pt.  11,  md  \  pt.  v,  prop.  41.  schol.    Cp.  the  Letters,  vassim. 


136 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTUKY 


and  to  retort  the  charge  without  reconciling  it  with  the  thesis  was 
to  impair  the  philosophic  argument.'  It  was  not  on  that  score, 
however,  that  it  was  resented,  but  as  an  unpardonable  attack  on 
orthodoxy,  not  to  be  atoned  for  by  any  words  about  the  spirit  of 
Christ.'^  The  discussion  went  deep  and  far.  A  reply  to  the  Tractatus 
which  appeared  in  1674,  by  an  Utrecht  professor  (then  dead),  is 
spoken  of  by  Spinoza  with  contempt ;"  but  abler  discussion  followed, 
though  the  assailants  mostly  fell  foul  of  each  other.  Franz  Cuper 
or  Kuyper  of  Amsterdam,  who  in  1676  published  an  Arcaiia 
Atheismi  Revelata,  professedly  refuting  Spinoza's  Tractatus,  was 
charged  with  writing  in  bad  faith  and  with  being  on  Spinoza's  side 
—an  accusation  which  he  promptly  retorted  on  other  critics, 
apparently  with  justice. 

The  able  treatise  of  Prof.  E.  E.  Powell  on  Spinoza  and 
Religion  is  open  to  demur  at  one  point — its  reiterated  dictum 
that  Spinoza's  character  was  marred  by  "  lack  of  moral  courage  " 
(p.  44).  This  expression  is  later  in  a  measure  retreated  from: 
after  *'  his  habitual  attitude  of  timid  caution,"  we  have : 
"  Spinoza's  timidity,  or,  if  you  will,  his  peaceable  disposition." 
If  the  last-cited  concession  is  to  stand,  the  other  phrases  should 
be  withdrawn.  Moral  courage,  like  every  other  human  attribute, 
is  to  be  estimated  comparatively  ;  and  the  test-question  here  is  : 
Did  any  other  writer  in  Spinoza's  day  venture  further  than  he? 
Moral  courage  is  not  identical  with  the  fanaticism  which  invites 
destruction ;  fanaticism  supplies  a  motive  which  dispenses  with 
courage,  though  it  operates  as  courage  might.  But  refusal  to 
challenge  destruction  gratuitously  does  not  imply  lack  of  courage, 
though  of  course  it  may  be  thereby  motived.  A  quite  brave  man, 
it  has  been  noted,  will  quietly  shun  a  gratuitous  risk  where  one 
who  is  "  afraid  of  being  afraid  "  may  face  it.  When  all  is  said, 
Spinoza  was  one  of  the  most  daring  writers  of  his  day  ;  and  his 
ethic  made  it  no  more  a  dereliction  of  duty  for  him  to  avoid 
provoking  arrest  and  capital  punishment  than  it  is  for  either  a 
Protestant  or  a  rationalist  to  refrain  from  courting  death  by 
openly  defying  Catholic  behefs  before  a  Catholic  mob  in  Spain. 
It  is  easy  for  any  of  us  to-day  to  be  far  more  explicit  than 
Spinoza  was.  It  is  doubtful  whether  any  of  us,  if  we  had  lived 
in  his  day  and  were  capable  of  going  as  far  in  heresy,  would 

»  Tbe  solution  is,  of  course,  that  the  attitude  of  the  will  in  the  forming  of  opinion  may 
or  may  not  be  passionally  perverse,  in  the  sense  of  being  inconsistent.  To  show  that  it  is 
inconsistent  may  be  a  means  of  enlightening  it ;  and  an  aspersion  to  that  effect  may  oe 
medicinal.  Spinoza  might  truly  have  said  that  passional  perversity  was  at  lease  as 
common  on  the  orthodox  side  as  on  the  other.  In  any  case,  he  quashes  his  own  criticism 
of  Bacon.    Cp.  the  author's  essay  on  Spinoza  in  Pioneer  Humanists. 

a  Pt.  iv.  prop.  68,  schol.  »  Ep.  1 ;  2  June,  1674. 

*  Colerus,  as  cited,  p.  liv.  Cuper  appears  to  have  been  genuinely  anti-SpmozisT,  wnue 
his  opponent,  Breitburg.  or  Bredenburg,  of  Rotterdam,  was  a  Spinozist.  BoUi  were 
members  of  the  society  of  "  Collegiants,"  a  body  of  non-dogmatic  Christians,  whicn  lor 
a  time  was  broken  up  through  their  dissensions.  Mosheim,  17  Cent.  sec.  u,  pt.  u. 
ch.  yii,  §  2,  and  note. 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  HOLLAND 


137 


have  run  such  risks  as  he  did  in  publishing  the  Tractatus 
Theologico-Politicus.  For  those  who  have  lived  much  in  his 
society,  it  should  be  difficult  to  doubt  that,  if  allowed,  he  would 
have  dared  death  on  the  night  of  the  mob-murder  of  the 
De  Witts.  The  formerly  suppressed  proof  of  his  very  plain 
speaking  on  the  subject  of  prayer,  and  his  indications  of 
aversion  to  the  practice  of  grace  before  meals  (Powell,  pp.  323-25) 
show  lack  even  of  prudence  on  his  part.  Prof.  Powell  is  cer- 
tainly entitled  to  censure  those  recent  writers  who  have  wilfully 
kept  up  a  mystification  as  to  Spinoza's  reHgiosity ;  but  their 
lack  of  courage  or  candour  does  not  justify  an  imputation  of  the 
same  kind  upon  him.  That  Spinoza  was  "  no  saint  "  (Powell, 
p.  43)  is  true  in  the  remote  sense  that  he  was  not  incapable  of 
anger.  But  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  Christian  who  would 
compare  with  him  in  general  nobility  of  character.  The  propo- 
sition that  he  was  not  "in  any  sense  religious"  {id,  ih)  seems 
open  to  verbal  challenge. 

13.  The  appearance  in  1678  of  a  Dutch  treatise  "  against  all  sorts 
of  atheists," '  and  in  1681,  at  Amsterdam,  of  an  attack  in  French  on 
Spinoza's  Scriptural  criticism,^  points  to  a  movement  outside  of  the 
clerical  and  scholarly  class.  All  along,  indeed,  the  atmosphere  of 
the  Arminian  or  "  Remonstrant  "  School  in  Holland  must  have  been 
fairly  liberal.'  Already  in  1685  Locke's  friend  Le  Clerc  had  taken 
up  the  position  of  Hobbes  and  Spinoza  and  Simon  on  the  Pentateuch 
in  his  Sentiniens  de  quelques  tMologiens  de  Hollande  (translated  into 
English  and  published  in  1690  as  "  Five  Letters  Concerning  the 
Inspiration  of  the  Holy  Scriptures").*  And  although  Le  Clerc 
always  remained  something  of  a  Scripturalist,  and  refused  to  go  the 
way  of  Spinoza,  he  had  courage  enough  to  revive  an  ancient  heresy 
by  urging,  in  his  commentary  on  the  fourth  Gospel  (1701),  that  the 
Logos  "  should  be  rendered  "  Reason  "—an  idea  which  he  probably 
derived  from  the  Unitarian  Zwicker  without  reaUzing  how  far  it 
could  take  him.  His  ultimate  recantation,  on  the  subject  of  the 
authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  served  only  to  weaken  his  credit  with 
freethinkers,  and  came  too  late  to  arrest  the  intellectual  movement 
which  he  had  forwarded. 

A  rationahzing  spirit  had  now  begun  to  spread  widely  in  Holland ; 
and  within  twenty  years  of  Spinoza's  death  there  had  arisen  a  Dutch 

*  Theologiach,  Philosophisch,  en  HistoriscTi  process  voor  God,  tegen  allerley  Atfieisten. 
By  Francis  Ridder,  Rotterdam,  1678.  „    ,     ^,      _.        ^^  ... 

2  L'lmpiH^  Convaincu,  "  par  Pierre  Yvon,"  Amsterdam,  1681.  Really  by  the  Sieur  Noel 
Aubert  de  Vers6.  This  appears  to  have  been  reprinted  in  1685  under  the  title  i  Impie 
convaincu,  ou  Dissertation  contre  Spinosa,  ou  Von  refute  les  fondemens  de  son  atheisme. 

8  See  Fox  Bourne's  Life  of  Locke,  ii.  282-83.  as  to  Locke's  friendly  relations  with  the 
Remonstrants  in  1683-89.  ^     -r.     ^ 

*  See  the  summary  of  his  argument  by  Alexandre  Westphal,  Les  Sources  au  Penta- 
Uuque,  1888,  i.  78  sq. 


138 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY 


sect,  led  by  Pontiaan  van  Hattem,  a  pastor  at  Philipsland,  which 
blended  Spinozism  with  evangelicalism  in  such  a  way  as  to  incur 
the  anathema  of  the  Church.'  In  the  time  of  the  English  Civil 
War  the  fear  of  the  opponents  of  the  new  multitude  of  sects  was 
that  England  should  become  "another  Amsterdam.'"  This  very 
multiplicity  tended  to  promote  doubt ;  and  in  1713  we  find  Anthony 
Collins'  pointing  to  Holland  as  a  country  where  freedom  to  think 
has  undermined  superstition  to  a  remarkable  degree.  During  his 
stay,  in  the  previous  generation,  Locke  had  found  a  measure  of 
liberal  theology,  in  harmony  with  his  own ;  but  in  those  days  down- 
right heresy  was  still  dangerous.  Deurhoff  (d.  1717),  who  trans- 
lated Descartes  and  was  accused  of  Spinozism,  though  he  strongly 
attacked  it,'  had  at  one  time  to  fly  Holland,  though  by  his  writings 
he  founded  a  pantheistic  sect  known  as  Deurhovians  ;  and  Balthasar 
Bekker,  a  Cartesian,  persecuted  first  for  Socinianism,  incurred  so 
much  odium  by  publishing  in  1691  a  treatise  denying  the  reality  of 
witchcraft  that  he  had  to  give  up  his  office  as  a  Treacher. 

Cp.  art.  in  Biographie   Universelle,  and  Mosheim,  17  Cent, 
pt.  ii,  ch.  ii,  §  35,  and  notes  in  Eeid's  ed.     Bekker  was  not  the 
first   to   combat   demonology   on   scriptural   grounds;    Arnold 
GeuHncx,  of  Leyden,  and  the  French  Protestant  refugee  Daillon 
having  less  confidently  put  the  view  before  him,  the  latter  in 
his  Daimonologia,  1687  (trans,  in  English,  1723),  and  the  former 
in  his  system  of  ethics.     Gassendi,  as  we  saw,  had  notably 
discredited  witchcraft  a  generation  earlier ;  Keginald  Scot  had 
impugned  its  actuality  in  1584 ;  and  Wier,  stiU  earher,  in  1583. 
And  even  before  the  Keformation  the  learned  King  Christian  II 
of  Denmark  (deposed  1523)  had  vetoed  witch-burning  in  his 
dominions.     (Allen,    Hist,  de   Danemark,    French   tr.   1878,  i, 
281.)     As  Scot's  Discoverie  had  been  translated  into  Dutch  in 
1609,  Bekker  probably  had  a  lead  from  him.     Glanvill's  Blotv  at 
Modern  Sadducism  (1688),  reproduced  in  Sadducismus  Triim' 
phatus,  undertakes  to  answer  some  objections  of  the  kind  later 
urged   by  Bekker;    and  the  discussion  was  practically  inter- 
national.    Bekker's  treatise,  entitled  De  Betooverte  Wereld,  was 
translated  into  English— first  in  1695.  from  the  French,  under 
the   title    The   World  Beivitched  (only   1  vol.  published),  and 
again  in  1700  as  The  World  turned  upside  down.    In  the  French 
translation,  Le  Monde  Enchants  (4  tom.  1694),  it  had  a  great 
vogue.     A  refutation  was  published  in  English  in  An  Histoncal 
Treatise  of  Spirits,  by  J.  Beaumont,  in  1705.     It  is  noteworthy 

1  Mosheim.  Reid's  ed.  p.  836;  Martineati.  pp.  327-28.  The  first  MS.  of  t^e  treatise  of 
Spinoza.  De  Deo  et  Homine,  found  and  pubUshed  in  the  nineteenth  century,  bore  a  noie 
which  showed  it  to  have  been  used  by  a  sect  of  Christian  Spinozists.  See  Janet  s  ea.  io<o. 
p.  3.    They  altered  the  text,  putting  "  faith  "  for  "  opinion."    Id.  p.  53,  notes. 

2  Edwards,  Gavgrcsna,  as  before  cited.  ,  ^  ,  ...  „  ,  ... 
8  Diacourse  of  Freethinking,  p.  28.                                     *  Colerus.  as  cited,  p.  iviii. 


FKEETHOXIGHT  IN  HOLLAND 


139 


that  Bekker  was  included  as  one  of  "  four  modern  sages  {vier 
neuer  Welt-Weise7i) ''  with  Descartes,  Hobbes,  and  Spmoza,  m 
a  German  folio  tractate  (hostile)  of  1702. 
14.  No  greater  service  was  rendered  in  that  age  to  the  spread 
of  rational  views   than   that   embodied   in   the   great  Dictionnaire 
Eistorique  et  Critique'  of  PlEBRE  Bayle  (1647-1706),  who,  born 
in  France,  but  driven  out  by  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes, 
spent  the  best  part  of  his  life  and  did  his  main  work  at  Kotterdam. 
Persecuted  there  for  his  freethinking,  to  the  extent  of  having  to  give 
up  his  professorship,  he  yet  produced   a  virtual   encyclopedia  for 
freethinkers   in   his   incomparable  Dictionary,  baffling  hostility  by 
the  Pyrrhonian  impartiality  with  which   he  handled  all  religious 
questions.     In  his  youth,  when   sent   by  his  Protestant  father  to 
study  at  Toulouse,  he  had  been  temporarily  converted,  as  was  the 
young  Gibbon  later,  to  Catholicism;'    and  the  retrospect  of  that 
experience  seems  in  Bayle's  case,  as  in  Gibbon's,  to  have  been  a 
permanent  motive  to  practical  skepticism.'     But,  again,  in  the  one 
case  as  in  the  other,  skepticism  was  fortified  by  abundant  know- 
ledge.    Bayle  had  read  everything  and  mastered  every  controversy, 
and  was  thereby  the  better  able  to  seem  to  have  no  convictions  of 
his  own.     But  even  apart  from  the  notable  defence  of  the  character 
of  atheists  dropped  by  him  in  the  famous  Pensccs  diverses  sur  la 
Coviete  (1682),  and  in  the  Eclaircissements  in  which  he  defended  it,  it 
is  abundantly  evident  that  he  was  an  unbeliever.    The  only  alternative 
view  is  that  he  was  strictly  or  philosophically  a  skeptic,  reaching  no 
conclusions  for  himself ;  but  this  is  excluded  by  the  whole  manage- 
ment of  his  expositions.'     It  is  recorded  that  it  was  his  vehement 
description  of  himself  as  a  Protestant  "  in  the  full  force  of  the  term," 
accompanied  with  a  quotation  from  Lucretius,  that  set  the  clerical 
diplomatist  PoHgnac  upon  re-reading  the  Eoman  atheist  and  writing 
his  poem  Anti- Lucretius."    Bayle's  ostensible  Pyrrhonism  was  simply 
the  tactic  forced  on  him  by  his  conditions ;  and  it  was  the  positive 
unbelievers  who  specially  delighted  in  his  volumes.     He  laid  down 
no  cosmic  doctrines,  but  he  illuminated  all ;  and  his  air  of  repudiating 

1  First  ed.  Rotterdam.  2  vols,  folio.  1696. 

2  Albert  Gazes,  Pierre  Bayle,  sa  vie,  ses  idees,  son  influence,  son  oeuvre,  1905.  pp.  6.  7. 

8  A  movement  of  skepticism  had  probably  been  first  set  up  in  the  young  Bayle  by 
Montaigne,  who  was  one  of  his  favourite  authors  before  his  conversion  (Gazes,  p.  5). 
Montaigne,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  been  a  fanatic  in  his  youth.  Thus  three  typical 
skeptics  of  the  sixteenth,  seventeenth,  and  eighteenth  centuries  had  known  what  it  was 
to  be  Catholic  believers. 

*  Cp.  the  essay  on  The  Skevticism  of  Bayle  in  Sir  J.  F.  Stephen's  Bores  Sabbatices, 
vol.  iii.  and  the  remarks  of  Perrens.  Les  Lihertins,  pp.  331-37. 

5  Eloge  de  M.  le  Cardinal  Polionac  prefixed  to  Bougainville's  translation,  L'Antt- 
Lucrece,  1767,  i.  141.  Bayle's  quoted  words  are:  "Qui,  monsieur,  je  suis  bon  Protestant, 
et  dans  toute  la  force  du  mot ;  car  au  fond  de  mon  ame  je  protests  centre  tout  ce  qui  se 
dit  et  tout  ce  qui  se  fait." 


140 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY 


such  views  as  Spinoza's  had  the  efifecfe  rather  of  forcing  Spinozists  to 
leave  neutral  ground  than  of  rehabilitating  orthodoxy. 

On  one  theme  he  spoke  without  any  semblance  of  doubt.  Above 
all  men  who  had  yet  written  he  is  the  champion  of  toleration.^  At 
a  time  when  in  England  the  school  of  Locke  still  held  that  atheism 
must  not  be  tolerated,  he  would  accept  no  such  position,  insisting 
that  error  as  such  is  not  culpable,  and  that,  save  in  the  case  of  a 
sect  positively  inciting  to  violence  and  disorder,  all  punishment  of 
opinion  is  irrational  and  unjust.^  On  this  theme,  moved  by  the 
memory  of  his  own  life  of  exile  and  the  atrocious  persecution  of  the 
Protestants  of  France,  he  lost  his  normal  imperturbability,  as  in  his 
Letter  to  an  Abb6  (if  it  be  really  his),  entitled  Ce  que  c'est  que  la 
France  toute  catholique  sous  le  rtgne  de  Louis  le  Grand,  in  which  a 
controlled  passion  of  accusation  makes  every  sentence  bite  like  an 
acid,  leaving  a  mark  that  no  dialectic  can  efface.  But  it  was  not 
only  from  Catholicism  that  he  sufifered,  and  not  only  to  Catholics 
that  his  message  was  addressed.  One  of  his  most  malignant  enemies 
was  the  Protestant  Jurieu,  who  it  was  that  succeeded  in  having  him 
deprived  of  his  chair  of  philosophy  and  history  at  Kotterdam  (1693) 
on  the  score  of  the  freethinking  of  his  Pens&es  s«r  la  ComHe.  This 
wrong  cast  a  shadow  over  his  life,  reducing  him  to  financial  straits 
in  which  he  had  to  curtail  greatly  the  plan  of  his  Dictionary. 
Further,  it  moved  him  to  some  inconsistent  censure  of  the  political 
writings  of  French  Protestant  refugees^ — Jurieu  being  the  reputed 
author  of  a  violent  attack  on  the  rule  of  Louis  XIV,  under  the  title 
Les  Soupirs  de  la  France  esclave  qui  aspire  aprds  la  liberU  (1689)."* 
Yet  again,  the  malicious  Jurieu  induced  the  Consistory  of  Kotterdam 
to  censure  the  Dictionary  on  the  score  of  the  tone  and  tendency  of 
the  article  "  David  "  and  the  renewed  vindications  of  atheists. 

But  nothing  could  turn  Bayle  from  his  loyalty  to  reason  and 
toleration  ;  and  the  malice  of  the  bigots  could  not  deprive  him  of 
his  literary  vogue,  which  was  in  the  ratio  of  his  unparalleled 
industry.  As  a  mere  writer  he  is  admirable :  save  in  point  of 
sheer  wit,  of  which,  however,  he  has  not  a  little,  he  is  to  this  day 
as  readable  as  Voltaire.     By  force  of  unfailing  lucidity,  wisdom,  and 

1  Cp.  tbe  testimony  of  Bonet-Maury.  Histoire  de  la  lihertS  de  conncience  en  France,  1900, 
p.  55.  Besides  the  writings  above  cited,  note,  in  the  Dictionnaire,  art.  Mahomet,  §  ix  ;  art. 
CoNECTE  :  art.  SiMONiDE.  notes  H  and  G;  art.  Sponde.  note  C. 

2  Commentaire  phUoscyphique  sur  la  parabola  :  Contrains-les  d'entrer,  2e  ptie,  vi.  Cp. 
the  Critique  generate  de  V histoire  du  Calvtnisme  du  Fkre  Maimbourg,  passim. 

8  See  pref.  to  Eng.  tr.  of  Hotman's  Franco-Oallia,  1711. 

*  Rep.  at  Amsterdam,  1788.  under  the  title,  Vceux  d'un  Patriate.  .Turieu's  authorship 
is  not  certain.  Cp.  Ch.  Nodier,  Melanges  tires  d'une  petite  bibliotJi^que.  1829,  p.  357.  But 
it  is  more  likely  than  the  alternative  ascription  to  Le  Vassor.  The  book  made  such  a 
sensation  that  the  police  of  Louis  XIV  destroyed  every  copy  they  could  find ;  and  in  177*2 
the  Chancelier  Maupeou  was  said  to  have  paid  500  livres  lor  a  copy  at  auction  over  the 
Duo  d'Orl^ans. 


FEEETHOUGHT  IN  FEANCE 


141 


knowledge,  he  made  the  conquest  of  literary  Europe  ;  and  fifty  years 
after  his  death  we  find  the  Jesuit  Delamare  in  his  (anonymous) 
apologetic  treatise.  La  Foi  justifiee  de  tout  reproche  de  contradiction 
avec  la  raison  (1761),  speaking  of  him  to  the  deists  as  "  their 
theologian,  their  doctor,  their  oracle." '  He  was  indeed  no  less ; 
and  his  serene  exposure  of  the  historic  failure  of  Christianity  was 
all  the  more  deadly  as  coming  from  a  master  of  theological  history. 

15.  Meantime,  Spinoza  had  reinforced  the  critical  movement  in 
France,'' where  decline  of  belief  can   be  seen   proceeding  after  as 
before  the  definite  adoption  of  pietistic  courses  by  the  king,  under 
the  influence   of    Madame   de   Maintenon.      Abbadie,   writing   his 
Traiti^  de  la  verity  de  la  religion  chrdtienne  at  Berlin  in^^l684,  speaks 
of  an  "infinity"  of  prejudiced  deists  as  against  the  "infinity"  of 
prejudiced  believers'— evidently  thinking  of  northern  Europeans  in 
general ;  and  he  strives  hard  to  refute  both  Hobbes  and  Spinoza  on 
points  of  Biblical  criticism.     In  France  he  could  not  turn  the  tide. 
That  radical  distrust  of  religious  motives  and  illumination  which 
can  be  seen  growing  up  in  every  country  in  modern  Europe  where 
religion  led  to  war,  was  bound  to  be  strengthened  by  the  spectacle 
of  the  reformed  sensualist  harrying  heresy  in  his  own  kingdom  in 
the  intervals  of  his  wars  with  his  neighbours.     The  crowning  folly 
of  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes'  (1685),  forcing  the  flight 
from   France   of   some   three   hundred   thousand   industrious*    and 
educated  inhabitants  for  the  offence  of  Protestantism,  was  as  mad 
a  blow  to  religion  as  to  the  State.     Less  paralysing  to  economic 
life  than  the  similar  policy  of  the  Church  against  the  Moriscoes  in 
Spain,  it  is  no  less  striking  a  proof  of  the  paralysis  of  practical 
judgment  to  which  unreasoning  faith  and  systematic  ecclesiasticism 
can  lead.     Orthodoxy  in  France  was  as  ecstatic  in  its  praise  of  the 
act  as  had  been  that  of  Spain  in  the  case  of  the  expulsion  of  the 
Moriscoes.     The  deed  is  not  to  be  laid  at  the  single  door  of  the  king 
or  of  any  of  his  advisers,  male  or  female  :  the  act  which  deprived 
France  of  a  vast  host  of  her  soundest  citizens  was  applauded  by 


1   Vft     I7RR     TJ     7  • 

2  The  Trdctatus  Theologico-Politicus  had  been  translated  into  French  in  ISTSJjy  Saint- 
Glain,  a  Protestant,  who  gave  it  no  fewer  than  three  other  titles  m  succession  to  evade 
prosecution.  (Note  to  Colerus  in  Gfrorer's  ed.  of  Spinoza,  p.  xlix.)  In  a-ddition  lo  ine 
work  of  Aubert  de  Vers6.  above  mentioned,  replies  were  published  by  Simon.  ^JJe  la  motie 
(minister  of  the  Savoy  Chapel,  London),  Lami.  a  Benedictine,  and  others.  Iheir  spiriii 
may  be  divined  from  Lami's  title,  Nouvel  atheisme  renversd,  1706. 

«  Tom.  I.  §  ii.  ch.  ix  (ed.  1864.  i,  134, 177).  ^,  ,       .    .,  ^   ^.   ^.       .    .    .^ 

*  The  destruction  of  Protestant  liberties  was  not  the  work  of  the  sipej®  /fj,  ^J 
Revocation.  It  had  begun  in  detail  as  early  as  1663.  From  the  withholding  ot  courj 
favour  it  proceeded  to  subsidies  for  conversions,  and  thence  to  a  graduatea  series  oi 
invasions  of  Protestant  rights,  so  that  the  formal  Revocation  was  only  the  yioj^nt  con- 
summation of  a  process.  See  the  recital  in  Bonet-Maury.  Histoire  de  la  liberty  de  conscience 
en  France,  1900,  pp.  46-52.  ^        ^n       a      * 

^  As  to  the  loss  to  French  industry  see  Bonet-Maury,  as  cited,  p.  59,  and  reis. 


142 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY 


nearly  all  cultured  Catholicism.^  Not  merely  the  bishops,  Bossuet 
and  F^nelon'^  and  Masillon,  but  the  Jansenist  Arnauld  ;  not 
merely  the  female  devotees,  Mademoiselle  de  Scud^ry  and  Madame 
DeshouH^res,  but  Racine,  La  Bruy6re,  and  the  senile  la  Fontaine — 
all  extolled  the  senseless  deed.  The  not  over-pious  Madame  de 
S6vign6  was  dehghted  with  the  *'  dragonnades,"  declaring  that 
'  nothing  could  be  finer :  no  king  has  done  or  will  do  anything 
more  memorable";  the  still  less  mystical  Bussy,  author  of  the 
Histoire  amoureuse  des  Gaules,  was  moved  to  pious  exultation ;  and 
the  dying  Chancelier  le  Tellier,  on  signing  the  edict  of  revocation, 
repeated  the  legendary  cry  of  Simeon,  Nu7ic  dimitte  servum  tuum, 
Domine  !  To  this  pass  had  the  Catholic  creed  and  discipline  brought 
the  mind  of  France.  Only  the  men  of  affairs,  nourished  upon 
realities — the  Vaubans,  Saint  Simons,  and  Catinats — reahzed  the 
insanity  of  the  action,  which  Colbert  (d.  1683)  would  never  have 
allowed  to  come  to  birth. 

The  triumphers,  doubtless,  did  not  contemplate  the  expatriation 
of  the  myriads  of  Protestants  who  escaped  over  the  frontiers  in  the 
closing  years  of  the  century  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  the  royal 
police,  "  carrying  with  them,"  as  a  later  French  historian  writes, 
*'  our  arts,  the  secrets  of  our  manufactures,  and  their  hatred  of  the 
king."  The  Catholics,  as  deep  in  civics  as  in  science,  thought  only 
of  the  humiliation  and  subjection  of  the  heretics — doubtless  feeling 
that  they  were  getting  a  revenge  against  Protestantism  for  the  Test 
Act  and  the  atrocities  of  the  Popish  Plot  mania  in  England.  The 
blow  recoiled  on  their  country.  Within  a  generation,  their  children 
were  enduring  the  agonies  of  utter  defeat  at  the  hands  of  a  coalition 
of  Protestant  nations  every  one  of  which  had  been  strengthened 
by  the  piously  exiled  sons  of  France ;  and  in  the  midst  of  their 
mortal  struggle  the  revolted  Protestants  of  the  C^vennes  so  furiously 
assailed  from  the  rear  that  the  drain  upon  the  king's  forces  precipi- 
tated the  loss  of  their  hold  on  Germany. 

For  every  Protestant  who  crossed  the  frontiers  between  1685  and 
1700,  perhaps,  a  Catholic  neared  or  crossed  the  line  between  indiffer- 
entism  and  active  doubt.  The  steady  advance  of  science  all  the 
while  infaUibly  undermined  faith ;  and  hardly  was  the  bolt  launched 
against  the  Protestants  when  new  sapping  and  mining  was  going  on. 
FONTENELLE  (1657-1757),  whose  Conversations  on  the  Plurality  of 
Worlds  (1686)  popularized  for  the  elegant  world  the  new  cosmology, 


I  See  Duruy,  Hist,  de  la  France,  ii.  253 :  Bonet-Maury.  as  cited,  pp.  53-66. 

"  As  to  whose  aUitude  at  this  crisis  see  0.  Douen,  L' IntoUrance  de  Fenelon,  1880. 


FBEETHOUGHT  IN  FEANCE 


143 


cannot  but  have  undermined  dogmatic  faith  in  some  directions ; 
above  all  by  his  graceful  and  skilful  Histoire  des  Oracles  (also  1686), 
where  "  the  argumentation  passes  beyond  the  thesis  advanced.  All 
that  he  says  of  oracles  could  be  said  of  miracles."^  The  Jesuits 
found  the  book  essentially  '*  impious  ";  and  a  French  culture-historian 
sees  in  it  *'  the  first  attack  which  directs  the  scientific  spirit  against 
the  foundations  of  Christianity.  All  the  purely  philosophic  arguments 
with  which  religion  has  been  assailed  are  in  principle  in  the  work 
of  Fontenelle."^  In  his  abstract  thinking  he  was  no  less  radical,  and 
his  Trait&  de  la  Liberie  *  established  so  well  the  determinist  position 
that  it  was  decisively  held  by  the  majority  of  the  French  freethinkers 
who  followed.  Living  to  his  hundredth  year,  he  could  join  hands 
with  the  freethought  of  Gassendi  and  Voltaire,^  Descartes  and 
Diderot.  Yet  we  shall  find  him  later,  in  his  official  capacity  of 
censor  of  literature,  refusing  to  pass  heretical  books,  on  principles 
that  would  have  vetoed  his  own.  He  is  in  fact  a  type  of  the  free- 
thought  of  the  age  of  Louis  XIV — Epicurean  in  the  common  sense, 
unheroic,  resolute  only  to  evade  penalties,  guiltless  of  over-zeal. 
Not  in  that  age  could  men  generate  an  enthusiasm  for  truth. 

16.  Of  the  new  Epicureans,  the  most  famous  in  his  day  was 
Saint-Evremond,^  who,  exiled  from  France  for  his  politics,  main- 
tained both  in  London  and  in  Paris,  by  his  writings,  a  leadership  in 
polite  letters.  In  England  he  greatly  influenced  young  men  like 
BoUngbroke  ;  and  a  translation  (attributed  to  Dryden)  of  one  of  his 
writings  seems  to  have  given  Bishop  Butler  the  provocation  to  the 
first  and  weakest  chapter  of  his  Analogy,^  As  to  his  skepticism 
there  was  no  doubt  in  his  own  day ;  and  his  compliments  to  Christi- 
anity are  much  on  a  par  with  those  paid  later  by  the  equally  con- 
forming and  unbelieving  Shaftesbury,  whom  he  also  anticipated  in 
his  persuasive  advocacy  of  toleration.'  Eegnard,  the  dramatist, 
had  a  similar  private  repute  as  an  "Epicurean."  And  even  among 
the  nominally  orthodox  writers  of  the  time  in  France  a  subtle 
skepticism  touches  nearly  all  opinion.  La  Bruy^re  is  almost  the 
only  lay  classic  of  the  period  who  is  pronouncedly  religious  ;  and  his 
essay  on  the  freethinkers,®  against  whom  his  reasoning  is  so  forcibly 

8  fe^®°°-  ?*^*-  ^^  ^^  ^***'  frangaise,  p.  627.  2  j^  Hj^    Cp.  Demofieot.  p.  468. 

flrim,.?  •  ^U-4  T^^^^  ^"^^^^  ^°  '^^  Nouvelles  liberies  de  penser ;  and  stiU  read  in  MS.  by 
ami  nn  i°  Fontenelle  was  also  credited  with  a  heretical  letter  on  the  resurrection, 

stln^a  f«    J  ^°    ■    ^^fioite,  pointing  to  disbelief.    It  should  be  noted,  however,  that  he 
thP  hL^^^    ^^^^  ^°  ^^^  ^^•''^y'  -^^  I'existence  de  Dieu,  which  is  a  guarded  application  of 
••forHTit£^o^^^"°^®°*'  a-eainst  what  was  then  assumed  to  be  the  only  alternative— the 
lortuitous  concourse  of  atoms." 

6  B  ffir?!'^^'i®Tn?^  !?®  ^®^®  °°*  ^*  °^^-    ^^  is  *^6  "  »ain  de  Saturne"  in  Micromegas. 
8  rU   rf,;        ■     *  .  ^  ™*°  ^^°  l^v6<i  'o  ninety  can  have  been  no  great  debauchee. 

7  rn'rv!(  fT^*  °^  12ei7gi07j,  p.  172. 

8  Carnrf^l'    nti^^^^t^^^'^ *°  (^^^^^es  CJioisiesde Saint-Evremond, ed.  Gamier,  pp.  64-69. 
taracUres  (1^7).  oh.  xvi :  Les  Esprits  Forts. 


144  SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY 

feeble,  testifies  to  their  numbers  and  to  the  stress  of  debate  set  up 
by  them.  Even  he,  too,  writes  as  a  deist  against  atheists,  hardly  as 
a  believing  Christian.  If  he  were  a  believer  he  certainly  found  no 
comfort  in  his  faith  :  whatever  were  his  capacity  for  good  feehng, 
no  great  writer  of  his  age  betrays  such  bitterness  of  spirit,  such 
suffering  from  the  brutalities  of  life,  such  utter  disillusionment,  such 
unf aith  in  men.  And  a  certain  doubt  is  cast  upon  all  his  professions 
of  opinion  by  the  sombre  avowal :  "  A  man  born  a  Christian  and 
a  Frenchman  finds  himself  constrained'  in  satire  :  the  great  subjects 
are  forbidden  him :  he  takes  them  up  at  times,  and  then  turns  aside 

to  little  things,  which  he  elevates  by  his genius  and  his  style." 

M.  Lanson  remarks  that  "  we  must  not  let  ourselves  be 
abused  by  the  last  chapter  [Des  esprits  forts],  b,  collection  of 
philosophic  reflections  and  reasonings,  where  La  Bruy^re 
mingles  Plato,  Descartes,  and  Pascal  in  a  vague  Christian 
spiritualism.  This  chapter,  evidently  sincere,  but  without 
individuality,  and  containing  only  the  reflex  of  the  thoughts  of 
others,  is  not  a  conclusion  to  which  the  whole  work  conducts. 
It  marks,  on  the  contrary,  the  lack  of  conclusion  and  of  general 
views  What  is  more,  with  the  chapter  Oii  the  Sovereign,  placed 
in  the  middle  of  the  volume,  it  is  destined  to  disarm  the  tempora 
and  spiritual  powers,  to  serve  as  passport  for  the  independent 
freedom  of  observation  in  the  rest  of  the  CaraMres     (p.  5JJj. 

On  this  it  may  be  remarked  that  the  essay  in  question  is  not 
so  much  Christian  as  theistic ;  but  the  suggestion  as  to  the 
object  is  plausible.     Taine  {Essais  de  critique  et  d'histoire,  ed. 
1901)  first  remarks  (p.  11)  on  the  "  christianisme  "  of  the  essay, 
and  then  decides  (p.  12)  that  "  he  merely  exposes  m  brief^  and 
imperious  style  the  reasonings  of  the  school  of  Descartes.      it 
should  be  noted,  however,  that  in  this  essay  La  Bruy^re  does 
not  scruple  to  write  :  *'  If  all  reHgion  is  a  respectful  fear  ot  C^od, 
what  is  to  be  thought  of  those  who  dare  to  wound  him  m  liis 
most   living  image,  which   is   the   sovereign?"     (^  27  m  ed. 
Walckenaer,  p.  578.     Pascal  holds  the  same  tone.     Ki^,  par 
Madame  Perier.)     This  appears  first  in  the  fourth  edition  ;  ana 
many  other  passages  were  inserted  in  that  and  later  issues  :  tlie 
whole  is  an  inharmonious  mosaic.  ,    i     i.u  4.  fi.« 

Concerning  La  Bruy^re,  the  truth  would  seem  to  be  that  tne 
inconsequences  in  the  structure  of  his  essays  were  symptomatic 
of  variabiHty  in  his  moods  and  opinions.  Taine  and  Lanson  are 
struck  by  the  premonitions  of  the  revolution  i^/f^^^™^.^^ 
picture  of  the  peasants,  and  other  passages  ;  and  the  latter 
remarks  (p.  603)  that  "  the  points  touched  by  La  Bruy^re  are 
precisely  those  where  the  writers  of  the  next  age  undermmea 

»  "Is  embarrassed"  in  the  first  edition.     ,       ^  „.  i  i,««o«v  n  i7fi 
«  Des  ouvragea  de  I'esprU,  near  end.    §  66  in  ed.  Walckenaer,  p.  176. 


FKEETHOUGHT  IN  FEANCE 


145 


II 


the  old  order :  La  Bruy^re  is  already  philosophe  in  the  sense 
which  Voltaire  and  Diderot  gave  to  that  term."  But  we  cannot 
be  sure  that  the  plunges  into  convention  were  not  real  swervings 
of  a  vacillating  spirit.  It  is  difficult  otherwise  to  explain  his 
recorded  approbation  of  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes. 

The  Dialogues  sur  le  Qui^tisme,  published  posthumously  under 

his  name  (1699),  appear  to  be  spurious.     This  was  emphatically 

asserted  by  contemporaries  {Sentiments  critiques  sur  les  Carac- 

tdres  de  M.  de  la  Bruydre,  1701,  p.  447 ;  Apologie  de  M.  de  la 

Bruydre,  1701,  p.  357,  both  cited  by  Walckenaer)  who  on  other 

points  were  in  opposition.    Baron  Walckenaer  (Etude,  ed.  cited, 

p.  76  sq.)  pronounces  that  they  were  the  work  of  ElHes  du  Pin, 

a  doctor   of   the   Sorbonne,  and   gives   good   reasons   for   the 

attribution.     The  Abb6  d'Olivet  in  his  Histoire  de  VAcademie 

franqaise  declares  that  La  Bruy^re  only  drafted  them,  and  that 

du  Pin  edited  them  ;  but  the  internal  evidence  is  against  their 

containing  anything  of  La  Bruyere's  draught.     They  are  indeed 

so  feeble  that  no  admirer  cares  to  accept  them  as  his.     (Cp. 

note  to  Suard's  Notice  sur  la  personne  et  les  Merits  de  la  Bruydre, 

in  Didot  ed.  1865,  p.  20.)     Written  against  Madame  Guyon, 

they  were  not  worth  his  while. 

If  the  apologetics  of  Huet  and  Pascal,  Bossuet  and  F^nelon,  had 

any  influence  on  the  rationalistic  spirit,  it  was  but  in  the  direction  of 

making  it  more  circumspect,  never  of  driving  it  out.    It  is  significant 

that  whereas  in  the  year  of  the  issue   of   the  Demonstratio   the 

Duchesse  d'Orleans  could  write  that  "every  young  man  either  is 

or  affects  to  be  an  atheist,"  Le  Vassor  wrote  in  1688  :  "  People  talk 

only  of  reason,  of  good  taste,  of  force  of  miyid,  of  the  advantage  of 

those  who  can  raise  themselves  above  the  prejudices  of  education 

and  of  the  society  in  which  one  is  born.     Pyrrhonism  is  the  fashion 

in  many  things  :  men  say  that  rectitude  of  mind  consists  in  '  not 

believing  lightly'  and  in  being  'ready  to  doubt.' "^     Pascal  and 

Huet  between  them  had  only  multiplied  doubters.     On  both  lines, 

obviously,   freethought  was   the  gainer ;    and  in  a  Jesuit  treatise, 

Le  Monde  conda7nn6  par  luymesme,  published  in  1695,  the  Preface 

contre  V incredulity  des  libertins  sets  out  with  the  avowal  that  "to 

draw  the  condemnation  of  the  world  out  of  its  own  mouth,  it  is 

necessary  to  attack  first  the  incredulity  of  the  unbelievers  {lihertins), 

who  compose  the  main  part  of  it,  and  who  under  some  appearance  of 

Christianity  conceal  a  mind  either  Judaic  [read  deistic]  or  pagan." 

Such  was  France  to  a  religious  eye  at  the  height  of  the  Catholic 

triumph   over   Protestantism.     The    statement    that    the   lihertins 

1  M.  Le  Vassor,  De  la  veritable  religion,  1688,  pr6f.  Le  Vassor  speaks  in  the  same 
preiace  of  this  multitude  of  libertina  and  of  unbelievers  which  now  terrifies  us."  His 
book  seeks  to  vindicate  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  inspiration,  prophecies, 
and  miracles,  against  Spinoza,  Le  Clerc,  and  others. 

VOL.   II  T. 


146 


SEVENTEENTH  CENTUEY 


formed  the  majority  of  "  the  world  "  is  of  course  a  furious  extrava- 
gance.    But  there  must  have  been  a  good  deal  of  unbehef  to  have 
moved  a  priest  to  such  an  explosion.     And  the  unbelief  must  have 
been  as  much  a  product  of  revulsion  from  religious  savagery  as  a 
result  of  direct  critical  impulse,  for  there  was  as  yet  no  circulation  of 
positively  freethinking  literature.     For  a  time,  indeed,  there  was  a 
general  falling  away  in  French  intellectual  prestige.'  the  result,  not 
of  the  mere  "  protective  spirit  "  in  literature,  as  is  sometimes  argued, 
but  of  the  immense  diversion  of  national  energy  under  Louis  XIV  to 
militarism  ;^  and  the  freethinkers  lost  some  of  the  confidence  as  well 
as   some   of   the   competence  they  had   exhibited   in  the  days  of 
Moli^re.^     There  had  been  too  little  solid  thinking  done  to  preclude 
a  reaction  when  the  king,  led  by  Madame  de  Maintenon,  went  about 
to  atone  for  his  debaucheries  by  an  old  age  of  piety.    "  The  king  had 
been  put  in  such  fear  of  hell  that  he  believed  that  all  who  had  not 
been  instructed  by  the  Jesuits  were  damned.    To  ruin  anyone  it  was 
necessary  only  to  say,  '  He  is  a  Huguenot,  or  a  Jansenist,'  and  the 
thing  was  done."  *     In  this  state  of  things  there  spread  in  France 
the  revived  doctrine  or  temper  of  Quietism,  set  up  by  the  Spanish 
priest,   Miguel   de   Molinos    (1640-1697),   whose   Spiritual   Guide, 
pubHshed  in  Spanish  in  1675,  appeared  in  1681  in  Italian  at  Eome, 
where  he  was  a  highly  influential  confessor.     It  was  soon  translated 
into  Latin,  French,  and  Dutch.     In  1685  he  was  cited  before  the 
Inquisition ;  in  1687  the  book  was  condemned  to  be  burned,  and  he 
was  compelled  to  retract  sixty-eight  propositions  declared  to  be 
heretical ;  whereafter,  nonetheless,  he  was  imprisoned  till  his  death 
in  1696.     In  France,  whence  the  attack  on  him  had  begun,  his 
teaching  made  many  converts,  notably  Madame  Guyon.  and  may  bo 
said   to  have  created  a  measure  of   rehgious  revival.     But  when 
F^nelon  took  it  up  (1697),  modifying  the  terminology  of  MoHnos  to 
evade  the  official  condemnation,  he  was  bitterly  attacked  by  Bossuet 
as  putting  forth  doctrine  incompatible  with  Christianity  ;  the  prelates 
fought  for  two  years ;  and  finally  the  Pope  condemned  Fenelon's 
book,  whereupon  he  submitted,  limiting  his  polemic  to  attacks  on 
the  Jansenists.     Thus  the  gloomy  orthodoxy  of  the  court  and  the 
mysticism   of   the   new  school   alike   failed   to   affect   the   general 
inteUigence;   there   was   no   real   building   up   of   belief;    and  the 
forward  movement  at  length  recommenced. 

iCp.Hnet.JEfMctiana.5l.  .    .„     , ,        ^  i.  •    /-.«.*.v-  »,«  Qoi-io  and  ed.  of 

2  The  question  is  discussed  in  the  author's  Buckle  and  his  g«'/<'-!' PP/ ^^f^c'rf 
Buckle's  Introduction.   Buckle's  view,  however,  was  held  by  Huet.  Huettana,  s  <a. 

4  L?Uefo??he  Du?LU^e  d'Orl^ans.  cited  by  Rocquain.  L' Esprit  rSvolutionnaireavant 
la  revolution,  1878.  p.  3,  note. 


Chapter  XVI 


BKITISH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH 

CENTUEY 

§1 


It  appears  from  our  survey  that  the  deistic  movement,"  commonly 
assigned  to  the  eighteenth  century,  had  been  abundantly  prepared 
for  in  the  seventeenth,  which,  in  turn,  was  but  developing  ideas 
current  in  the  sixteenth.  When,  in  1696,  JoHN  TOLAND  pubHshed, 
his  Christiaiiity  Not  Mysterious,  the  sensation  it  made  was  due  not 
so  much  to  any  unheard-of  boldness  in  its  thought  as  to  the  simple 
fact  that  deistic  ideas  had  thus  found  their  way  into  print.^  So  far 
the  deistic  position  was  explicitly  represented  in  English  literature 
only  by  the  works  of  Herbert,  Hobbes,  and  Blount ;  and  of  these  only 
the  first  (who  wrote  in  Latin)  and  the  third  had  put  the  case  at  any 
length.  Against  the  deists  or  atheists  of  the  school  of  Hobbes,  and 
the  Scriptural  Unitarians  who  thought  with  Newton  and  Locke, 
there  stood  arrayed  the  great  mass  of  orthodox  intolerance  which 
clamoured  for  the  violent  suppression  of  every  sort  of  "  infidelity." 
It  was  this  feeling,  of  which  the  army  of  ignorant  rural  clergy  were 
the  spokesmen,  that  found  vent  in  the  Blasphemy  Act  of  1697.  The 
new  hterary  growth  dating  from  the  time  of  Toland  is  the  evidence 
of  the  richness  of  the  rationalistic  soil  already  created.  Thinking 
men  craved  a  new  atmosphere.  Locke's  Beasonahleness  of  Christi- 
anity is  an  unsuccessful  compromise  :  Toland's  book  begins  a  new 
propagandist  era. 

Toland's  treatise,^  heretical  as  it  was,  professed  to  be  a  defence 
of  the  faith,  and  avowedly  founded  on  Locke's  anonymous  Beason- 
ahleness of  Christianity,  its  young  author  being  on  terms  of 
acquaintance  with  the  philosopher.^  He  claimed,  in  fact,  to  take  for 
granted  "the  Divinity  of  the  New  Testament,"  and  to  "  demonstrate 
the  verity  of  divine  revelation  against  atheists  and  all  enemies  of 
revealed  reUgion,"  from  whom,  accordingly,  he  expected  to  receive 

first  h^  X?^*^^I^  noted.  Toland  was  persecuted  in  Ireland  for  his  circumspect  and  cautious 
2  v°   f '  ^A  unmolested  in  England  when  he  grew  much  more  aggressive. 

in  I7na'^  anonymous.  Second  ed.,  of  same  year,  gives  author's  name.  Another  ed. 
•^'"^'  ^  See  Dynamics  of  Religion,  p.  129. 

147 


148  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

no  quarter.  Brought  up,  as  he  declared  "  from  my  cradle  in  the 
erossest  superstition  and  idolatry."  he  had  been  divmely  led  to  make 
use  o  his  own  reason  :  and  he  assured  his  Christian  readers  of  his 
Wect  sincerity  in  "defending  the  true  religion."'  Twenty  years 
fater  h  P  i--^  P0-"°-  ^^^  ^^'^^^  ^'^  distinguished  from 
hos;  of  ratiocinative  champions  of  the  creed,  save  m  respect  that 
r«    Ls    challenging    orthodoxy    where    they    were    replying    to 

^nbeulrs      Toind    however,  lacked   alike  the  timidity  and  the 
unbelievers^    10  ^^  ,^^^^^^  ^^.^^^   ^^^^^  .^  ^.^  ^^^^^^  ^^^^^ .  ^^^, 

thougrhis  argument  was  only  a  logical  and  outspoken  extension  of 
Lock?s  positfon,  to  the  end  of  showing  tha  there  was  nothing 
™  raUonal  in  Christianity  of  Locke's  type,  it  separated  him  rom 
■•rpectbr"  society  in  England  and  Ireland  for  the  rest  o  his 
life  The  book  was  "  presented  "  by  the  Grand  Juries  of  Middlesex 
and  Dublin  • '  the  dissenters  in  Dublin  being  chiefly  active  in 
Lou^cin7it-with  or  without  knowledge  of  its  conten  s ;  Half-a- 
dozr—  appeared:  and  when  in  1698  To  and  produced 
another  entitled  Znyntor,  showing  the  infirm  foundation  of  th 
ChrsSn  canon,  there  was  again  a  speedy  crop  of  replies.  Despite 
fhe  oversights  nevitable  to  such  pioneer  work,  this  opens  rom  the 
the  °773;;  i^g  ^,^  of  documentary  criticism  of  the  New 

Nazarenus  (1718)  and   the  Panthetsticon  (1720),  he  continues  4 
lw~self  in  advance  of  his  time  in     opening  -w  wmd-^  Jo 
Ss  mind.'    The  latter  work  represents  in  particular  the  >'ifl"«°f  ° 

l;.o..,  whom  he  -fJ^J^tl^^^^^^^^ 
hldtC  wTh^dtTntTh::  "motion  is  hut  matter  under 
^cer    i^con:ideration  "-an   essentially   "  -teri^f  ^j^^^— 
deriving  from  the  pre-Socratic  Greeks,  and  incidentally  affirmed  by 
,C1^    He  was  not  exactly  an  industrious  student  -  wri    r^    u 
I  he  had  scholarly  knowledge  and  instinct,  and  several  of  his  woiks 
Vshow  close  study  of  Bayle.  ^,    ,  ..  •  •       u^\a  nnh 

^  As  regards  his  more  original  views  on  <^-*'-/"Xv  sta^d  0 
impressive  to  the  modern  reader  ;  but  theses  which  to-day  stand  0 
littl  were  in  their  own  day  important.    Thus  in  his  Hodegus  (pt. 

1  Pref.  to  2nd  ed.  pp.  vi.  viii.  xxiv.  xxyi.  -.-^ed  in  the  Lower  House  of  Convoca- 

2  As  late  as  1701  a  vote  for  its  Prosecution  was  passed  in  Dne  1.0 
♦ion     Farrar  Crit.  Hist,  of  Freethought,  p.  180. 

'^°s  mJi^^^ux.  inVamiliar  ^^fXle'^Jfe'stephe^n 'Notice  of  T ol.na  in  EnglisnT^o;;^ 
4  No  credit  for  this  is  giyen  m  f  ir  ^eshe  SteP»ien  s^^^^^    ^^  ^^^^^  ^^^^^  des  Material 

in  the Eightee^ith  Century,  i.Wl-n^^^^  kiealizes  his  subject  somewhat. 

iamus,  i.  372-76  (Eng.  t^- 1.  3'^30).    Lange  pe^^^^^  ^^^^ 

6  In  two  letters  published  along  witn  tne  neiiers 

6  laetters  to  Serena,  etc.  l^M.  pref.  ^  ^^  gg^), 

7  De  FriTwipiis  atque  Ongtmbua  (Routledge  s  i-voi.  eu.  vv 


BKITISH  FKEETHOUGHT 


149 


of  the  Tetradymus,  1720)  it  is  elaborately  argued  that  the  "  pillar  of 
fire  by  night  and  of  cloud  by  day  "  was  no  miracle,  but  the  regular 
procedure  of  guides  in  deserts,  where  night  marches  are  the  rule ; 
the  "cloud"  being  simply  the  smoke  of  the  vanguard's  fire,  which 
by  night  flared  red.  Later  criticism  decides  that  the  whole  narrative 
of  the  Exodus  is  myth.  Toland's  method,  however,  was  relatively 
so  advanced  that  it  had  not  been  abandoned  by  theological  "  ration- 
aUsts  "  a  century  later.  Of  that  movement  he  must  be  ranked  an 
energetic  pioneer  :  though  he  lacked  somewhat  the  strength  of  char- 
acter that  in  his  day  was  peculiarly  needed  to  sustain  a  freethinker. 
Much  of  his  later  life  was  spent  abroad ;  and  his  Letters  to  Serena 
(1704)  show  him  permitted  to  discourse  to  the  Queen  of  Prussia  on 
such  topics  as  the  origin  and  force  of  prejudice,  the  history  of  the 
doctrine  of  immortality,  and  the  origin  of  idolatry.  He  pays  his  corre- 
spondent the  compliment  of  treating  his  topics  with  much  learning;  and 
his  manner  of  assuming  her  own  orthodoxy  in  regard  to  revelation 
could  have  served  as  a  model  to  Gibbon.^  But,  despite  such  distin- 
guished patronage,  his  life  was  largely  passed  in  poverty,  cheerfully 
endured,^  with  only  chronic  help  from  well-to-do  sympathizers,  such 
as  Shaftesbury,  who  was  not  over-sympathetic.  When  it  is  noted 
that  down  to  1761  there  had  appeared  no  fewer  than  fifty-four 
answers  to  his  first  book,^  his  importance  as  an  intellectual  influence 
may  be  realized. 

A  certain  amount  of  evasion  was  forced  upon  Toland  by  the 
Blasphemy  Law  of  1697;  inferentially,  however,  he  was  a  thorough 
deist  until  he  became  pantheist ;  and  the  discussion  over  his  books 
showed  that  views  essentially  deistic  were  held  even  among  his 
antagonists.  One,  an  Irish  bishop,  got  into  trouble  by  setting  forth 
a  notion  of  deity  which  squared  with  that  of  Hobbes.^  The  whole 
of  our  present  subject,  indeed,  is  much  complicated  by  the  distribu- 
tion of  heretical  views  among  the  nominally  orthodox,  and  of 
orthodox  views  among  heretics. '^  Thus  the  school  of  Cud  worth, 
zealous  against  atheism,  was  less  truly  theistic  than  that  of  Blount, 

J  Letters  to  Serena,  pp.  19,  67. 

2  Sir  Henry  Craik  (cited  by  Temple  Scott,  Bohn  ed.  of  Swift's  Works,  iii.  9)  speaks  of 
Toland  as  "  a  man  of  utterly  worthless  character."  This  is  mere  malignant  abuse.  Toland 
18  described  by  Pope  in  a  note  to  the  Dunciad  (ii,  399)  as  a  spy  to  Lord  Oxford.  There 
could  hardly  be  a  worse  authority  for  such  a  charge. 

J  Gostwick,  German  Culture  and  Christianity,  1882,  p.  26. 

*  Cp.  Stephen,  as  cited,  p.  115. 

The  Christianity  of  many  writers  consisted  simply  in  expressing  deist  opinions  in 
'he  o  Id-fashioned  phraseology  "  (Stephen,  i,  91). 

^  Cp,  Punier,  Christ.  Philos.  of  Religion,  i,  289-90 ;  and  Dynamics  of  Religion,  pp.  94-98. 
Lord  Morley's  reference  to  "the  godless  deism  of  the  English  school"  (FoZtaire,  4th  ed. 
p.  69)  is  puzzling,  Cp.  Rosenkranz  (Diderot's  Leben  und  Werke,  1866.  ii.  421)  on  *'den 
ungbttlichen  Gott  der  Jesuiten  and  Jansenisten,  dies  monstrose  Zerrbild  des  alten 
Jebovah.  diesen  apotheosirten  Tyrannen,  diesen  Moloch."  The  latter  application  of  the 
term  seems  the  more  plausible. 


It 


150 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


151 


who,  following  Hobbes,  pointed  out  that  to  deny  to  God  a  continual 
personal  and  providential  control  of  human  affairs  was  to  hold  to 
atheism  under  the  name  of  theism  ;*  whereas  Cudworth,  the 
champion  of  theism  against  the  atheists,  entangled  himself  hope- 
lessly'^ in  a  theory  which  made  deity  endow  Nature  with  "  plastic" 
powers  and  leave  it  to  its  own  evolution.  The  position  was  serenely 
demohshed  by  Bayle,"'*  as  against  Le  Clerc,  who  sought  to  defend  it ; 
and  in  England  the  clerical  outcry  was  so  general  that  Cudworth 
gave  up  authorship/  Over  the  same  crux,  in  Ireland,  Bishop 
Browne  and  Bishop  Berkeley  accused  each  other  of  promoting 
atheism ;  and  Archbishop  King  was  embroiled  in  the  dispute.^  On 
the  other  hand,  the  theistic  Descartes  had  laid  down  a  "  mechanical " 
theory  of  the  universe  which  perfectly  comported  with  atheism,  and 
partly  promoted  that  way  of  thinking ;®  and  a  selection  from 
Gassendi's  ethical  writings,  translated  into  EngHsh'^  (1699),  wrought 
in  the  same  direction.  The  Church  itself  contained  Cartesians  and 
Cudworthians,  Socinians  and  deists.®  Each  group,  further,  had 
inner  differences  as  to  free-wilP  and  Providence ;  and  the  theistic 
schools  of  Newton,  Clarke,  and  Leibnitz  rejected  each  other's  philo- 
sophies as  well  as  that  of  Descartes.  Leibnitz  complained  grimly 
that  Newton  and  his  followers  had  *'  a  very  odd  opinion  concerning 
the  Work  of  God,"  making  the  universe  an  imperfect  machine,  which 
the  deity  had  frequently  to  mend ;  and  treating  space  as  an  organ 
by  which  God  perceives  things,  which  are  thus  regarded  as  not 
produced  or  maintained  by  him.^°  Newton's  principles  of  explana- 
tion, he  insisted,  were  those  of  the  materialists."  John  Hutchinson, 
a  professor  at  Cambridge,  in  his  Treatise  of  Power,  Essejitial  and 
Mechanical,  also  bitterly  assailed  Newton  as  a  deistical  and  anti- 
scriptural  sophist.'"^  Clarke,  on  the  other  hand,  declared  that  the 
philosophy   of    Leibnitz   was    "  tending  to   banish    God   from   the 


1  Macaulay's  description  of  Blount  as  an  atheist  is  therefore  doubly  unwarranted. 

2  Cp.  Dynamics  of  Religion,  pp.  94-98. 

3  Continuation  des  Penshes  Diverses d  I'occasion  de  la  ComHe de  1680,  Amsterdam. 

1705.  i.  91. 

^  War  burton,  Divine  Legatinn,  vol.  ii,  preface. 

5  Stephen.  English  Thought,  i,  114-18. 

6  This,  according  to  John  Craig,  was  Newton's  opinion.  "  The  reason  of  his  [Newton  sj 
showing  the  errors  of  Cartes's  philosophy  was  because  he  thought  it  made  on  purpose  to 
be  the  foundation  of  infidelity."  Letter  to  Conduitt.  April  7, 1727,  in  Brewster's  Mertwirs 
of  Newton,  ii.  31.5.    Clarke,  in  his  Answer  to  Butler's  Fifth  Letter,  expresses  a  similar  view. 

7  **  Three  Di.^coursen  of  Happiness,  Virtue,  and  Liberty,  Collected  from  the  Works  of  the 
Learn'd  Gassendi  by  Monsieur  Bernier.    Translated  out  of  the  French,  1699." 

«  Cp.  W.  Sichel.  Bolinghroke  and  His  Times,  1901.  i.  175. 

9  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  (i,  33)  makes  the  surprising  statement  that  a  "dogmatic  assertion 
of  free-will  became  a  mark  of  the  whole  deist  and  semi-deist  school."    On  the  contrary. 
Hobbes  and  Anthony  Collins,  not  to  speak  of  Locke,  wrote  with  uncommon  power  against 
the  conception  of  free-will,  and  had  many  disciples  on  that  head. 
*o  Letter  to  the  Princess  of  Wales,  November,  1715.  in  Brewster,  ii,  284-85. 
11  Second  Letter  to  Clarke,  par.  1. 
i'-*  Abstract  from  the  Works  of  John  Hutchinson,  1755,  pp.  149-63. 


world."  *  Alongside  of  such  internecine  strife,  it  was  not  surprising 
that  the  great  astronomer  Halley,  who  accepted  Newton's  principles 
in  physics,  was  commonly  reputed  an  atheist ;  and  that  the  free- 
thinkers pitted  his  name  in  that  connection  against  Newton's.^  As 
it  was  he  who  first  suggested^  the  idea  of  the  total  motion  of  the 
entire  solar  system  in  space— described  by  a  modern  pietist  as  "  this 
great  cosmical  truth,  the  grandest  in  astronomy  "  ^— they  were  not 
ill  justified.  It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  if  intellectual  England 
could  have  been  polled  in  1710,  under  no  restraints  from  economic, 
social,  and  legal  pressure,  some  form  of  rationahsm  inconsistent 
with  Christianity  would  have  been  found  to  be  nearly  as  common 
as  orthodoxy.  In  outlying  provinces,  in  Devon  and  Cornwall,  in 
Ulster,  in  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow,  as  well  as  in  the  metropoHs,  the 
pressure  of  deism  on  the  popular  creed  evoked  expressions  of  Arian 
and  Socinian  thought  among  the  clergy.^  It  was,  in  fact,  the 
various  restraints  under  notice  that  determined  the  outward  fortunes 
of  beUef  and  unbeHef,  and  have  substantially  determined  them  since. 
When  the  devout  Whiston  was  deposed  from  his  professorship  for 
his  Arianism,  and  the  unbelieving  Saunderson  was  put  in  his  place,^ 
and  when  Simson  was  suspended  from  his  ministerial  functions  in 
Glasgow,'  the  lesson  was  learned  that  outward  conformity  was  the 
sufficient  way  to  income.^ 

Hard  as  it  was,  however,  to  kick  against  the  pricks  of  law  and 
prejudice,  it  is  clear  that  many  in  the  upper  and  middle  classes 
privately  did  so.  The  clerical  and  the  new  popular  literature  of  the 
time  prove  this  abundantly.  In  the  Tatler  and  its  successors,^  the 
decorous  Addison  and  the  indecorous  Steele,  neither  of  them  a 
competent  thinker,  frigidly  or  furiously  asperse  the  new  tribe  of 
.  freethinkers ;  while  the  evangelically  pious  Berkeley  and  the 
extremely  unevangelical    Swift  rival   each  other  in  the  malice  of 

1  Clarke's  Answer  to  Leibnitz's  First  Letter,  end. 

2  Berkeley,  Defence  of  Freethinking  in  Mathematics,  par.  vii;  and  Stock's  Memoir  of 
Berkeley.    Cp.  Brewster,  Memoirs  of  Newton,  ii,  408. 

^  In  the  Philosophical  Transactions,  1718.  No.  355,  i.  v.  vi. 

*  Brewster.  More  Worlds  than  One,  1854,  p.  110. 

*  Lecky,  Hist,  of  England  tn  the  Eighteenth  Cent.  ed.  1892,  iii,  22-24. 

6  The  tradition  of  Saunderson's  unbelief  is  constant.  In  the  memoir  prefixed  to  his 
Elements  of  Algebra  (1740)  no  word  is  said  of  his  creed,  though  at  death  he  received  the 
sacrament. 

'  See  The  State  of  the  Process  depending  against  Mr.  John  Si7?iso?i,  Edinburgh,  1728. 
Simson  always  expressed  himself  piously,  but  had  thrown  out  such  expressions  as  Batio 
est  principiuyn  et  fundamentAim  theologies , -which  "contravened  the  Act" of  Assembly,  1717" 
(vol.  cited,  p.  316).  The  *'  process"  against  him  began  in  1714,  and  dragged  on  for  nearly 
twenty  years,  with  the  result  of  his  resigning  his  professorsliip  of  theology  at  Glasgow 
in  1729,  and  seceding  from  the  Associate  Presbytery  in  1733.  Burton,  History  of  Scotland, 
viii,  399-400. 

®  Cp.  the  pamphlet  by  "A  Presbyter  of  the  Church  of  England."  attributed  to  Bishop 
Hare,  cited  in  Dynamics  of  Beligion,  pp.  177-78.  and  by  Lecky,  iii,  25. 

^  Tatler,  Nos.  12.  111.  135 ;  Spectator,  Nos.  234.  381,  389. 599  ;  Guardian,  Nos.  3, 9,  27.  35,  39, 
55, 62. 70,  77,  83.  88, 126, 130, 169.  Most  of  the  Guardian  papers  cited  are  by  Berkeley.  They 
are  extremely  virulent ;  but  Steele's  run  them  hard. 


152 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


their  attacks  on  those  who  rejected  their  creed.  Berkeley,  a  man 
of  philosophic  genius  but  intense  prepossessions,  maintained  Chris- 
tianity on  grounds  which  are  the  negation  of  philosophy/  Swift, 
the  genius  of  neurotic  misanthropy,  who,  in  the  words  of  Macaulay, 
"  though  he  had  no  religion,  had  a  great  deal  ol  professional  spirit," ' 
fought  venomously  for  the  creed  of  salvation.  And  still  the  deists 
multiplied.  In  the  Earl  OF  SHAFTESBURY*  they  had  a  satirist 
wifch  a  finer  and  keener  weapon  than  was  wielded  by  either  Steele 
or  Addison,  and  a  much  better  temper  than  was  owned  by  Swift  or 
Berkeley.  He  did  not  venture  to  parade  his  unbelief :  to  do  so  was 
positively  dangerous ;  but  his  thrusts  at  faith  left  little  doubt  as  to 
his  theory.  He  was  at  once  dealt  with  by  the  orthodox  as  an 
enemy,  and  as  promptly  adopted  by  the  deists  as  a  champion, 
important  no  less  for  his  ability  than  for  his  rank.  Nor,  indeed,  is 
he  lacking  in  boldness  in  comparison  with  contemporary  writers. 
The  anonymous  pamphlet  entitled  The  Natural  History  of  Super- 
stition, by  the  deist  John  Trenchard,  M.P.  (1709),  does  not  venture 
on  overt  heresy.  But  Shaftesbury's  Letter  Concerning  EntJmsiasm 
(1708),  his  Essay  on  the  Freedom  of  Wit  and  Humour  (1709),  and 
his  treatise  The  Moralists  (1709),  had  need  be  anonymous  because 
of  their  essential  hostility  to  the  reigning  reUgious  ethic. 

Such  polemic  marks  a  new  stage  in  rationalistic  propaganda. 
Swift,  writing  in  1709,  angrily  proposes  to  **  prevent  the  pubHshing 
of  such  pernicious  works  as  under  pretence  of  freethinking  endeavour 
to  overthrow  those  tenets  in  religion  which  have  been  held  inviolable 
in  almost  all  ages."  *  But  his  further  protest  that  "  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity,  the  divinity  of  Christ,  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and 
even  the  truth  of  all  revelation,  are  daily  exploded  and  denied  in 
books  openly  printed,"  points  mainly  to  the  Unitarian  propaganda. 
Among  freethinkers  he  names,  in  his  Argument  Against  Abolishing 
Christianity  (1708),  Asgill,  Coward,  Toland,  and  Tindal.  But  the 
first  was  an  ultra-Christian ;  the  second  was  a  Christian  upholder 
of  the  thesis  that  spirif;  is  not  immaterial;  and  the  last,  at  that 
date,  had  published  only  his  Four  Discourses  (collected  in  1709)  and 
his  Bights  of  the  Christian  Church,  which  are  anti-clerical,  but  not 


1  Analyst,  Queries  60  and  62:  Defence  of  FreethinJiing  in  Mathematics,  §§  5,  6,  50.  Cp. 
Dynamics  of  Heligion,  pp.  141-42. 

^  Letter  in  De  Morgan's  Newton :  his  Friend  :  and  his  Niece,  1885,  p.  69. 

3  The  essays  in  the  Characteristics  (excepting  the  Inquiry  Cmicerning  Virtue  and 
Merit,  which  was  published  by  Toland.  without  permission,  in  1699)  appeared  between 
1708  and  1711,  being  collected  in  the  latter  year.  Shaftesbury  died  in  1713.  in  which  year 
appeared  his  paper  on  The  Judgment  of  Hercules. 

*  A  Project  for  the  Advancement  of  Religion.  Bohn  ed.  of  Works,  in,  44.  In  this  paper 
Swift  reveals  his  moral  standards  by  the  avowal  (p.  40)  that "  hypocrisy  is  much  more 

eligible  than  open  infidelity  and  vice  :  it  wears  the  livery  of  religion and  is  cautious  of 

giving  scandal." 


BKITISH  FKEETHOUGHT 


153 


anti-Christian.  Prof.  Henry  Dodwell,  who  about  1673  published  Two 
Letters  of  Advice,  I,  For  the  Susception  of  Holy  Orders  ;  II,  For 
Studies  Theological,  especially  such  as  are  Bational,  and  in  1706  an 
Epistolary  Discourse  Concerning  the  Soul's  Natural  Mortality,  main- 
taining the  doctrine  of  conditional  immortality,^  which  he  made 
dependent  on  baptism  in  the  apostolical  succession,  was  a  devout 
Christian  ;  and  no  writer  of  that  date  went  further.  Dodwell  is  in 
fact  blamed  by  Bishop  Burnet  for  stirring  up  fanaticism  against  lay- 
baptism  among  dissenters.^  It  would  appear  that  Swift  spoke 
mainly  from  hearsay,  and  on  the  strength  of  the  conversational 
freethinking  so  common  in  society.^  But  the  anonymous  essays  of 
Shaftesbury  which  were  issued  in  1709  might  be  the  immediate 
provocation  of  his  outbreak.* 

An  official  picture  of  the  situation  is  formally  drawn  in  A  Bepre- 
sentation  of  the  Present  State  of  Beligion,  with  regard  to  the  late 
excessive  growth  of  infidelity,  heresy,  and  profaneness,  drawn  up  by 
the  Upper  House  of  Convocation  of  the  province  of  Canterbury  in 
1711.*  This  sets  forth,  as  a  result  of  the  disorders  of  the  Eebellion, 
a  growth  of  all  manner  of  unbelief  and  profanity,  including  denial  of 
inspiration  and  the  authority  of  the  canon ;  the  likening  of  Christian 
miracles  to  heathen  fables ;  the  treating  of  all  religious  mysteries  as 
absurd  speculations  ;  Arianism  and  Socinianism  and  scoffing  at  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  ;  denial  of  natural  immortality  ;  Erastianism  ; 
mockery  of  baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper ;  decrying  of  all  priests 
as  impostors ;  the  collecting  and  reprinting  of  infidel  works ;  and 
pubHcation  of  mock  catechisms.  It  is  explained  that  all  such 
printing  has  greatly  increased  "  since  the  expiration  of  the  Act  for 
restraining  the  press  ";  and  mention  is  made  of  an  Arian  work  just 
pubHshed  to  which  the  author  has  put  his  name,  and  which  he  has 
dedicated  to  the  Convocation  itself.  This  was  the  first  volume  of 
Whiston's  Primitive  Christianity  Bevived,  the  work  of  a  devout 
eccentric,  who  had  just  before  been  deprived  of  his  professorship  at 
Cambridge  for  his  orally  avowed  heresy.    Whiston,  whose  cause  was 

^  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  {English  Thought,  i,  283)  speaks  of  Dodwell's  thesis  as  deserving 
only  "pity  or  contempt."  Cp.  Macaulay,  Student's  ed.  ii,  107-108.  But  a  doctrine  of 
conditional  immortality  had  been  explicitly  put  by  Locke  in  his  Beasonahleness  of 
Christianity,  1695,  p.  13.  Cp.  Prof.  Eraser's  Locke,  1890.  pp.  259-60,  and  Fox  Bourne's 
Life  of  Locke,  ii,  287.  The  difference  was  that  Dodwell  elaborately  gave  his  reasons, 
which,  as  Dr.  Clarke  put  it,  made  "all  good  men  sorry,  and  all  profane  men  rejoice." 

^  History  of  his  Own  Time,  ed.  1838.  p.  887. 

^  Compare  his  ironical  Argument  Against  Abolishing  Christianity,  1708. 

*  He  had,  however,  hailed  the  anonymous  Letter  Concerning  Enthusiasm  as  "very 
well  writ,"  believing  it  to  be  by  a  friend  of  his  own— (Robert  Hunter,  to  whom,  accordingly. 
It  has  since  been  mistakenly  attributed  by  various  bibliographers,  including  Barbier). 
iiUthusiasm,"  as  meaning  "popular  fanaticism."  was  of  course  as  repellent  to  a  Church- 
man as  to  the  deists. 

«  If '^^^^'^  ^  ^olio  1711.    Rep.  in  voL  xi  of  the  Harleian  Miscellany,  p.  168  sq.  (2nd  ed. 
p.  163  SQ.). 


154 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


championed,  and  whose  clerical  opponents  were  lampooned,  in  an 
indecorous  but  vigorous  sketch.  The  Tryal  of  William  Whiston, 
Clerk,  for  defaming  and  denying  Die  Holy  Trinity,  before  the  Lord 
Chief  Justice  Reason  (1712  ;  3rd  ed.  1740),  always  remained  per- 
fectly devout  in  his  Arian  orthodoxy;  but  his  and  his  friends' 
arguments  were  rather  better  fitted  to  make  deists  than  to  persuade 
Christians  ;  and  Convocation's  appeal  for  a  new  Act  "  restraining  the 
present  excessive  and  scandalous  liberty  of  printing  wicked  books  at 
home,  and  importing  the  hke  from  abroad  "  was  not  responded  to. 
There  was  no  love  lost  between  Bolingbroke  and  Shaftesbury ;  but 
the  government  in  which  the  former,  a  known  deist,  was  Secretary 
of  State,  could  hardly  undertake  to  suppress  the  works  of  the  latter. 


§  2 

Deism  had  been  thus  made  in  a  manner  fashionable  when,  in 
1713,  Anthony  Collins  (1676-1729)  began  a  new  development  by 
his  Discourse  of  Freethinking.  He  had  previously  published  a  notably 
freethinking  Essay  Concerning  the  Use  of  Beason  (1707),  albeit 
without  specific  impeachment  of  the  reigning  creed ;  carried  on 
a  discussion  with  Clarke  on  the  question  of  the  immateriality  of  the 
soul;  and  issued  treatises  entitled  Priestcraft  in  Perfection  (1709, 
deaUng  with  the  history  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles)^  and  A  Vindica- 
tion of  the  Divine  Attributes  (1710),  exposing  the  Hobbesian  theism 
of  Archbishop  King  on  lines  followed  twenty  years  later  by  Berkeley 
in  his  Minute  Philosopher.  But  none  of  these  works  aroused  such 
a  tumult  as  the  Discourse  of  Freethinking,  which  may  be  said  to 
sum  up  and  unify  the  drift  not  only  of  previous  English  freethinking, 
but  of  the  great  contribution  of  Bayle,  whose  learning  and  temper 
influence  all  English  deism  from  Shaftesbury  onwards.*  Collins's 
book,  however,  was  unique  in  its  outspokenness.  To  the  reader  of 
to-day,  indeed,  it  is  no  very  aggressive  performance  :  the  writer  was 
a  man  of  imperturbable  amenity  and  genuine  kindliness  of  nature ; 
and  his  style  is  the  completest  possible  contrast  to  that  of  the  furious 
replies  it  elicited.  It  was  to  CoUins  that  Locke  wrote,  in  1703  : 
'*  Believe  it,  my  good  friend,  to  love  truth  for  truth's  sake  is  the 

1  Dr.  E.  Synge,  of  Dublin  (afterwards  Archbishop  of  Tuam).  in  his  Beligion  Tryedby 
the  Test  of  Sober  and  Impartial  Reason,  published  in  1713,  seems  to  be  writing  before  ine 
issue  of  Collins's  book  when  he  says  (Dedication,  p.  11)  that  the  spread  of  the  disease  not 
only  of  Heterodoxy  but  of  Infidelity"  is  "too  plain  to  be  either  denied  or  dissembled. 

2  Leslie  affirms  in  his  Truth  of  ChHatianity  Demonstrated  (1711.  p.  14)  that  the  satirical 
Detectimi  of  his  Short  Method  with  the  Deifits,  to  which  the  Truth  is  a  reply,  was  by  t ne 
author  of  Priestcraft  in  Perfection ;  but.  while  the  Detection  has  some  of  Collins  s  bumour, 
it  lacks  his  amenity,  and  is  evidently  not  by  him.  „  _,__ 

8  An  English  translation  of  the  Dictionary,  ia  S  Tola,  folio,  with  many  passagta 
restored."  appeared  in  1734. 


BKITISH  FKEETHOUGHT 


155 


principal  part  of  human  perfection  in  this  world,  and  the  seed-plot  of 
all  other  virtues ;  and,  if  I  mistake  not,  you  have  as  much  of  it  as 
I  ever  met  with  in  anybody."^  The  Discourse  does  no  discredit  to 
this  uncommon  encomium,  being  a  luminous  and  learned  plea  for  the 
conditions  under  which  alone  truth  can  be  prosperously  studied,  and 
the  habits  of  mind  which  alone  can  attain  it.  Of  the  many  replies, 
the  most  notorious  is  that  of  Bentley  writing  as  Phileleutherus 
Lipsiensis,  a  performance  which,  on  the  strength  of  its  author's 
reputation  for  scholarship,  has  been  uncritically  applauded  by  not 
a  few  critics,  of  whom  some  of  the  most  eminent  do  not  appear  to 
have  read  ColHns's  treatise.^  Bentley's  is  in  reality  pre-eminent  only 
for  insolence  and  bad  faith,  the  latter  complicated  by  lapses  of  scholar- 
ship hardly  credible  on  its  author's  part. 

See  the  details  in  Dynamics  of  Beligion,  ch.  vii.  I  am  com- 
pelled to  call  attention  to  the  uncritical  verdict  given  on  this 
matter  by  the  late  Sir  Leslie  Stephen,  who  asserts  {English 
Thought,  i,  206)  that  Bentley  convicts  Collins  of  "unworthy 
shuffling  "  in  respect  of  his  claim  that  freethinking  had  "  banished 
the  devil."  Bentley  affirmed  that  this  had  been  the  work,  not  of 
the  freethinkers,  but  of  "  the  Eoyal  Society,  the  Boyles  and  the 
Newtons";  and  Sir  Leslie  comments  that  "  nothing  could  be 
more  true."  Nothing  could  be  more  untrue.  As  we  have  seen 
(above  p.  82),  Boyle  was  a  convinced  believer  in  demonology ; 
and  Newton  did  absolutely  nothing  to  disperse  it.  Glanvill, 
a  Eoyal  Society  man,  had  been  a  vehement  supporter  of  the 
belief  in  witchcraft ;  and  the  Society  as  such  never  meddled 
with  the  matter.  As  to  Collins's  claim  for  the  virtue  of  free- 
thinking,  Sir  Leslie  strangely  misses  the  point  that  Collins 
meant  by  the  word  not  unbeHef ,  but  free  inquiry.  He  could  not 
have  meant  to  say  that  Holland  was  full  of  deists.  In  Collins's 
sense  of  the  word,  the  Eoyal  Society's  work  in  general  was 
freethinking  work. 

One  mistranslation  which  appears  to  have  been  a  printer's  error, 
and  one  mis-speUing  of  a  Greek  name,  are  the  only  heads  on  which 
Bentley  confutes  his  author.  He  had,  in  fact,  neither  the  kind  of 
knowledge  nor  the  candour  that  could  fit  him  to  handle  the  problems 
raised.  It  was  Bentley's  cue  to  represent  Collins  as  an  atheist, 
though  he  was  a  very  pronounced  deist  ;^  and  in  the  first  uproar 

^  A  Collection  of  Several  Piecea  of  Mr.  John  LocTce,  1720.  p.  271. 

*  E.g.  Mark  Pattison,  who  calls  Collins's  book  of  178  pages  a  "small  tract." 

Itinorance."  Collins  writes,  "is  the  foundation  of  Atheism,  and  Freethinking  the 
cure  of  it"  {Discourse  of  Freethinking.  p.  105).  Like  Newton,  he  contemplated  only  an 
r>^f— ^^^^®  a-theism,  never  formulated  by  any  writer.  The  Philosophical  Principles  of 
Meligion,  Natural  and  Reveal d,  of  Dr.  George  Chevne  (1705,  2nd  ed.  1715),  similarly 
aeciares  (pref.  end)  that  "  if  the  modern  [i.e.  Newtonian]  philosophy  demonstrates  nothing 
M^,'  y?.'  \^  infallibly  proves  Atheism  to  be  the  most  gross  ignorance."  Thus  the  vindicator 
01    religion  "  was  writing  in  the  key  of  the  deist. 


156  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 

CoUins  thought  it  weU  to  fly  to  Holland  to  avoid  arrest/  But  deism 
was  too  general  to  permit  of  such  a  representative  being  exiled ;  and 
he  returned  to  study  quietly,  leaving  Bentley's  vituperation  and 
prevarication  unanswered,  with  the  other  attacks  made  upon  him. 
In  1715  he  published  his  brief  but  masterly  hiqmry  Concerning 
Human  Lzberty-^nonymom,  like  all  his  works-which  remains 
unsurpassed  as  a  statement  of  the  case  for  Determmism 

The  welcome  given   to   Bentley's  attack  upon  Collins  by  the 
orthodox  was  warm   in  proportion  to  their  sense  of   the  general 
inadequacy  of    the  apologetics  on  their  side.     Amid   the   common 
swarm  of   voluble  futilities   put  forth  by  Churchmen  the  strident 
vehemence  as  well  as  the  erudite  repute  of  the  old  scholar  were  fitted 
at  least  to  attract  the  attention  of  lay  readers  in  general      Most  ot 
the  contemporary  vindications  of  the  faith,  however,  were  fitted  on  y 
to  move  intelligent  men  to  new  doubt  or  mere  contempt.     A  sample 
of  the  current  defence  against  deism  is  the  treatise  of  Joseph  Smith 
on  The  Unreasonable7iess  of  Deism,  or,  the  Certainty  of  a  Divine 
Bevelation,  etc.  1720.  where  deists  in  general  are  called     the  Wicked 
and  Unhappy  men  we  have  to  deal  with  ":'  and  the  argumentation 
consists  in  alleging  that  a  good  God  must  reveal  himself,  and  that  if 
the  miracle  stories  of  the  New  Testament  had  been  false  the  Jews 
would  have  exposed  and  discarded  them.     Against  such  nugatory 
traditionaUsm,  the   criticism    of    ColUns   shone  with  the  spirit  o 
science.     Not  till  1723  did  he  pubUsh  his  next  work.  A  Discourse  of 
tlie  Grounds  and  Reasons  of  the  Christian  Religion,  a  weighty  attack 
on   the  argument  from  prophecy,  to  which  the  replies  numbered 
thirty-five  ;  on  which  followed  in  1727  his  Schema  of  Literal  Prophecy 
Considered,  a  reply  to  criticisms.     The  former  work  was  pronounced 
by  Warburton  one  of  the  most  plausible  ever  written  against  Ums- 
tianity.  and   he   might  well  say  so.     It  faced  the  argument  from 
prophecy  not  merely  with  the  skepticism  of  the  ordinary  deist  bu. 
with  that  weapon  of  critical  analysis  of  which  the  use  had  been  bnetty 
shown  by  Hobbes  and  Spinoza.     Apparently  for  the  first  time,  ne 
pointed  out  that  the  "  virgin  prophecy  "  in  Isaiah  had  a  plain  reference 
to  contemporary  and  not  to  future  events  ;  he  showed  that  tne     o 
of  Egypt "  prophecy  referred  to  the  Hebrew  past ;  and  be  revived  tie 
ancient  demonstration  of   Porphyry  that   the   Book  of   l^aniei 

1  Mr.  Temple  Scott,  in  his  Bohn  ed.of  Swift's  Works  (in.  166)  asser^^^^^^^^ 
"  frightened  Collins  into  Holland."    For  this  s^iajement  there  is  no  evide^^         ^^^^^^^  ^^ 
as  it  stands  it  is  unintelligible     The  assertion  that^^llms  had  had^o  ny 
1711  (Dr.  Conybeare,  Hist,  of  N.  T.  Crit.  R.  P.  A- 1910.  P- 38)  is  also  as,r^  y  ^^^^^  P^bli^^i"! 

a  Second  ed.  1717.    Another  writer.  William  Lyons  was  on  tne  sa  ^^    ^^.^j^  ^^^ 

The  Infallibility  of  Human  Judgment,  its  BtpnitV  and   Excellence 
A  Discourse  of  the  Necessity  of  Human  Actioiia  (1730J. 

3  Work  cited,  p.  13. 


BKITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


157 


Maccabean.  The  general  dilemma  put  by  Collins— that  either  the 
prophecies  must  be  reduced,  textually  and  otherwise,  to  non- 
prophetic  utterances,  or  Christianity  must  give  up  prophetic  claims 
— has  never  since  been  solved. 

The  deistic  movement  was  now  in  full  flood,  the  acute  Mande- 
ville'  having  issued  in  1720  his  Free  Thoughts  on  Religion,  and  in 
1723  a  freshly-expanded  edition  of  his  very  anti- evangelical  Fable  of 
the  Bees;    while  an  eccentric   ex-clergyman,  THOMAS  WOOLSTON, 
who  had  already  lost  his  fellowship  of  Sidney-Sussex  College,  Cam- 
bridge, for  vagaries  of  doctrine  and  action,  contributed  in   1726-28 
his  freshly  reasoned  but   heedlessly  ribald  Discourses  on  Miracles. 
Voltaire,  who  was  in  England  in  1728,  tells  that  thirty  thousand 
copies  were   sold;^    while   sixty  pamphlets  were  written  in  opposi- 
tion.    Woolston's   were  indeed   well    fitted    to   arouse   wrath   and 
rejoinder.     The   dialectic   against  the  argument  from  miracles  in 
general,    and    the    irrelevance   or    nuUity    of    certain    miracles   in 
particular,  is  really  cogent,  and  anticipates  at  points  the  thought 
of  the  nineteenth   century.     But  Woolston  was  of  the  tribe  who 
can    argue  no  issue   without    jesting,    and   who   stamp   levity   on 
every  cause  by  force  of  innate  whimsicaUty.     Thus   he  could  best 
sway  the  light-hearted  when  his  cause  called  for  the  winning- oyer 
of  the  earnest.    Arguments  that  might  have  been  made  convincing 
were  made   to  pass  as  banter,  and  serious   spirits  were  repelled. 
It  was   during  this   debate   that    CONYEKS    MiDDLETON,   Fellow 
of    Trinity    College,  Cambridge,   produced   his   Letter  from  Rome 
(1729),  wherein  the  part  of  paganism  in  Christianity  is  so  set  forth 
as  to  carry  inference  further  than  the  argument  ostensibly  goes.     In 
that  year  the  heads  of  Oxford  University  pubUcly  lamented   the 
spread  of  open  deism  among  the  students;  and  the  proclamation 
did  nothing  to  check  the  contagion.     In  Fogg's  Weekly  Journal  of 
July  4,  1730,  it  is  announced  that  "  one  of  the  principal  colleges  in 
Oxford  has  of  late  been  infested  with  deists ;  and  that  three  deistical 
students   have   been  expelled;    and  a  fourth   has   had   his  degree 
deferred  two  years,  during  which  he  is  to  be  closely  confined  in 
college ;  and,  among  other  things,  is  to  translate  Leslie's  Short  and 

*  As  to  whose  positions  see  a  paper  in  the  writer's  Pioneer  Humanists,  1907. 

«  There  were  six  separate  Discourses.  Voltaire  speaks  of  three  editions  couv  sur 
coup  of  ten  thousand  each  "  {Lettre  sur  les  auteurs  Anglais— in  (Euvres,  ed^79-2.  Ixviii, 
359).  This  seems  extremely  unlikely  as  to  any  one  Discourse ;  and  even  5.000  copies  of 
each  Discourse  is  a  hardly  credible  sale,  though  the  writer  of  the  sketch  of  nis  life  (1733) 
says  that  "  the  sale  of  Mr.  Woolston's  works  was  very  great."  In  any  case,  Woolston  s 
Discourses  are  now  seldomer  met  with  than  Collins's  Discourse  of  Freethinkmg.  Alberti 
(Brief e  hetreffend  den  Zustand  der  Religion  in  Gross-Brittannien)  wrote  in  1752  th&t  the 
Discourses  were  even  in  that  day  somewhat  rare,  and  seldom  found  together.  Many 
copies  were  probably  destroyed  by  the  orthodox,  and  many  would  doubtless  be  thrown 
away,  as  tracts  so  often  are. 


158 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


Easy  Method  with  the  Deists." '  It  is  not  hard  to  divine  the  effect 
of  such  exegetic  methods.  In  1731,  the  author  of  an  apologetic 
pamphlet  in  reply  to  Woolston  laments  that  even  at  the  universities 
young  men  "  too  often  "  become  tainted  with  "  infidelity";  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  directing  his  battery  against  those  who  "  causelessly 
profess  to  build  their  skeptical  notions  "  on  the  writings  of  Locke, 
he  complains  of  Dr.  Holdsworth  and  other  academic  polemists  who 
had  sought  to  rob  orthodoxy  of  the  credit  of  such  a  champion  as 
Locke  by  "consigning  him  over  to  that  class  of  freethinkers  and 
skeptics  to  which  he  was  an  adversary."  * 

With  the  most  famous  work  of  MATTHEW  TiNDAL,'  Christianity 
as  Old  as  Creation  (1730),  the  excitement  seems  to  have  reached 
high-water  mark.  Here  was  vivacity  without  flippancy,  and  argu- 
ment without  irrelevant  mirth  ;  and  the  work  elicited  from  first  to 
last  over  a  hundred  and  fifty  repHes,  at  home  and  abroad.  Tindal's 
thesis  is  that  the  idea  of  a  good  God  involved  that  of  a  simple, 
perfect,  and  universal  rehgion,  which  must  always  have  existed 
among  mankind,  and  must  have  essentially  consisted  in  moral 
conduct.  Christianity,  insofar  as  it  is  true,  must  therefore  be  a 
statement  of  this  primordial  religion  ;  and  moral  reason  must  be 
the  test,  not  tradition  or  Scripture.  One  of  the  first  repHes  was  the 
Vindication  of  Scripture  by  Waterland,  to  which  Middleton  promptly 
offered  a  biting  retort  in  a  Letter  to  Dr.  Waterland  (1731)  that  serves 
to  show  the  slightness  of  its  author's  faith.  After  demolishing 
Waterland's  case  as  calculated  rather  to  arouse  than  to  allay 
skepticism,  he  undertakes  to  offer  a  better  reply  of  his  own.  It 
is  to  the  simple  effect  that  some  religion  is  necessary  to  mankmd 
in  modern  as  in  ancient  times;  that  Christianity^ meets  the  need 
very  well ;  and  that  to  set  up  reason  in  its  place  is  "  impracticable  " 
and  "  the  attempt  therefore  foolish  and  irrational."  in  addition  to 
being  "  criminal  and  immoral,"  when  politically  considered.'  Such 
legalist  criticism,  if  seriously  meant,  was  hardly  Hkely  to  discredit 
Tindal's  book.  Its  directness  and  simplicity  of  appeal  to  what  passed 
for  theistic  common-sense  were  indeed  fitted  to  give  it  the  widest 
audience  yet  won  by  any  deist ;  and  its  anti-clericalism  would  carry 
it  far  among  his  fellow  Whigs  to  begin  with.'    One  tract  of  the 

1  Tverman's  Life  of  Wesley,  ed.  1871,  i.  65-66.        2  The  Ivfidel  Cmiyicted,  1731.  PP.  33,  62. 

3  TrnS^?653-1733)  was  the  so^  of  a  clergyman,  and  in  .1678  was  elected  a  Fellow  of  All 
SouJoxford  From  1685  to  1688  he  was  a  Roman  Catholic  Under  William  III  he  wrote 
tWe  works  on  points  of  political  freedom-one,  1698.  on  The  Liberty  of  *J«  ^7««-  .f^f 

5  Tindal  (Voltaire  tells)  regarded  Pope  as  devoid  ol  genius  and  imagination,  auu  & 
trebly  earned  his  place  in  the  Dunciad. 


BEITISH  FKEETHOUGHT 


159 


period,  dedicated  to  the  Queen  Eegent,  complains  that  "  the  present 
raging  infidehty  threatens  an  universal  infection,"  and  that  it  is  not 
confined  to  the  capital,  but  "  is  disseminated  even  to  the  confines  of 
your  kingdom."  ^  Tindal,  like  Collins,  wrote  anonymously,  and  so 
escaped  prosecution,  dying  in  1733,  when  the  second  part  of  his 
book,  left  ready  for  pubHcation,  was  deliberately  destroyed  by  Bishop 
Gibson,  into  whose  hands  it  came.  In  1736  he  and  Shaftesbury  are 
described  by  an  orthodox  apologist  as  the  "  two  oracles  of  deism."  ^ 

Woolston,  who  put  his  name  to  his  books,  after  being  arrested 
in  May,  1728,  and  released  on  bail,  was  prosecuted  in  1729  on  the 
charge  of  blasphemy,  in  that  he  had  derided  the  gospel  miracles 
and  represented  Jesus  alternately  as  an  impostor,  a  sorcerer,  and  a 
magician.  His  friendly  counsel  ingeniously  argued  that  Woolston 
had  aimed  at  safeguarding  Christianity  by  returning  to  the  allegorical 
method  of  the  early  Fathers ;  and  that  he  had  shown  his  reverence 
for  Jesus  and  religion  by  many  specific  expressions ;  but  the  jury 
took  a  simpler  view,  and,  without  leaving  the  court,  found  Woolston 
guilty.  He  was  sentenced  to  pay  a  fine  of  £100,  to  suffer  a  year's 
imprisonment,  and  either  to  find  surety  for  his  future  good  conduct 
or  pay  or  give  sureties  for  £2,000.^  He  is  commonly  said  to  have 
paid  the  penalty  of  imprisonment  for  the  rest  of  his  life  (d.  1733). 
being  unable  to  pay  the  fine  of  £100 ;  but  Voltaire  positively  asserts 
that  "  nothing  is  more  false  "  than  the  statement  that  he  died  in 
prison ;  adding :  "  Several  of  my  friends  have  seen  him  in  his  house : 
he  died  there,  at  liberty."  ^  The  solution  of  the  conflict  seems  to  be 
that  he  lived  in  his  own  house  "  in  the  rules  of  "  the  King's-  Bench 
Prison — that  is,  in  the  precincts,  and  under  technical  supervision.^ 
In  any  case,  he  was  sentenced ;  and  the  punishment  was  the  measure 
of  the  anger  felt  at  the  continuous  advance  of  deistic  opinions,  or  at 
least  against  hostile  criticism  of  the  Scriptures. 


§3 

Unitarianism,  formerly  a  hated  heresy,  was  now  in  comparison 
leniently  treated,  because  of  its  deference  to  Scriptural  authority, 

2  i,^.^y^an's  Faith "By  a  Freethinker  and  a  Christian,"  1732. 

8  f  L  ^f'^-^^^  of  Rev.  Ehsha  Smith's  Cure  of  Deism,  1st  ed.  1736 ;  3rd  ed.  1740. 
nr,  o^Qi     -P^o  P^^o^T*?^*''*^  historiqne  sur  les  ecrits  de  Woolston,  sa  condemjiation,  etc. 

4  r  ,7  ?^  Salchi.  Lettres  sur  le  Deisme,  1759,  p.  67  sq. 

snnf  irf  w^  ^I'T  ,  <i^teurs  Anglais,  as  cited.  Voltaire  tells  that,  when  a  she-bigot  one  day 
Anotvrovo?  ^  ^^  ^^^96-  l^e  calmly  remarked  :  "  It  was  so  that  the  Jews  treated  your  God." 
to  hn v!  o!.  ^^^  '"f ^^?  ^^^®  ^  carefully-improved  version  of  the  foregoing.  A  woman  is  said 
asking  >.il«  ^^^}  ^^  ^  scoundrel,  and  asked  him  why  he  was  not  yet  hanged.  On  his 
WW  Ji^.il^K^^^^  ^°l  ^"^^  ^"  accost,  she  replied  :  "You  have  writ  against  my  Saviour, 
whn  r^jJi  vi  ^®°°^e  o;  my  poor  sinful  soul  if  it  was  not  for  my  dear  Saviour— my  Saviour 
of  his  ooiii^f  J"^  •  kicked  sinners  as  I  am."  Life  of  Mr.  WooUt(m,  prefixed  to  a  reprint 
6  T  if     -.^^f^  ^^^courses.  1733.  p.  27.    Cp.  Salchi,  p.  78. 

5  Life  cited.Ipp.  22.  26.  29. 


IGO  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 

Where  the  deists  rejected  all  revelation,  Unitarianism  held  by  the 
Bible,  calling  only  for  a  revision  of  the  central  Christian  dogma.     It 
had  indeed  gained  much  theological  ground  in  the  past  quarter  of  a 
century.     Nothing  is  more  instructive  in  the  culture-history  of  the 
period  than  the  rapidity  with  which  the  Presbyterian  succession  of 
clergy  passed  from   violent   Calvinism,   by   way   of   '*  Baxterian " 
Arminianism,  to  Arianism.  and  thence  in  many  cases  to  Unitarianism. 
First  they  virtually  adopted  the  creed  of  the  detested  Laud,  whom 
their  fathers  had  hated  for  it ;  then  they  passed  step  by  step  to  a 
heresy  for  which  their  fathers  had  slain  men.     A  closely  similar 
process  took  place  in  Geneva,  where  Servetus  after  death  triumphed 
over  his  slayer.'     In  1691,  after  a  generation  of  common  suffering, 
a  precarious  union  was  effected  between  the  EngUsh  Presbyterians, 
now   mostly  semi-Arminians.  and   the   Independents,  still   mostly 
Calvinists  :  but  in  1694  it  was  dissolved.'     Thereafter  the  former 
body,  largely  endowed  by  the  will  of  Lady  Hewley  in  1710,  became 
as  regards  its  Trust  Deeds  the  freest  of  all  the  Enghsh  sects  in 
matters  of  doctrine.'     The  recognition  of  past  changes  had  made 
their  clergy  chary  of  a  rigid  subscription.     Naturally  the  movement 
did  not  gain  in  popularity  as  it  fell  away  from  fanaticism  ;  but  the 
decline  of  Nonconformity  in  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century 
was  common  to  all   the   sects,  and   did   not   specially   affect   the 
Presbyterians.    Of  the  many  "  free  "  churches  established  in  England 
and  Wales  after  the  Act  of  Toleration  (1689),  about  half  were  extinct 
in  1715  ;'  and  of  the  Presbyterian  churches  the  number  in  Yorkshire 
alone  fell  from  fifty-nine  in  1715  to  a  little  over  forty  in  1730.^ 
Economic  causes  were  probably  the  main  ones.     The  State-endowed 
parish  priest  had  an  enduring  advantage  over  his  rival.     But  the 
Hewley  endowment'  gave  a  certain  economic  basis  to  the  Presby- 
terians ;  and  the  concern  for  scholarship  which  had  always  marked 
their  body  kept  them  more  open  to  intellectual  influences  than  the 
ostensibly  more  free-minded  and  certainly  more  democratic  sectaries 
of  the  Independent  and  Baptist  bodies.^ 

The  result  was  that,  with  free  Trust  Deeds,  the  Presbyterians 

1  An  HiHtorical  Defence  of  the  Trustees  of  Lady  Hewley' 8  Foundations,  by  tbe  Rev. 
Tnlnh  Hnnter  1834  DP17  35:  The  History,  Optyiions,  and  present  legal  vositimx  of  ih^ 
E'XhFrXtlnans^id^^^  pp.'  18.  29 ;  SkeaTs.  msiory  of  the  Free  Churches  of  England, 

"^•^'Huntfr.'as  cited,  p.  17  :  History  of  the  PresbyteTtans.f^n  cited,  p.  19;  Fletcher. fiutori/ 
of  Independency,  1862.  iv,  266-67.  ;  ^^^\|^;  P^'  f4_g- 

6  ikeate  (rp''239?40)  sums  up  that  while  the  Baptists  had  probably  "never  been  entirely 
free  from  thrtaint"  of  Unitarianism,  the  Particular  Baptists  and  the  Congregationalists 
wl?e  sa^ed  from  it  by  their  lack  of  men  of  "eminently  speculative  mmd  ;  wbile  tbe 
PrIsbytoHans  "  were  menrfor  the  most  part,  of  larger  reading  than  other  Nonconformists. 
;il  the  w?fting8  of  Thiston  and  Clarke  had  found  their  way  among  them."  But  the 
tendency  existed  before  Whiston  and  Clarke. 


BKITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


161 


openly  exhibited  a  tendency  which  was  latent  in  all  the  other 
churches.  In  1719,  at  a  special  assembly  of  Presbyterian  ministers 
at  Salters'  Hall,  it  was  decided  by  a  majority  of  73  to  69  that 
subscription  to  the  orthodox  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  should  no 
longer  be  demanded  of  candidates  for  the  ministry.^  Of  the  73, 
the  majority  professed  to  be  themselves  orthodox  ;  but  there  was 
no  question  that  antitrinitarian  opinions  had  become  common, 
especially  in  Devonshire,  where  the  heresy  case  of  Mr.  Peirce  of 
Exeter  had  brought  the  matter  to  a  crisis.^  From  this  date  "  Arian  " 
opinions  spread  more  rapidly  in  the  dwindling  denomination,  shading 
yet  further  into  Unitarianism,  step  for  step  with  the  deistic  move- 
ment in  the  Church.  "  In  less  than  half  a  century  the  doctrines  of 
the  great  founders  of  Presbyterianism  could  scarcely  be  heard  from 
any  Presbyterian  pulpit  in  England."^  ''In  the  English  Presby- 
terian ministry  the  process  was  from  Arian  opinions  to  those  called 

Unitarian by  a  gradual  sliding,"  even  as  the  transition  had  been 

made  from  Calvinism  to  Arminianism  in  the  previous  century/ 

Presbyterianism  having  thus  come  pretty  much  into  line  with 
AngHcanism  on  the  old  question  of  predestination,  while  still 
holding  fast  by  Scriptural  standards  as  against  the  deists,  the  old 
stress  of  Anglican  dislike  had  slackened,  despite  the  rise  of  the  new 
heretical  element.  Unitarian  arguments  were  now  forthcoming  from 
quarters  not  associated  with  dissent,  as  in  the  case  of  THOMAS 
Chubb's  first  treatise,  The  Supremactj  of  the  Father  Asserted  (1715), 
courteously  dedicated  "  To  the  Eeverend  the  Clergy,  and  in  particular 
to  the  Right  Reverend  Gilbert  Lord  Bishop  of  Sarum,  our  vigilant 
and  laborious  Diocesan."  Chubb  (1679-1747)  had  been  trained  to 
glove-making,  and,  as  his  opponents  took  care  to  record,  acted  also 
as  a  tallow-chandler;®  and  the  good  hterary  quality  of  his  work 
made  some  sensation  in  an  England  which  had  not  learned  to  think 
respectfully  of  Bunyan.  Chubb's  impulse  to  write  had  come  from 
the  perusal  of  Whiston's  Primitive  Christianity  Bevived,  in  1711, 
and  that  single-minded  Arian  pubHshed  his  book  for  him. 

The  Unitarians  would  naturally  repudiate  all  connection  with 
such  a  performance  as  A  Sober  Beply  to  Mr.  -  Biggs' s  Merry 
Arguments  from  the  Light  of  Nature  for  the  Tritheistic  Doctrine 
of  the  Trinity,  which  was  condemned  by  the  House  of  Lords  on 

a  g*f*on/,  cited,  p.  22  ;  Hunter,  pp.  44-45;  Skeats,  pp.  243-44. 

«  A«  sf^T^^-i^^^'  ?.^^  ^<'-  '  Skeats.  p.  248.  ^  Hunter,  p.  50. 

i)rai<,A  n.f  It  ,?u  ®  Stephen  has  observed  {English  Thought,  1. 164).  Chubb  "deserves  the 
^livAH  o  „i  ,  "V?i^°?-  ,  Having  a  sufficiency  of  means  for  himself,  but  not  more,  he 
withmif  o  J^^  life,  judging  it  greatly  improper  to  introduce  a  family  into  the  world 
obsflrvao  i?!!"^^^®*^^  °^  maintaining  them."  The  proverb  as  to  mouths  and  meat,  he  drily 
to  Posth\^^xcTwo?kl  1748?^  p!w^/'  ^''P^"^^^^-    ^'^^^  Author's  Account  of  Himself,  pref. 


VOL.  11 


M 


162 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


BKITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


163 


February  12,  1720,  to  be  burnt,  as  having  in  a  daring,  impious 
manner,  ridiculed  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  and  all  revealed 
religion."  Its  author,  Joseph  Hall,  a  serjeant-at-arms  to  the 
King,  seems  to  have  undergone  no  punishment,  and  more  decorous 
antitrinitarians  received  public  countenance.  Thus  the  Unitarian 
Edward  Elwall,^  who  had  published  a  book  called  A  True  Testimony 
for  God  and  his  Sacred  Law  (1724),  for  which  he  was  prosecuted  at 
Stafford  in  1726,  was  allowed  by  the  judge  to  argue  his  cause  fully, 
and  was  unconditionally  acquitted,  to  the  displeasure  of  the  clergy. 

Anti-scriptural  writers  could  not  hope  for  such  toleration,  being 
doubly  odious  to  the  Church.  Berkeley,  in  1721,  had  complained 
bitterly^  of  the  general  indifference  to  religion,  which  his  writings 
had  done  nothing  to  alter ;  and  in  1736  he  angrily  demanded  that 
blasphemy  should  be  punished  like  high  treason.^  His  Minute 
Philosopher  (1732)  betrays  throughout  his  angry  consciousness  of 
the  vogue  of  freethinking  after  twenty  years  of  resistance  from  his 
profession ;  and  that  performance  is  singularly  ill  fitted  to  alter  the 
opinions  of  unbelievers.  In  his  earlier  papers  attacking  them  he  had 
put  a  stress  of  malice  that,  in  a  mind  of  his  cahbre,  is  startling  even 
to  the  student  of  religious  history/  It  reveals  him  as  no  less 
-possessed  by  the  passion  of  creed  than  the  most  ignorant  priest 
of  his  Church.  For  him  all  freethinkers  were  detested  disturbers  of 
his  emotional  hfe ;  and  of  the  best  of  them,  as  Collins,  Shaftesbury, 
and  Spinoza,  he  speaks  with  positive  fury.  In  the  Miyiute  Philosopher, 
half-conscious  of  the  wrongness  of  his  temper,  he  sets  himself  to 
make  the  unbelievers  figure  in  dialogue  as  ignorant,  pretentious,  and 
coarse-natured ;  while  his  own  mouthpieces  are  meant  to  be  benign, 
urbane,  wise,  and  persuasive.  Yet  in  the  very  pages  so  planned  he 
unwittingly  reveals  that  the  freethinkers  whom  he  goes  about  to 
caricature  were  commonly  good-natured  in  tone,  while  he  becomes 
as  virulent  as  ever  in  his  eagerness  to  discredit  them.  Not  a 
paragraph  in  the  book  attains  to  the  spirit  of  judgment  or  fairness; 
all  is  special  pleading,  overstrained  and  embittered  sarcasm,  rankling 
animus.  Gifted  alike  for  literature  and  for  philosophy,  keen  of  vision 
in  economic  problems  where  the  mass  of  men  were  short-sighted,  he 
was  flawed  on  the  side  of  his  faith  by  the  hysteria  to  which  it  always 

»  One  of  the  then  numerous  tribe  of  eccentrics.    He  held  by  Judaic  Sabbatarianism, 
and  affected  a  Rabinnical  costume.     He  made  a  competence,  however,  as  an  ironmonger. 
'^  Essay  Tcnvards  Preventing  the  Muin  of  Great  Britain. 
8  Discourse  to  Magistrates.  *  Guardian,  Nos.  3,  55,  88. 


stirred  him.  No  man  was  less  qualified  to  write  a  well-balanced 
dialogue  as  between  his  own  side  and  its  opponents.  To  candour  he 
never  attains,  unless  it  be  in  the  sense  that  his  passion  recoils  on  his 
own  case.  Even  while  setting  up  ninepins  of  ill-put  ''infidel" 
argument  to  knock  down,  he  elaborates  futihties  of  rebuttal,  indi- 
cating to  every  attentive  reader  the  slightness  of  his  rational  basis. 

On  the  strength  of  this  performance  he  might  fitly  be  termed  the 
most  ill-conditioned  sophist  of  his  age,  were  it  not  for  the  perception 
that  rehgious  feeling  in  him  has  become  a  pathological  phase,  and 
that  he  suffers  incomparably  more  from  his  own  passions  than  he 
can  mflict  on  his  enemies  by  his  eager  thrusts  at  them.     More  than 
almost  any  gifted  pietist  of  modern  times  he  sets  us  wondering  at  the 
power  of  creed  in  certain  cases  to  overgrow  judgment  and  turn  to 
naught  the  rarest  faculties.     No  man  in  Berkeley's  day  had  a  finer 
natural  lucidity  and   suppleness   of   intelligence;   yet  perhaps   no 
polemist  on  his  side  did  less  either  to  make  converts  or  to  establish 
a  sound  intellectual  practice.    Plain  men  on  the  freethinking  side  he 
must   either    have  bewildered  by  his    metaphysic   or   revolted  by 
his  spite ;  while  to  the  more  efficient  minds  he  stood  revealed  as  a 
kind  of  inspired  child,  rapt  in  the  construction  and  manipulation  of 
a  set  of  briUiant  sophisms  which  availed  as  much  for  any  other 
creed  as  for  his  own.     To  the  armoury  of  Christian  apologetic  now 
growing  up  in  England  he  contributed  a  special  form  of  the  skeptical 
argument:    freethinkers,    he   declared,    made   certain   arbitrary   or 
irrational  assumptions  in  accepting  Newton's  doctrine  of  fluxions, 
and  It  was  only  their  prejudice  that  prevented  them  from  being 
similarly  accommodating  to  Christian  mysteries.'     It  is  a  kind  of 
argument  dear  to  minds  pre- convinced  and  incapable  of  a  logical 
revision,  but  worse  than  inept  as  against  opponents ;  and  it  availed 
no  more  in  Berkeley's  hands  than  it  had  done  in  those  of  Huet." 
To  theosophy,  indeed,  Berkeley  rendered  a  more  successful  service  in 
presenting  it  with  the  no  better  formula  of  "  existence  [i.e.,  in  con- 
sciousness]  dependent  upon  consciousness  "~a  verbahsm  which  has 
served  the  purposes  of  theology  in  the  philosophic  schools  down  till 
our  own  day.     For  his,  however,  the  popular  polemic  value  of  such 
a  theorem  must  have  been  sufficiently  countervailed  by  his  vehement 
championship  of  the  doctrine  of  passive  obedience  in  its  most  extreme 
form--   that  loyalty  is  a  virtue  or  moral  duty ;  and  disloyalty  or 
rebelhon,  in  the  most  strict  and  proper  sense,  a  vice  or  crime  against 
the  law  of  nature." ' 

»  The  Analyst,  Queries,  55-67.  2  gee  above,  pp.  126-28. 

8  Discourse  of  Passive  Obedience,  §  26. 


I 


i|i 


164 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


It  belonged  to  the  overstrung  temperament  of  Berkeley  that,  like 
a  nervous  artist,  he  should  figure  to  himself  all  his  freethinking 
antagonists  as  personally  odious,  himself  growing  odious  under  the 
obsession  ;  and  he  solemnly  asserts,  in  his  Discourse  to  Magistrates, 
that  there  had  been  "  lately  set  up  within  this  city  of  Dublin  "  an 
*'  execrable  fraternity  of  blasphemers,"  calling  themselves  "  blasters," 
and  forming  "  a  distinct  society,  whereof  the  proper  and  avowed 
business  shall  be  to  shock  all  serious  Christians  by  the  most  impious 
and  horrid  blasphemies,  uttered  in  the  most  public  manner."  '  There 
appears  to  be  not  a  grain  of  truth  in  this  astonishing  assertion,  to 
which  no  subsequent  historian  has  paid  the  slightest  attention.  In 
a  period  in  which  freethinking  books  had  been  again  and  again 
burned  in  Dublin  by  the  public  hangman,  such  a  society  could  be 
projected  only  in  a  nightmare  ;  and  Berkeley's  hallucination  may 
serve  as  a  sign  of  the  extent  to  which  his  judgment  had  been 
deranged  by  his  passions.''  His  forensic  temper  is  really  on  a  level 
with  that  of  the  most  incompetent  swashbucklers  on  his  side. 

When  educated  Christians  could  be  so  habitually  envenomed  as 
was  Berkeley,  there  was  doubtless  a  measure  of  contrary  heat 
among  English  unbehevers ;  but,  apart  altogether  from  what  could 
be  described  as  blasphemy,  unbelief  abounded  in  the  most  cultured 
society  of  the  day.  Bolingbroke's  rationalism  had  been  privately 
w^ell  known ;  and  so  distinguished  a  personage  as  the  brilliant  and 
scholarly  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  hated  by  Pope,  is  one  of 
the  reputed  freethinkers  of  her  time.'  In  the  very  year  of  the 
publication  of  Berkeley's  Minute  Philosopher,  the  first  two  epistles 
of  the  Essay  on  Man  of  his  own  friend  and  admirer.  Pope,  gave 
a  new  currency  to  the  form  of  optimistic  deism  created  by 
Shaftesbury,  and  later  elaborated  by  Bolingbroke.  Pope  was 
always  anxiously  hostile  in  his  allusions  to  the  professed  free- 
thinkers'—among  whom  Bohngbroke  only  posthumously  enrolled 
himself— and  in  private  he  specially  aspersed  Shaftesbury,  from 
whom  he  had  taken  so  much  f   but  his  prudential  tactic  gave  all 


1  WorJcs,  ed.  1837,  p.  352.  ,  .  ,         ..  ^ 

2  See  the  whole  context,  which  palpitates  with  excitement. 

8  Mr  Walter  Sichel  {Bolingbroke  and  his  Times,  1901.  1. 175)  thinks  fit  to  dispose  of  her 
attitude  as  "  her  aversion  to  the  Church  and  to  everything  that  transcended  her  own 
faculties."  So  far  as  the  evidence  goes,  her  faculties  were  much  superior  to  those  of  mosTi 
of  her  orthodox  contemporaries.    For  her  tone  see  her  letters. 

*  ^.g.Dimciad.  ii,  399;  iii,  212;  iv.  49-2.  .     .        .  ,  ,  f/, 

6  Voltaire  commented  pointedly  on  Pope's  omission  to  make  any  reference  do 
Shaftesbury,  while  vending  his  doctrine.  {Lettres  PhilosophiQues  xxiU  As  a  matter 
of  fact  Pope  does  in  the  Diinciad  (iv.  488)  refer  maliciously  to  the  Theocles  of  Shaftes- 
bury's Moralists  as  maintaining  a  Lucretian  theism  or  virtual  atheism.  The  explanation 
is  that  Shaftesbury  had  sharply  criticized  the  political  course  of  Bolingbroke,  who  in 
turn  ignored  him  as  a  thinker.  See  the  present  writer's  introd.  to  Shaftesbury  s  Lfiar- 
acteristics,  ed.  1900  (rep.  in  Pioneer  Humanists) ;  and  cp.  W.  R.  Scott,  Francis  Hutcheson, 
1900.  p.  101. 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


165 


the  more  currency  to  the  virtual  deism  he  enunciated.  Given  out 
without  any  critical  allusion  to  Christianity,  and  put  forward  as 
a  vindication  of  the  ways  of  God  to  men,  it  gave  to  heresy,  albeit 
in  a  philosophically  incoherent  exposition,  the  status  of  a  well-bred 
piety.  A  good  authority  pronounces  that  "  the  Essay  on  Man  did 
more  to  spread  English  deism  in  France  than  all  the  works  of 
Shaftesbury";^  and  we  have  explicit  testimony  that  the  poet 
privately  avowed  the  deistic  view  of  things.^ 

The  line  of  the  Essay  which  now  reads : 

The  soul,  uneasy  and  confined /ro??^  home, 

originally  ran  ''at  home";  but,  says  Warton,  "  this  expression 
seeming  to  exclude  a  future  existence,  as,  to  speak  the  plain 
truth,  it  was  intended  to  do,  it  was  altered" — presumably  by 
Warburton.  (Warton's  Essay  on  Pope,  4th  ed.  ii,  67.)  The 
Spinozistic  or  pantheistic  character  of  much  of  the  Essay  on 
Man  was  noted  by  various  critics,  in  particular  by  the  French 
Academician  De  Crousaz  {Examen  de  I'Essay  de  M.  Pope  stir 
VHomnie,  1748,  p.  90,  etc.)  After  promising  to  justify  the  ways 
of  God  to  man,  writes  Crousaz  (p.  33),  Pope  turns  round  and 
justifies  man,  leaving  God  charged  with  all  men's  sins.  When 
the  younger  Eacine,  writing  to  the  Chevalier  Eamsay  in  1742, 
charged  the  Essay  with  irreligion.  Pope  wrote  him  repudiating 
alike  Spinoza  and  Leibnitz.  (Warton,  ii,  121.)  In  1755, 
however,  the  Abb6  Gauchat  renewed  the  attack,  declaring  that 
the  Essay  was  **  neither  Christian  nor  philosophic "  {Lettres 
Critiques,  i,  346).  Warburton  at  first  charged  the  poem  with 
rank  atheism,  and  afterwards  vindicated  it  in  his  manner. 
(Warton,  i,  125.)  But  in  Germany,  in  the  youth  of'  Goethe, 
we  find  the  Essay  regarded  by  Christians  as  an  unequivocally 
deistic  poem.  (Goethe's  Wahrheit  und  Dichtung,  Th.  II,  B.  vii : 
Werke,  ed.  1866,  xi,  263.)  And  by  a  modern  Christian  polemist 
the  Essay  is  described  as  "  the  best  positive  result  of  English 
deism  in  the  eighteenth  century"  (Gostwick,  German  Culture 
and  Christianity,  1882,  p.  31). 

In  point  of  fact,  deism  was  the  fashionable  way  of  thinking  among 
cultured  people.  Though  Voltaire  testifies  from  personal  know- 
ledge that  there  were  in  England  in  his  day  many  principled  atheists,^ 
there  was  little  overt  atheism,*  whether  by  reason  of  the  special 

9  1^?^*®'  ^''"««««w  and  the  Cosmopolitan  Spirit  in  Literature.  Eng.  tr.  pp.  117-18. 

f  Chesterfield  in  his  Characters  (app.  to  the  Letters)  testifies  that  Pope  "  was  a  deist 

believing  in  a  future  state  ;  this  he  has  often  owned  himself  to  me."    (Bradshaw's  ed.  of 

Letters,  iii,  1410.)    Chesterfield  makes  a  similar  statement  concerning  Queen  Caroline:— 

After  puzzling  herself  in  all  the  whimsies  and  fantastical  speculations  of  different  sects, 

sue  fixed  herself  ultimately  in  Deism,  believing  in  a  future  state."    (Id.  p.  1406.) 

°  Diet.  Phtlos.  art.  Athee,  §  2. 
Wise,  in  his  adaptation  of  Cudworth,  A  Confutation  of  the  Reason  and  Philosophy  of 
^tfteis/n,  (1706).  writes  (i.  5)  that  "the  philosophical  atheists  are  but  few  in  number,"  and 
tneir  objections  so  weak  "  as  that  they  deserve  not  a  hearing  but  rather  neglect " ;  but 
confusedly  goes  on  to  admit  that  "one  or  two  broachers  of  'em  maybe  thought  able  to 
iniect  a  whole  nation,  as sad  experience  tells  us." 


166 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


odium  attaching  to  that  way  of  thought,  or  of  a  real  production  of 
theistic  belief  by  the  concurrence  of  the  deistic  propaganda  on  this 
head  with  that  of  the  clergy,  themselves  in  so  many  cases  deists.' 
Bishop  Burnet,  in  the  Conclusion  to  the  History  of  his  Own  Time, 
pronounces  that  "  there  are  few  atheists,  but  many  infidels,  who 
are  indeed  very  little  better  than  the  atheists."  Collins  observed 
that  nobody  had  doubted  the  existence  of  God  until  the  Boyle 
lecturers  began  to  prove  it ;  and  Clarke  had  more  than  justified  the 
jest  by  arguing,  in  his  Boyle  Lectures  for  1705,  that  all  deism 
logically  leads  to  atheism.  But  though  the  apologists  roused  much 
,  discussion  on  the  theistic  issue,  the  stress  of  the  apologetic  literature 
passed  from  the  theme  of  atheism  to  that  of  deism.  Shaftesbury's 
early  Biquinj  Concerning  Virtue  had  assumed  the  existence  of  a  good 
deal  of  atheism  ;  but  his  later  writings,  and  those  of  his  school,  do 
not  indicate  much  atheistic  opposition.''  Even  the  revived  discus- 
sion on  the  immateriality  and  immortality  of  the  soul— which  began 
with  the  Grand  Essay  of  Dr.  William  Coward,'  in  1704,  and  was 
taken  up,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  non-juror  Dodwell  * — was 
conducted  on  either  orthodox  or  deistic  lines.  Coward  wrote  as 
a  professed  Christian,'  to  maintain,  "  against  impostures  of  philo- 
sophy," that  **  matter  and  motion  must  be  the  foundation  of  thought 
in  men  and  brutes."  Collins  maintained  against  Clarke  the  pro- 
position that  matter  is  capable  of  thought;  and  SAMUEL  Strutt 
["of  the  Temple"),  whose  Philosophical  Inquiry  into  the  Physical 
Spring  of  Human  Actions,  and  the  Immediate  Cause  of  Thinking 
(1732),  is  a  most  tersely  cogent  sequence  of  materialistic  argument, 
never  raises  any  question  of  deity.  The  result  was  that  the  problem 
of  "  materialism  "  was  virtually  dropped,  Strutt's  essay  in  particular 
passing  into  general  oblivion. 

It  was  replied  to,  however,  with  the  hiquiry  of  Collins,  as 
late  as  1760,  by  a  Christian  controversialist  who  admits  Strutt 


1  Complaint  to  this  efifect  was  made  by  orthodox  writers.  The  Scotch  Professor 
Halyburton,  for  instance,  complains  that  in  many  sermons  in  his  day  "  Heathen  Morality 
has  been  substituted  in  the  room  of  Oospel  Holiness.  And  Ethicks  by  some  have  been 
preached  instead  of  the  Gospels  of  Christ."  Natural  Ileliginn  Insufficient  (Edmburf^u). 
1714.  p.  25.  Cp.  pp.  23,  26-27.  59,  etc.  Bishop  Burnet,  in  the  Conclusion  to  his  History  of 
his  Oivn  Time,  declares.  "  I  must  own  that  the  main  body  of  our  clergy  has  always  seemed 
dead  and  lifeless  to  me,"  and  ascribes  much  more  zeal  to  Catholics  and  dissenters,    (ha. 

1838,  pp.  907-910.)  .  ,        ,    ,      ,.         ,,     . 

•■^  The  Moralists  deals  rather  with  strict  skepticism  than  with  substantive  atheism. 

8  Tlie  Grand  Essay :  or,  a  Vindication  of  Reason  and  Religion  against  Imvostures  of 
Philosophy.  The  book  was,  on  March  18,  1704.  condemned  by  the  House  of  Commons  to 
be  burned  in  Palace  Yard,  along  with  its  author's  Second  Thoughts  Concerning  the 
Human  Soul  (1702).    A  second  ed.  of  the  latter  appeared  soon.after.  *  Above,  p.  153. 

5  Mr.  Herbert  Paul,  in  his  essay  on  Swift  (Men  and  Letters,  1901.  p.  267),  lumps  as  deists 
the  four  writers  named  by  Swift  in  his  Argument.  Not  having  read  them,  he  thinks  fit  to 
asperse  all  four  as  bad  writers.  Asfiill,  as  was  noted  by  Coleridge  (Tabfe  TaZfc,  July  30. 
1831 ;  April  30, 1832).  was  one  of  the  best  writers  of  his  time.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  master  oi 
the  staccato  style,  practised  by  Mr.  Paul  with  less  success. 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


167 


to  have  been  a  gentleman  of  an  excellent  genius  for  philo- 
sophical inquiries,  and  a  close  reasoner  from  those  principles  he 
laid  down  "  {An  Essay  towards  demonstrating  the  Immateriality 
and  Free  Agency  of  the  Soul,  1760,  p.  94).  The  Eev.  Mr.  Monk, 
in  his  Life  of  Bentley  (2nd  ed.  1833,  ii,  391),  absurdly  speaks  of 
Strutt  as  having  "  dressed  up  the  arguments  of  Lord  Herbert 
of  Cherbury  and  other  enemies  of  religion  in  a  new  shape." 
The  reverend  gentleman  cannot  have  paid  any  attention  to  the 
arguments  either  of  Herbert  or  of  Strutt,  which  have  no  more 
in  common  than  those  of  Toland  and  Hume.  Strutt's  book 
was  much  too  closely  reasoned  to  be  popular.  His  name  was 
for  the  time,  however,  associated  with  a  famous  scandal  at 
Cambridge  University.  When  in  1739  proceedings  were  taken 
against  what  was  described  as  an  *'  atheistical  society  "  there, 
Strutt  was  spoken  of  as  its  "  oracle."  One  of  the  members  was 
Paul  Whitehead,  satirized  by  Pope.  Another,  Tinkler  Ducket, 
a  Fellow  of  Caius  College,  in  holy  orders,  was  prosecuted  in  the 
Vice-Chancellor's  Court  on  the  twofold  charge  of  proselytizing 
for  atheism  and  of  attempting  to  seduce  a  "  female."  In  his 
defence  he  explained  that  he  had  been  for  some  time  "  once 
more  a  believer  in  God  and  Christianity  ";  but  was  nevertheless 
expelled.     See  Monk's  Life  of  Bentley^  as  cited,  ii,  391  sg. 


§5 

No  less  marked  is  the  failure  to  develop  the  "  higher  criticism  " 
from  the  notable  start  made  in  1739  in  the  very  remarkable  Inquiry 
into  the  Jeioish  and  Christian  Bevelations  by  Samuel  Parvish,  who 
made  the  vital  discovery  that  Deuteronomy  is  a  product  of  the 
seventh  century  B.C.^  His  book,  which  is  in  the  form  of  a  dialogue 
between  a  Christian  and  a  Japanese,  went  into  a  second  edition 
(1746) ;  but  his  idea  struck  too  deep  for  the  critical  faculty  of  that 
age,  and  not  till  the  nineteenth  century  was  the  clue  found  again 
by  De  Wette,  in  Germany.^  Parvish  came  at  the  end  of  the  main 
deistic  movement,^  and  by  that  time  the  more  open-minded  men 
had  come  to  a  point  of  view  from  which  it  did  not  greatly  matter 
when  Deuteronomy  was  written,  or  precisely  how  a  cultus  was  built 
up;  while  orthodoxy  could  not  dream  of  abandoning  its  view  of 
inspiration.  There  was  thus  an  arrest  alike  of  historical  criticism 
and  of  the  higher  philosophic  thought  under  the  stress  of  the 
concrete  disputes  over  ethics,  miracles,  prophecy,  and  politics  ;  and 

*  Work  cited,  p.  324.    The  book  is  now  rare. 

^  Cp.  Cheyne,  Founders  of  Old  Testainent  Criticism,  1893.  p.  2. 

8  Dr.  Cheyne  expresses  surprise  that  a  "theological  writer"  who  got  so  far  should  not 
have  been  "  prompted  by  his  good  genius  to  follow  up  his  advantage."  It  is,  however, 
rather  remarkable  that  Parvish,  who  was  a  bookseller  at  Guildford  (Alberti,  Briefe, 
p.  426),  should  have  achieved  what  he  did.  It  was  through  nob  being  a  theological  writer 
that  he  went  so  far,  no  theologian  of  his  day  following  him. 


168 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


a  habifc  of  taking  deity  for  granted  became  normal,  with  the  result 

that  when  the  weak  point  was  pressed  upon  by  Law  and  Butler 

there  was  a  sense  of  blankness  on   both  sides.     But  among  men 

theistically  inclined,  the  argument  of  Tindal  against  revolationism 

was  extremely  telling,  and  it  had  more  literary  impressiveness  than 

any  writing   on   the   orthodox  side   before   Butler.     By  this   time 

Ahe  philosophic   influence   of   Spinoza — seen   as   early  as  1699  in 

/  Shaftesbury's  Inquiry  Concerning   Virtue !^   and   avowed   by  Clarke 

\  when  he  addressed  his  Demonstration  (1705)  '*  more  particularly  in 

answer  to  Mr.  Hobbs,  Spinoza,  and  their  followers" — had  spread 

among  the  studious  class,  greatly  reinforcing  the  deistic  movement ; 

so  that  in  1732  Berkeley,  who  ranked  him  among  "  weak  and  wicked 

writers,"  described  him  as  "  the  great  leader  of  our  modern  infidels." 

See  the  Minute  Philosopher,  Dial,  vii,  §  29.  Similarly  Leland, 
in  the  Supplement  (1756)  to  his  Vieiv  of  the  Deistical  Writers 
(afterwards  incorporated  as  Letter  VI),  speaks  of  Spinoza  as 
"  the  most  applauded  doctor  of  modern  atheism."  Sir  Leslie 
Stephen's  opinion  (English  Thought^  i,  33),  that  "  few  of  the 
deists,  probably,"  read  Spinoza,  seems  to  be  thus  outweighed. 
If  they  did  not  in  great  numbers  read  the  Ethica,  they  certainly 
read  the  Tractatus  and  the  letters.  As  early  as  1677  we  find 
Stillingfleet,  in  the  preface  to  his  Letter  to  a  Deist,  speaking  of 
Spinoza  as  "  a  late  author  [who]  I  hear  is  mightily  in  vogue 
among  many  who  cry  up  anything  on  the  atheistical  side, 
though  never  so  weak  and  trifling";  and  further  of  a  mooted 
proposal  to  translate  the  Tractatus  Theologico-Politicics  into 
English.  A  translation  was  published  in  1689.  In  1685  the 
Scotch  Professor  George  Sinclar,  in  the  "  Preface  to  the  Eeader  " 
of  his  Satan's  Invisible  World  Discovered,  writes  that  "  There 
are  a  monstrous  rable  of  men,  who  following  the  Hohhesian  and 
Spinx)sian  principles,  slight  religion  and  undervalue  the  Scrip- 
ture," etc.  In  Gildon's  work  of  recantation,  The  Deist's  Manual 
(1705,  p.  192),  the  indifferent  Pleonexus,  who  "  took  more 
delight  in  bags  than  in  books,"  and  demurs  to  accumulating 
the  latter,  avows  that  he  has  a  few,  among  them  being  Hobbes 
and  Spinoza.  Evelyn,  writing  about  1680-90,  speaks  of  "  that 
infamous  book,  the  Tractatus  Theologico-Politicus,"  as  a 
wretched  obstacle  to  the  searchers  of  holy  truth "  (The 
History  of  Belig ion,  1850,  p.  xxvii).  Cp.  Halyburton,  Natural 
Religion  Insufficient,  Edinburgh,  1714,  p.  31,  as  to  the  "great 
vogue  among  our  young  Gentry  and  Students  "  of  Hobbes, 
Spinoza,  and  others. 


I  See  the  author's  introduction  to  ed.  of  the  Characteristics,  1900,  rep.  in  Pioneer 
Humanists. 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


169 


§6 

Among  the  deists  of  the  upper  classes  was  the  young  William 
Pitt,  afterwards  Lord  Chatham,  if,  as  has  been  alleged,  it  was  he 
who  in  1733,  two  years  before  he  entered  ParHament,  contributed 
to  the  Lojidon  Journal  a  "  Letter  on  Superstition,"  the  work  of  a 
pronounced  freethinker/  On  the  other  hand,  such  deistic  writing 
as  that  with  which  Chubb,  in  a  multitude  of  tracts,  followed  up 
his  early  Unitarian  essay  of  1715,  brought  an  ethical  "  Christian 
rationahsm  "  within  the  range  of  the  unscholarly  many.  THOMAS 
Morgan  (d.  1741),  a  physician,  began  in  the  Moral  Philosopher, 
1739-1740,^  to  sketch  a  rationahstic  theory  of  Christian  origins, 
besides  putting  the  critical  case  with  new  completeness.  Morgan 
had  been  at  one  time  a  dissenting  minister  at  Frome,  Somerset,  and 
had  been  dismissed  because  of  his  deistical  opinions.  Towards  the 
Jehovah  and  the  ethic  of  the  Old  Testament  he  holds,  however, 
the  attitude  rather  of  an  ancient  Gnostic  than  of  a  modern 
rationalist ;  and  in  his  philosophy  he  is  either  a  very  "  godly " 
deist  or  a  pantheist  miscarried.^ 

At  the  same  time  Peter  Annet  (1693-1769),  a  schoolmaster 
and  inventor  of  a  system  of  shorthand,  widened  the  propaganda  in 
other  directions.  He  seems  to  have  been  the  first  freethought 
lecturer,  for  his  first  pamphlet,  Judging  for  Ourselves  :  or,  Free- 
thifiking  the  Great  Duty  of  ReligioJi,  "  By  P.  A.,  Minister  of  the 
Gospel  "  (1739),  consists  of  "  Two  Lectures  delivered  at  Plaisterers' 
Hall."  Through  all  his  propaganda,  of  which  the  mora  notable 
portions  are  his  Supernaturals  Examined  and  a  series  of  controversies 
on  the  Eesurrection,  there  runs  a  train  of  shrewd  critical  sense,  put 
forth  in  crisp  and  vivacious  English,  which  made  him  a  popular 
force.  ^  What  he  lacked  was  the  due  gravity  and  dignity  for  the 
handling  of  such  a  theme  as  the  reversal  of  a  nation's  faith.  Like 
Woolston,  he  is  facetious  where  he  should  be  seribus  ;  entertaining 
where  he  had  need  be  impressive ;  provocative  where  he  should  have 
aimed  at  persuasion.  We  cannot  say  what  types  he  influenced,  or 
how  deep  his  influence  went :  it  appears  only  that  he  swayed  many 
whose  suffrages  weighed  little.  At  length,  when  in  1761  he  issued 
mne  numbers  of  The  Free  Inquirer,  in  which  he  attacked  the 
Pentateuch  with  much   insight   and  cogency,  but  with   a   certain 

I83J  ed.^Tp'aiSe's' Work."  ffc^Vn.i.?^-^^^^ ^*,*^^  *^^*«^'  reprinted  at  end  of  Carver's 
Chatha^^^SpingIS?e••Tp^elch  ^^^     ^-  ^^^^^^^^^^  ^^/«  of  Chatham,  ii.  405;  and 
«  Cp'^LStSpf  37'!  m!""^  Philosopher  appeared  in  1741. 


170 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


want  of  rational  balance  (shown  also  in  his  treatise,  Social  Bliss 
Considered,  1749),  he  was  made  a  victim  of  the  then  strengthened 
spirit  of  persecution,  being  sentenced  to  stand  thrice  in  the  pillory 
with  the  label  "  For  Blasphemy,"  and  to  suffer  a  year's  hard  labour. 
Nevertheless,  he  was  popular  enough  to  start  a  school  on  his  release. 
Such  popularity,  of  course,  was  alien  to  the  literary  and  social 
traditions  of  the  century ;  and  from  the  literary  point  of  view  the 
main  line  of  deistic  propaganda,  as  apart  from  the  essays  and 
treatises  of  Hume  and  the  posthumous  works  of  BoHngbroke,  ends 
with  the  younger  HENRY  DODWELL'S  (anonymous)  ironical  essay. 
Christianity  not  Founded  on  Argument  (1741).  So  rigorously  con- 
gruous is  the  reasoning  of  that  brilliant  treatise  that  some  have  not 
quite  unjustifiably  taken  it  for  the  work  of  a  dogmatic  believer, 
standing  at  some  such  position  as  that  taken  up  before  him  by  Huet, 
and  in  recent  times  by  Cardinal  Newman/  He  argues,  for  instance, 
not  merely  that  reason  can  yield  none  of  the  confidence  which 
belongs  to  true  faith,  but  that  it  cannot  duly  strengthen  the  moral 
will  against  temptations.'  But  the  book  at  once  elicited  a  number  of 
replies,  all  treating  it  unhesitatingly  as  an  anti-Christian  work; 
and  Leland  assails  it  as  bitterly  as  he  does  any  openly  freethinking 
treatise.'  Its  thesis  might  have  been  seriously  supported  by  refer- 
ence to  the  intellectual  history  of  the  preceding  thirty  years,  wherein 
much  argument  had  certainly  failed  to  establish  the  reigning  creed 
OT  to  discredit  the  unbelievers. 

§7 

Of  the  work  done  by  English  deism  thus  far.  it  may  suffice  to 
say  that  within  two  generations  it  had  more  profoundly  altered  the 
intellectual  temper  of  educated  men  than  any  religious  movement 
had  ever  done  in  the  same  time.  This  appears  above  all  from  the 
literature  produced  by  orthodoxy  in  reply,  where  the  mere  defensive 
resort  to  reasoning,  apart  from  the  accounts  of  current  rationalism, 
outgoes  anything  in  the  previous  history  of  literature.  The  whole 
evolution  is  a  remarkable  instance  of  the  effect  on  intellectual 
progress  of  the  diversion  of  a  nation's  general  energy  from  war  and 
intense  political  faction  to  mental  activities.  A  similar  diversion 
had  taken  place  at  the  Eestoration.  to  be  followed  by  a  return  to 
civil  and  foreign  strife,  which  arrested  it.  It  was  in  the  closing 
years  of  Anne,  and  in  the  steady  regime  of  Walpole  under  the  first 
two   Georges,   that   the   ferment   worked   at   its   height.     Collins's 

1  Cp.  Cairns.  Unbelief  in  the  EigMeenth  Centttry,  1881.  p.  101.  i«f  p.^  ) 

a  Ed.  1741.  p.  30  sq.  *  View  of  the  Deisttcal  Writers,  Letter  XI  (X  m  1st  ed.}. 


BKITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


171 


Discourse  of  Freethinking  was  synchronous  with  the  Peace  of 
Utrecht :  the  era  of  war  re-opened  in  1739,  much  against  the  will 
of  Walpole,  who  resigned  in  1742.  Home  and  foreign  wars  there- 
after became  common  ;  and  in  1751  Clive  opened  the  period  of 
imperialistic  expansion,  determining  national  developments  on  that 
main  line,  concurrently  with  that  of  the  new  industry.  Could  the 
discussion  have  been  continuous — could  England  have  remained 
what  she  was  in  the  main  deistic  period,  a  workshop  of  investigation 
and  a  battleground  of  ideas — all  European  development  might  have 
been  indefinitely  hastened.  But  the  deists,  for  the  most  part 
educated  men  appealing  to  educated  men  or  to  the  shrewdest 
readers  among  the  artisans,  had  not  learned  to  reckon  with  the 
greater  social  forces  ;  and  beyond  a  certain  point  they  could  not 
affect  England's  intellectual  destinies. 

It  is  worse  than  idle  to  argue  that  "  the  true  cause  of  the  decay 
of  deism  is  to  be  sought  in  its  internal  weakness,"  in  the  sense  that 
it  was  not  rooted  in  the  deepest  convictions,  nor  associated  with 
the  most  powerful  emotions  of  its  adherents."  ^  No  such  charge  can 
be  even  partially  proved.  The  deists  were  at  least  as  much  in 
earnest  as  two-thirds  of  the  clergy  :  the  determining  difference,  in 
this  regard,  was  the  economic  basis  of  the  latter,  and  their  social 
hold  of  an  ignorant  population.  The  clergy,  who  could  not  argue  the 
deists  down  in  the  court  of  culture,  had  in  their  own  jurisdiction  the 
great  mass  of  the  uneducated  lower  classes,  and  the  great  mass  of 
the  women  of  all  classes,  whom  the  ideals  of  the  age  kept  uneducated, 
with  a  difference.  And  while  the  more  cultured  clergy  were  them- 
selves in  large  measure  deists,  the  majority,  in  the  country  parishes, 
remained  uncritical  and  unreflective,  caring  little  even  to  cultivate 
belief  among  their  flocks.  The  "  contempt  of  the  clergy  "  which  had 
subsisted  from  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  (if,  indeed,  it 
should  not  be  dated  from  the  middle  of  the  sixteentji)  meant  among 
other  things  that  popular  culture  remained  on  a  lower  plane.  With 
the  multitude  remaining  a  ready  hotbed  for  new  "  enthusiasm,"  and 
the  women  of  the  middle  and  upper  orders  no  less  ready  nurturers  of 
new  generations  of  young  believers,  the  work  of  emancipation  was 
but  begun  when  deism  was  made  "  fashionable."  And  with  England 
on  the  way  to  a  new  era  at  once  of  industrial  and  imperial  expansion, 
m  which  the  energies  that  for  a  generation  had  made  her  a  leader  of 
European  thought  were  diverted  to  arms  and  to  commerce,  the  critical 
and  rationalizing  work  of  the  deistical  generation  could  not  go  on  as 


1  Sir  Leslie  Stephen,  English  Thought,  i,  169. 


172 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


173 


it  had  begun.  That  generation  left  its  specific  mark  on  the  statute- 
book  in  a  complete  repeal  of  the  old  laws  relating  to  witchcraft ;  ^  on 
literature  in  a  whole  library  of  propaganda  and  apology ;  on  moral 
and  historic  science  in  a  new  movement  of  humanism,  which  was  to 
find  its  check  in  the  French  Kevolution. 

How  it  affected  the  general  intelligence  for  good  may  be  partly 
gathered  from  a  comparison  of  the  common  English  political  attitudes 
towards  Ireland  in  the  first  and  the  last  quarters  of  the  century. 
Under  William  was  wrought  the  arrest  of  Irish  industry  and 
commerce,  begun  after  the  Restoration ;  under  Anne  were  enacted 
the  penal  laws  against  Catholics — as  signal  an  example  of  religious 
iniquity  as  can  well  be  found  in  all  history.  By  the  middle  of  the 
century  these  laws  had  become  anachronisms  for  all  save  bigots. 

"  The  wave  of  freethought  that  was  spreading  over  Europe 
and  permeating  its  literature  had  not  failed  to  affect  Ireland. 

An  atmosphere  of  skepticism  was  fatal  to  the  Penal  Code. 

What  element  of  religious  persecution  there  had  been  in  it  had 
long  ceased  to  be  operative"  (R.  Dunlop,  in  Canih.  Mod.  Hist. 
vi,  489).  Macaulay's  testimony  on  this  head  is  noteworthy  : 
"  The  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century  had  purified  English 
Whiggism  of  the  deep  taint  of  intolerance  which  had  been  con- 
tracted during  a  long  and  close  alliance  with  the  Puritanism  of 
the  eighteenth  century"  {History,  ch.  xvii,  end). 

The  denunciations  of  the  penal  laws  by  Arthur  Young  in  1780^ 
are  the  outcome  of  two  generations  of  deistic  thinking  ;  the  spirit  of 
religion  has  been  ousted  by  judgment.^  Could  that  spirit  have  had 
freer  play,  less  hindrance  from  blind  passion,  later  history  would 
have  been  a  happier  record.  But  for  reasons  lying  in  the  environ- 
ment as  well  as  in  its  own  standpoint,  deism  was  not  destined  to  rise 
on  continuous  stepping-stones  to  social  dominion. 

Currency  has  been  given  to  a  misconception  of  intellectual 
history  by  the  authoritative  statement  that  in  the  deistic  con- 
troversy "  all  that  was  intellectually  venerable  in  England " 
appeared  '*  on  the  side  of  Christianity  "  (Sir  Leslie  Stephen, 
English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  i,  86).  The  same 
thing,  in  effect,  is  said  by  Lecky  :  "  It  was  to  repel  these  [deistic] 
attacks  ['  upon  the  miracles  *]  that  the  evidential  school  arose, 
and  the  annals  of  religious  controversy  narrate  few  more  complete 
victories  than  they  achieved  "  {Bise  and  Influence  of  Batio7ialism, 
pop.  ed.  i,  175).    The  proposition  seems  to  be  an  echo  of  orthodox 

t  Act  9th,  Geo.  II  (1736).  ch.  5.  "^  A  Tour  in  Ireland,  ed.  1892.  ii.  59-72. 

8  Young  at  this  period  was  entirely  secular  in  his  thinking.  Telling  of  his  recovery 
from  a  fever  in  1790,  he  writes  :  "  I  fear  that  not  one  thought  of  God  ever  occurred  to  me 
at  that  time "  (Autobiography,  1898.  p.  188).  Afterwards  he  fell  into  religious  melancholia 
{Introd.  note  of  editor). 


historiography,  as  Buckle  had  before  written  in  his  note-book : 
In  England  skepticism  made  no  head.  Such  men  as  Toland 
and  Tindal,  Collins,  Shaftesbury,  Woolston,  were  no  match  for 
Clarke,  Warburton,  and  Lardner.  They  could  make  no  head 
till  the  time  of  Middleton  "  {Misc.  Works,  abridged  ed.  i,  321)— 
a  strain  of  assertion  which  clearly  proceeds  on  no  close  study  of 
the  period.  In  the  first  place,  all  the  writing  on  the  freethinking 
side  was  done  under  peril  of  Blasphemy  Laws,  and  under  menace 
of  all  the  calumny  and  ostracism  that  in  Christian  society  follow 
on  advanced  heresy ;  while  the  orthodox  side  could  draw  on  the 
entire  clerical  profession,  over  ten  thousand  strong,  and  trained 
for  and  pledged  to  defence  of  the  faith.  Yet,  when  all  is  said, 
the  ordinary  Hst  of  deists  amply  suffices  to  disprove  Sir  L. 
Stephen's  phrase.  His  "intellectually  venerable"  list  runs: 
Bentley,  Locke,  Berkeley,  Clarke,  Butler,  Waterland,  War- 
burton,  Sherlock,  Gibson,  Conybeare,  Smalbroke,  Leslie,  Law, 
Leland,  Lardner,  Foster,  Doddridge,  Lyttelton,  Barrington, 
Addison,  Pope,  Swift.  He  might  have  added  Newton  and 
Boyle.  Sykes,'  Balguy,  Stebbing,  and  a  "host  of  others."  he 
declares  to  be  "  now  for  the  most  part  as  much  forgotten  as 
their  victims";  Young  and  Blackmore  he  admits  to  be  in 
similar  case.  It  is  expressly  told  of  Doddridge,  he  might  have 
added,  that  whereas  that  well-meaning  apologist  put  before 
his  ^  students  at  Northampton  the  ablest  writings  both  for  and 
against  Christianity,  leaving  them  to  draw  their  own  conclusions, 
many  of  his  pupils,  "  on  leaving  his  institution,  became  confirmed 
Arians  and  Socinians  "  (Nichols  in  App.  P  to  Life  of  Arminius 
—Works  of  Armi7iius,  1825,  i,  223-25).  This  hardly  spells 
success.^  All  told,  the  list  includes  only  three  or  four  men  of 
any  permanent  interest  as  thinkers,  apart  from  Newton ;  and 
only  three  or  four  more  important  as  writers.  The  description 
of  Waterland,'  Warburton,'  Smalbroke,^  Sherlock,  Leslie,  and 
half-a-dozen  more  as  "  intellectually  venerable  "  is  grotesque  ; 
even  Bentley  is  a  strange  subject  for  veneration. 
^^  On  the  other  hand,  the  list  of  "  the  despised  deists,"  who 
make  but  a  poor  show  when  compared  with  this  imposing 
hst,"  runs  thus  :  Herbert,  Hobbes,  Blount,  Halley  (well  known 
to  be  an  unbeliever,  though  he  did  not  write  on  the  subject), 

herPtio^^L^^  ^^Y^  man  than  half  the  others  in  the  list,  but  himself  a  good  deal  of  a 
treatment  of  dTistLTbje^^^^^^^  *°  "^^^^  "victims."  he  pleaded  for  a  more  candid 

Dr'*  <Snn2i^d^^'®  y  ?.^^"  ^^^  ^°^  theologically  orthodox,  but  was  an  evangelical  Christian. 

3  Wh£  ^   \  •  "^^^'^  *^*  ^nflfZrtmi  wider  Queen  Anne  and  the  Georges,  1878,  i.  344-46. 
BloripH  in  ?^  ^^  ,-°^  ^^^^.^^^^^^  Stephen  elsewhere  (p.  258)  calls  a  "brutal  theology  which 
of  eichfppnfH    ^^1°^  °°  ^^^  ^^^^  mstincts  of  its  opponents."  and  a  "most  unlovely  product 

4  Of  w       ^  ^°  ^'"^  speculation." 

rubhiih  "  Q^'^'^^^^.^.^J  Leslie  writes  elsewhere  (p.  353)  that  "this  colossus  was  built  up  of 
•'  coWfli  iS.>f  ^"  ^'-^  ^.?^  samples.  Again  he  speaks  (p.  368)  of  the  bishop's  pretensions  as 
iHvhLRTJ^r^F-^^^^'  ^^  should  be  noted,  further,  that  Warburton's  teaching  in  the 
SufRHj-ifr^f  \  T-^®  ^  ^^°^^  heresy  in  the  eyes  of  William  Law.  who  in  his  Short  hut 
asSted  i  217  ^  ^  ^^'*  pronounced  its  main  thesis  a  "most  horrible  doctrine."    Ed.  1768, 

As  to  Whose  "senile  incompetence"  see  same  vol.  p.  234. 


174 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


Toland,  Shaftesbury,  Collins,  Mandeville,  Tindal,  Chubb,  Morgan, 
Dodwell,  Middleton,  Hume,  Bolingbroke,  Gibbon.  It  would  be 
interesting  to  know  on  what  principles  this  group  is  excluded 
from  the  intellectual  veneration  so  liberally  allotted  to  the  other. 
It  is  nothing  to  the  purpose  that  Shaftesbury  and  Mandeville 
wrote  "  covertly  "  and  *'  indirectly."  The  law  and  the  conditions 
compelled  them  to  do  so.  It  is  still  more  beside  the  case  to  say 
that  "  Hume  can  scarcely  be  reckoned  among  the  deists.  He  is 
already  [when  ?]  emerging  into  a  higher  atmosphere."  Hume 
wrote  explicitly  as  a  deist ;  and  only  in  his  posthumous  Dialogues 
did  he  pass  on  to  the  atheistic  position.  At  no  time,  moreover, 
was  he  '*  on  the  side  of  Christianity."  On  the  other  hand,  Locke 
and  Clarke  and  Pope  were  clearly  "  emerging  into  a  higher  atmo- 
sphere "  than  Christianity,  since  Locke  is  commonly  reckoned 
by  the  culture-historians,  and  even  by  Sir  Leslie  Stephen,  as 
making  for  deism ;  Pope  was  the  pupil  of  Bolingbroke,  and  wrote 
as  such  ;  and  Clarke  was  shunned  as  an  Arian.  Newton,  again, 
was  a  Unitarian,  and  Leibnitz  accused  his  system  of  making 
for  irreligion.  It  would  be  hard  to  show,  further,  who  are  the 
'*  forgotten  victims  "  of  Balguy  and  the  rest.  Balguy  criticized 
Shaftesbury,  whose  name  is  still  a  good  deal  better  known  than 
Balguy's.  The  main  line  of  deists  is  pretty  well  remembered. 
And  if  we  pair  off  Hume  against  Berkeley,  Hobbes  against 
Locke,  Middleton  (as  historical  critic)  against  Bentley,  Shaftes- 
bury against  Addison,  Mandeville  against  Swift,  Bolingbroke 
against  Butler,  Collins  against  Clarke,  Herbert  against  Lyttelton, 
Tindal  against  Waterland,  and  Gibbon  against — shall  we  say  ? — 
Warburton,  it  hardly  appears  that  the  overplus  of  merit  goes  as 
Sir  Leslie  Stephen  alleges,  even  if  we  leave  Newton,  with  brain 
unhinged,  standing  against  Halley.  The  statement  that  the 
deists  "  are  but  a  ragged  regiment,"  and  that  "  in  speculative 
ability  most  of  them  were  children  by  the  side  of  their  ablest 
antagonists,"  is  simply  unintelligible  unless  the  names  of  all 
the  ablest  deists  are  left  out.  Locke,  be  it  remembered,  did 
not  live  to  meet  the  main  deistic  attack  on  Christianity  ;  and  Sir 
Leslie  admits  the  weakness  of  his  pro-Christian  performance. 

The  bases  of  Sir  Leslie  Stephen's  verdict  may  be  tested  by 
his  remarks  that  "  Collins,  a  respectable  country  gejitlertian, 
showed  considerable  acuteness ;  Toland,  a  poor  denizen  of  Grub 
Street,  and  Tindal,  a  Fellow  of  All  Souls,  made  a  certain  display 
of  learning,  and  succeeded  in  planting  some  effective  arguments." 
Elsewhere  (pp.  217-227)  Sir  Leshe  admits  that  Collins  had  the 
best  of  the  argument  against  his  **  venerable"  opponents  on 
Prophecy ;  and  Huxley  credits  him  with  equal  success  in  the 
argument  with  Clarke.  The  work  of  Collins  on  Human  Liberty ^ 
praised  by  a  long  series  of  students  and  experts,  and  entirely 
above  the  capacity  of  Bentley,  is  philosophically  as  durable  as 
any  portion  of  Locke,  who  made  Collins  his  chosen  friend  and 


BEITISH  FKEETHOUGHT 


175 


trustee,  and  who  did  not  live  to  meet  his  anti-Biblical  arguments. 
Tindal,  who  had  also  won  Locke's  high  praise  by  his  political 
essays,  profoundly  influenced  such  a  student  as  Laukhard 
(Lechler,  p.  451).  And  Toland,  whom  even  Mr.  A.  S.  Farrar 
(Bampton  Lectures,  p.  179)  admitted  to  possess  "  much 
originality  and  learning,"  has  struck  Lange  as  a  notable 
thinker,  though  he  was  a  poor  man.  Leibnitz,  who  answered 
him,  praises  his  acuteness,  as  does  Pusey,  who  further  admits 
the  uncommon  ability  of  Morgan  and  Collins  (Histor.  Enq. 
into  German  Bationalism,  1828,  p.  126).  It  is  time  that  the 
conventional  English  standards  in  these  matters  should  be 
abandoned  by  modern  rationalists. 

The  unfortunate  effect  of  Sir  Leslie  Stephen's  dictum  is  seen 
in  the  assertion  of  Prof.  Hoffding  {Hist,  of  Modern  Philos. 
Eng.  tr.  1900,  i,  403),  that  Sir  Leslie  ''rightly  remarks  of 
the  English  deists  that  they  were  altogether  inferior  to  their 
adversaries";  and  further  (p.  405),  that  by  the  later  deists, 
"Collins,  Tindal,  Morgan,  etc.,  the  dispute  as  to  miracles 
was  carried  on  with  great  violence."  It  is  here  evident  that 
Prof.  Hoffding  has  not  read  the  writers  he  depreciates,  for 
those  he  names  were  far  from  being  violent.  Had  he  known 
the  literature,  he  would  have  named  Woolston,  not  Collins  and 
Tindal  and  Morgan.  He  is  merely  echoing,  without  inquiring 
for  himself,  a  judgment  which  he  regards  as  authoritative.  In 
the  same  passage  he  declares  that  "only  one  of  all  the  men 
formerly  known  as  the  *  English  deists '  [Toland]  has  rendered 
contributions  of  any  value  to  the  history  of  thought."  If  this 
is  said  with  a  knowledge  of  the  works  of  Collins,  Shaftesbury, 
and  Mandeville,  it  argues  a  sad  lack  of  critical  judgment.  But 
there  is  reason  to  infer  here  also  that  Prof.  Hoffding  writes  in 
ignorance  of  the  literature  he  discusses. 

^  While  some  professed  rationaHsts  thus  belittle  a  series  of 
pioneers  who  did  so  much  to  make  later  rationalism  possible, 
some  eminent  theologians  do  them  justice.  Thus  does  Prof. 
Cheyne  begin  his  series  of  lectures  on  Founders  of  Old  Testament 
Criticism  (1893) :  "  A  well-known  and  honoured  representative 
of  progressive  German  orthodoxy  (J.  A.  Dorner)  has  set  a  fine 
example  of  historical  candour  by  admitting  the  obligations  of 
his  country  to  a  much-disHked  form  of  English  heterodoxy. 
He  says  that  English  deism,  which  found  so  many  apt  disciples 
in  Germany,  '  by  clearing  away  dead  matter,  prepared  the  way 
for  a  reconstruction  of  theology  from  the  very  depths  of  the 
heart's  beliefs,  and  also  subjected  man's  nature  to  stricter 
observation.'^  This,  however,  as  it  appears  to  me,  is  a  very 
inadequate  description  of  the  facts.     It  was  not  merely  a  new 

rJr^h^?'^  ^^^^^otefitaiit  Theology,  Eng.  tr.  ii,  77.     For  the   influence  of   deism  on 

n^^nl:  ^^  F^i,^^^^^  [^y^mischte  Schriften,  Bd.  ii)  and  Lechler  {Qesch.  des  englischm 
■ue%smus).~Note  by  Dr.  Cheyne. 


176  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 

constructive  stage  of  German  theoretic  theology,  and  a  keener 
psychological  investigation,  for  which  deism  helped  to  prepare 
the  way,  but  also  a  great  movement,  which  has  in  our  own 
day  become  in  a  strict  sense  international,  concerned  with  the 
literary  and  historical  criticism  of  the  Scriptures.  Beyond  all 
doubt,  the  Biblical  discussions  which  abound  in  the  works  of 
the  deists  and  their  opponents  contributed  in  no  slight  degree 
to  the  development  of  that  semi-apologetic  criticism  of  the  Old 
Testament  of  which  J.  D.  Michaelis,  and  in  some  degree  even 

Eichhorn,  were  leading  representatives It  is  indeed  singular 

that  deism  should  have  passed  away  in  England  without  having 
produced  a  great  critical  movement  among  ourselves."  Not 
quite  so  singular,  perhaps,  when  we  note  that  in  our  own  day 
Sir  Leslie  Stephen  and  Lecky  and  Prof.  Hoffding  could  sum  up 
the  work  of  the  deists  without  a  glance  at  what  it  meant  for 
Biblical  criticism. 


§  8 

If  we  were  to  set  up  a  theory  of  intellectual  possibihties  from 
what  has  actually  taken  place  in  the  history  of  thought,  and  without 
regard  to  the  economic  and  political  conditions  above  mentioned,  we 
might  reason  that  deism  failed  permanently  to  overthrow  the  current 
creed  because  it  was  not  properly  preceded  by  discipline  in  natural 
science.  There  might  well  be  stagnation  in  the  higher  criticism  of 
the  Hebrew  Scriptures  when  all  natural  science  was  still  coloured  by 
them.  In  nothing,  perhaps,  is  the  danger  of  Sacred  Books  more  fully 
exemplified  than  in  their  influence  for  the  suppression  of  true  scientific 
thought.  A  hundredfold  more  potently  than  the  faiths  of  ancient 
Greece  has  that  of  Christendom  blocked  the  way  to  all  intellectually 
vital  discovery.  If  even  the  fame  and  the  pietism  of  Newton  could 
not  save  him  from  the  charge  of  promoting  atheism,  much  less  could 
obscure  men  hope  to  set  up  any  view  of  natural  things  which  clashed 
with  pulpit  prejudice.  But  the  harm  lay  deeper,  inasmuch  as  the 
ground  was  preoccupied  by  pseudo-scientific  theories  which  were  at 
best  fanciful  modifications  of  the  myths  of  Genesis.  Types  of  these 
performances  are  the  treatise  of  Sir  Matthew  Hale  on  The  Primitive 
Origination  of  Mankind  (1685) ;  Dr.  Thomas  Burnet's  Sacred  Theory 
of  the  Earth  (1680-1689) ;  and  Whiston's  New  Theory  of  the  Earth 
(1696)— all  devoid  of  scientific  value ;  Hale's  work  being  pre-New- 
tonian ;  Burnet's  anti-Newtonian,  though  partly  critical  as  regards 
the  sources  of  the  Pentateuch  ;  and  Whiston's  a  combination  of 
Newton  and  myth  with  his  own  quaint  speculations.  Even  the 
Natural  History  of  the  Earth  of  Prof.  John  Woodward  (1695),  after 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


177 


recognizing  that  fossils  were  really  prehistoric  remains,  decided  that 
they  were  deposited  by  the  Deluge.^ 

Woodward's  book  is  in  its  own  way  instructive  as  regards  the 
history  of  opinion.  A  **  Professor  of  Physick"  in  Gresham  College, 
F.C.P.,  and  F.E.S.,  he  goes  about  his  work  in  a  methodical  and 
ostensibly  scientific  fashion,  colligates  the  phenomena,  examines 
temperately  the  hypotheses  of  the  many  previous  inquirers,  and 
shows  no  violence  of  orthodox  prepossession.  He  claims  to  have 
considered  Moses  **  only  as  an  historian,"  and  to  give  him  credit 
finally  because  he  finds  his  narrative  "punctually  true."^  He  had 
before  him  an  abundance  of  facts  irreconcilable  with  the  explanation 
offered  by  the  Flood  story ;  yet  he  actually  adds  to  that  myth  a 
thesis  of  universal  decomposition  and  dissolution  of  the  earth's  strata 
by  the  flood's  action^ — a  hypothesis  far  more  extravagant  than  any 
of  those  he  dismissed.  With  all  his  method  and  scrutiny  he  had 
remained  possessed  by  the  tradition,  and  could  not  cast  it  off.  It 
would  seem  as  if  such  a  book,  reducing  the  tradition  to  an  absurdity, 
was  bound  at  least  to  put  its  more  thoughtful  readers  on  the  right 
track.  But  the  legend  remained  in  possession  of  the  general 
intelligence  as  of  Woodward's ;  and  beyond  his  standpoint  science 
made  little  advance  for  many  years.  Moral  and  historical  criticism, 
then,  as  regards  some  main  issues,  had  gone  further  than  scientific ; 
and  men's  thinking  on  certain  problems  of  cosmic  philosophy  was 
thus  arrested  for  lack  of  due  basis  or  discipline  in  experiential  science. 
The  final  account  of  the  arrest  of  exact  Biblical  criticism  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  however,  is  that  which  explains  also  the  arrest 
of  the  sciences.  English  energy,  broadly  speaking,  was  diverted 
into  other  channels.  In  the  age  of  Chatham  it  became  more  and 
more  military  and  industrial,  imperialist  and  commercial ;  and  the 
scientific  work  of  Newton  was  considerably  less  developed  by 
English  hands  than  was  the  critical  work  of  the  first  deists. 
Long  before  the  French  Eevolution,  mathematical  and  astronomical 
science  were  being  advanced  by  French  minds,  the  English  doing 
nothing.  Lagrange  and  Euler,  Clairaut  and  D'Alembert,  carried  on 
the  task,  till  Laplace  consummated  it  in  his  great  theory,  which  is 
to  Newton's  what  Newton's  was  to  that  of  Copernicus.  It  was 
Frenchmen,  freethinkers  to  a  man,  who  built  up  the  new  astronomy, 
while  England  was  producing  only  eulogies  of  Newton's  greatness. 
No  British  name  is  ever  mentioned  in  the  list  of  mathematicians 


__     An  Esuay  towards  a  Natural  History  of  the  Earth,  3rd  ed.  1723,  pref.  and  pp.  16  sq., 
1?;^  ^P-  White,  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology,  i.  227. 
End  of  pref.  3  Work  cited,  p.  85. 


VOL.  II 


N 


I  \ 


178 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


who  followed  Newton  in  his  brilliant  career  and  completed  the 
magnificent  edifice  of  which  he  laid  the  foundation."^  "Scotland 
contributed  her  Maclaurin,  but  England  no  European  name.'" 
Throughout  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  "  there  was 
hardly  an  individual  in  this  country  who  possessed  an  intimate 
acquaintance  with  the  methods  of  investigation  which  had  con- 
ducted the  foreign  mathematicians  to  so  many  sublime  results."^ 
"  The  EngHsh  mathematicians  seem  to  have  been  so  dazzled  with  the 
splendour  of  Newton's  discoveries  that  they  never  conceived  them 
capable  of  being  extended  or  improved  upon";*  and  Newton's  name 
was  all  the  while  vaunted,  unwarrantably  enough,  as  being  on  the 
side  of  Christian  orthodoxy.  Halley's  great  hypothesis  of  the  motion 
of  the  solar  system  in  space,  put  forward  in  1718,  borne  out  by 
Cassini  and  Le  Monnier,  was  left  to  be  established  by  Mayer  of 
Gottingen.^  There  was  nothing  specially  incidental  to  deism,  then, 
in  the  non-development  of  the  higher  criticism  in  England  after 
CoUins  and  Parvish,  or  in  the  lull  of  critical  speculation  in  the  latter 
half  of  the  century.  It  was  part  of  a  general  social  readjustment  in 
which  EngUsh  attention  was  turned  from  the  mental  Hfe  to  the 
physical,  from  intension  of  thought  to  extension  of  empire. 

Playfair  (as  cited,  p.  39  ;  Brewster,  Memoirs  of  Newton,  i,  348, 
note)  puts  forward  the  theory  that  the  progress  of  the  higher 
science  in  France  was  due  to  the  "  small  pensions  and  great 
honours "  bestowed  on  scientific  men  by  the  Academy  of 
Sciences.  The  lack  of  such  an  institution  in  England  he  traces 
to  "  mercantile  prejudices,"  without  explaining  these  in  their 
turn.  They  are  to  be  understood  as  the  consequences  of  the 
special  expansion  of  commercial  and  industrial  life  in  England 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  when  France,  on  the  contrary,  losing 
India  and  North  America,  had  her  energies  in  a  proportional 
degree  thrown  back  on  the  Hfe  of  the  mind.  French  freethought, 
it  will  be  observed,  expanded  with  science,  while  in  England  there 
occurred,  not  a  spontaneous  reversion  to  orthodoxy  any  more 
than  a  surrender  of  the  doctrine  of  Newton,  but  a  general 
turning  of  attention  in  other  directions.  It  is  significant  that 
the  most  important  names  in  the  Hterature  of  deism  after  1740 
are  those  of  Hume  and  Smith,  late  products  of  the  intellectual 
atmosphere  of  pre-industrial  Scotland ;  of  BoHngbroke,  an 
aristocrat  of  the  deistic  generation,  long  an  exile  in  France, 
who  left  his  works  to  be  published  after  his  death;  and  of 
Gibbon,  who  also  breathed  the  intellectual  air  of  France. 

1  Playfair,  in  the  Edinburgh  Beview,  Jannary,  1808.  cited  by  Brewster,  Memoirs  of 
Netvton,  1855.  i.  347.  ^  Brewster,  as  last  cited. 

8  Grant.  History  of  Physical  Astronomy,  1852,  p.  108. 
*  Baden  Powell.  Hist,  of  Nat.  Philos.  1834.  p.  363. 
fi  Brewster,  More  Worlds  than  One,  1854,  p.  111. 


BKITISH  FKEETHOUGHT 


§9 


179 


It  has  been  commonly  assumed  that  after  Chubb  and  Morgan  the 
deistic  movement  in  England  "  decayed,"  or  "  passed  into  skepticism  " 
with  Hume  ;  and  that  the  decay  was  mainly  owing  to  the  persuasive 
effect  of  Bishop  Butler's  Analogy  (1736).^  This  appears  to  be  a 
complete  misconception,  arising  out  of  the  habit  of  looking  to  the 
mere  succession  of  books  without  considering  their  vogue  and  the 
accompanying  social  conditions.  Butler's  book  had  very  little 
influence  till  long  after  his  death,^  being  indeed  very  ill-fitted  to 
turn  contemporary  deists  to  Christianity.  It  does  but  develop  one 
form  of  the  skeptical  argument  for  faith,  as  Berkeley  had  developed 
another ;  and  that  form  of  reasoning  never  does  attain  to  anything 
better  than  a  success  of  despair.  The  main  argument  being  that 
natural  religion  is  open  to  the  same  objections  as  revealed,  on  the 
score  (1)  of  the  inconsistency  of  Nature  with  divine  benevolence,  and 
(2)  that  we  must  be  guided  in  opinion  as  in  conduct  by  probability, 
a  Mohammedan  could  as  well  use  the  theorem  for  the  Koran  as 
could  a  Christian  for  the  Bible ;  and  the  argument  against  the 
justice  of  Nature  tended  logically  to  atheism.  But  the  deists  had 
left  to  them  the  resource  of  our  modern  theists — that  of  surmising  a 
beneficence  above  human  comprehension  ;  and  it  is  clear  that  if 
Butler  made  any  converts  they  must  have  been  of  a  very  unenthu- 
siastic  kind.  It  is  therefore  safe  to  say  with  Pattison  that  "  To 
whatever  causes  is  to  be  attributed  the  decline  of  deism  from  17501 
onwards,  the  books  polemically  written  against  it  cannot  be  reckoned 
among  them."  ^ 

On  the  other  hand,  even  deists  who  were  afifected  by  the  plea 
that  the  Bible  need  not  be  more  consistent  and  satisfactory  than 
Nature,  could  find  refuge  in  Unitarianism,  a  creed  which,  as  indus- 
triously propounded  by  Priestley*  towards  the  end  of  the  century, 
made  a  numerical  progress  out  of  all  proportion  to  that  of  orthodoxy. 
The  argument  of  William  Law,*^  again,  which  insisted  on  the  irrecon- 
cilability of  the  course  of  things  with  human  reason,  and  called  for 

J  Sir  James  Stephen,  Horce  Sahhaticce,  ii,  281 ;  Lechler.  p.  451. 

*  See  details  in  Dynamics  of  Beligion,  ch.  viii. 

Essay  on  "  Tendencies  of  Religious  Thought  in  England :  1688-1750."  in  Essays  and 
Beviews,  9th  ed.  p.  304. 

*  In  criticizing  whom  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  barely  notices  his  scientific  work,  but  dwells 
much  on  his  religious  fallacies— a  course  which  would  make  short  work  of  the  fame  of 
Newton. 

w  '^J^  ^^^  ^^^*  ^^  Beason  ;  or.  Natural  Beligion  Fully  and  Fairly  Stated,  in  answer  to 
imdal  (1732).  See  the  argument  set  forth  by  Sir  Leslie  Stephen,  i,  158-63.  It  is  noteworthy, 
nowever.  that  in  his  Spirit  of  Prayer  (1750),  pt.  ii,  dial,  i.  Law  expressly  argues  that  "  No 
other  religion  can  be  right  but  that  which  has  its  foundation  in  Nature.  For  the  God  of 
mature  can  require  nothing  of  his  creatures  but  what  the  state  of  their  nature  calls  them 
60.  Like  Baxter,  Berkeley.  Butler,  and  so  many  other  orthodox  polemists.  Law  uses  the 
argument  from  ignorance  when  it  suits  him.  and  ignores  or  rejects  it  when  used  by  others. 


180  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 

an  abject  submission   to  revelation,  could   appeal   only  to   minds 
already  thus  prostrate.     Both  his  and  Butler's  methods,  m  fact, 
prepared  the  way  for  HuME.     And  in  the  year  1741,  five  years  after 
the  issue  of   the  Analogy  and  seven  before  the  issue  of   Hume's 
Essay  on  Miracks,  we  find  the  thesis  of  that  essay  tersely  affirmed 
in  a  note  to  Book  II  of   an  anonymous  translation  (ascribed  to 
T.  Feancklin)  of  Cicero's  De  Natura  Deorum. 

The  passage  is  worth  comparing  with  Hume :   "Hence  we 
see  what  little  credit  ought  to  be  paid  to  facts  said  to  bo  done 
out  of  the  ordinary  course  of  nature.     These  miracles  [cutting 
the  whetstone,  etc..  related  by  Cicero,  De  Div.  i,  c.  xviij  are  well 
attested.     They  were  recorded  in  the  annals  of  a  great  people, 
beheved  by  many  learned  and  otherwise  sagacious  persons,  and 
received  as  religious  truths  by  the  populace ;  but  the  testimonies 
of  ancient  records,  the  credulity  of  some  learned  men,  and  the 
implicit  faith  of  the  vulgar,  can  never  prove  that  to  have  been, 
which  is  impossible  in  the  nature  of  things  ever  to  be.      M.  1  iittui^ 
Cicero  Of  the  Nature  of  the  God[s......with  Notes,  London,  1741 

p  85.     It  does  not  appear  to  have  been  noted  that  in  regard 
to  this  as  to  another  of  his  best-known  theses,  Hume  develops 
a  proposition  laid  down  before  him. 
What  Hume  did  was  to  elaborate  the  skeptical  argument  with  a 
power  and  fullness  which  forced  attention  once  for  all,  alike  in  England 
and  on  the  Continent.     It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  however,  that 
Hume's  philosophy,  insofar    as  it  was  strictly  skeptical^that  is, 
suspensory— drew  away  deists  from  their  former  attitude  of  con- 
fidence to  one  of  absolute  doubt.     Nor  did  Hume  ever  aim  at  such  a 
result.     What  he  did  was  to  countermine  the  mines  of  Berkeley  and 
others,  who,  finding  their  supra-rational  dogmas  set  aside  by  ration- 
alism, deistic  or  atheistic,  sought  to  discredit  at  once  deistic  and 
atheistic  philosophies  based  on  study  of  the  external  world,  and  to 
establish  their  creed  anew  on  the  basis  of  their  subjective  conscious- 
ness.    As  against  that  method,  Hume  showed  the  futility  of   all 
apriorism  alike,  destroying  the  sham  skepticism  of   the  Christian 
theists  by  forcing  their  method  to  its  conclusions.     If  the  universe 
was  to  be  reduced  to  a  mere  contingent  of  consciousness,  he  calmly 
showed,  consciousness  itself  was  as  easily  reducible,  on  the  same 
principles,  to  a  mere  series  of  states.     Idealistic  skepticism,  having 
disposed  of  the  universe,  must  make  short  work  of  the  hypostatized 
process  of   perception.     Hume,  knowing  that   strict  skepticism  is 
practically  null  in  life,  counted  on  leaving  the  ground  cleared  for 
experiential  rationalism.     And  he  did,  insofar  as  he  was  read.     His 
essay,  Of  Miracles  (with  the  rest  of  the  Inquiries  of  1748-1751. 


BBITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


181 


which  recast  his  early  Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  1739),  posits  a 
principle  valid  against  all  supernaturalism  whatever ;  while  his 
Natural  History  of  Beligion  (1757),  though  affirming  deism,  rejected 
the  theory  of  a  primordial  monotheism,  and  laid  the  basis  of  the 
science  of  Comparative  Hierology.^  Finally,  his  posthumous 
Dialogues  Concerning  Natural  Beligion  (1779)  admit,  though  in- 
directly, the  untenableness  of  deism,  and  fall  back  decisively  upon 
the  atheistic  or  agnostic  position.'^  Like  Descartes,  he  lacked  the 
heroic  fibre ;  but  like  him  he  recast  philosophy  for  modern  Europe ; 
and  its  subsequent  course  is  but  a  development  of  or  a  reaction 
against  his  work. 

§  10 

It  is  remarkable  that  this  development  of  opinion  took  place  in 
that  part  of  the  British  Islands  where  religious  fanaticism  had  gone 
furthest,  and  speech  and  thought  were  socially  least  free.  Free- 
thought  in  Scotland  before  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century 
can  have  existed  only  as  a  thing  furtive  and  accursed;  and  though, 
as  we  have  seen  from  the  Beligio  Stoici  of  Sir  George  Mackenzie, 
unbelief  had  emerged  in  some  abundance  at  or  before  the  Eestoration, 
only  wealthy  men  could  dare  openly  to  avow  their  deism.*  Early  in 
1697  the  clergy  had  actually  succeeded  in  getting  a  lad  of  eighteen, 
Thomas  Aikenhead,  hanged  for  professing  deism  in  general,  and  in 
particular  for  calling  the  Old  Testament  **  Ezra's  Fables,"  ridiculing 
the  doctrines  of  the  Trinity  and  the  Incarnation,  and  expressing  the 
hope  and  belief  that  Christianity  would  be  extinct  within  a  century.* 
The  spirit  of  the  prosecution  may  be  gathered  from  the  facts  that 
the  boy  broke  down  and  pleaded  penitence,^  and  that  the  statute 
enacted  the  capital  penalty  only  for  obstinately  persisting  in  the 
denial  of  any  of  the  persons  of  the  Trinity.^     He  had  talked  reck- 


1  The  general  reader  should  take  note  that  in  A.  Murray's  isajue  of  Hume's  Essays 
(afterwards  published  by  Ward,  Lock,  and  Co.),  which  omits  alto^jether  the  essays  on 
Miracles  and  a  Future  State,  the  Natural  History  of  Beligion  is  much  mutilated,  though 
tiie  book  professes  to  be  a  verbatim  reprint. 

■^  Even  before  his  death  he  was  suspected  of  that  view.  When  his  coffin  was  being 
carried  from  his  house  for  interment,  one  of  "  the  refuse  of  the  rabble  "  is  said  to  have 
remarked,  "Ah.  he  was  an  atheist."  "No  matter,"  replied  another,  "he  was  an  honest 
man  "  {Curious  Particulars,  etc.,  respecting  Chesterfield  and  Hume,  1788,  p.  15). 

"  See  Burton,  Hist,  of  Scotland,  viii,  54^-50,  as  to  the  case  of  Pitcairne. 

*  HoweU's  State  Trials,  xiii  (1812),  coll.  917-38. 

5  Macaulay,  History,  ch.  xxii ;  student's  ed.  ii,  620-21 ;  Burton,  History  of  Scotland,  viii, 
fi  I'  ^i.k^'i^ead  seems  to  have  been  a  boy  of  unusual  if  unbalanced  capacity,  even  by 
the  bullying  account  of  Macaulay,  who  missed  no  opportunity  to  cover  himself  by  stoning 
heretics.  See  the  boy's  arguments  on  the  bases  of  ethics,  set  forth  in  his  "  dying  speech," 
as  cited  by  Halyburton,  Nattiral  Beligion  Insufficient,  1714,  pp.  119-23. 131,  and  the  version 
in  the  State  Trials,  xiii.  930-34. 

6  Macaulay  ascribes  the  savagery  of  the  prosecution  to  the  Lord  Advocate,  Sir  James 
btewart,  as  cruel  as  he  was  base";  but  a  letter  printed  in  the  State  Trials,  from  a 
member  of  the  Privy  Council,  says  the  sentence  would  have  been  commuted  if  "the 
ministers  would  intercede."  They,  however,  "spoke  and  preached  for  cutting  him  off." 
Trials,  xui,  930;  Burton,  viii.  77. 


182 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT 


183 


lessly  against  the  current  creed  among  youths  about  his  own  age, 
one  of  whom  was  in  Locke's  opinion  "  the  decoy  who  gave  him  the 
books  and  made  him  speak  as  he  did." '  It  would  appear  that  a 
victim  was  very  much  wanted  ;  and  Aikenhead  was  not  allowed  the 
help  of  a  counsel.  It  is  characteristic  of  the  deadening  effect  of 
dogmatic  religion  on  the  heart  that  an  act  of  such  brutish  cruelty 
elicited  no  cry  of  horror  from  any  Christian  writer.  At  this  date 
the  clergy  were  hounding  on  the  Privy  Council  to  new  activity 
in  trying  witches  ;  and  all  works  of  supposed  heretical  tendency 
imported  from  England  were  confiscated  in  the  Edinburgh  shops, 
among  them  being  Thomas  Burnet's  Sacred  Theory  of  the  Earth,'' 
Scottish  intellectual  development  had  in  fact  been  arrested  by  the 
Reformation,  so  that,  save  for  Napier's  Logarithms  (1614)  and  such 
a  political  treatise  as  Rutherford's  Lex  Bex  (1644).  the  nation  of 
Dunbar  and  Lyndsay  produced  for  two  centuries  no  secular  literature 
of  the  least  value,  and  not  even  a  theology  of  any  enduring  interest. 
Deism,  accordingly,  seems  in  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  and 
the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  have  made  fully  as  much 
progress  in  Scotland  as  in  England ;  and  the  bigoted  clergy  could 
offer  little  intellectual  resistance. 

As  early  as  1696  the  Scottish  General  Assembly,  with  theo- 
logical candour,  passed  an  Act  "  against  the  Atheistical  opinions 
of  the  Deists."  (Abridgment  of  the  Acts  of  the  General  Assemblies, 
1721,  pp.  16,  76  ;  Cunningham,  Hist,  of  the  Ch.  of  Scotland,  ii, 
313.)    The  opinions  specified  were  "  The  denying  of  all  revealed 

rehgion,  the  grand  mysteries  of  the  gospels the  resurrection 

of  the  dead,  and,  in  a  word,  the  certainty  and  authority  of 
Scripture  revelation ;  as  also,  their  asserting  that  there  must 

be   a   mathematical   evidence   for   each    purpose and   that 

Natural  Light  is  sufficient  to  Salvation."  All  this  is  deism, 
pure  and  simple.  But  Sir  W.  Anstruther  (a  judge  in  the  Court 
of  Session),  in  the  preface  to  his  Essays  Moral  and  Divine, 
Edinburgh,  1710,  speaks  of  **  the  spreading  contagion  of 
atheism,  which  threatens  the  ruin  of  our  excellent  and  holy 
religion."  To  atheism  he  devotes  two  essays  ;  and  neither  in 
these  nor  in  one  on  the  Incarnation  does  he  discuss  deism,  the 
arguments  he  handles  being  really  atheistic.  Scottish  free- 
thought  would  seem  thus  to  have  gone  further  than  Enghsh  at 
the  period  in  question. 

As  to  the  prevalence  of  deism,  however,  see  the  posthumous 
work  of  Prof.  Halyburton,  of  St.  Andrews,  Natural  Beligion 

1  Letter  to  Sir  Francis  Masham.  printed  in  the  State  Trials,  xiii,  928-29— evidently 
written  by  Loclie.  who  seems  to  have  preserved  aU  the  papers  printed  by  Howell. 

2  Macaulay,  as  cited.  In  1681  one  Francis  Borthwick.  who  had  gone  abroad  at  the  age 
of  fourteen  and  turned  Jew.  was  accused  of  blaspheming  Jesus,  and  had  to  fly  for  his  liie, 
being  outlawed.    State  Trials,  as  cited,  col.  939, 


Insufficient  (Edinburgh,  1714),  Epist.  of  Recom. ;  pref.  pp.  25,  27, 
and  pp.  8, 15, 19,  23,  31,  etc.  Halyburton's  treatise  is  interesting 
as  showing  the  psychological  state  of  argumentative  Scotch 
orthodoxy  in  his  day.  He  professes  to  repel  the  deistical 
argument  throughout  by  reason  ;  he  follows  Huet,  and  concurs 
with  Berkeley  in  contending  that  mathematics  involves  anti- 
rational  assumptions ;  and  he  takes  entire  satisfaction  in  the 
execution  of  the  lad  Aikenhead  for  deism.  Yet  in  a  second 
treatise,  Aii  Essay  Concerning  the  Nature  of  Faith,  he  contends, 
as  against  Locke  and  the  "  Rationalists,"  that  the  power  to 
believe  in  the  word  of  God  is  "  expressly  deny'd  to  man  in  his 
natural  estate,"  and  is  a  supernatural  gift.  Thus  the  Calvinists, 
like  Baxter,  were  at  bottom  absolutely  insincere  in  their  pro- 
fession to  act  upon  reason,  while  insolently  charging  insincerity 
on  others. 

Even  apart  from  deism  there  had  arisen  a  widespread  aversion 
to  dogmatic  theology  and  formal  creeds,  so  that  an  apologist  of  1715 
speaks  of  his  day  as  '*  a  time  when  creeds  and  Confessions  of  Faith 
are  so  generally  decried,  and  not  only  exposed  to  contempt,  as  useless 

inventions but  are  loaded  by  many  writers  of  distinguished  wit 

and  learning  with  the  most  fatal  and  dangerous  consequences." 
This  writer  admits  the  intense  bitterness  of  the  theological  disputes 
of  the  time  ;^  and  he  speaks,  on  the  other  hand,  of  seeing  "  the  most 
sacred  mysteries  of  godhness  impudently  denied  and  impugned"  by 
some,  while  the  "  distinguishing  doctrines  of  Christianity  are  by 
others  treacherously  undermined,  subtilized  into  an  airy  phantom, 
or  at  least  doubted,  if  not  disclaimed."  ^  His  references  are  probably 
to  works  published  in  England,  notably  those  of  Locke, '  Toland, 
Shaftesbury,  and  Collins,  since  in  Scotland  no  such  literature  could 
then  be  published ;  but  he  doubtless  has  an  eye  to  Scottish  opinion. 

While,  however,  the  rationalism  of  the  time  could  not  take  book 
form,  there  are  clear  traces  of  its  existence  among  educated  men, 
even  apart  from  the  general  complaints  of  the  apologists.  Thus  the 
Professor  of  Medicine  at  Glasgow  University  in  the  opening  years 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  John  Johnston,  was  a  known  freethinker.* 
In  the  way  of  moderate  or  Christian  rationalism,  the  teaching  of 
the  prosecuted  Simson  seems  to  have  counted  for  something,  seeing 
that  Francis  Hutcheson  at  least  imbibed  from  him  "  liberal "  views 
about  future  punishment  and  the  salvation  of  the  heathen,  which 

_  *  A  Full  Account  of  the  Several  Ends  and  Uses  of  Confessions  of  Faith,  first  published 
in  1719  as  a  preface  to  a  Collection  of  Confessions  of  Faith,  by  Prof.  W.  Dunbar,  of 
Edinburgh  University,  3rd  ed.  1775.  p.  1. 

2  Work  cited,  p.  48.  8  Id.  p.  198. 

<  Scotland  and  Scotsmen  in  the  Eighteenth  Century.  From  the  MSS.  of  John  Ramsay, 
of  Ochtertyre,  1888.  i,  277.  Ramsay  describes  Johnston  as  a  "joyous,  manly,  honourable 
man,"  of  whom  Karnes  "  was  exceedingly  fond"  (p.  278). 


% 


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185 


gave  much  offence  in  the  Pregbyterian  pulpit  in  Ulster.^  And 
Hutcheson's  later  vindication  of  the  ethical  system  of  Shaftesbury 
in  his  Inquiry  Concerning  the  Ideas  of  Beauty  and  Virtue  (1725)  must 
have  tended  to  attract  attention  in  Scotland  to  the  Characteristics 
after  his  instalment  as  a  Professor  at  Glasgow.  In  an  English 
pamphlet,  in  1732,  he  was  satirized  as  introducing  Shaftesbury's 
system  into  a  University,'^  and  it  was  from  the  Shaftesbury  camp  that 
the  first  literary  expression  of  freethought  in  Scotland  was  sent  forth. 
A  young  Scotch  deist  of  that  school,  William  Dudgeon,  published  in 
1732  a  dialogue  entitled  The  State  of  the  Moral  World  Considered, 
wherein  the  optimistic  position  was  taken  up  with  uncommon 
explicitness ;  and  in  1739  the  same  writer  printed  A  Catechism 
Founded  upon  Experience  and  Beason,  prefaced  by  an  Introductory 
Letter  on  Natural  Religion,  which  takes  a  distinctly  anti-clerical 
attitude.  The  Catechism  answers  to  its  title,  save  insofar  as  it  is 
k  priori  in  its  theism  and  optimistic  in  its  ethic,  as  is  another  work 
of  its  author  in  the  same  year,  A  View  of  the  Necessarian  or  Best 
Scheme,  defending  the  Shaftesburyan  doctrine  against  the  criticism 
of  Crousaz  on  Pope's  Essay.  Still  more  heterodox  is  his  little 
volume  of  Philosophical  Letters  Concerning  the  Being  and  Attributes 
of  God  (1737),  where  the  doctrine  goes  far  towards  pantheism.  All 
this  propaganda  seems  to  have  ehcited  only  one  printed  reply — an 
attack  on  his  first  treatise  in  1732.  In  the  letter  prefaced  to  his 
Catechism,  however,  he  tells  that  "  the  bare  suspicion  of  my  not 
believing  the  opinions  in  fashion  in  our  country  hath  already  caused 
me  sufficient  trouble."^  His  case  had  in  fact  been  raised  in  the 
Church  courts,  the  proceedings  going  through  many  stages  in  the 
years  1732-36;  but  in  the  end  no  decision  was  taken,*  and  the 
special  stress  of  his  rationalism  in  1739  doubtless  owes  something 
alike  to  the  prosecution  and  to  its  collapse.  Despite  such  hostiUty, 
he  must  privately  have  had  fair  support.^ 

The  prosecution  of  Hutcheson  before  the  Glasgow  Presbytery  in 
1738  reveals  vividly  the  theological  temper  of  the  time.  He  was 
indicted  for  teaching  to  his  students  "  the  following  two  false  and 
dangerous  doctrines  :  first,  that  the  standard  of  moral  goodness  was 
the  promotion  of  the  happiness  of  others ;  and,  second,  that  we  could 

1  W.  R.  Scott,  Francis  Hutcheson,  1900.  pp.  15.  20-21.  2  ja,  p.  52. 

8  Cp.  AlberCi,  Brie/e  betreffende  den  Zustand  der  Religion  in  Qross-Brittannien,  1752, 

pp.  43t>-31.  ^      ,,  ^     ,         ,      .,    ^     1. 

4  See  Dr.  McCosh's  Scottish  Philosophy,  1875,  pp.  111-13.  Dr.  McCosh  notes  that  at 
some  points  Dudgeon  anticipated  Hume. 

5  Dr.  McCosh.  however,  admits  that  the  absence  of  the  prmter's  name  on  the  1765 
edition  of  Dudgeon's  works  shows  that  there  was  then  no  thorough  freedom  of  thought 
in  Scotland. 


have  a  knowledge  of  good  and  evil  without  and  prior  to  a  knowledge 
of  God."  ^  There  has  been  a  natural  disposition  on  the  orthodox 
side  to  suppress  the  fact  that  such  teachings  were  ever  ecclesiastically 
denounced  as  false,  dangerous,  and  irreligious  ;  and  the  prosecution 
seems  to  have  had  no  effect  beyond  intensifying  the  devotion  of 
Hutcheson's  students.  Among  them  was  Adam  Smith,  of  whom  it 
has  justly  been  said  that,  "  if  he  was  any  man's  disciple,  he  was 
Hutcheson's,"  inasmuch  as  he  derived  from  his  teacher  the  bases 
ahke  of  his  moral  and  political  philosophy  and  of  his  deistic 
optimism.^  Another  prosecution  soon  afterwards  showed  that  the 
new  influences  were  vitally  affecting  thought  within  the  Church 
itself.  Hutcheson's  friend  Leechman,  whom  he  and  his  party 
contrived  to  elect  as  professor  of  theology  in  Glasgow  University, 
was  in  turn  proceeded  against  (1743-44)  for  a  sermon  on  Prayer, 
which  Hutcheson  and  his  sympathizers  pronounced  "  noble,"  ^  but 
which  "  resolved  the  efficacy  of  prayer  into  its  reflex  influence  on 
the  mind  of  the  worshipper"* — a  theorem  which  has  chronically 
made  its  appearance  in  the  Scottish  Church  ever  since,  still  ranking 
as  a  heresy,  after  having  brought  a  clerical  prosecution  in  the  last 
century  on  at  least  one  divine,  Prof.  William  Knight,  and  rousing 
a  scandal  against  another,  the  late  Dr.  Robert  Wallace.** 

Leechman  in  turn  held  his  ground,  and  later  became  Principal 
of  his  University ;  but  still  the  orthodox  in  Scotland  fought  bitterly 
against  every  semblance  of  rationalism.  Even  the  anti-deistic  essays 
of  Lord-President  Forbes  of  Culloden,  head  of  the  Court  of  Session, 
when  collected^  and  posthumously  published,  were  offensive' to  the 
Church  as  laying  undue  stress  on  reason  ;  as  accepting  the  heterodox 
Biblical  theories  of  Dr.  John  Hutchinson ;  and  as  making  the 
awkward  admission  that  **  the  freethinkers,  with  all  their  perversity, 
generally  are  sensible  of  the  social  duties,  and  act  up  to  them  better 
than  others  do  who  in  other  respects  think  more  justly  than  they."  ^ 
Such  an  utterance  from  such  a  dignitary  told  of  a  profound  change  ; 
and,  largely  through  the  influence  of  Hutcheson  and  Leechman  on 

1  Rae.  Life  of  Adam  Smith.  1895,  p.  13.  Prof.  Fowler  shows  no  knowledge  of  this 
prosecution  m  his  monograph  on  Hutcheson  (Shaftesbury  and  Hutcheson,  1882);  and 
Mr.  vv.  R.  Scott,  in  his,  seems  to  rely  for  the  wording  of  the  indictment  solely  on  Mr.  Rae, 
WHO  gives  no  references,  drawing  apparently  on  unpublished  MSS. 

^  Rae,  as  cited,  pp.  11-15.  »  Scott,  as  cited,  p.  87. 

•  Dr.  James  Orr,  David  Hume  and  his  Influence,  etc.,  1903.  pp.  36-37. 

6  mi^°  ^°^  ^  *^^®  ^  theological  professor  in  Edinburgh  University. 
7.**     .    ^'^j^.'^phts  Concerning  Religion,  Natural  and  Revealed,  appeared  in  1735:  the 
getter  to  a  Bishop  in  1732;  and  the  Reflections  on  tlw  Sources  of  Incredulity  {left  unfinished) 

Svf«S"™°'^^J^  ^^°^'  ^^^-  Forbes  in  his  youth  had  been  famed  as  one  of  the  hardest 
arinKers  of  nis  day. 

v^l^^f^^^^\^VJ^l  Incredulity,  in  WorJcs,  undated,  ii,  141-42.  Yet  the  works  of  Forbes 
w^;,h-  '^"*.^!f,;^^  ,  orthodox  purposes  into  German,  and  later  into  French  by  P6re 
the  ^e^^'^r  wbo  preserves  the  passage  on  freethinkers'  morals,  though  curtailing 


iiijJIiaiS&lAidajBMMaiaMWMaajBaijMjrfi 


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187 


a  generation  of  students,  the  educated  Scotland  of  the  latter  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century  was  in  large  part  either  "Moderate"  or 
deistic.  After  generations  of  barren  controversy/  the  very  aridity 
of  the  Presbyterian  life  intensified  the  recoil  among  the  educated 
classes  to  philosophical  and  historical  interests,  leading  to  the 
performances  of  Hume,  Smith,  Robertson,  Millar,  Ferguson,  and  yet 
others,  all  rationalists  in  method  and  sociologists  in  their  interests. 

Of  these,  Millar,  one  of  Smith's  favourite  pupils,  and  a  table- 
talker  of  "  magical  vivacity," '^  was  known  to  be  rationalistic  in  a 
high  degree;'  while  Smith  and  Ferguson  were  certainly  deists,  as 
was  Henry  Home  (the  judge.  Lord  Karnes),  who  had  the  distinction 
of   being   attacked   along   with   his    friend    Hume   in   the   General 
Assembly  of   the  Church  of   Scotland   in    1755-56.     Home  wrote 
expressly  to  controvert  Hume,  aUke  as  to  utilitarianism  and  the 
idea  of  causation  ;  but  his  book.  Essays  on  Morality  and  Natural 
Beligion  (pubhshed  anonymously,  1751),  handled  the  thorny  question 
of  free-will  in  such  fashion  as  to  give  no  less  offence  than  Hume  had 
done;    and  the   orthodox  bracketed   him  with   the   subject  of  his 
criticism.     His  doctrine  was  indeed  singular,  its  purport  being  that 
there  can  be  no  free-will,  but  that  the  deity  has  for  wise  purposes 
implanted  in  men  the  feeUng  that  their  wills  are  free.     The  fact  of 
his  having  been  made  a  judge  of  the  Court  of  Session  since  writing 
his  book  had  probably  something  to  do  with  the  rejection  of  the 
whole  subject  by  the  General   Assembly,  and  afterwards   by  the 
Edinburgh  Presbytery;    but  there   had   evidently  arisen  a  certain 
diffidence  in  the  Church,  which  would  be  assiduously  promoted  by 
"  moderates  "  such   as   Principal  Robertson,   the  historian.     It  is 
noteworthy  that,  while  Home  and  Hume  thus  escaped,  the  other 
Home,  John,  who  wrote  the  then  admired  tragedy  of  Douglas,  was 
soon  after  forced  to  resign  his  position  as  a  minister  of  the  Church 
for  that  authorship,  deism  having  apparently  more  friends  in  the  fold 
than  drama.*     While  the  theatre  was  thus  being  treated  as  a  place 
of  sin,  many  of  the  churches  in  Scotland  were  the  scenes  of  repeated 
Sunday  riots.     A  new  manner  of  psalm-singing  had  been  introduced, 
and  it  frequently  happened  that  the  congregations  divided  into  two 
parties,  each   singing  in  its  own  way,  till  they  came   to  blows. 
According  to  one  of  Hume's  biographers,  unbelievers  were  at  this 


^Itilfr  5:^:  ^"^^^^^^^^  T^^^"^^  ^ora  Karnes.  2nd  ed.  181.  i. 
ch.  V ;  Burton's  Life  of  Hume,  i.  Iii5~30. 


period  wont  to  go  to  church  to  see  the  fun.*     Naturally  orthodoxy 
did  not  gain  ground. 

In  the  case  of  Adam  Smith  we  have  one  of  the  leading  instances 
of  the  divorce  between  culture  and  creed  in  the  Scotland  of  that  age. 
His  intellectual  tendencies,  primed  by  Hutcheson,  were  already 
revealing  themselves  when,  seeking  for  something  worth  study  in 
the  unstudious  Oxford  of  his  day,  he  was  found  by  some  suspicious 
supervisor  reading  Hume's  Treatise  of  Human  Nature.  The  book 
was  seized  and  the  student  scolded.^  When,  in  1751,  he  became 
Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  Glasgow  University,  he  aroused 
orthodox  comment  by  abandoning  the  Sunday  class  on  Christian 
Evidences  set  up  by  Hutcheson,  and  still  further,  it  is  said,  by 
petitioning  the  Senatus  to  be  allowed  to  be  relieved  of  the  duty  of 
opening  his  class  with  prayer.^  The  permission  was  not  given  ;  and 
the  compulsory  prayers  were  "  thought  to  savour  strongly  of  natural 
religion  ";  while  the  lectures  on  Natural  Theology,  which  were  part 
of  the  work  of  the  chair,  were  said  to  lead  "  presumptuous  striplings  " 
to  hold  that  "the  great  truths  of  theology,  together  with  the  duties 
which  man  owes  to  God  and  his  neighbours,  may  be  discovered  by 
the  light  of  nature  without  any  special  revelation."  *  Smith  was 
thus  well  founded  in  rationalism  before  he  became  personally 
acquainted  with  Voltaire  and  the  other  French  freethinkers ;  and 
the  pious  contemporary  who  deplores  his  associations  avows  that 
neither  before  nor  after  his  French  tour  was  his  religious  creed  ever 
"properly  ascertained."^  It  is  clear,  however,  that  it  steadily 
developed  in  a  rationalistic  direction.  In  the  Theory  of  Moral 
Sentiments  (1759)  the  prevailing  vein  of  theistic  optimism  is 
sufficiently  uncritical ;  but  even  there  there  emerges  an  apparent 
doubt  on  the  doctrine  of  a  future  state,  and  positive  hostility  to 
certain  ecclesiastical  forms  of  it.^  In  the  sixth  edition,  which  he 
prepared  for  the  press  in  1790,  he  deleted  the  passage  which  pro- 
nounced  the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement  to  be  in  harmony  with 
natural  ethics.'  But  most  noteworthy  of  all  is  his  handling  of  the 
question  of  religious  establishments  in  the  Wealth  of  Nations.^  It 
is  so  completely  naturalistic  that   only   the   habit   of   taking  the 

J  Ritchie,  as  cited,  p.  57. 

J  McCulloch,  Life  of  Smith  prefixed  to  ed.  of  Wealth  of  Nations,  ed.  1839.  p.  ii. 

8  Ramsay  of  Ochtertyre,  Scotland  and  Scotsynen  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  1888,  i, 
462-63.    Mr.  Rae  doubts  the  story.  Life  of  Adam  Smith,  1895,  p.  60. 

*  Ramsay,  as  last  cited.  5  Ramsay,  passage  cited. 

°  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  pt.  iii,  ch.  ii,  end. 

'  Cp.  Rae,  pp.  427-30.  Mr.  Rae  thinks  the  deletion  stood  for  no  change  of  opinion,  and 
cites  Smith's  own  private  explanation  (Sinclair's  Life  of  Sir  John  Sinclair,  i,  40)  that  he 
thought  the  passage  "unnecessary  and  misplaced."  But  this  expression  must  be  read  in 
tu  ^^j  °^  Smith's  general  reticence  concerning  established  dogmas.  Certainly  he 
adhered  to  his  argument— which  does  not  claim  to  be  a  demonstration— for  the  doctrine 
0^  a  future  state.  8  Bk.  v.  ch.  i.  pt.  iii.  art.  3. 


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Christian  religion  for  granted  could  make  men  miss  seeing  that  its 
account  of  the  conditions  of  the  rise  of  new  cults  applied  to  that  in 
its  origin  no  less  than  to  the  rise  of  any  of  its  sects.  As  a  whole, 
the  argument  might  form  part  of  Gibbon's  fifteenth  chapter.  And 
even  allowing  for  the  slowness  of  the  average  believer  to  see  the 
application  of  a  general  sociological  law  to  his  own  system,  there 
must  be  inferred  a  great  change  in  the  intellectual  climate  of  Scottish 
life  before  we  can  account  for  Smith's  general  popularity  at  home 
as  well  as  abroad  after  his  handling  of  "  enthusiasm  and  superstition  " 
in  the  Wealth  of  Nations.  The  fact  stands  out  that  the  two  most 
eminent  thinkers  in  Scotland  in  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century  were  non-Christians,'  and  that  their  most  intellectual 
associates  were  in  general  sympathy  with  them. 

§  11 

In  Ireland,  at  least  in  Dublin,  during  the  earlier  part  of  the 
century,  there  occurred,  on  a  smaller  scale,  a  similar  movement  of 
rationalism,  also  largely  associated  with  Shaftesbury.  In  Dul)nn 
towards  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  we  have  seen  Molyneux, 
the  friend  and  correspondent  of  Locke,  interested  in  *'  freethought," 
albeit  much  scared  by  the  imprudence  of  Toland.  At  the  same 
period  there  germinated  a  growth  of  Unitarianism,  which  was  even 
more  fiercely  persecuted  than  that  of  Toland's  deism.  The  Eev. 
Thomas  Emlyn,  an  Englishman,  co-pastor  of  the  Protestant 
Dissenting  Congregation  of  Wood  Street  (now  Strand  Street), 
Dublin,  was  found  by  a  Presbyterian  and  a  Baptist  to  be  here- 
tical on  the  subject  of  the  Trinity,  and  was  indicted  in  1702  for 
blasphemy.  He  was  sentenced  to  two  years'  imprisonment  and  a 
fine  of  £1,000,  which  was  partly  commuted  on  his  release.  He 
protested  that  South  and  Sherlock  and  other  writers  on  the 
Trinitarian  controversy  might  have  been  as  justly  prosecuted  as 
he;  but  Irish  Protestant  orthodoxy  was  of  a  keener  scent  than 
English,  and  Emlyn  was  fain,  when  released,  to  return  to  his  native 
land.'  His  colleague  Boyse,  like  many  other  Churchmen,  wished 
that  the  unhappy  trinitarian  controversy  "  were  buried  in  silence," 
but  was  careful  to  conform  doctrinally.     More  advanced  thinkers 

1  Smith's  admiration  for  Voltaire  might  alone  indicate  his  mental  attitude.  As  to  that 
see  F.  W.  Hirst.  Adam  Smith  (Eng.  Men  of  Letters  ser.)  pp.  127-28.  But  the  asserUo°  ^J 
Skarzinski.  that  Smith,  after  being  an  Idealist  under  the  mfluence  of  Hume,  returned  a 
materialist"  from  his  intercourse  with  Voltaire  and  other  French  freethmkers.  is  an 
exhibition  of  learned  ignorance.    See  Hirst,  p.  181.    ,_     ^    ^      ^  ^.         .   ,     ^.i  „  T>^vr  nv 

2  An  Explanation  and  Defence  of  the  Principles  of  Protestant  Dissmt,  by  the  Rev.  ui. 
W.  Hamilton  Drummond.  1842.  pp.  5-6.  47;  Skeats.  Hist,  of  the  Free  Churches  of  hnglamu 
©d.  Miall.  pp.  238-39  ;  Wallace,  \nti-Trinitarian  Biography,  in,  art.  360. 


had  double  reason  to  be  reticent.  As  usual,  however,  persecution 
provoked  the  growth  it  sought  to  stifle  ;  and  after  the  passing  of  the 
Irish  Toleration  Act  of  1719,  a  more  liberal  measure  than  the 
English,  there  developed  in  Ulster,  and  even  in  Dublin,  a  Unitarian 
movement  akin  to  that  proceeding  in  England.^  In  the  next 
generation  we  find  in  the  same  city  a  coterie  of  Shaftesburyans, 
centring  around  Lord  Molesworth,  the  friend  of  Hutcheson,  a  man 
of  afifairs  devoted  to  intellectual  interests.  It  was  within  a  few  years 
of  his  meeting  Molesworth  that  Hutcheson  produced  his  Inquiry, 
championing  Shaftesbury's  ideas  ;^  and  other  literary  men  were 
similarly  influenced.  It  is  even  suggested  that  Hutcheson's  clerical 
friend  Synge,  whom  we  have  seen^  in  1713  attempting  a  ratiocinative 
answer  to  the  unbelief  he  declared  to  be  abundant  around  him,  was 
not  only  influenced  by  Shaftesbury  through  Molosworth,  but  latterly 
"  avoided  publication  lest  his  opinions  should  prejudice  his  career  in 
the  Church."*  After  the  death  of  Molesworth,  in  1725,  the  move- 
ment he  set  up  seems  to  have  languished;^  but,  as  we  have  seen, 
there  were  among  the  Irish  bishops  men  given  to  philosophic  con- 
troversy, and  the  influence  of  Berkeley  cannot  have  been  wholly 
obscurantist.  When  in  1756  we  read  of  the  Arian  Bishop  Clayton® 
proposing  in  the  Irish  House  of  Lords  to  drop  the  Nicene  and 
Athanasian  creeds,  we  realize  that  in  Ireland  thought  was  far  from 
stagnant.  The  heretic  bishop,  however,  died  (February,  1758)  just 
as  he  was  about  to  be  prosecuted  for  the  anti-Athanasian  heresies  of 
his  last  book  ;  and  thenceforth  Ireland  plays  no  noticeable  part  in 
the  development  of  rationalism,  political  interests  soon  taking  the 
place  of  religious,  with  the  result  that  orthodoxy  recovered  ground. 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  spectacle  of  religious  wickedness 
presented  by  the  operation  of  the  odious  penal  laws  against  Catholics, 

^  Cp.  Drummond,  as  cited,  pp.  29-30 ;  History,  Opinions,  etc.,  of  the  English  Presby- 
terians, 1834.  p.  29.  V 

2  W.  R.  Scott.  Francis  Hutcheson,  p.  31.  ^  Above,  p.  154,  note. 

^  Scott,  pp.  28-29, 35-36.  The  suggestion  is  not  quite  convincing.  Synge.  after  becoming 
Archbishop  of  Tuam,  continued  to  publish  his  propagandist  tracts,  among  them  Aji  Essay 
towards  making  the  Knowledge  of  Religion  Easy  to  the  Meanest  Capacity  (6th  ed.  1734), 
which  is  quite  orthodox,  and  which  argues  (p.  3)  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is  to  be 
believed,  and  not  pried  into,  "because  it  is  above  our  understanding  to  comprehend." 
All  the  while  there  was  being  sold  also  his  early  treatise,  "A  Gentleman's  Religion:  in 

Three  Parts with  an  Appendix,  wherein  it  is  proved  that  nothing  contrary  to  our 

Reason  can  possibly  be  the  object  of  our  belief,  but  that  it  is  no  just  exception  against 
some  of  the  doctrines  of  Christianity  that  they  are  above  our  reason."  *  Scott,  p.  36. 

.  6  All  that  is  told  of  this  prelate  by  Lecky  {Hist,  of  Ireland  in  the  18th  Cent.  1892.  i,  207) 
is  that  at  Killala  he  patronized  horse-races.  He  was  industrious  on  more  episcopal  lines. 
He  wrote  an  Introduction  to  the  History  of  the  Jews;  a  Vindication  of  Biblical  Chronology ; 
two  treatises  on  prophecy ;  an  anti-Athanasian  Essay  on  Spirit  (1751),  which  aroused  much 
controversy;  A  Vindication  of  the  Histories  of  the  Old  and  Neiv  Testament,  in  answer  to 
Bolingbroke  (2  vols.  1752-1754  ;  2nd  ed.  1757  ;  rep.  with  the  Essay  on  Spirit,  Dublin,  1759), 
which  led  to  his  being  prosecuted ;  and  other  works.  The  offence  given  by  the  Vi7idication 
l^y  "1  his  denunciation  of  the  Athanasian  creed,  and  of  the  bigotry  of  those  who  supported 
It.  See  pt.  iii,  letters  i  and  ii.  The  Essay  on  Spirit  is  no  less  heterodox.  In  other  respects, 
however,  Clayton  is  ultra-orthodox. 


'%• 


190 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


and  the  temper  of  the  Protestant  Ascendancy  party  in  religious 
matters,  had  bred  rational  skepticism  in  Ireland  in  the  usual  way. 
Molesworth  stands  out  in  Irish  history  as  a  founder  of  a  new  and 
saner  patriotism ;  and  his  doctrines  would  specially  appeal  to  men 
of  a  secular  and  critical  way  of  thinking.  Heretical  bishops  imply 
heretical  laymen.  But  the  environment  was  unpropitious  to  dispas- 
sionate thinking.  The  very  relaxation  of  the  Penal  Code  favoured  a 
reversion  to  "  moderate  "  orthodoxy  ;  and  the  new  pohtical  strifes  of 
the  last  quarter  of  the  century,  destined  as  they  were  to  be  reopened 
in  the  next,  determined  the  course  of  Irish  culture  in  another  way. 

§  12 

In  England,  meanwhile,  there  was  beginning  the  redistribution 
of  energies  which  can  be  seen  to  have  prepared  for  the  intellectual 
and  political  reaction  of  the  end  of  the  century.  There  had  been  no 
such  victory  of  faith  as  is  supposed  to  have  been  wrought  by  the 
forensic  theorem  of  Butler.  An  orthodox  German  observer,  making 
a  close  inquest  about  1750,  cites  the  British  Magazine  as  stating  in 
1749  that  half  the  educated  people  were  then  deists ;  and  he,  after 
full  inquiry,  agrees.^  In  the  same  year,  Kichardson  speaks  tragically 
in  the  Postscriptum  to  Clarissa  of  seeing  "  skepticism  and  infidehty 
openly  avowed,  and  even  endeavoured  to  be  propagated  from  the 
press  ;  the  great  doctrines  of  the  gospel  brought  into  question  ";  and 
he  describes  himself  as  "  seeking  to  steal  in  with  a  disguised  plea  for 
religion."  Instead  of  being  destroyed  by  the  clerical  defence,  the 
deistic  movement  had  really  penetrated  the  Church,  which  was 
become  as  rationalistic  in  its  methods  as  its  function  would  permit, 
and  the  educated  classes,  which  had  arrived  at  a  state  of  compromise. 
Pope,  the  chief  poet  of  the  preceding  generation,  had  been  visibly 
deistic  in  his  thinking ;  as  Dryden  had  inf erribly  been  before  him ; 
and  to  such  literary  prestige  was  added  the  prestige  of  scholarship. 
The  academic  Conyers  Middleton,  whose  Letter  from  Borne  had  told 
so  heavily  against  Christianity  in  exposing  the  pagan  derivations  of 
much  of  Catholicism,  and  who  had  further  damaged  the  doctrine  of 
inspiration  in  his  anonymous  Letter  to  Dr.  Waterland  (1731),  while 
professing  to  refute  Tindal,  had  carried  to  yet  further  lengths  his 
service  to  the  critical  spirit.  In  his  famous  Free  Inquiry  into  the 
miracles  of  post-apostolic  Christianity  (1749),  again  professing  to 
strike  at  Kome,  he  had  laid  the  foundations  of  a  new  structure  of 

»  Dr.  G.  W.  Alberti.  Briefe  betreiffmdedenZustand  der  Religion  in  Gross-Britiannien, 
Hannover,  1752,  p.  440. 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


191 


comparative  criticism,  and  had  given  permanent  grounds  for  rejecting 
the  miracles  of  the  sacred  books. 

Middleton's  book  appeared  a  year  after  Hume's  essay  Of  Miracles, 
and  it  made  out  no  such  philosophic  case  as  Hume's  against  the 
concept  of  miracle ;  but  it  created  at  once,  by  its  literary  brilliance 
and  its  cogent  argument,  a  sensation  such  as  had  thus  far  been  made 
neither  by  Hume's  philosophic  argument  nor  by  Francklin's  antici- 
pation of  that.^    Middleton  had  duly  safeguarded  himself  by  positing 
the  certainty  of  the  gospel  miracles  and  of  those  wrought  by  the 
Apostles,  on  the  old  principle^  that  prodigies  were  divinely  arranged 
so  far  forth  as  was  necessary  to  establish  Christianity,  but  no  further. 
"  The  history  of  the  gospel,"  he  writes,  "  I  hope  may  be  true,  though 
the  history  of  the  Church  be  fabulous."^     But  his  argument  against 
post-Apostolic  miracles  is  so  strictly  naturalistic  that  no  vigilant 
reader  could  fail  to  realize  its  fuller  bearing  upon  all  miracles  what- 
soever.    With  Hume  and  Francklin,  he  insisted  that  facts  incredible 
in  themselves  could  not  be  established  by  any  amount  or  kind  of 
testimony ;  and  he  suggested  no  measure  of  comparative  credibility 
as  between  the  two  orders  of  miracle.    With  the  deists  in  general,  he 
argued  that  knowledge  *'  either  of  the  ways  or  will  of  the  Creator  " 
was  to  be  had  only  through  study  of  "  that  revelation  which  he  made 
of  himself  from  the  beginning  in  the  beautiful  fabric  of  this  visible 
world." ^     An  antagonist  accordingly  wrote  that  his  theses  were: 
First,   that    there   were    no    miracles   wrought   in   the   primitive 
Church ;    Secondly,   that   all   the   primitive   fathers  were   fools   or 
knaves,  and   most   of   them  both  one  and   the  other.     And  it  is 
easy  to  observe,  the  whole  tenor  of  your  argument  tends  to  prove. 
Thirdly,  that  no  miracles  were  wrought  by  Christ  or  his  apostles ; 
and  Fourthly,  that  these  too  were  fools  or  knaves,  or  both."^     A 
more  temperate  opponent  pressed  the  same  point  in  less  explosive 
language.     Citing  Middleton's  demand  for  an  inductive  method,  this 
critic  asks  with  much  point :  "  What  does  he  mean  by  '  deserting 
the  path  of  Nature  and  experience,'  but  giving  in  to  the  belief  of  a7iy 
miracles,  and  acknowledging  the  reality  of  events  contrary  to  the 
known  effects  of  the  established  Laws  of  Nature  ?  "  ^ 

No  other  answer  was  seriously  possible.  In  the  very  act  of 
ostentatiously  terming  Tindal  an  "  infidel,"  Middleton  describes  an 
answer  made  to  him  by  the  apologist  Chapman  as  a  sample  of  a 


\ 


8  T^nl^'^-  ^^An  ^  P"t  by  Huarte  in  1575.    Above,  i,  472. 

6  JT.\7'  ^-  ^f?-  „  *  Inquiry,  pref.  pp.x,  xxii. 

q  l^rTQ-T^  *°  ^"^  ^^^-  ^^-  Conyers  Middleton,  occasioned  by  his  late  "Free  Inquiry.' 


1749,  pp.  3-4. 

ildfir  nn/vf-Hu""""*  1"^  ■^'  •  ■i"*"'"«'6to7i  »    x- rcc  inQuiry,-  oy  wiiiiam  uoaweii  ls 
mer  and  brother  of  the  younger  Henry],  Rector  of  Shottesbrook.  1749.  pp.  14-15. 


,_AFree  Answer  to  Dr.  Middleton's  "Free  Inquiry:'  by  William  Dodwell  [son  of  the 


( 


192 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


kind  of  writing  which  did  "  more  hurt  and  discredit "  to  Christianity 
"  than  aU  the  attacks  of  its  open  adversaries."*    In  support  of  the 
miracles  of  the  gospel  and  the  apostolic  history  he  offers  merely 
conventional  pleas :  against  the  miracles  related  by  the  Fathers  he 
brings  to  bear  an  incessant  battery  of  destructive  criticism.     We 
may  sum  up  that   by  the  middle  of   the  eighteenth  century  the 
essentials  of  the  Christian  creed,  openly  challenged  for  a  generation 
by  avowed  deists,  were  abandoned  by  not  a  few  scholars  within  the 
pale  of  the  Church,  of  whom  Middleton  was  merely  the  least  reticent. 
After  his  death  was  published  his  Vindication  of  the  Inquinj  (1751) ; 
and  in  his  collected  works  (1752)  was  included  his  Befkctions  on  the 
Variations  or  Inconsistencies  which  are  found  among  the  Four  Evan- 
gelists, wherein  it  is  demonstrated  that  "  the  belief  of  the  inspiration 
and  absolute  infallibility  of  the  evangelists  seems  to  be  more  absurd 
than  even  that  of  transubstantiation  itself." '     The  main  grounds  of 
orthodoxy  were  thus  put  in  doubt  in  the  name  of  a  critical  orthodoxy. 
In  short,  the  deistic  movement  had  done  what  it  lay  in  it  to  do. 
The  old  evangelical  or  pietistic  view  of  life  was  discredited  among 
instructed  people,  and  in  this  sense  it  was  Christianity  that  had 
*'  decayed."     Its  later  recovery  was  economic,  not  intellectual. 

Thus  Skelton  writes  in  1751  that  "  our  modern  apologists  for 
Christianity  often  defend  it  on  deistical  principles"  Weism 
Bevealed,  pref.  p.  xii.  Cp.  vol.  ii,  pp.  234,  237).  See  also  Sir 
Leslie  Stephen  as  cited  above,  p.  149,  note ;  and  Gostwick, 
German  Culture  and  Christianity,  1882,  pp.  33-36. 

An  interesting  instance  of  liberalizing  orthodoxy  is  furnished 
by  the  Rev.  Arthur  Ashley  Sykes,  who  contributed  many  volumes 
to  the  general  deistic  discussion,  some  of  them  anonymously. 
In  the  preface  to  his  Essay  on  the  Truth  of  the  Christian  Religion 
(1732;  2nd  ed.  enlarged,  1755)  Sykes  remarks  that     since...... 

systematical  opinions  have  been  received  and  embraced  in  sucli 
a  manner  that  it  has  not  been  safe  to  contradict  them,  the 
burden  of  vindicating  Christianity  has  been  very  much  increased. 
Its  friends  have  been  much  embarrassed  through  fear  of  speaking 
against  local  truths  ;  and  its  adversaries  have  so  success  uU> 
attacked  those  weaknesses  that  Christianity  itself  has  been 
deemed  indefensible,  when  in  reality  the  follies  of  Christianb 
alone  have  been  so."  Were  Christians  left  to  the  simple 
doctrines  of  Christ  and  the  Apostles,  he  contends,  I/i^^Q^^^^ 
could  make  no  converts.  And  at  the  close  of  the  book  ne 
writes  •  "  Would  to  God  that  Christians  would  be  content  witn 

the  plainness  and  simpHcity  of  the  gospel That  they  wouW 

not  vend  under  the  name  of  evangelical  truth  the  absurd  anu 


1  Inauiry,  p.  163. 


a  TForfcs.  and  ed.  1755,  ii,  348. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT 


193 


contradictory  schemes  of  ignorant  or  wicked  men !  That  they 
would  part  with  that  load  of  rubbish  which  makes  thinking 
men  almost  sink  under  the  weight,  and  gives  too  great  a  handle 
for  Infidelity !  "  Such  writing  could  not  give  satisfaction  to  the 
ecclesiastical  authorities  ;  and  as  little  could  Sykes's  remarkable 
admission  [The  Principles  and  Connection  of  Natural  and 
Eevealed  Beligion,  1740,  p.  242)  :  "  When  the  advantages  of 
revelation  are  to  be  specified,  I  cannot  conceive  that  it  should 
be  maintained  as  necessary  to  fix  a  rule  of  morality.  For  what 
one  principle  of  morality  is  there  which  the  heathen  moralists 
had  not  asserted  or  maintained  ?  Before  ever  any  revelation  is 
offered  to  mankind  they  are  supposed  to  be  so  well  acquainted 
with  moral  truths  as  from  them  to  judge  of  the  truth  of  the 
revelation  itself."     Again  he  writes  : — 

Nor  can  revelation  be  necessary  to  ascertain  religion.  For 
religion  consisting  in  nothing  but  doing  our  duties  from  a  sense 
of  the  being  of  God,  revelation  is  not  necessary  to  this  end, 
unless  it  be  said  that  we  cannot  know  that  there  is  a  God,  and 
what  our  duties  are,  without  it.  Beaso7i  will  teach  us  that  there 
is  a  God that  we  are  to  be  just  and  charitable  to  our  neigh- 
bours ;  that  we  are  to  be  temperate  and  sober  in  ourselves  " 
[id.  p.  244). 

This  is  simple  Shaftesburyan  deism,  and  all  that  the  apologist 
goes  on  to  contend  for  is  that  revelation  "contains  motives  and 
reasons  for  the  practice  of  what  is  right,  more  and  different  from 
what  natural  reason  without  this  help  can  suggest."  He  seems, 
however,  to  have  believed  in  miracles,  though  an  anonymous 
Essay  on  the  Nature,  Design,  and  Origin  of  Sacrifices  (1748) 
which  is  ascribed  to  him  quietly  undermines  the  whole  evan- 
gelical doctrine.  Throughout,  he  is  remarkable  for  the  amenity 
of  his  tone  towards  "  infidels." 

Balguy,  a  man  of  less  ability,  is  notably  latitudinarian  in  his 
theology.^  In  the  very  act  of  criticizing  the  deists,  he  complains 
of  Locke's  arbitrariness  in  deriving  morality  from  the  will  of 
God.  Rehgion,  he  argues,  is  so  derived,  but  morality  is  inherent 
in  the  whole  nature  of  things,  and  is  the  same  for  God  and  men. 
This  position,  common  to  the  school  of  Clarke,  is  at  bottom  that 
of  Shaftesbury  and  the  Naturalists.  All  that  Balguy  says  for 
religion  is  that  a  doctrine  of  rewards  and  punishments  is  neces- 
sary to  stimulate  the  average  moral  sense  ;  and  that  the  Christian 
story  of  the  condescension  of  Omnipotence  in  coming  to  earth 
and  suffering  misery  for  man's  sake  ought  to  overwhelm  the 
imagination  !  (See  A  Letter  to  a  Deist,  2nd  ed.  1730,  pp.  5,  14, 
15,  31 ;  Foundation  of  Moral  Goodness,  pt.  ii,  1729,  p.  41  sq) 

The  next  intellectual  step  in  natural  course  would  have  been  a 
revision  of  the  deistic  assumptions,  insofar,  that  is,  as  certain  positive 
assumptions  were  common  to  the  deists.     But,  as  we  have  seen, 

VOL.  II  '  ^         ' 


/ 


194 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


i 


BKITISH  I^REETHOUGHT 


195 


certain  fresh  issues  were  raised  as  among  the  deists  themselves.    In 
addition  to  those  above  noted,  there  was  the  profoundly  important 
one  as  to  ethics.     Shaftesbury,  who  rejected  the  religious  basis,  held 
a  creed  of  optimism ;  and  this  optimism  was  assailed  by  Mandeville, 
who  in  consequence  was  opposed  as  warmly  by  the  deist  Hutcheson 
and  others  as  by  Law  and  Berkeley.     To  grapple  with  this  problem, 
and  with  the  underlying  cosmic  problem,  there  was  needed  at  least 
as  much  general  mental  activity  as  went  to  the  antecedent  discussion ; 
and  the  main  activity  of  the  nation  was  now  being  otherwise  directed. 
The  negative  process,  the  impeachment  of  Christian  supernaturalism, 
had  been  accomplished  so  far  as  the  current  arguments  went.    Toland 
and  Collins  had  fought  the  battle  of  free  discussion,  forcing  ratio- 
cination on  the  Church  ;  Collins  had  shaken  the  creed  of  prophecy ; 
Shaftesbury  had  impugned  the  religious  conception  of  morals ;  and 
Mandeville  had  done   so  more  profoundly,  laying  the  foundations 
of  scientific  utilitarianism.'     So  effective  had  been  the  utiUtarian 
propaganda  in  general  that  the  orthodox  Brown  (author  of  the  once 
famous  Estimate  of  the  life  of  his  countrymen),  in  his  criticism  of 
Shaftesbury  (1751),  wrote  as  a  pure  utilitarian  against  an  incon- 
sistent one,  and  defended  Christianity  on  strictly  utiHtarian  lines. 
Woolston,    following   up   Collins,   had    shaken   the    faith   in  New 
Testament  miracles  ;    Middleton   had  done  it   afresh  with  all  the 
decorum  that  Woolston  lacked;    and   Hume  had  laid  down  with 
masterly    clearness    the    philosophic    principle    which,  rebuts    all 
attempts   to    prove    miracles    as   such.'*     Tindal   had   clinched  the 
case  for  "natural"  theism  as  against  revelationism  ;  and  the  later 
deists,  notably  Morgan,  had  to  some  extent  combined  these  results. 
This  literature  was  generally  distributed ;  and  so  far  the  case  had 
been  thrashed  out. 

§13 
To  carry  intellectual  progress  much  further  there  was  needed  a 
general  movement  of  scientific  study  and  a  reform  in  education. 
The  translation  of  La  Mettrie's  Man  a  Machine  (1749)*  found  a 
public  no  better  prepared  for  the  problems  he  raised  than  that 
addressed  by  Strutt  eighteen  years  before ;  and  the  reply  of  Luzac, 
Man  More  than  a  Machine,  in  the  preface  to  which  the  translator 
(1752)  declared  that  "  irreligion  and  infidelity  overspread  the  land," 

1  Cp.  essay  on  Mandeville.  in  the  author's  Pioneer  Humanists,  1907.  vpUaious 

a  Aa  against  the  objections  of  Mr.  Lang,  see  the  author's  paper  m  Studies  m  ueiigi^ 

Fallacy.  ^ " 

s 


probably  satisfied  what  appetite  there  was  for  such  a  discussion. 
There  had  begun  a  change  in  the  prevailing  mental  life,  a  diversion 
of  interest  from  ideas  as  such  to  political  and  mercantile  interests. 
The  middle  and  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  the  period 
of  the  rise  of  (1)  the  new  machine  industries,  and  (2)  the  new 
imperialistic  policy  of  Chatham.^  Both  alike  withdrew  men  from 
problems  of  mere  belief,  whether  theological  or  scientific.^  That 
the  reaction  was  not  one  of  mere  fatigue  over  deism  we  have 
already  seen.  It  was  a  general  diversion  of  energy,  analogous  to 
what  had  previously  taken  place  in  France  in  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV. 
As  the  poet  Gray,  himself  orthodox,  put  the  case  in  1754,  "  the  mode 
of  freethinking  has  given  place  to  the  mode  of  not  thinking  at  all."  ^ 
In  Hume's  opinion  the  general  pitch  of  national  intelligence  south 
of  the  Tweed  was  lowered.*  This  state  of  things  of  course  was 
favourable  to  religious  revival ;  but  what  took  place  was  rather  a 
new  growth  of  emotional  pietism  in  the  new  industrial  masses  (the 
population  being  now  on  a  rapid  increase),  under  the  ministry  of  the 
Wesleys  and  Whitefield,  and  a  further  growth  of  similar  religion  in 
the  new  provincial  middle-class  that  grew  up  on  the  industrial  basis. 
The  universities  all  the  while  were  at  the  lowest  ebb  of  culture,  but 
officially  rabid  against  philosophic  freethinking.^ 

It  would  be  a  great  mistake,  however,  to  suppose  that  all  this 
meant  a  dying  out  of  deism  among  the  educated  classes.  The  state- 
ment of  Goldsmith,  about  1760,  that  deists  in  general  "  have  been 
driven  into  a  confession  of  the  necessity  of  revelation,  or  an  open 
avowal  of  atheism,"^  is  not  to  be  taken  seriously.  Goldsmith, 
whose  own  orthodoxy  is  very  doubtful,  had  a  whimsical  theory 
that  skepticism,  though  it  might  not  injure  morals,  has  a  "  manifest 
tendency  to  subvert  the  literary  merits"  of  any  country;*^  and 
argued  accordingly.  Deism,  remaining  fashionable,  did  but  fall 
partly  into  the  background  of  living  interests,  the  more  concrete 
issues  of  politics  and  the  new  imaginative  literature  occupying  the 
foreground.  It  was  early  in  the  reign  of  George  III  that  Sir 
William  Blackstone,  having  had  the  curiosity  to  listen  in  succession 

*  The  point  is  further  discussed  in  Dynamics  of  Eeligion,  pp.  175-76. 
I  Cp.  G.  B.  Hertz,  The  Old  Colonial  System,  1905,  pp.  4,  22,  93. 157. 

^  Letter  xxxi,  in  Mason's  Memoir. 

J  Hill  Burton's  Life  of  Hume,  ii.  433,  434,  484-85,  487. 

*  Compare  the  verdicts  of  Gibbon  in  his  Autobiography,  and  of  Adam  Smith,  Wealth 
of  Nations,  bk.  v,  ch.  i,  art.  2  ;  and  see  the  memoir  of  Smith  in  1831  ed.  and  McCulloch's 
ed.,  and  Rae's  Life  of  Adam  Smith,  p.  24.  It  appears  that  about  1764  many  English  people 
sent  their  sons  to  Edinburgh  University  on  account  of  the  better  education  there.  Letter 
of  Blair,  in  Burton's  Life  of  Hume,  ii.  229.  6  Essays,  iv,  end. 

7  Present  State  of  Polite  Learning,  1765,  ch.  vi.  His  story  of  how  the  father  of  St.  Foix 
cured  the  youth  of  the  desire  to  rationalize  his  creed  is  not  suggestive  of  conviction.  The 
father  pointed  to  a  crucifix,  saying,  "  Behold  the  fate  of  a  reformer."  The  story  has  been 
often  plagiarized  since— e.^.,  in  Gait's  Aimals  of  the  Parish. 


196 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


197 


to  the  preaching  of  every  clergyman  in  London,  "  did  not  hear  a 
single  discourse  which  had  more  Christianity  in  it  than  the  writings 
of  Cicero,"  and  declared  that  it  would  have  been  impossible  for 
him  to  discover  from  what  he  heard  whether  the  preacher  were  a 
follower  of  Confucius,  of  Mahomet,  or  of  Christ/  When  the  Church 
was  thus  deistic,  the  educated  laity  can  have  been  no  less  so.  The 
literary  status  of  deism  after  1750  was  really  higher  than  ever.  It 
was  now  represented  by  Hume  ;  by  Adam  SMITH  (Moral  Sentiments, 
1759) ;  by  the  scholarship  of  Conyers  Middleton  ;  and  by  the  post- 
humous works  (1752-54)  of  Lord  BOLINGBKOKE,  who,  albeit  more 
of  a  debater  than  a  thinker,  debated  often  with  masterly  skill,  in  a 
style  unmatched  for  harmony  and  energetic  grace,  which  had  already 
won  him  a  great  literary  prestige,  though  the  visible  insincerity  of 
his  character,  and  the  habit  of  browbeating,  always  countervailed 
his  charm.  His  influence,  commonly  beUttled,  was  much  greater 
than  writers  like  Johnson  would  admit ;  and  it  went  deep.  Voltaire, 
who  had  been  his  intimate,  tens'"  that  he  had  known  some  young 
pupils  of  Bolingbroke  who  altogether  denied  the  historic  actuality 
of  the  Gospel  Jesus— a  stretch  of  criticism  beyond  the  assimilative 
power  of  that  age. 

His  motive  to  write  for  posthumous  publication,  however,  seems 
rather  to  have  been  the  venting  of  his  tumultuous  feelings  than  any 
philosophic  purpose.  An  overweening  deist,  he  is  yet  at  much  pains 
to  disparage  the  k  priori  argument  for  deism,  bestowing  some  of  his 
most  violent  epithets  on  Dr.  Samuel  Clarke,  who  seems  to  have 
exasperated  him  in  politics.  But  his  castigation  of  "  divines  "  is 
tolerably  impartial  on  that  side;  and  he  is  largely  concerned  to 
deprive  them  of  grounds  for  their  functions,  though  he  finally  insists 
that  churches  are  necessary  for  purposes  of  public  moral  teaching. 
His  own  teachings  represent  an  effort  to  rationalize  deism.  The 
God  whom  he  affirms  is  to  be  conceived  or  described  only  as  omni- 
potent and  omniscient  (or  all-wise),  not  as  good  or  benevolent  any 
more  than  as  vindictive.  Thus  he  had  assimilated  part  of  the 
Spinozistic  and  the  atheistic  case  against  anthropomorphism,  while 
still  using  anthropomorphic  language  on  the  score  that  "  we  must 
speak  of  God  after  the  manner  of  men."  Beyond  this  point  he 
compromises  to  the  extent  of  denying  special  while  admitting 
collective  or  social  providences  ;  though  he  is  positive  in  his  denial  of 
the  actuahty  or  the  moral  need  of  a  future  state.  As  to  morals  he 
takes  the  ordinary  deistic  line,  putting  the  innate  **  law  of  nature ' 

»  Abbey  and  Overton,  The  English  Ohumhimtke  Eighteenth  Century,  1878.  ii.  37. 
'-*  Dieu  et  les  Hommea,  cb.  xxxix. 


as  the  sufficient  and  only  revelation  by  the  deity  to  his  creatures. 
On  the  basis  of  that  inner  testimony  he  rejects  the  Old  Testament 
as  utterly  unworthy  of  deity,  but  endorses  the  universal  morality 
found  in  the  gospels,  while  rejecting  their  theology.  It  was  very 
much  the  deism  of  Voltaire,  save  that  it  made  more  concessions  to 
anti-theistic  logic. 

The  weak  side  of  Bolingbroke's  polemic  was  its  inconsistency — 
a  flaw  deriving  from  his  character.  In  the  spirit  of  a  partisan 
debater  he  threw  out  at  any  point  any  criticism  that  appeared  for 
the  moment  plausible ;  and,  having  no  scientific  basis  or  saving 
rectitude,  would  elsewhere  take  up  another  and  a  contradictory 
position.  Careful  antagonists  could  thus  discredit  him  by  mere 
collation  of  his  own  utterances.^  But,  the  enemy  being  no  more 
consistent  than  he,  his  influence  w^as  not  seriously  affected  in  the 
world  of  ordinary  readers  ;  and  much  of  his  attack  on  "  divines," 
on  dogmas,  and  on  Old  Testament  morality  must  have  appealed  to 
many,  thus  carrying  on  the  discredit  of  orthodoxy  in  general. 
Leland  devoted  to  him  an  entire  volume  of  his  Vieiu  of  the  Principal 
Deistical  Writers,  and  in  all  bestows  more  space  upon  him  than  on 
all  the  others  together — a  sufficient  indication  of  his  vogue. 

In  his  lifetime,  however,  Bolingbroke  had  been  extremely 
careful  to  avoid  compromising  himself.  Mr.  Arthur  H assail, 
in  his  generally  excellent  monograph  on  Bolingbroke  (Statesmen 
Series,  1889,  p.  226),  writes,  in  answer  to  the  attack  of  Johnson, 
that  "Bolingbroke,  during  his  lifetime,  had  never  scrupled  to 
publish  criticisms,  remarkable  for  their  freedom,  on  religious 
subjects."  I  cannot  gather  to  what  he  refers  ;  and  Mr.  Walter 
Sichel,  in  his  copious  biography  (2  vols.  1901-1902),  indicates 
no  such  pubhcations.  The  Letters  on  the  Study  and  Use  of 
History,  which  contain  (Lett,  iii,  sect.  2)  a  skeptical  discussion 
of  the  Pentateuch  as  history,  though  written  in  1735-36,  were 
only  posthumously  pubhshed,  in  1752.  The  Examen  Lnportant 
de  Milord  Bolingbroke,  produced  by  Voltaire  in  1767,  but  dated 
1736,  is  Voltaire's  own  work,  based  on  Bolingbroke.  In  his 
letter  to  Swift  of  September  12,  1724  (Swift's  Works,  Scott's  ed. 
1824,  xvi,  448-49),  Bolingbroke  angrily  repudiates  the  title  of 
esprit  fort,  declaring,  in  the  very  temper  in  which  pious  posterity 
has   aspersed   himself,   that    "  such   are   the   pests  of   society, 

because  they  endeavour  to  loosen  the  bands  of  it I  therefore 

not  only  disown,  but  I  detest,  this  character."     In  this  letter 
he  even  affects  to  believe  in  "  the  truth  of  the  divine  revelation 

or,]  9v?*  ^,^s^?P  ^^aw,  Considerations  on  the  Theory  of  Beligion,  6th  ed.  1774,  p.  65,  note, 
^naihQ  Analysis  oi  Bolingbroke's  writings  (1755)  there  cited.  Mr.  Sichers  reply  to  Sir 
Bishop  l'^  ^  criticism   may  or  may  not   be  successful ;   but  he  does  not  deal  with 


198  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 

of  Christianity."     He  began  to  write   his  essays,  it  is  true, 
before  his  withdrawal  to  France  in  1735,  but  with  no  intention 
of    speedily   publishing    them.      In    his    Letter   to   Mr.   Pope 
(published    with    the   Letter  to  Wyndham,    1753),   p.  481,   he 
writes  :  *'  I  have  been  a  martyr  of  faction  in  politics,  and  have 
no  vocation  to  be  so  in  philosophy."     Cp.  pp.  485-86.     It  is 
thus  a  complete  blunder  on  the  part  of  Bagehot  to  say  {Literary 
Studies,  Button's  ed.  iii,  137)  that  Butler's  Analogy,  published 
in  1736,  was  "  designed  as  a  confutation  of  Shaftesbury  and 
Bolinghroker     It  is  even  said  (Warton,  Essay  on  Pope,  4th  ed. 
ii,  294-95)  that  Pope  did  not  know  Bolingbroke's  real  opinions ; 
but  Pope's  untruthfulness  was   such    as   to   discredit   such  a 
statement.     Cp.  Bolingbroke's  Letter  as  cited,  p.  521,  and  his 
Philosophical  Works,  8vo-ed.  1754,  ii,  405.     It  is  noteworthy 
that  a  volume  of  controversial  sermons  entitled  A  Preservative 
against  unsettled  notions  and  Want  of  Principles  in  Beligion,  so 
entirely  stupid  in  its  apologetics  as  to  be  at  times  positively 
entertaining,  was  published   in  1715  by  Joseph  Trapp,  M.A., 
"Chaplain  to  the  Eight  Honble.  The  Lord  Viscount  Bolingbroke." 
In  seeking  to  estimate  Bolingbroke's  posthumous  influence 
we  have  to  remember  that  after  the  publication  of  his  works 
the  orthodox  members  of  his  own  party,  who  otherwise  would 
have  forgiven  him  all  his  vices  and  insincerities,  have  held  him 
up  to  hatred.     Scott,  for  instance,  founding  on  Bolingbroke's 
own  dishonest  denunciation  of  freethinkers  as  men  seeking  to 
loosen  the  bands  of  society,  pronounced  his  arrangement  for  the 
posthumous  issue  of  his  works  "an  act  of  wickedness  more 
purely  diabolical  than  any  hitherto  upon  record  in  the  history 
of  any  age  or  nation  "  (Note  to  Bolingbroke's  letter  above  cited 
in  SiDift's  Works,  xvi,  450).     It  would  be  an  error,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  class  him  among  either  the  great  sociologists  or  the 
great  philosophers.     Mr.  Sichel  undertakes  to  show  (vol.  ii,  ch.  x) 
that  Bolingbroke  had  stimulated  Gibbon  to  a  considerable  extent 
in  his  treatment  of  early  Christianity.     This  is  in  itself  quite 
probable,  and  some  of  the  parallels  cited  are  noteworthy ;  but 
Mr.    Sichel,  who   always   writes   as    a   panegyrist,   makes   no 
attempt  to  trace  the  common  French  sources  for  both.     He 
does  show  that  Voltaire  manipulated  Bolingbroke's  opinions  in 
reproducing  them.     But  he  does   not  critically  recognize  the 
incoherence  of  Bolingbroke's  eloquent  treatises.     Mr.  Hassall's 
summary  is  nearer  the  truth  ;  but  that  in  turn  does  not  note 
how  well  fitted  was  Bolingbroke's  swift  and  graceful  declamation 
to  do  its  work  with  the  general  public,  which  (if  it  accepted  him 
at  all)  would  make  small  account  of  self-contradiction. 

§  14 
In  view  of  such  a  reinforcement  of  its  propaganda,  deism  could 


BEITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


199 


not  be  regarded  as  in  the  least  degree  written  down.  In  1765,  in 
fact,  we  find  Diderot  recounting,  on  the  authority  of  d'Holbach,  who 
had  just  returned  from  a  visit  to  this  country,  that  "  the  Christian 
religion  is  nearly  extinct  in  England.  The  deists  are  innumerable ; 
there  are  almost  no  atheists;  those  who  are  so  conceal  it.  An 
atheist  and  a  scoundrel  are  almost  synonymous  terms  for  them."  * 
Nor  did  the  output  of  deistic  literature  end  with  the  posthumous 
works  of  Bolingbroke.  These  were  followed  by  translations  of  the 
new  writings  of  VOLTAIRE,^  who  had  assimilated  the  whole  propa- 
ganda of  English  deism,  and  gave  it  out  anew  with  a  wit  and 
brilliancy  hitherto  unknown  in  argumentative  and  critical  literature. 
The  freethinking  of  the  third  quarter  of  the  century,  though 
kept  secondary  to  more  pressing  questions,  was  thus  at  least  as 
deeply  rooted  and  as  convinced  as  that  of  the  first  quarter ;  and  it 
was  probably  not  much  less  common  among  educated  men,  though 
new  social  influences  caused  it  to  be  more  decried. 

The  hapless  Chatterton,  fatally  precocious,  a  boy  in  years  and 
experience  of  life,  a  man  in  understanding  at  seventeen,  incurred 
posthumous  obloquy  more  for  his  "  infidelity  "  than  for  the  harmless 
literary  forgeries  which  reveal  his  poetic  affinity  to  a  less  prosaic 
age.  It  is  a  memorable  fact  that  this  first  recovery  of  the  lost  note 
of  imaginative  poetry  in  that  "  age  of  prose  and  reason "  is  the 
exploit  of  a  boy  whose  mind  was  as  independently  "  freethinking  " 
on  current  religion  as  it  was  original  even  in  its  imitative  reversion 
to  the  poetics  of  the  past.  Turning  away  from  the  impossible 
mythicism  and  mysticism  of  the  Tudor  and  Stuart  liter-atures,  as 
from  the  fanaticism  of  the  Puritans,  the  changing  English  world 
after  the  Eestoration  had  let  fall  the  artistic  possession  of  imagina- 
tive feeling  and  style  which  was  the  true  glory  of  the  time  of 
Eenascence.  The  ill-strung  genius  of  Chatterton  seems  to  have  been 
the  first  to  reunite  the  sense  of  romantic  beauty  with  the  spirit  of 
critical  reason.  He  was  a  convinced  deist,  avowing  in  his  verse,  in 
his  pathetic  will  (1770),  in  a  late  letter,  and  at  times  in  his  talk,  that 
he  was  "  no  Christian,"  and  contemning  the  ethic  of  Scripture  history 
and  the  absurdity  of  literal  inspiration.^  Many  there  must  have  been 
who  went  as  far,  with  less  courage  of  avowal. 

What  was  lacking  to  the  age,  once  more,  was  a  social  foundation 
on  which  it  could  not  only  endure  but  develop.  In  a  nation  of  which 
the  majority  had  no  intellectual  culture,  such  a  foundation  could  not 

J  Mimoires  de  Diderot,  ed.  1841,  ii,  25. 

2  These  had  begun  as  early  as  1753  iMicromigas). 

8  Works,  ed.  1842.  i,  pp.  cix,  445 ;  ii,  628,  728.    Cp.  the  poem  Kew  Gardens,  left  in  MS. 


200 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


exist.  Green  exaggerates^  when  he  writes  that  "schools  there  were 
none,  save  the  grammar  schools  of  Edward  and  Elizabeth  ";^  but  by 
another  account  only  twelve  public  schools  were  founded  in  the  long 
reign  of  George  III;^  and,  as  a  result  of  the  indifference  of  two 
generations,  masses  of  the  people  "  were  ignorant  and  brutal  to  a 
degree  which  it  is  hard  to  conceive."  *  A  great  increase  of  popula- 
tion had  followed  on  the  growth  of  towns  and  the  development  of 
commerce  and  manufactures  even  between  1700  and  1760;^  and 
thereafter  the  multiplication  was  still  more  rapid.  There  was  thus 
\a  positive  fall  in  the  culture  standards  of  the  majority  of  the  people. 
According  to  Massey,  "hardly  any  tradesman  in  1760  had  more 
instruction  than  qualified  him  to  add  up  a  bill ";  and  '*  a  labourer, 
mechanic,  or  domestic  servant  who  could  read  or  write  possessed  a 
rare  accomplishment."^  As  for  the  Charity  Schools  established 
between  1700  and  1750,  their  express  object  was  to  rear  humble  trades- 
men and  domestics,  not  to  educate  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term. 

In  the  view  of  hfe  which  accepted  this  state  of  things  the 
educated  deists  seem  to  have  shared ;  at  least,  there  is  no  record  of 
any  agitation  by  them  for  betterment.  The  state  of  political  thought 
was  typified  in  the  struggle  over  "  Wilkes  and  Liberty,"  from  which 
cool  temperaments  like  Hume's  turned  away  in  contempt ;  and  it  is 
significant  that  poor  men  were  persecuted  for  freethinking  while  the 
better-placed  went  free.  JACOB  ILIVE,  for  denying  in  a  pamphlet 
(1753)  the  truth  of  revelation,  was  pilloried  thrice,  and  sent  to  hard 
labour  for  three  years.  In  1754  the  Grand  Jury  of  Middlesex 
"presented"  the  editor  and  publisher  of  Bolingbroke's  posthumous 
works  ^ — a  distinction  that  in  the  previous  generation  had  been 
bestowed  on  Mandeville's  Fable  of  the  Bees ;  and  in  1761,  as  before 
noted,  Peter  Annet,  aged  seventy,  was  pilloried  twice  and  sent  to 
prison  for  discrediting  the  Pentateuch  ;  as  if  that  were  a  more  serious 
offence  than  his  former  attacks  on  the  gospels  and  on  St.  Paul.  The 
personal  influence  of  George  III,  further,  told  everywhere  against 
freethinking ;  and  the  revival  of  penalties  would  have  checked  pub- 
lishing even  if  there  had  been  no  withdrawal  of  interest  to  politics. 

Yet  more  or  less  freethinking  treatises  did  appear  at  intervals 

*  I  here  take  a  few  sentences  from  my  paper,  The  Church  and  Education,  1903. 

2  Short  Hi.Htory.  p.  717.  The  Concise  Description  of  the  Endowed  Grammar  Schools,  by 
Nicholas  Carlisle.  1818.  shows  that  schools  were  founded  in  all  parts  ot  the  country  by 
private  bequest  or  public  action  during  the  eighteenth  century. 

3  CoUis,  in  Transactions  of  the  Social  Science  Association,  1857,  p.  126.  According  to 
Collis.  48  had  been  founded  by  James  1.28  under  Charles  I.  16  under  the  Commonwealth. 
36  under  Charles  II,  4  under  James  II,  7  under  William  and  Mary,  11  under  Anne,  17  under 
George  I,  and  7  under  George  II.    He  does  not  indicate  their  size. 

^  Green,  as  last  cited.  *  Gibbins,  Industrial  History  of  England,  1894,  p.  151. 

^  Hist,  of  England  under  George  III,  ed.  1865,  ii,  83. 

7  The  document  is  given  in  Ritchie's  Life  of  Hume,  1807,  pp.  53-55. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT 


201 


in  addition  to  the  works  of  the  better-known  writers,  such  as 
Bolingbroke  and  Hume,  after  the  period  commonly  marked  as 
that  of  the  "decline  of  deism."  In  the  list  may  be  included  a 
few  by  Unitarians,  who  at  this  stage  were  doing  critical  work. 
Like  a  number  of  the  earlier  works  above  mentioned,  the  follow- 
ing (save  Evanson)  are  overlooked  in  Sir  Leslie  Stephen's  survey: — 
1746.  Essay  on  Natural  Religion.  Falsely  attributed  to  Dryden. 
„       Deism  fairly  stated  ajid  fully  vindicated,  etc.    Anon. 

1749.  J.  G.  Cooper,  Life  of  Socrates. 

1750.  John  Dove,  A  Creed  founded  on  Truth  and  Common  Sense. 
„        TJie  British  Oracle.     (Two  numbers  only.) 

1752.  TJie  Pillars  of  Priestcraft  and  Orthodoxy  Shaken.  Four  vols,  of  free- 
thinking  pamphlets,  collected  (and  some  written)  by  Thomas  Gordon, 
formerly  secretary  to  Trenchard.     Edited  by  R.  Barron.     (Rep.  1768.) 

1765.  W.  Dudgeon,  Philosophical  Works  (reprints  of  those  of  1732,-4,-7,-9, 
above  mentioned) .     Privately  printed — at  Glasgow  ? 

1772.  E.  Evanson,  TJie  Doctrines  of  a  Trinity  and  the  Incarnation,  etc. 

1773.     Three  Discourses  (1.  Upon  the  Man  after  God's  own  Heart ;  2.  Upon 

the  Faith  of  Abraham  ;  3.  Upon  the  Seal  of  the  Foundation  of  God). 

Letter  to  Bishop  Hurd. 


nil.   — 

1781.  W.  Nicholson,  The  Doubts  of  tlie  Infidels.     (Rep.  by  R.  Carlile.) 

1782.  W.  Turner,  Answer  to  Dr.  Priestley's  Letters  to  a  Philosophical  Unbeliever. 
1785.  Dr.  G.  Hoggart  Toulmin,  The  Antiquity  and  Duration  of  tlie  World. 
1789.  Tlie  Eternity  of  the  Universe.^     (Rep.  1825.) 

„       Dr.  T.  Cooper,  Tracts,  Ethical,  TJieological,  and  Political. 
1792.    E.  Evanson,  The  Dissonance  of  the  Four  Evangelists.     (Rep.  1805.) 
1795.    Dr.  J.  A.  O'Keefe,  On  the  Progress  of  the  Human  Under stariding. 
1797.    John  C.  Davies,  The  Scripturian's  Creed.     Prosecuted  and  imprisoned. 
(Book  rep.  1822  and  1839.) 

Of  the  work  here  noted  a  considerable  amount  was  done  by 
Unitarians,  Evanson  being  of  that  persuasion,  though  at  the  time 
of  writing  his  earlier  Unitarian  works  he  was  an  Anglican  vicar.^ 
During  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  despite  the  move- 
ment at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth,  specific  anti-Trinitarianism  was 
not  much  in  evidence,  the  deistic  controversy  holding  the  foreground. 
But  gradually  Unitarianism  made  fresh  headway.  One  dissenting 
clergyman,  Martin  Tomkyns,  who  had  been  dismissed  by  his  con- 
gregation at  Stoke  Newington  for  his  "  Arian  or  Unitarian  opinions," 
pubKshed  in  1722  A  Sober  Appeal  to  a  Turk  or  an  Indian,  co7icerning 
the  plain  sense  of  the  Trinity,  in  reply  to  the  treatise  of  Dr.  Isaac 
Watts  on  The  Christian  Doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  A  second  edition 
of  Tomkyns's  book  appeared  in  1748,  with  a  further  reply  to  Watts's 
Dissertations  of  1724.  The  result  seems  to  have  been  an  unsettle- 
ment  of  the  orthodoxy  of  the  hymn-writer.  There  is  express 
testimony   from    Dr.    Lardner,    a   very   trustworthy  witness,  that 

2  T^vf  ®^^'  "^''^  World  proved  to  he  not  eternal  nor  mechanical,  appeared  in  1790. 
ihe  Doctrines  of  a  Trinity  and  the  Incarnation  of  God  was  published  anonymously. 


202 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


Watts  in  his  latter  years,  "  before  he  was  seized  with  an  imbecility 
of  his  faculties,"  was  substantially  a  Unitarian.     His  special  papers 
on  the  subject  were  suppressed  by  his  executors  ;  but  the  full  text 
of  his  Solemn  Address  to  the  Great  and  Blessed  God  goes  far  to  bear 
out  Lardner's  express  assertion.^     Other  prominent  religionists  were 
more  outspoken.     The  most  distinguished   names  associated  with 
the  position  were   those  of   Lardner  and   Priestley,  of  whom  the 
former,   trained   as   a   simple    "dissenter,"    avowedly   reached   his 
conclusions  without  much  reference   to    Socinian  literature  ;^  and 
the  second,  who  was  similarly  educated,  no  less  independently  gave 
up  the  doctrines  of  the  Atonement  and  the  Trinity,  passing  later 
from  the  Arian  to  the   Socinian   position  after  reading  Lardner's 
Letter  on  the  Logos!"     As  Priestley  derived  his  determinism  from 
Collins,'  it  would  appear  that  the  deistical  movement  had  set  up  a 
general  habit  of  reasoning  which  thus  wrought  even  on  Christians 
who,  like  Lardner  and  Priestley,  undertook  to  rebut  the  objections 
of  unbehevers  to  their  faith.     A  generally  rationalistic  influence  is 
to  be  noted  in  the  works   of   the  Unitarian   Antipaedobaptist  Dr. 
Joshua  Toulmin,   author  of   lives   of   Socinus  (1777)   and   Biddle 
(1789),  and  many  other  soHd  works,  including  a  sermon  on  "The 
Injustice  of  classing  Unitarians  with  Deists  and  Infidels  "  (1797). 
In  his  case  the  "classing"  was  certainly  inconvenient.     In  1791 
the  effigy  of  Paine  was  burned  before  his  door,  and  his  windows 
broken.     His  house  was  saved  by  being  closely  guardedj  but  his 
businesses  of  schoolkeeping  and  bookselHng  had  to  be  given  up.     It 
thus   becomes   intelligible   how,  after  a  period   in  which   Dissent, 
contemned  by  the  State  Church,  learned  to  criticize  that  Church's 
creed,  there  emerged  in  England  towards  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century  a  fresh  movement  of  specific  Unitarianism. 

Evanson  and  Toulmin  were  scholarly  writers,  though  without 
the  large  learning  of  Lardner  and  the  propagandist  energy  and 
reputation  of  Priestley  ;  and  the  Unitarian  movement,  in  a  quiet 
fashion,  made  a  numerical  progress  out  of  all  proportion  to  that  of 
orthodoxy.  It  owed  much  of  its  immunity  at  this  stage,  doubtless, 
to  the  large  element  of  tacit  deism  in  the  Church  ;  and  apart  from 
the  scholarly  work  of  Lardner  both  Priestley  and  Evanson  did 
something   for  New  Testament  criticism,  as  well   as  towards  the 

1  See  the  Biographical   Introduction  to   the  Unitarian  reprint  of  Watts's   Solemn 
Address,  mo,  which  gives  the  letters  of  Lardner.    And  cp.  Skeats,  Hist,  of  the  Englisn 

Free  Churches,  ed.  Miall,  p.  240.  «     ^  ^    -rrr    i        ^  -iqok  {  «  ^^^a 

^Life  of  Lardner,  by  Dr.  Kippis.  prefixed  to  TTorfrs,  ed.  1835,  i.  p.  xxxii.  „  ,^„egged 

8  Memoirs  cf  Priestley,  1806.  pp.  30-32,  35.  37.    The  Letter  on  the  Logos  was  adfi-essea 
by  Lardner  to  the  first  Lord  Harrington,  and  was  first  published  anonymously,  in  17a9. 

*  Memoirs  of  Priestley,  p.  19. 


BRITISH  FPEETHOUGMT 


203 


clearing-up  of  Christian  origins.  Evanson  was  actually  prosecuted 
in  1773,  on  local  initiative,  for  a  sermon  of  Unitarian  character 
delivered  by  him  in  the  parish  church  of  Tewkesbury  on  Easter-Day 
of  1771 ;  and,  what  is  much  more  remarkable,  members  of  his  con- 
gregation, at  a  single  defence-meeting  in  an  inn,  collected  £150  to 
meet  his  costs.^  Five  years  later  he  had  given  up  the  belief  in 
eternal  punishment,  though  continuing  to  believe  in  "long  pro- 
tracted "  misery  for  sinners.^  Still  later,  after  producing  his 
Dissonance,  he  became  uncommonly  drastic  in  his  handling  of  the 
Canon.  He  lived  well  into  the  nineteenth  century,  and  published 
in  1805  a  vigorous  tractate,  Secofid  Thoughts  on  the  Trinity^ 
recommended  to  the  Bight  Beverend  the  Lord  Bishop  of  Gloucester. 
In  that  he  treats  the  First  Gospel  as  a  forgery  of  the  second  century. 
The  method  is  indiscriminating,  and  the  author  lays  much  uncritical 
stress  upon  prophecy.  On  the  whole,  the  Unitarian  contribution  to 
rational  thought,  then  as  later,  was  secondary  or  ancillary,  though 
on  the  side  of  historical  investigation  it  was  important.  Lardner's 
candour  is  as  uncommon  as  his  learning  ;  and  Priestley^  and 
Evanson  have  a  solvent  virtue."*  In  all  three  the  limitation  lies 
in  the  fixed  adherence  to  the  concept  of  revelation,  which  withheld 
them  from  radical  rationalism  even  as  it  did  from  Arianism. 
Evanson's  ultra-orthodox  acceptance  of  the  Apocalypse  is  signi- 
ficant of  his  limitations ;  and  Priestley's  calibre  is  indicated  by  his 
life-long  refusal  to  accept  the  true  scientific  inference  from  his  own 
discovery  of  oxygen.  A  more  pronounced  evolution  was  that  of  the 
Welsh  deist  David  Williams,  who,  after  publishing  two  volumes  of 
Sermons  on  Beligious  Hypocrisy  (1774),  gave  up  his  post  as  a 
dissenting  preacher,  and,  in  conjunction  with  Franklin  and  other 
freethinkers,  opened  a  short-lived  deistic  chapel  in  Margaret  Street, 
London  (1776),  where  there  was  used  a  "  Liturgy  on  the  Universal 
Principles  of  Religion  and  Morality."^ 

§  15 

On  the  other  hand,  apart  from  the  revival  of  popular  religion 
under  Whitefield  and  Wesley,  which  won  multitudes  of  the  people 


*  Pamphlet  of  1778,  printing  the  sermon,  with  reply  to  a  local  attack. 
2  MS.  alteration  in  print.    See  also  p.  1  of  Epistle  Dedicatory- 

^  In  criticizing  whom  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  barely  notices  his  scientific  work,  but  dwells 
much  on  his  religious  fallacies— a  course  which  would  make  short  work  of  the  fame  of 
Newton. 

*  A.  Church  dignitary  has  described  Evanson's  Dissonance  as  "the  commencement 
of  the  destructive  criticism  of  the  Fourth  Gospel"  (Archdeacon  Watkins's  Bampton 
Lectures.  1S90.  p.  174). 

5  Williams  (d.  1816),  who  published  3  vols,  of  "Lectures  on  Education"  and  other 
works,  has  a  longer  claim  on  remembrance  as  the  founder  of  the  "Literary  Fund." 


204 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


BBITISH  FEEETHOUGHT 


205 


whom  no  higher  culture  could  reach,  there  was  no  recovery  of 
educated  belief  upon  intellectual  lines ;  though  there  was  a  steady 
detachment  of  energy  to  the  new  activities  of  conquest  and  com- 
merce which  mark  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  in 
England.  On  this  state  of  things  supervened  the  massive  perform- 
ance of  the  greatest  historical  writer  England  had  yet  produced. 
Gibbon,  educated  not  by  Oxford  but  by  the  recent  scholarly 
literature  of  France,  had  as  a  mere  boy  seen,  on  reading  Bossuet, 
the  theoretic  weakness  of  Protestantism,  and  had  straightway 
professed  Eomanism.  Shaken  as  to  that  by  a  skilled  Swiss 
Protestant,  he  speedily  became  a  rationalist  pure  and  simple, 
with  as  little  of  the  dregs  of  deism  in  him  as  any  writer  of  his 
age  ;  and  his  great  work  begins,  or  rather  signalizes  (since  Hume 
and  Eobertson  preceded  him),  a  new  era  of  historical  writing,  not 
merely  by  its  sociological  treatment  of  the  rise  of  Christianity,  but 
by  its  absolutely  anti-theological  handling  of  all  things. 

The  importance  of  the  new  approach  may  be  at  once  measured 
by  the  zeal  of  the  opposition.  In  no  case,  perhaps,  has  the  essen- 
tially passional  character  of  religious  resistance  to  new  thought 
been  more  vividly  shown  than  ia  that  of  the  contemporary  attacks 
upon  Gibbon's  History.  There  is  not  to  be  found  in  controversial 
literature  such  another  annihilating  rejoinder  as  was  made  by 
Gibbon  to  the  clerical  zealots  who  undertook  to  confound  him  on 
points  of  scholarship,  history,  and  ratiocination.  The  contrast 
between  the  mostly  spiteful  incompetence  of  the  attack  and  the 
finished  mastery  of  the  reply  put  the  faith  at  a  disadvantage  from 
which  it  never  intellectually  recovered,  though  other  forces  reinstated 
it  socially.  By  the  admission  of  Macaulay,  who  thought  Gibbon 
"most  unfair"  to  rehgion,  the  whole  troup  of  his  assailants  are 
now  "utterly  forgotten";  and  those  orthodox  commentators  who 
later  sought  to  improve  on  their  criticism  have  in  turn,  with  a 
notable  uniformity,  been  rebutted  by  their  successors  ;  till  Gibbon's 
critical  section  ranks  as  the  first  systematically  scientific  handling 
of  the  problem  of  the  rise  of  Christianity.  He  can  be  seen  to  have 
profited  by  all  the  relevant  deistic  work  done  before  him,  learning 
alike  from  Toland,  from  Middleton,  and  from  Bolingbroke ;  though 
his  acknowledgments  are  mostly  paid  to  respectable  Protestants  and 
Catholics,  as  Basnage,  Beausobre,  Lardner,  Mosheim,  and  Tillemont ; 
and  the  sheer  solidity  of  the  work  has  sustained  it  against  a  hundred 
years  of  hostile  comment.^     While  Gibbon  was  thus  earning  for  his 

1  The  subject  is  discussed  at  length  in  the  essay  on  Gibbon  in  the  author's  Fianeer 
Humanista. 


country  a  new  literary  distinction,  the  orthodox  interest  was  con- 
cerned above  all  things  to  convict  him  of  ignorance,  incompetence, 
and  dishonesty ;  and  Davis,  the  one  of  his  assailants  who  most  fully 
manifested  all  of  these  qualities,  and  who  will  long  be  remembered 
solely  from  Gibbon's  deadly  exposure,  was  rewarded  with  a  royal 
pension.  Another,  Apthorp,  received  am  archiepiscopal  living ;  while 
Chelsum,  the  one  who  almost  alone  wrote  against  him  like  a 
gentleman,  got  nothing.  But  no  cabal  could  avail  to  prevent  the 
instant  recognition,  at  home  and  abroad,  of  the  advent  of  a  new 
master  in  history  ;  and  in  the  worst  times  of  reaction  which  followed, 
the  History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Boman  Empire  impassively 
defied  the  claims  of  the  ruling  creed. 

In  a  literary  world  which  was  eagerly  reading  Gibbon^  and 
Voltaire,'^  there  was  a  peculiar  absurdity  in  Burke's  famous  question 
(1790)  as  to  "  Who  now  reads  Bolingbroke  "  and  the  rest  of  the 
older  deists.^  The  fashionable  public  was  actually  reading  Boling- 
broke even  then  ;  *  and  the  work  of  the  older  deists  was  being  done 
with  new  incisiveness  and  thoroughness  by  their  successors.^  In  the 
unstudious  world  of  politics,  if  the  readers  were  few  the  indifferentists 
were  many.  Evanson  could  truthfully  write  to  Bishop  Hurd  in  1777 
that  *  That  general  unbelief  of  revealed  religion  among  the  higher 
orders  of  our  countrymen,  which,  however  your  Lordship  and  I 
might  differ  in  our  manner  of  accounting  for  it,  is  too  notorious  for 
either  of  us  to  doubt  of,  hath,  by  a  necessary  consequence,  produced 
in  the  majority  of  our  present  legislators  an  absolute  indifference 
towards  religious  questions  of  every  kind."^  Beside  Burke  in 
ParHament,  all  the  while,  was  the  Prime  Minister,  WILLIAM  PiTT 
the  younger,  an  agnostic  deist. 

Whether  or  not  the  elder  Pitt  was  a  deist,  the  younger  gave 
very  plain  signs  of  being  at  least  no  more.  Gladstone  (Studies 
subsidiary  to  the  Works  of  Bishop  Butler,  ed.  1896,  pp.  30-33) 
has  sought  to  discredit  the  recorded  testimony  of  Wilberforce 
{Life  of  Wilberforce,  1838,  i,  98)  that  Pitt  told  him  "  Bishop 

*  Cp.  Bishop  Watson's  Apology  for  Christianity  (1776)  as  to  the  vogue  of  unbelief  at  that 

-»^"rrv!       °  Apologies,  ed.  1806.  p.  121.    Cp.  pp.  179,  399.) 
T7-TD»         panegyric  on  Voltaire  delivered  at  his  death  by  Frederick  the  Great  (Nov.  26, 

a  ^^^  promptly  translated  into  English  (1779). 

J  Befiections  on  the  French  Revolution,  1790.  p.  131. 
n/i  f-  ®®  Hannah  More's  letter  of  April,  1777.  in  her  Life,  abridged  16mo-ed.  p.  36.     An 

5  mu  Shaftesbury,  apparently,  appeared  in  1773,  and  another  in  1790. 
ine  essays  of  Hume,  including  the  Dialogues  concerning  Natural  Religion  (1779),  were 
now  circulated  in  repeated  editions.  Mr.  Kae.  in  his  valuable  Life  of  Adam  Smith,  p.  311. 
Sfiff  ^-.^erman  observer,  Wendeborn,  as  writing  in  1785  that  the  Dialogues,  though  a  good 
aeai  aiscussed  m  Germany,  had  made  no  sensation  in  England,  and  were  at  that  date 
entirely  forgotten.  But  a  second  edition  had  been  called  for  in  1779,  and  they  were  added 
tL„  -f^  edition  of  the  essays  in  1788.  Any  "  forgetting  "  is  to  be  set  down  to  preoccupa- 
Uon  with  other  interests, 

Letter  to  the  Bishop  of  Lichfield  and  Coventry,  1777.  p.  3. 


206 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


Butler's  work  raised  in  his  mind  more  doubts  than  it  had 
answered."  Gladstone  points  to  another  passage  in  Wilber- 
force's  diary  which  states  that  Pitt  "  commended  Butler's 
Analogy"  (Life,  i,  90).  But  the  context  shows  that  Pitt 
had  commended  the  book  for  the  express  purpose  of  turning 
Wilberforce's  mind  from  its  evangelical  bias.  Wilberforce  was 
never  a  deist,  and  the  purpose  accordingly  could  not  have  been 
to  make  him  orthodox.  The  two  testimonies  are  thus  perfectly 
consistent;  especially  when  we  note  the  further  statement 
credibly  reported  to  have  been  made  by  Wilberforce  {Life,  i,  95), 
that  Pitt  later  "  tried  to  reason  nie  out  of  my  convictions."  We 
have  yet  further  the  emphatic  declaration  of  Pitt's  niece,  Lady 

Hester  Stanhope,  that  he  "  never  went  to  church  in  his  life 

never  even  talked  about  religion"  (Memoirs  of  Lady  Hester 
Stanhope,  1845,  iii,  166-67).  This  was  said  in  emphatic  denial 
of  the  genuineness  of  the  unctuous  death-bed  speech  put  in 
Pitt's  mouth  by  Gifford.  Lady  Hester's  high  veracity  is 
accredited  by  her  physician  (Travels  of  Lady  Hester  Sta7ihope, 
1846,  i,  pref.  p.  11).  No  such  character  can  be  given  to  the 
conventional  English  biography  of  the  period. 

We  have  further  to  note  the  circumstantial  account  by 
Wilberforce  in  his  letter  to  the  Eev.  S.  Gisborne  immediately 
after  Pitt's  death  (Correspondence,  1840,  ii,  69-70),  giving  the 
details  he  had  had  in  confidence  from  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln. 
They  are  to  the  effect  that,  after  some  demur  on  Pitt's  part 
("  that  he  was  not  worthy  to  offer  up  any  prayer,  or  was  too 
weak,")  the  Bishop  prayed  with  him  once.  Wilberforce  adds 
his  "fear"  that  "no  further  religious  intercourse,  took  place 
before  or  after,  and  I  oivn  I  thought  what  was  inserted  in  the 
papers  impossible  to  be  true" 

There  is  clear  testimony  that  Charles  James  Fox,  Pitt's  illustrious 
rival,  was  no  more  of  a  believer  than  he,^  though  equally  careful  to 
make  no  profession  of  unbelief.  And  it  was  Fox  who,  above  all  the 
English  statesmen  of  his  day,  fought  the  battle  of  religious  toleration' 
—a  service  which  finally  puts  him  above  Burke,  and  atones  for  many 
levities  of  political  actica. 

Among  thinking  men  too  the  nascent  science  of  geology  was 
setting  up  a  new  criticism  of  "  revelation  "—this  twenty  years  before 
the  issue  of  the  epoch-making  works  of  Hutton.^  In  England  the 
impulse  seems  to  have  come  from  the  writings  of  the  Abb6  Langlet 
du   Fresnoy,  De  Maillet,  and   Mirabaud,  challenging   the  Biblical 

1  Dr.  Parr.  Characters  of  C.  J.  Fox,  i.  220 :  cited  in  Charles  James  Fox  a  Co^J']^']!^^^' 
by  W.  S.  Landor,  ed.  by  S.  Wheeler.  1907.  p.  147.    Fox's  secretary  and  biographer.  liMi«. 
while  anxious  to  discredit  the  statement  of  Parr  gives  such  a  Q^^l^fied  account  (JMemu^ 
0/  the  Latter  Years  of  C.J.  Fox,  1811.  pp.  470-71)  of  Fox's  views  on  im«iortality  as  to  inro 
much  doubt  on  the  stronger  testimony  of  B.  C.  Walpole  (B^coZ/ac^tmis  o/ C.  J.  i-o^r.^^^ 
p.  243).  2  See  J.  L.  Le  B.  Hammond.  Charles  James  Fox,  1903.  ch.  xiu. 

8  See  a  letter  in  Bishop  Watson's  Life,  i.  402 :  and  cp.  Buckle,  ch.  vu,  note  Mti. 


BBITISH  EEEETHOUGHT 


207 


account  of  the  antiquity  of  the  earth.  The  new  phase  of  infidehty  " 
was  of  course  furiously  denounced,  one  of  the  most  angry  and  most 
absurd  of  its  opponents  being  the  poet  Cowper/  Still  rationaHsm 
persisted.  Paley,  writing  in  1786,  protests  that  "  Infidelity  is  now 
served  up  in  every  shape  that  is  Hkely  to  allure,  surprise,  or  beguile 
the  imagination,  in  a  fable,  a  tale,  a  novel,  or  a  poem,  in  interspersed 
or  broken  hints,  remote  and  oblique  surmises,  in  books  of  travel,  of 
philosophy,  of  natural  history — in  a  word,  in  any  form  rather  than 
that  of  a  professed  and  regular  disquisition."  ^  The  orthodox  Dr.  J. 
Ogilvie,  in  the  introduction  to  his  Biquiry  into  the  Causes  of  the 
hifidelity  and  Skepticism  of  the  Times  (1783),  begins  :  "  That  the 
opinions  of  the  deists  and  skeptics  have  spread  more  universally 
during  a  part  of  the  last  century  and  in  the  present  than  at  any 
former  sera  since  the  resurrection  of  letters,  is  a  truth  to  which  the 
friends  and  the  enemies  of  religion  will  give  their  suffrage  without 
hesitation."  In  short,  until  the  general  reversal  of  all  progress 
which  followed  on  the  French  Kevolution,  there  had  been  no  such 
change  of  opinion  as  Burke  alleged. 

One  of  the  most  popular  poets  and  writers  of  the  day  was  the 
celebrated  Ekasmus  Darwin,  a  deist,  whose  Zoonomia  (1794) 
brought  on  him  the  charge  of  atheism,  as  it  well  might.  However 
he  might  poetize  about  the  Creator,  Dr.  Darwin  in  his  verse  and 
prose  alike  laid  the  foundations  of  the  doctrines  of  the  transmutation 
of  species  and  the  aqueous  origin  of  simple  forms  of  life  which 
evolved  into  higher  forms ;  though  the  idea  of  the  descent  of  man 
from  a  simian  species  had  been  broached  before  him  by  Buffon 
and  Helv6tius  in  France,  and  Lords  Kames  and  Monboddo  in 
Scotland.  The  idea  of  a  Natura  naturans  was  indeed  ancient ;  but 
it  has  been  authoritatively  said  of  Erasmus  Darwin  that  **  he  was 
the  first  who  proposed  and  consistently  carried  out  a  well-rounded 
theory  with  regard  to  the  development  of  the  living  world — a  merit 
which  shines  forth  more  brilliantly  when  we  compare  it  with  the 
vacillating  and  confused  attempts  of  Buffon,  Linnaeus,  and  Goethe. 
It  is  the  idea  of  a  power  working  from  within  the  organisms  to 
improve  their  natural  position"* — the  idea  which,  developed  by 
Lamarck,  was  modified  by  the  great  Darwin  of  the  nineteenth 
century  into  the  doctrine  of  natural  selection. 

And  in  the  closing  years  of  the  century  there  arose  a  new 
promise  of  higher  life  in  the  apparition  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft, 


\  See  his  Task,  bk.  iii.  150-90  (1783-1784),  for  the  prevailing  religious  tone. 
8  i,^^*^i°-C  ■*^o»'«i  Philos.  bk.  v.  ch.  ix.    The  chapter  tells  of  widespread  freethinking. 
n-rnest  Krause.  Erasmus  Darwin,  Eng.  tr.  1879.  p.  211.    Cp.  pp.  193, 194. 


208 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUBY 


BEITlSH  f  BEETHOUGHT 


209 


ill-starred  but  noble,  whose  Letters  on  Sweden,  Norway,  and  Denmark 
(1796)  show  her  to  have  been  a  freethinking  deist  of  remarkable 
original  faculty/  and  whose  Vindication  of  the  Rights  of  Woman 
(1792)  was  the  first  great  plea  for  the  emancipation  of  her  sex. 

§  16 

Even  in  rural  Scotland,  the  vogue  of  the  poetry  of  Burns  told 
of  germinal  doubt.  To  say  nothing  of  his  mordant  satires  on 
pietistic  types — notably  Holij  Willie's  Prayer,  his  masterpiece  in 
that  line — Burns  even  in  his  avowed  poems ^  shows  small  regard 
for  orthodox  beliefs  ;  and  his  letters  reveal  him  as  substantially  a 
deist,  shading  into  a  Unitarian.  Such  pieces  as  A  Prayer  in  tJie 
prospect  of  Death,  and  A  Prayer  under  the  pressure  of  Violent 
Anguish,  are  plainly  unevangelical;'  and  the  allusions  to  Jesus  in 
his  letters,  even  w^hen  writing  to  Mrs.  Maclehose,  who  desired  to 
bring  him  to  confession,  exclude  orthodox  belief,*  though  they 
suggest  Unitarianism.  He  frequently  refers  to  religion  in  his 
letters,  yet  so  constantly  restricts  himself  to  the  affirmation  of  a 
belief  in  a  benevolent  God  and  in  a  future  state  that  he  cannot 
be  supposed  to  have  held  the  further  beliefs  which  his  orthodox 
correspondents  would  wish  him  to  express.  A  rationalistic  habit 
is  shown  even  in  his  professions  of  belief,  as  here :  "  Still  I  am  a 
very  sincere  believer  in  the  Bible ;  but  I  am  drawn  by  the  conviction 
of  a  man,  not  the  halter  of  an  ass  ";*  and  in  the  passage  :  "  Though 
I  have  no  objection  to  what  the  Christian  system  tells  us  of  another 
world,  yet  I  own  I  am  partial  to  those  proofs  and  ideas  of  it  which 
we  have  wrought  out  of  our  own  heads  and  hearts."^  Withal, 
Burns  always  claimed  to  be  "religious,"  and  was  so  even  in  a 
somewhat  conventional  sense.     The  lines  : 

An  atheist-laugh's  a  poor  exchange 
For  Deity  ofiended' 

exhibit  a  sufficiently  commonplace  conception  of  Omnipotence  ;  and 

1  Letters  vii,  viii,  ix,  xix.  xxii. 

2  E.g.,  The  Ordination,  the  Address  to  tJie  Deil,  A  Dedication  to  Gavin  Hamilton,  The 
Kirk's  Alarm,  etc. 

8  See  also  the  pieces  printed  between  these  in  the  Globe  edition,  pp.  66-68. 

*  The  benevolent  Supreme  Being,  he  writes,  "has  put  the  immediate  administration 
of  all  this  into  the  hands  of  Jesus  Christ— a  great  personage,  whose  relation  to  Him  we 
cannot  fathom,  but  whose  relation  to  us  is  [that  of]  a  guide  and  Saviour."  Letter  86  in 
Globe  ed.  Letters  189  and  197.  to  Mrs.  Dunlop.  similarly  fail  to  meet  the  requirements  of 
the  orthodox  correspondent.  The  poem  Look  up  and  See,  latterly  printed  several  times 
apart  from  Burns's  works,  and  extremely  likely  to  be  his,  is  a  quite  Voltairean  criticism 
of  David.  If  the  poem  be  ungenuine.  it  is  certainly  by  far  the  ablest  of  the  unacknow- 
ledged pieces  ascribed  to  him,  alike  in  diction  and  in  purport. 

5  Letter  to  Mrs.  Dunlop,  Jan.  1,  1789,  in  Bobert  Burns  and  Mrs.  Dunlop,  ed.  by 
W.  Wallace.  1898,  p.  129.  The  passage  is  omitted  from  Letter  168  in  the  Globe  ed.,  and 
presumably  from  other  reprints. 

6  Letter  to  Mrs.  Dunlop.  July  9. 1790.    Published  for  the  first  time  in  vol.  cited,  p.  266. 

7  Emstle  to  a  Young  Friend. 


there  is  no  sign  that  the  poet  ever  did  any  hard  thinking  on  the 
problem.  But,  emotionalist  of  genius  as  he  was,  his  influence  as 
a  satirist  and  mitigator  of  the  crudities  and  barbarities  of  Scots 
religion  has  been  incalculably  great,  and  underlies  all  popular 
culture  progress  in  Scotland  since  his  time.  Constantly  aspersed 
in  his  own  day  and  world  as  an  "  infidel,"  he  yet  from  the  first 
conquered  the  devotion  of  the  mass  of  his  countrymen ;  though  he 
would  have  been  more  potent  for  intellectual  liberation  if  he  had 
been  by  them  more  intelligently  read.  Few  of  them  now,  probably, 
realize  that  their  adored  poet  was  either  a  deist  or  a  Unitarian — 
presumably  the  former. 

§  17 

With  the  infelicity  in  prediction  which  is  so  much  commoner 
with  him  than  the  "prescience"  for  which  he  is  praised,  Burke 
had  announced   that   the   whole   deist   school  *'  repose   in   lasting 
obHvion."     The  proposition  would  be  much  more  true  of  999  out 
of  every  thousand  writers  on  behalf  of  Christianity.     It  is  charac- 
teristic of  Burke,  however,  that  he   does   not    name    Shaftesbury, 
a  Whig  nobleman  of  the  sacred   period.^     A  seeming  justice  was 
given  to  Burke's   phrase   by  the   undoubted   reaction  which  took 
place  immediately  afterwards.     In  the  vast  panic  which  followed 
on  the  French  Kevolution,  the  multitude  of  mediocre  minds  in  the 
middle  and  upper  classes,  formerly  deistic  or  indifferent,  took  fright 
at  unbelief  as  something  now  visibly  connected  with  democracy  and 
regicide  ;  new  money  endowments  were   rapidly  bestowed   on  the 
Church  ;    and  orthodoxy  became   fashionable  on  political  grounds 
just  as   skepticism    had    become    fashionable   at   the   Kestoration. 
Class  interest  and  political  prejudice  wrought  much  in  both  cases  ; 
only  in  opposite  directions.     Democracy  was  no  longer  Bibliolatrous, 
therefore  aristocracy  was  fain  to  became  so,  or  at  least  to  grow 
respectful  towards  the  Church  as  a  means  of  social  control.    Gibbon, 
in  his  closing  years,  went  with  the  stream.     And  as  religious  wars 
have  always  tended  to  discredit  religion,  so  a  war  partly  associated 
with  the  freethinking  of  the  French  revolutionists  tended  to  discredit 
freethought.     The  brutish  wrecking  of  Priestley's  house  and  library 
and  chapel  by  a  mob  at  Birmingham  in  1791  was  but  an  extreme 

JnM  ^,?°^y' J^i'iting  in  1865,  and  advancing  on  Burke,  has  said  of  the  whole  school, 
inciuaing  Shaftesbury,  that  "  the  shadow  of  the  tomb  rests  on  all :  a  deep,  unbroken 
suence,  the  chill  of  death,  surrounds  them.  They  have  long  ceased  to  wake  any  interest " 
in  iS  K  "'J!:  *'*  Europe,  i,  116).  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  had  been  discussed  by  Tayler 
\a,t^  Iby  Pattison  in  1860 ;  and  by  Farrar  in  1862 ;  and  they  have  since  been  discussed  at 
RtlfvL  v.^1:  ^""*''  ^y  ^^'  Cairns,  by  Lange,  by  Gyzicki,  by  M.  Sayous.  by  Sir  Leslie 
Stephen,  by  Prof.  Hoffding.  and  by  many  others. 

VOL.  u 


210 


JEIGHTEENTH  CENTIlBt 


manifestation  of  a  reaction  which  affected  every  form  of  mental 
life.     But  while  Priestley  went  to  die  in  the  United  States,  another 
English  exile,  temporarily  returned  thence  to  his  native  land,  was 
opening  a  new  era  of  popular  rationalism.     Even  in  the  height  of 
the  revolutionary  tumult,  and  while  Burke  was  blustering  about  the 
disappearance  of  unbelief,  Thomas  Paine  was  laying  deep  and  wide 
the  English  foundations  of  a  new  democratic  freethought ;  and  the 
upper-class  reaction  in  the  nature  of  the  case  was  doomed  to  imper- 
manency,  though  it  was  to  arrest  English  intellectual  progress  for 
over  a  generation.     The  French  Kevolution  had  re-introduced  free- 
thought  as  a  vital  issue,  even  in  causing  it  to  be  banned  as  a  danger. 
That  freethought  at  the  end  of  the  century  was  rather  driven 
inwards  and  downwards  than  expelled  is  made  clear  by  the 
multitude  of  fresh  treatises  on  Christian  evidences.     Growing 
numerous  after  1790,  they  positively  swarm  for  a  generation 
after  Paley  (1794).     Cp.  Essays  on  the  Evidence  and  Infinencc 
of  Christia7iity,  Bath,  1790,  pref.;  Andrew  Fuller,  The  Gopcl 
its  own  Wit7iess,  1799,  pref.  and  concluding  address  to  deists ; 
Watson's  sermon  of  1795,  in  Ttvo  Apologies,  ed.  1806,  p.  39J; 
Priestley's    Memoirs    (written    in    1795),    1806,   pp.    127-28; 
Wilberforce's  Practical   Vietv,  1797,  passim  (e.g.,  pp.  366-(jJ, 

8th   ed.   1841);   Rev.  D.   Simpson,  A   Plea  for  Beligion 

addressed  to  the  Disciples  of  Thomas  Paine,  1797.  The  latter 
writer  states  (2nd  ed.  p.  126)  that  "  infidelity  is  at  this  moment 
running  like  wildfire  among  the  common  people";  and^iuller 
(2nd  ed.  p.  128)  speaks  of  the  Monthly  Magazine  as  pijetty 
evidently  devoted  to  the  cause  of  infidelity."  A  pamphlet  on 
The  Rise  and  Dissolution  of  the  Infidel  Societies  in  this  Metropolis 
(London,  1800),  by  W.  Hamilton  Reid,  describes  the  period  as 
the  first  *'  in  which  the  doctrines  of  infidehty  have  been  exten- 
sively circulated  among  the  lower  orders  ";  and  a  Summaryoj 
Christian  Evidences,  by  Bishop  Porteous  (1800 ;  16th  ed.  18L-b). 
afiirms,  in  agreement  with  the  1799  Report  of  the  Lords  Com- 
mittee on  Treasonable  Societies,  that  "  new  compendiums  of 
infidelity,  and  new  libels  on  Christianity,  are  dispersed  con- 
tinually, with  indefatigable  industry,  through  every  part  of  the 
kingdom,  and  every  class  of  the  community."  Freethought,  in 
short,  w^as  becoming  democratized. 

As  regards  England,  Paine  is  the  great  popular  factor  ;  and  it  is 
the  bare  truth  to  say  that  he  brought  into  the  old  debate  a  new 
earnestness  and  a  new  moral  impetus.  The  first  |)art  of  the  Age^of 
Reason,  hastily  put  together  in  expectation  of  speedy  death  in  1793, 
and  including  some  astronomic  matter  that  apparently  antedates 
1781,'  is  a  swift  outline  of  the  position  of  the  rationalizing  deist, 

1  Conway,  introd.  to  Age  of  Season,  in  his  ed.  of  Paine's  Works,  iv.  3. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT 


211 


newly  conscious  of  firm  standing-ground  in  astronomic  science. 
That  is  the  special  note  of  Paine's  gospel.  He  was  no  scholar; 
and  the  champions  of  the  "religion  of  Galilee"  have  always  been 
prompt  to  disparage  any  unlearned  person  who  meddles  with 
religion  as  an  antagonist ;  but  in  the  second  part  of  his  book  Paine 
put  hard  criticism  enough  to  keep  a  world  of  popular  readers 
interested  for  well  over  a  hundred  years.  The  many  replies  are 
forgotten :  the  Biblical  criticism  of  Paine  will  continue  to  do  its 
work  till  popular  orthodoxy  follows  the  lead  of  professional  scholar- 
ship and  gives  up  at  once  the  acceptance  and  the  circulation  of 
things  incredible  and  indefensible  as  sacrosanct. 

Mr.  Benn  (Hist,  of  Eng.  Rationalism  iri  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  i,  217)  remarks  that  Paine's  New  Testament  criticisms 
are  **  such  as  at  all  times  would  naturally  occur  to  a  reader  of 
independent  mind  and  strong  common  sense."  If  so,  these  had 
been  up  to  Paine's  time,  and  remained  long  afterwards,  rare 
characteristics.  And  there  is  some  mistake  about  Mr.  Bonn's 
criticism  that  **the  repeated  charges  of  fraud  and  imposture 

brought  against  the  Apostles  and  Evangelists jar  painfully 

on  a  modern  ear.  But  they  are  largely  due  to  the  mistaken 
notion,  shared  by  Paine  with  his  orthodox  contemporaries,  that 
the  Gospels  and  Acts  were  written  by  contemporaries  and  eye- 
witnesses of  the  events  related."  Many  times  over,  Paine 
argues  that  the  documents  could  not  have  been  so  written. 
E,g,  in  Conway's  ed.  of  Works,  pp.  157,  158, 159, 160, 164, 167, 
168,  etc.  The  reiterated  proposition  is  "  that  the  writers  cannot 
have  been  eye-witnesses  and  ear- witnesses  of  what  they  relate ; 

and  consequently  that  the  books  have  not  been  written  by 

the  persons  called  apostles  "  (p.  168).  And  there  is'  some 
exaggeration  even  in  Mr.  Bonn's  remark  that,  "strangely 
enough,  he  accepts  the  Book  of  Daniel  as  genuine."  Paine 
(ed.  p.  144)  merely  puts  a  balance  of  probability  in  favour  of 
the  genuineness.  It  may  be  sometimes — it  is  certainly  not 
always — true  that  Paine  "  cannot  distinguish  between  legendary 
or  [?and]  mythical  narratives"  (Benn,  p.  216) ;  but  it  is  to  be 
feared  that  the  disability  subsists  to-day  in  more  scholarly  quarters. 

Despite  his  deadly  directness,  Paine,  in  virtue  of  his  strong 
sincerity,  probably  jars  much  less  on  the  modern  ear  than  he 
did  on  that  of  his  own,  which  was  so  ready  to  make  felony  of 
ariy  opinion  hostile  to  reigning  prejudices.  But  if  jt  be  other- 
wise, it  is  to  be  feared  that  no  less  offence  will  be  given  by 
Mr.  Bonn's  own  account  of  the  Hexateuch  as  "  the  records  kept 
by  a  lying  and  bloodthirsty  priesthood  ";  even  if  that  estimate 
be  followed  by  the  very  challengeable  admission  that  "  priest- 
hoods are  generally  distinguished  for  their  superior  humanity  " 
(Benn,  p.  350,  and  note). 


21^ 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUM 


Henceforth  there  is  a  vital  difference  in  the  fortunes  of  free- 
thought  and  religion  alike.  Always  in  the  past  the  institutional 
strength  of  religion  and  the  social  weakness  of  freethought  had  lain 
in  the  credulity  of  the  ignorant  mass,  which  had  turned  to  naught  an 
infinity  of  rational  effort.  After  the  French  Kevolution,  when  over 
a  large  area  the  critical  spirit  began  simultaneously  to  play  on  faith 
and  life,  politics  and  religion,  its  doubled  activity  gave  it  a  new 
breadth  of  outlook  as  of  energy,  and  the  slow  enlightenment  of  the 
mass  opened  up  a  new  promise  for  the  ultimate  reign  of  reason. 


Chapter  XVII 

FBENCH  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH 

CENTUKY 

1.  The  fruits  of  the  intellectual  movement  of  the  seventeenth 
century  are  seen  beginning  to  take  form  on  the  very  threshold  of 
the  eighteenth.  In  1700,  at  the  height  of  the  reign  of  the  King's 
confessors,  there  was  privately  printed  the  Lettre  d' Hiiypocrate  d 
Daviagdte,  described  as  "  the  first  French  work  openly  destructive  of 
Christianity."  It  was  ascribed  to  the  Comte  de  Boulainvilliers,  a 
pillar  of  the  feudal  system.'  Thus  early  is  the  sound  of  disintegra- 
tion heard  in  the  composite  fabric  of  Church  and  State  ;  and  various 
fissures  are  seen  in  all  parts  of  the  structure.  The  king  himself,  so 
long  morally  discredited,  could  only  discredit  pietism  by  his  adoption 
of  it ;  the  Jansenists  and  the  Molinists  [i.e.,  the  school  of  Molina,  not 
of  Molinos]  fought  incessantly  ;  even  on  the  side  of  authority  there 
was  bitter  dissension  between  Bossuet  and  F6nelon  ;^  and  the 
movement  of  mysticism  associated  with  the  latter  came  to  nothing, 
though  he  had  the  rare  credit  of  converting,  albeit  to  a  doubtful 
orthodoxy,  the  emotional  young  Scotch  deist  ChevaHer  Kamsay.^ 
Where  the  subtlety  of  F(^nelon  was  not  allowed  to  operate,  the  loud 
dialectic  of  Bossuet  could  not  avail  for  faith  as  against  ratioiaalism, 
whatever  it  might  do  to  upset  the  imperfect  logic  of  Protestant  sects. 
In  no  society,  indeed,  does  mere  declamation  play  a  larger  part  than 
in  that  of  modern  France  ;  but  in  no  society,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
mere  declamation  more  sure  to  be  disdained  and  derided  by  the 
keener  spirits.  In  the  years  of  disaster  and  decadence  which 
rounded  off  in  gloom  the  life  of  the  Grand  Monarque,  with  defeat 
dogging  his   armies  and  bankruptcy  threatening  his   finances,   the 

1  Lemontey,  Hist,  de  la  rcgence  et  de  la  minorite  de  Louis  XV,  1835,  ii,  358,  noje.  In  1731 
Uiero  was  published  under  the  name  of  Boulainvilliers  (d.  172-2)  a  so-called  -LMutattoucte 
Siniwza,  which  was  "  really  a  popular  exposition."  Pollock,  Spinoza,  2nd  ed.  p.  dbd.  bir 
F.  Pollock  assents  to  Voltaire's  remark  that  Boulainvilliers  "gave  the  poison  and  forgot 
to  give  the  antidote."  <2,n  ii      -ca     !«« 

'^  For  a  brief  view  of  the  facts,  usually  misconceived,  see  Lanson,  pp.  610-Jl.  J^eneion 
seems  to  have  been  uncandid,  while  Bossuet,  by  common  consent,  was  malevolent.  .  Ihere 
is  probably  truth,  however,  in  the  view  of  Shaftesbury  (Characteristics,  ed.  1000,  ".  ^14>. 
that  the  real  grievance  of  Fenelon's  ecclesiastical  opponents  was  the  tendency  of  uia 
mysticism  to  withdraw  devotees  from  ceremonial  duties.  •■.  -ni     i       / 

"  Now  remembered  chiefly  through  the  account  of  his  intercourse  with  Fenelon  irepr. 
in  Didot  ed.  of  Fenelon's  misc.  works),  and  Hume's  long  extract  from  his  PhilosophicaC 
Principles  of  Natural  and  Bevealed  Religion  in  the  concluding  note  to  the  Essays.  Cp.  M. 
Matter,  Le  Mysticiame  en  France  an  temps  de  Fenelon,  1865,  pp.  352-54. 

213 


214 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


FRENCH  FREETHOUGHT 


215 


spirit  of  criticism  was  not  likely  to  slacken.  Literary  polemic, 
indeed,  was  hardly  to  bo  thought  of  at  such  a  time,  even  if  it  had 
been  safe.  In  1709  the  king  destroyed  the  Jansenist  seminary  of 
Port  Royal,  wreaking  an  ignoble  vengeance  on  the  very  bones  of  the 
dead  there  buried ;  and  more  heretical  thinkers  had  need  go  warily. 

Yet  even  in  those  years  of  calamity,  perhaps  by  reason  of  the 
very  stress  of  it,  some  freethinking  books  somehow  passed  the  press, 
though  a  system  of  police  espionage  had  been  built  up  by  the  king, 
step  for  step  with  some  real  reforms  in  the  municipal  government  of 
Paris.  The  first  was  a  romance  of  the  favourite  type,  in  which  a 
traveller  discovers  a  strange  land  inhabited  by  surprisingly  rational 
people.  Such  appear  to  have  been  the  Ilistoire  de  Calejava,  by  Claude 
Gilbert,  produced  at  Dijon  in  1700,  and  the  imaginary  travels  of  Juan 
de  Posos,  published  at  Amsterdam  in  1708.  Both  of  these  were 
promptly  suppressed  ;  the  next  contrived  to  get  into  circulation.  The 
work  of  Symon  Tyssot  de  Patot,  Voyages  ei  Avantures  de  Jacques 
MassS,  published  in  1710,  puts  in  the  mouths  of  priests  of  the 
imaginary  land  discovered  by  the  traveller  such  mordant  arguments 
against  the  idea  of  a  resurrection,  the  story  of  the  fall,  and  other 
items  of  the  Christian  creed,  that  there  could  be  small  question  of 
the  deism  of  the  author;^  and  the  prefatory  Lettre  de  Veditcur 
indicates  misgivings.  The  Beflexions  sur  les  grands  liommcs  qui  sont 
morts  e7iplaisanta7it,  by  Deslandes,  ostensibly  published  at  Amsterdam 
in  1712,  seems  to  have  had  a  precarious  circulation,  inasmuch  as 
Brunet  never  saw  the  first  edition.  To  permit  of  the  issue  of  such  a 
book  as  Jacques  Masse — even  at  Bordeaux — the  censure  must  have 
been  notably  lax  ;  as  it  was  again  in  the  year  of  the  king's  death, 
when  there  appeared  a  translation  of  Collins's  Discourse  of  Free- 
thinking.  For  the  moment  the  Government  was  occupied  over  an 
insensate  renewal  of  the  old  persecution  of  Protestants,  promulgating 
in  1715  a  decree  that  all  who  died  after  refusing  the  sacraments 
should  be  refused  burial,  and  that  their  goods  should  be  confiscated. 
The  edict  seems  to  have  been  in  large  measure  disregarded. 

2.  At  the  same  time  the  continuous  output  of  apologetics  testified 
to  the  gathering  tide  of  unbelief.  The  Benedictine  Lami  followed  up 
his  attack  on  Spinoza  with  a  more  popular  treatise,  UlncrMulc 
anient  a  la  religion  par  la  raison  (1710) ;  the  Abb6  Genest  turned 
Descartes  into  verse  by  way  of  Preiives  iiaturelles  de  Vexistencc  dc 

1  Tyssot  de  Patot  was  Professor  of  Matliematics  at  Beventer.  In  his  Lettres  clwisies, 
pubUshed  in  1726,  there  is  an  avowal  that  "  he  might  be  charged  with  having  differenii 
notions  from  those  of  the  vulgar  in  point  of  religion"  (New  Memoirsof  Literature,  iv  {ii~bK 
267);  and  his  accounts  of  pietists  and  unbelieving  and  other  priests  suflaciently  cou^ey 
that  impression  (id.  pp.  268-84). 


} 


Dieu  et  de  VimmortaliU  de  Vdme  (1716);  ^ud.  \he  Anti-Lucretius  oi 
Cardinal  Pohgnac  (1661-1741),  though  only  posthumously  pubhshed 
in  full  (1745).  did  but  pass  on  to  the  next  age,  when  deism  was  the 
prevailing  heresy,  a  deistic  argument  against  atheism.  It  is  dithcult 
to  see  any  Christian  sentiment  in  that  dialectic  performance  of  a 

born  diplomatist.^  ,         ,       -^  ;\ 

When  the  old  king  died,  even  the  fashion  of  conformity  passed 
away  among  the  upper  classes;^  and  the  feverish  manufacture  of 
apologetic  works  testifies  to  an  unslackened  activity  of  unbehef.  ^  In 
1719  Jean  Denyse,  professor  of  philosophy  at  the  college  of  Montaigu, 
produced  La  vdritd  de  la  religion  cliretienne  deniontr6e  par  ordre 
geometrique  (a  title  apparently  suggested  by  Spinoza's  early  exposi- 
tion  of  Descartes),  without  making  any  permanent  impression  on 
heterodox  opinion.     Not  more  successful,  apparently,  was  ^the  per- 
formance of  the  Abbe  Houteville,  first  published  in  1722.      Much 
more   amiable   in   tone,   and   more  scientific   in   temper,  than  the 
common  run  of  defences,  it  was  found,  says  an  orthodox  biographical 
dictionary,  to  be  "  better  fitted  to  make  unbelievers  than  to  convert 
them,"  seeing  that  "objections  were  presented  with  much  force  and 
fulness,  and  the  replies  with  more  amenity  than  weight."  '     That  the 
AhU  was  in  fact  not  rigorously  orthodox  might  almost  be  suspected 
from  his  having  been  appointed,  in  the  last  year  of  his  life  (1742), 
"perpetual  secretary"  to  the  Academie,  an  office  which  somehow 
tended  to  fall  to  more  or  less  freethinking  members,  being  held 
before  him  by  the  Abb6  Dubos,  and  after  him  by  Mirabaud,  the 
Abb6    Duclos.'    D'Alembert.    and    Marmontel.      The    Traitds    des 
Premieres  Veritdz  of  the  Jesuit  Father  Buffier  (1724)  can  hardly 
have  been  more  helpful  to  the  faith.'     Another  experiment  by  way 
of  popularizing  orthodoxy,  the  copious  Ilistoire  du  peuple  de  Dieu,  by 
the  Jesuit  Berruyer,  first  published  in  1728,'  had  little  better  fortune. 

1  Towards  the  close  of  his  "poem"  Pol ignac  speaks  of  a  defence  of  Christianity  a^^^ 

future  task.    He  died  without  even  completing  the  ^'^'^-^"7f,J'^«']L^fAwentN  seven^ 
before.    Of  him  are  related  two  classic  anecdotes.    Sent  at  ^Jl^  age  of  twenty-s^^^ 
discuss  Church  questions  with  the  Pope,  he  earned  from  His  .Hol^°^^f„.*i^|,,^°^P^^^^ 
"You  seem  always  to  be  of  my  opinion-  and  in  ^^e  end  it.is  youis  that  pre^^^^^^^^ 
Louis  XIV  gave  him  a  long  audience,  after  which  the  King  said :     I  ^^X^Xip  ?o  he  ancrv 
^vith  a  young  man  who  has  constantly  contradicted  me  without  my  being  able  to  be  angry 
for  a  moment."    (Eloge  prefixed  to  Bougainville's  trans.,  L  ^nU-Lucj  ^.^^•^°; '  ''/^^'^'  jgS^ 

2  Cp.  Duvernet,  Vie  de  Voltaire,  ch.  i.  Rivarol  (Lettres  A  ^^<'\Zl.^ nTat^cn^ion  and 
p.  138)  wrote  that  under  Louis  XV  there  began  a  general  i^s^/reption  of  discussion,  and 
that  everybody  then  talked  "  only  of  religion  and  philosophy  during  l\alf  a  century .  uni 
this  exaggerates  the  beginnings,  of  which  Rivarol  could  have  no  exact  knowledge 

3  La  verite  de  la  religion  cliretienne  vrouvee  par  les  faits:  Precme  dun  ^^^flf^ 
historiqtieet  critique  sur  la  methode  des  principaux  auteurs  qui  ont  ecritpour  et  contie 
le  christianisme  depuis  son  origine,  17-22.    Rep.  1741,  3  vols.  4to.,  4  vols.  ;2mo. 

4  Nouveau  Dictionnaire  historiqne  portatif,  1771,  art.  Houteville.  torn.  a. 

5  Whose  Considerations  sur  les  Moeurs  (1751)  does  not  seem  to  contain  ^  single  religious 
sentiment.    Historiographer  of  France,  he  had  not  escaped  the  suppression  of  his  Mistoue 

6  See^above,  p.  130.  Buffier  seems  to  have  begun  an  attempt  at  spelling  reform  (by 
dropping  doubled  letters),  followed  in  1725  by  Huard  and  later  by  P^ei}?ontvai. 

7  7  vols.  4to.,  10  vols.  12mo.   Rep.  with  corrections  1733.   Seconde  partie,  1753, 8  vols.  IJmo, 


216 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


FEENCH  FEEETHOUGHT 


217 


inasmuch  as  it  scandalized  the  orthodox  by  its  secularity  of  tone 
without  persuading  the  freethinkers.  Condemned  by  the  Bishop  of 
MontpelUer  in  1731,  it  was  censured  by  Eome  in  1734;  and  the  second 
part,  produced  long  afterwards,  aroused  even  more  antagonism. 

3.  There  was  thus  no  adaptation  on  the  side  of  the  Church 
to  the  forces  which  in  an  increasing  degree  menaced  her  rule. 
Under  the  regency  of  Orleans  (1715-1723),  the  open  disorder  of 
the  court  on  the  one  hand  and  the  ruin  of  the  disastrous  financial 
experiment  of  Law  on  the  other  were  at  least  favourable  to  tolera- 
tion ;  but  under  the  Due  de  Bourbon,  put  in  power  and  soon 
superseded  by  Fleury  (bishop  of  Frejus  and  tutor  of  Louis  XV; 
later  cardinal)  there  was  a  renewal  of  the  rigours  against  the 
Protestants  and  the  Jansenists  ;  the  edict  of  1715  was  renewed  ; 
emigration  recommenced  ;  and  only  public  outcry  checked  the  policy 
of  persecution  on  that  side.  But  Fleury  and  the  king  went  on 
fighting  the  Jansenists  ;  and  while  this  embittered  strife  of  the 
religious  sections  could  not  but  favour  the  growth  of  freethought, 
it  was  incompatible  alike  with  official  tolerance  of  unbelief  and  with 
any  effectual  diffusion  of  liberal  culture.  Had  the  terrorism  and 
the  waste  of  Louis  XIV  been  followed  by  a  sane  system  of  finance 
and  one  of  religious  toleration  ;  and  had  not  the  exhausted  and 
bankrupt  country  been  kept  for  another  half  century — save  for  eight 
years  of  peace  and  iDrosperity  from  1748  to  1755 — on  the  rack  of 
ruinous  wars,  alike  under  the  regency  of  Orleans  and  the  rule  of 
Louis  XV,  the  intellectual  life  might  have  gone  fast  and  tar.  As  it 
was,  war  after  war  absorbed  its  energy ;  and  the  debt  of  five  milliards 
left  by  Louis  XIV  was  never  seriously  lightened.  Under  such  a 
system  the  vestiges  of  constitutional  government  were  gradually 
swept  away. 

4.  As  the  new  intellectual  movement  began  to  find  expression, 
then,  it  found  the  forces  of  resistance  more  and  more  organized.  In 
particular,  the  autocracy  long  maintained  the  severest  checks  on 
printing,  so  that  freethought  could  not  save  by  a  rare  chance  attain  to 
open  speech.  Any  book  with  the  least  tendency  to  rationalism  had 
to  seek  printers,  or  at  least  pubhshers,  in  Holland.  Huard,  in 
publishing  his  anonymous  translation  of  the  Hypotyposes  of  Sextus 
Empiricus  (1725),  is  careful  to  say  in  his  preface  that  he  "makes 
no  application  of  the  Pyrrhonian  objections  to  any  dogma  that  may 
be  called  theological";  but  he  goes  on  to  add  that  the  scandalous 
quarrels  of  Christian  sects  are  well  fitted  to  confirm  Pyrrhonists  in 
their  doubts,  the  sects  having  no  solid  ground  on  which  to  condemn 
each  other.     As  such  ux  assertion  was  rank  heresy,  the  translation 


4 


had  to  be  issued  in  Amsterdam,  and  even  there  without  a  publisher's 
name.*  And  still  it  remains  clear  that  the  age  of  Louis  XIV  had 
passed  on  to  the  next  a  heritage  of  hidden  freethinking,  as  well  as 
one  of  debt  and  misgovernment.  What  takes  place  thereafter  is 
rather  an  evolution  of  and  a  clerical  resistance  to  a  growth  known 
to  have  begun  previously,  and  always  feared  and  hated,  than  any 
new  planting  of  unbehef  in  orthodox  soil.  As  we  have  seen,  indeed, 
a  part  of  the  early  work  of  skepticism  was  done  by  distinguished 
apologists.  Huet,  dying  in  1722,  left  for  posthumous  pubhcation 
his  TraiU  philosophique  de  la  faiblesse  de  Vesprit  humain  (1723). 
It  was  immediately  translated  into  English  and  German  ;  and  though 
it  was  probably  found  somewhat  superfluous  in  deistic  England,  and 
supersubtle  in  Lutheran  Germany,  it  helped  to  prepare  the  ground 
for  the  active  unbelief  of  the  next  generation  in  France. 

5.  A  continuous  development  may  be  traced  throughout  the 
century.  MONTESQUIEU,  who  in  his  early  Persian  Letters  (1721) 
had  revealed  himself  as  "  fundamentally  irreligious  "  ^  and  a  censor 
of  intolerance,^  proceeded  in  his  masterly  little  book  on  the  Greatness 
and  Decadence  of  the  Boynans  (1734)  and  his  famous  Spirit  of  Laivs 
(1748)  to  treat  the  problems  of  human  history  in  an  absolutely 
secular  and  scientific  spirit,  making  only  such  conventional  allusions 
to  religion  as  were  advisable  in  an  age  in  which  all  heretical  works 
were  suppressible.*  The  attempts  of  La  Harpe  and  Villemain^  to 
establish  the  inference  that  he  repented  his  youthful  levity  in  the 
Persian  Letters,  and  recognized  in  Christianity  the  main  pillar  of 
society,  will  not  bear  examination.  The  very  passages  on  which 
they  found®  are  entirely  secular  in  tone  and  purpose,  and  tell  of 
no  belief.'  So  late  as  1751  there  appeared  a  work,  Les  Lettres 
Persanes  convaiyicues  d'impidte,  by  the  Abb6  Gaultier.  The  election 
of  Montesquieu  was  in  fact  the  beginning  of  the  struggle  between 
the  Philosophe  party  in  the-  Academy  and  their  opponents  ;^  and  in 

*  A  reprint  in  1735  bears  the  imprint  of  London,  with  the  note  "Aiix  depens  de  la 
Compagnie." 

'^  Lanson.  p.  702.  The  Persian  Letters,  like  the  Frovincial  Letters  of  Pascal,  had  to 
be  printed  at  Rouen  and  published  at  Amsterdam.  Their  freethinking  expressions  put 
considerable  difficulties  in  the  way  of  his  election  (I7'27)  to  the  Academy.  See  E.  Edwards, 
Cliapters  of  the  Biog.  Hist,  of  the  French  Academy,  1864.  pp.  34-35,  and  D.  M.  Robertson, 
Hist,  of  the  French  Academy,  1910,  p.  92,  as  to  the  mystification  about  the  alleged  reprint 
without  the  obnoxious  passages.  »  Lettre  86. 

*  Au  point  de  vue  religieux,  Montesquieu  tirait  poliment  son  coup  de  chapeau  au 
^"^istianisme  "  (Lanson,  p.  714).  E.g.  in  the  Esprit  des  Lois,  liv.  xxiv,  chs.  i,  ii.  iii,  iv,  vi. 
and  the  footnote  to  ch.  x  of  liv.  xxv.  Montesquieu's  letter  to  Warburton  (16  mai.  1754),  in 
acknowledgment  of  that  prelate's  attack  on  the  posthumous  works  of  Boliugbroke,  is  a 
sample  of  bis  social  make-believe.  But  no  religious  reader  could  suppose  it  to  come  from 
^  ^fi  o^^°"^  ^^*°-  *  Also  of  E.  Edwards,  as  cited  above. 

T  ^^®  notes  cited  on  pp.  405,  407  of  Garuier's  variorum  ed.  of  the  Esprit  d^is  Lois, 
Trvu     ^^''P®  ^^^  Villemain  seem  blind  to  irony. 
. ,     The  flings  at  Bayle  (liv.  xxiv.  chs.  ii,  vi)  are  part  of  a  subtly  ironical  vindication  of 
«■  tt    *8ainst  ecclesiastical  Christianity,  and  they  have  no  note  of  faith. 
"  J  aul  Mesnard,  Hist,  de  V academic  frangaise,  1857,  pp.  61-63. 


218  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 

his  own   day  there  was   never  much  doubt   about   Montesquieu's 
deism.     In  his  posthumous  Pensdes  his  anti-clericalism  is  sufficiently 
emphatic.     "  Churchmen,"  he  writes,  "  are  interested  in  keeping  the 
people  ignorant."     He  expresses  himself  as  a  convinced  deist,  and, 
with  no  great  air  of  conviction,  as  a  believer  in  immortality.     But 
there  his  faith  ends.     "  I  call  piety,"  he  says,      a  malady  of  the 
heart,  which  plants  in  the  soul  a  malady  of  the  most  ineradicable 
kind  "     "The  false  notion  of  miracles  comes  of  our  vanity,  which 
makes  us  believe  we  are  important  enough  for  the  Supreme  Being 
to   upset   Nature   on   our   behalf."     "Three   incredibilities   among 
incredibilities :    the   pure   mechanism   of   animals  [the   doctrine  of 
Descartes] ;  passive  obedience ;  and  the  infallibility  of  the  Pope." 
His  heresy  was  of  course  divined  by  the  guardians  of  the  faith, 
through  all  his  panegyric  of  it.     Even  in  his  lifetime.  Jesuits  and 
Jansenists   combined   to    attack    the    Spirit   of  Laws,  which   was 
denounced  at  an  assembly  of  the  clergy,  put  on  the  Koman  Index, 
and  prohibited  by  the  censure  until  Malesherbes  came  into  ollice  in 
1750.'     The  Count  de  Cataneo,  a  Venetian  noble  in  the  service  of 
the  King  of  Prussia,  published  in  French  about  1751  a  treatise  on  The 
Source,  the  Strength,  and  the  True  Spirit  of  Laws,'  in  which  the 
political  rationalism  and  the  ethical  utilitarianism  of  Cumberland 
and  Grotius  were  alike  repelled  as  irreconcilable  with  the  doctrine 
of   revelation.     It   was   doubtless   because   of   this   atmosphere  of 
hostility  that   on   the   death   of  Montesquieu   at   Paris,   in   17oo, 
Diderot  was  the  only  man  of   letters  who   attended  his  funeral, 
though  the  Academic  performed  a  commemorative  service.  ^     Never- 
theless, Montesquieu  was  througliout   his   Ufe   a   figure  m      good 
society,"  and  suffered  no  molestation  apart  from  the  outcry  against 
his  books.     He  lived  under  a  tradition  of  private  freethinking  and 
public  clericalism,  even  as  did  Moli^re  in  the  previous  century ;  and 
where  the  two  traditions  had  to  clash,  as  at  interment,  the  clerical 
dominion   affirmed   itself.     But   even    in    the   Church   there  were 
always  successors  of  Gassendi,  to  wit.  philosophic  unbelievers,  as 
well  as  quiet  friends  of  toleration.     And  it  was  given  to  an  obscuie 
Churchman  to  show  the  way  of  freethought  to  a  generation  of  lay 
combatants. 

I  Pens^es  Diverses  :  De  la  reliaion.  ^^  .  -,  ^   ^  ^^^^^.^^nvl^pApnts  "Montesquieu's 

8  Tr.  in  English.  1753.    It  is  noteworthy  tbat  Cataneo  fonimlly  accepts  Moni-tb  i 

professions  of  orthodoxy.      .       ^    ^    .  .   T^•7o^^*  ^a  i«oq--^i   i  273     See  the  footnote 

4  CorreHpondavce  litteraire  de  Grimm  et  Diderot,  ed.  182^31.  i^.^7d.oee  ^^^^ 
for  an  accoSnt  of  the  indecent  efforts  of  the  Jesuits  to  get  at  the  dying  pl^'^^soP",,^,  m.  le 
cur6  of  the  parish  who  was  aUowed  entry  began  his  exhortation  with  .vous  ^  ^.^^ 
President,  combien  Dieu  est  grand."   "Qui.  monsieur."  returned  Montesquieu. 

les  hommes  sont  petits."         ,     .    ,  .  -„ 

5  Mesnard,  Hist,  de  Vacad^mte  frangatse,  p.  63. 


FRENCH  FREETHOUGHT 


219 


I 


6.  One  of  the  most  comprehensive  freethinking  works  of  the 
century,  the  Testament  of  JEAN  Meslier,  cur6  of  Etr6pigny,  in 
Champagne  (d.  1723,  1729,  or  1733),  though  it  inspired  numbers  of 
eighteenth-century  freethinkers  who  read  it  in  manuscript,  was  never 
printed  till  1861-64.  It  deserves  here  some  special  notice.^  At  his 
death,  by  common  account,  Meslier  left  two  autograph  copies  of  his 
book,  after  having  deposited  a  third  copy  in  the  archives  of  the 
jurisdiction  of  Sainte-Menehould.  By  a  strange  chance  one  was 
permitted  to  circulate,  and  ultimately  there  were  some  hundred 
copies  in  Paris,  selling  at  ten  louis  apiece.  As  he  told  on  the 
wrapper  of  the  copy  he  left  for  his  parishioners,  he  had  not  dared 
to  speak  out  during  his  life  ;  but  he  had  made  full  amends.  He  is 
recorded  to  have  been  an  exceptionally  charitable  priest,  devoted  to 
his  parishioners,  whose  interests  he  indignantly  championed  against 
a  tyrannous  lord  of  the  manor  ;^  apropos  of  Descartes's  doctrine  of 
animal  automatism,  which  he  fiercely  repudiates,  he  denounces  with 
deep  feeling  all  cruelty  to  animals,  at  whose  slaughter  for  food  he 
winces  ;  and  his  book  reveals  him  as  a  man  profoundly  impressed  at 
once  by  the  sufferings  of  the  people  under  heartless  kings  and  nobles, 
and  the  immense  imposture  of  religion  which,  in  his  eyes,  maintained 
the  whole  evil  system.  Some  men  before  him  had  impugned  miracles, 
some  the  gospels,  some  dogma,  some  the  conception  of  deity,  some 
the  tyranny  of  kings.  He  impugns  all ;  and  where  nearly  all  the 
deists  had  eulogized  the  character  of  the  Gospel  Jesus,  the  priest 
envelops  it  in  his  harshest  invective. 

He  must  have  written  during  whole  years,  with  a  sombre, 
invincible  patience,  dumbly  building  up,  in  his  lonely  leisure,  his 
ui^faltering  negation  of  all  that  the  men  around  him  held  for  sacred, 
and  that  he  was  sworn  to  preach — the  whole  to  be  his  testament  to 
his  parishioners.  In  the  slow,  heavy  style — the  style  of  a  cart  horse, 
Voltaire  called  it— there  is  an  indubitable  sincerity,  a  smouldering 
passion,  but  no  haste,  no  explosion.  The  long-drawn,  formless, 
prolix  sentences  say  everything  that  can  be  said  on  their  theme  ; 
and  when  the  long  book  was  done  it  was  slowly  copied,  and  yet 
again  copied,  by  the  same  heavy,  unwearying  hand.  He  had  read 
few  books,  it  seems — only  the  Bible,  some  of  the  Fathers,  Montaigne, 
the  "Turkish  Spy,"  Naud6,  Charron,  PHny,  Tournemine  on  atheism, 
and  F^nelon  on  the  existence  of  God,  with  some  history,  and  Moreri's 

^  A  full  analysis  is  given  by  Strauss  in  the  second  Appendix  to  his  Voltaire:  Sechs 
Vortrdge,  2te  Aufl.  1870. 

...J  The  details  are  dubious.  See  the  memoir  compiled  by  "Rudolf  Charles"  (R.  C, 
IJ  Ablamg  van  Giessenburg).  the  editor  of  the  Testairient,  Amsterdam,  3  torn,  1861-64.  It 
oraws  chiefly  on  the  Mhmires  secrets  de  Bachaumont,  under  date  Sept.  30. 1764. 


220 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


Dictionary  ;  but  ho  had  re-read  them  often.  He  does  not  cite  Bayle ; 
and  Montaigne  is  evidently  his  chief  master.  But  on  his  modest 
reading  he  had  reached  as  absolute  a  conviction  of  the  untruth  of 
the  entire  Judaeo-Christian  religion  as  any  freethinker  ever  had. 
Moved  above  all  by  his  sense  of  the  corruption  and  misrule  around 
him,  he  sets  out  with  a  twofold  indictment  against  religion  and 
government,  of  which  each  part  sustains  the  other,  and  he  tells  his 
parishioners  how  he  had  been  '*  hundreds  of  times  "  ^  on  the  point 
of  bursting  out  with  an  indignant  avowal  of  his  contempt  for  tho 
rites  he  was  compelled  to  administer,  and  the  superstitions  ho  had 
to  inculcate.  Then,  in  a  grimly-planned  order,  he  proceeds  to 
demolish,  section  by  section,  the  whole  structure. 

Keligions  in  general  he  exhibits  as  tissues  of  error,  illusion,  and 
imposture,  the  endless  sources  of  troubles  and  strifes  for  men.  Their 
historical  proofs  and  documentary  bases  are  then  assailed,  and  the 
gospels  in  particular  are  ground  between  the  slow  mill-stones  of  his 
dialectic ;  miracles,  promises,  and  prophecies  being  handled  in  turn. 
The  ethic  and  the  doctrine  are  next  assailed  all  along  tho  line, 
from  their  theoretic  bases  to  their  political  results  ;  and  the  kings  of 
France  fare  no  better  than  their  creed.  As  against  the  tlieistic 
argument  of  F^nelon,  the  entire  theistic  system  is  then  oppugned, 
sometimes  with  precarious  erudition,  generally  with  cumbrous  hut 
solid  reasoning;  and  the  eternity  of  matter  is  aflarmed  with  more 
than  Averroistic  conviction,  the  Cartesians  coming  in. for  a  long 
series  of  heavy  blows.  Immortality  is  further  denied,  as  miracles 
had  been ;  and  the  treatise  ends  with  a  stern  afiSrmation  of  its 
author's  rectitude,  and,  as  it  were,  a  massive  gesture  of  contempt  for 
all  that  will  be  said  against  him  when  he  has  passed  into  the  nothing- 
ness which  he  is  nearing.  **  I  have  never  committed  any  crime,"  he 
writes,''*  "  nor  any  bad  or  mahcious  action:  I  defy  any  man  to  make 
me  on  this  head,  with  justice,  any  serious  reproach  ";  but  he  quotes 
from  the  Psalms,  with  grim  zest,  phrases  of  hate  towards  workers  of 
iniquity.  There  is  not  even  the  hint  of  a  smile  at  the  astonishing 
bequest  he  was  laying  up  for  his  parishioners  and  his  country.  He 
was  sure  he  would  be  read,  and  he  was  right.  The  whole  polemic  of 
the  next  sixty  years,  the  indictment  of  the  government  no  less  than 
that  of  the  creed,  is  laid  out  in  his  sombre  treatise. 

To  the  general  public,  however,  he  was  never  known  save  by  the 
"  Extract  "—really  a  deistic  adaptation— made  by  Voltaire,^  and  the 

*  Testameri*,  as  cited,  i,  25.  ^  iii,  396.  <^  174.7.  nnd 

8  First  published  in  1762  [or  1764?    See Bachanmonfc.  Oct.  30J,  with  the  date  174J,  ana 

reprinted  in  the  Evangile  de  la  Raismi,  176-1.    It  was  no  fewer  than  four  times  oracitu  w 

be  destroyed  in  the  Restoration  period. 


French  freetbeought 


221 


re -written  summary  by  d'Holbach  and  Diderot  entitled  Le  Bon  Sens 
du  Cur&  Mcslier  (1772).^  Even  this  pubhcity  was  delayed  for  a 
generation,  since  Voltaire,  who  heard  of  the  Testament  as  early  as 
1735,  seems  to  have  made  no  use  of  it  till  1762.  But  the  entire 
group  of  fighting  freethinkers  of  the  age  was  in  some  sense  inspired 
by  the  old  priest's  legacy. 

7.  Apart  from  this  direct  influence,  too,  others  of  the  cloth  bore 
some  part  in  the  general  process  of  enHghtenment.  A  good  type  of 
the  agnostic  priest  of  the  period  was  the  Abb6  Terrasson,  the  author 
of  the  philosophic  romance  Sethos  (1732),  who  died  in  1750.  Not 
very  judicious  in  his  theory  of  human  evolution  (which  he  repre- 
sented as  a  continuous  growth  from  a  stage  of  literary  infancy,  seen 
in  Homer),  he  adopted  the  Newtonian  theory  at  a  time  when  the 
entire  Academy  stood  by  Cartesianism.  Among  his  friends  he 
tranquilly  avowed  his  atheism.^  He  died  "  without  the  sacraments," 
and  when  asked  whether  he  believed  all  the  doctrine  of  the  Church, 
he  replied  that  for  him  that  was  not  possible.^  Another  anti-clerical 
Abb6  was  Gaidi,  whose  poem.  La  Beligion  a  VAssemhU  du  ClergS  de 
France  (1762),  was  condemned  to  be  burned.* 

Among  or  alongside  of  such  disillusioned  Churchmen  there  must 
have  been  a  certain  number  who,  desiring  no  breach  with  the 
organization  to  which  they  belonged,  saw  the  fatal  tendency  of  the 
spirit  of  persecution  upon  which  its  rulers  always  fell  back  in  their 
struggle  with  freethought,  and  sought  to  open  their  eyes  to  the  folly 
and  futility  of  their  course.  Freethinkers,  of  course,  had  to  lead  the 
way,  as  we  have  seen.  It  was  the  young  Turgot  who  in  1753 
pubHshed  two  powerful  Lettres  stcr  la  toUrance,  and  in  1754  a  further 
series  of  admirable  Lettres  d'un  eccUsiastique  a  un  magistrate  pleading 
the  same  cause.^  But  similar  appeals  were  anonymously  made,  by  a 
clerical  pen,  at  a  moment  when  the  Church  was  about  to  enter  on  a 
new  and  exasperating  conflict  with  the  growing  band  of  freethinking 
writers  who  rallied  round  Voltaire.  The  small  book  of  Questions  sur 
la  tolerance,  ascribed  to  the  Abb6  Tailh6  or  Tailhie  and  the  canonist 
Maultrot  (Geneva,  1758),  is  conceived  in  the  very  spirit  of  rationahsm, 
yet  with  a  careful  concern  to  persuade  the  clergy  to  sane  courses, 
and  is  to  this  day  worth  reading  as  a  utilitarian  argument.     But  the 


du  bon  sens  dans 
e  la  boutique  du 


1  Probably  Diderot  did  the  most  of  the  adaptation.    "  II  y  a  plus  que 
ce  11  vre."  writes  Voltaire  to  D'Alembert;   "il  est  terrible.    S'il  sort  d( 
liVstfme  de  la  Nature,  Tauteur  s'est  bien  perfeetionn6  "  (Lettre  de  27  Juillet.  1775). 
o«     J     "^^^  ^^^^  ^^  Eti-e  k  ces  messieurs:  pour  moi,  je  m'en  passe."     Grimm,  Corre- 
spondance  Litteraire,  ed.  182&-31.  iv,  186. 

4  Ji^rimm,  as  cited,  i.  235.    Grimm  tells  a  delightful  story  of  his  reception  of  the  confessor, 
ouvrage,  dont  les  vers  sont  grands  et  bien  tourn6s,  est  une  satire  des  plus  licen- 
cieuses  contre  les  mceurs  de  nos  6v^ques."    Bachaumont.  M^moires  Secrets,  Juin  15, 1762. 
uouet-Maury,  Hist,  de  la  lib.  de  conscience  en  France,  1900,  p.  68. 


2^2 


ElGUTEENTH  CENTUBt 


tEENCH  FEEETHOUGHT 


2^3 


Church  was  not  fated  to  be  led  by  such  light.  The  principle  of 
toleration  was  left  to  become  the  watchword  of  freethought,  while 
the  Church  identified  herself  collectively  with  that  of  tyranny. 

Anecdotes  of  the  time  reveal  the  coincidence  of  tyranny  and 
evasion,  intolerance  and  defiance.  Of  Nicolas  Boindin  (1676-1751), 
procureur  in  the  royal  Bureau  des  Finances,  who  was  received  into 
the  Academy  of  Inscriptions  and  Belles-Lettres  in  1706,  it  is  told 
that  he  **  would  have  been  received  in  the  French  Academy  if  the 
public  profession  he  made  of  being  an  atheist  had  not  excluded  him."  ^ 
But  the  publicity  was  guarded.  When  he  conversed  with  the  young 
Marmontel"^  and  others  at  the  CM  Procope,  they  used  a  conversa- 
tional code  in  which  the  soul  was  called  Margot,  religion  Javotte, 
liberty  Jeanneton,  and  the  deity  Moiisieitr  de  VEtre.  Once  a  listener 
of  furtive  aspect  asked  Boindin  who  might  be  this  Monsieur  de  I'Etre 
who  behaved  so  ill,  and  with  whom  they  were  so  displeased  ?  "  Mon- 
sieur," replied  Boindin,  "  he  is  a  police  spy  " — such  being  the  avoca- 
tion of  the  questioner.^  "  The  morals  of  Boindin,"  says  a  biographical 
dictionary  of  the  period,  "  were  as  pure  as  those  of  an  atheist  can  be ; 
his  heart  was  generous  ;  but  to  these  virtues  he  joined  presumption 
and  the  obstinacy  which  follows  from  it,  a  bizarre  humour,  and  an 
unsociable  character."*  Other  testimonies  occur  on  the  first  two 
heads,  not  on  the  last.  But  he  was  fittingly  refused  "Christian" 
interment,  and  was  buried  by  night,  "  sans  pompe." 

8.  With  the  ground  prepared  as  we  have  seen,  freethought  was 
bound  to  progress  in  France  in  the  age  of  Louis  XV  ;  but- it  chanced 
that  the  lead  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  most  brilliant  and  fecund  of 
all  the  writers  of  the  century.  Voltaire'^  (1694-1778)  was  already 
something  of  a  freethinker  when  a  mere  child.  So  common  was 
deism  already  become  in  Paris  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century 
that  his  godfather,  an  abb6,  is  said  to  have  taught  him,  at  the  age  of 
three,  a  poem  by  J.  B.  EOUSSEAU,^  then  privately  circulated,  in 
which  Moses  in  particular  and  religious  revelations  in  general  are 
derided  as  fraudulent.'     Knowing  this  poem  by  heart  in  his  child- 

1  Nouveau  dictioimaire  historiaue-portatif. par  une  Soci6t6  de  Gens  de  Lettres. 

ed.  1771   i  314. 

'i  Marmontel  does  not  relate  this  in  his  Mimoires,  where  he  insists  on  the  decorum  oi 
the  talk,  even  at  d'Holbach's  table.  »  Chamfort.  Caract^res  et  Anecdotes. 

^  Nouveau  dictionnaire,  above  cited,  i,  315.  ,        .,  „ 

5  Name  assumed  for  literary  purposes,  and  probably  composed  by  anagram  nomiue 
real  name  Aroukt.  with  '"le  jeune  "  (junior)  added,  thus  :  A.  R.  O.  V.  E.  T.  L(e).  Keunt). 

6  Not  to  be  confounded  with  the  greater  and  later  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau.    J.^- 
Rousseau  became  Voltaire's  bitter  enemy— on  the  score,  it  is  said,  of  the  yo""^,";*;" 
epigram  on  the  elder  poet's  "  Ode  to  Posterity."  which,  he  said,  would  not  reach  »tsad arej^^ 
Himself  a  rather  ribald  freethinker.  Rousseau  professed  to  be  outraged  by  the  irrentiu" 
of  Voltaire.  _  .      i,,:f"nnfl 

7  See  the  poem  in  note  4  to  ch.  ii  of  Duvernefs  Vie  de  Voltaire.    Duvernet  calls  it    one 
of  the  first  attacks  on  which  philosophy  in  Fxmm  kftd  ventured  agamst  supeiswwuu 
{Vie  de  Voltaire,  ed.  1797.  p.  19). 


i^ 


hood,  the  boy  was  well  on  the  way  to  his  life's  work.  It  is  on 
record  that  many  of  his  school- fellows  were,  like  himself,  already 
deists,  though  his  brother,  a  juvenile  Jansenist,  made  vows  to 
propitiate  the  deity  on  the  small  unbeliever's  behalf.'  It  may  have 
been  a  general  reputation  for  audacious  thinking  that  led  to  his  being 
charged  with  the  authorship  of  a  stinging  philippic  published  in  1715, 
after^he  death  of  Louis  XIV.  The  unknown  author,  a  young  man, 
enumerated  the  manifold  abuses  and  iniquities  of  the  reign,  con- 
cluding :  "  I  have  seen  all  these,  and  I  am  not  twenty  years  old." 
Voltaire  was  then  twenty-two  ;  but  D'Argenson,  who  in  the  poem 
had  been  called  "  the  enemy  of  the  human  race,"  finding  no  likelier 
author  for  the  verses,  put  him  under  surveillance  and  exiled  him  from 
Paris ;  and  on  his  imprudent  return  imprisoned  him  for  nearly  a  year 
in  the  Bastille  (1716),  releasing  him  only  when  the  real  author  of  the 
verses  avowed  himself.  Unconquerable  then  as  always,  Voltaire 
devoted  himself  in  prison  to  his  literary  ambitions,  planning  his 
Henriade  and  completing  his  CEdipe,  which  was  produced  in  1718 

with  signal  success. 

Voltaire  was  thus  already  a  distinguished  young  poet  and 
dramatist  when,  in  1726,  after  enduring  the  affronts  of  an  assault 
by  a  nobleman's  lacqueys,  and  of  imprisonment  in  the  Bastille  for 
seeking  amends  by  duel,  he  came  to  England,  where,  like  Deslandes 
before  him,  he  met  with  a  ready  welcome  from  the  freethinkers.^ 
Four  years  previously,  in  the  powerful  poem.  For  and  Against!"  he 
had  put  his  early  deistic  conviction  in  a  vehement  impeachment  of 
the  immoral  creed  of  salvation  and  damnation,  making  the  declara- 
tion, "  I  am  not  a  Christian."  Thus  what  he  had  to  learn  in 
England  was  not  deism,  but  the  physics  of  Newton  and  the  details 
of  the  deist  campaign  against  revelationism  ;  and  these  he  mastered. 
Not  only  was  he  directly  and  powerfully  influenced  by  Bolingbroke, 
who  b9came  his  intimate  friend,  but  he  read  widely  in  the  philo- 

1  Duvernet.  ch.  ii.  The  free-hearted  Ninon  de  l'Enclos,  brightest  of  ol<i,ladies.  is  to 
be  numbered  among  the  pre-Voltairean  freethinkers,  and  to  be  remembered  as  leaving 
young  Voltaire  a  legacy  to  buy  books,  felie  refused  to  sell  her  soul  gy  .'"^^^e.^^  devote 
on  tlie  invitation  of  her  old  friend  Madame  de  Maintenon.  Madame  DEpmay.  Voltaire  s 
"  belle  philosophe  et  aimable  Habacuc,"  Madame  du  Deffand,  and  Madame  Geotfrin  were 
among  the  later  freeth inking  grandes  dames  of  the  Voltairean  period  j^  and  so.  presumaoij , 
was  tbe  Madame  de  Crequi.  quoted  by  Rivarol,  who  remarked  that  ^^^^ovidence  is  tne 
baptismal  name  of  Chance."  As  to  Madame  Geoffrin  see  ihe  CEluvres  ^osthjimes  Oe 
D'Alembert,  1799,  i,  240,271 ;  and  the  Memoires  de  Marmontel,  1804,  n.  102  sq.  If  Marmontel 
is  accurate,  she  went  secretly  at  times  to  mass  (p.  104).  .     ^       -,        *      4.v,„  -c^^i.-d, 

•^  Deslandes  wrote  some  new  chapters  of  his  Beflexions  in  London,  for  the  h.ngiisn 
translation.    Eng.  tr.  1713,  p.  99.  ^  ^.,,  ,  --  , 

a  Pour  et  Contre,  ou  tpitre  a  Urame.    It  was  of  course  not  printed  till  long  atterwards. 
Diderot,  writing  his  Proinenade  du  Sceptique  in  1747,  says :  "  C'est.  je  crois,  dans  1  al^ee  des 
tleurs  [of  his  allegory]  entre  le  champagne  et  le  tokay,  que  I'^pitre  k  Uranie  prit  naissance. 
[L'AlUe  des  Marronniers,  fidimt.)    This  seems  unjust.  ,  ,        •   ^  i-f+i.^  +« 

*  He  has  been  alternately  represented  as  owing  everything  and  owing  very  iittie  do 
England.  Cp.  Texte,  Rousseau  and  the  Cosmopolitan  Spirit,  Eng.  tr.  p.  58.  Neitner  view 
is  just. 


224 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


sopliic,  scientific,  and  deistic  English  literature  of  the  day/  and  went 
back  to  France,  after  three  years'  stay,  not  only  equipped  for  his 
ultimate  battle  with  tyrannous  religion,  but  deeply  impressed  by  the 
moral  wholesomeness  of  free  discussion.*  Not  all  at  once,  indeed, 
did  he  become  the  mouthpiece  of  critical  reason  for  his  age:  his 
literary  ambitions  were  primarily  on  the  lines  of  belles  lettres,  and 
secondarily  on  those  of  historical  writing.  After  his  Pour  et  Contre, 
his  first  freethinking  production  was  the  not  very  heretical  Lettres 
philosopJiiques  or  Lettres  anglaises,  written  in  England  in  1728, 
and,  after  circulating  in  MS.,  published  in  five  editions  in  1734  ; 
and  the  official  burning  of  the  book  by  the  common  hangman, 
followed  by  the  imprisonment  of  the  bookseller  in  the  Bastille,^  was 
a  sufficient  check  on  such  activity  for  the  time.  Save  for  the  jests 
about  Adam  and  Eve  in  the  Mondain  (1736),  a  slight  satire  for 
which  he  had  to  fly  from  Paris;  and  the  indirect  though  effective  thrusts 
at  bigotry  in  the  Liqjie  (1723  ;  later  the  Henriade) ;  in  the  tragedy  of 
Mahomet  (1739 ;  printed  in  1742),  in  the  tales  of  Memnon  and  Zadig 
(1747-48),  and  in  the  Iddes  de  La  Mothe  le  Vayer  (1751)  and  the 
Defense  de  Milord  Bolifigbrohe  (1752),  he  produced  nothing  else 
markedly  deistic  till  1755,  when  he  published  the  *'  Poem  to  the 
King  of  Prussia,"  otherwise  named  Sur  la  hi  naturelle  (which 
appears  to  have  been  written  in  1751,  while  he  was  on  a  visit  to 
the  Margravine  of  Bayreuth),  and  that  on  the  Earthquake  of  Lisbon. 
So  definitely  did  the  former  poem  base  all  morality  on  natural 
principles  that  it  was  ordered  to  be  burned  by  the  Pai4ement  of 
Paris,  then  equally  alarmed  at  freethinking  and  at  Molinism.  And 
so  impossible  was  it  still  in  France  to  print  any  specific  criticism  of 
Christianity  that  when  in  1759  he  issued  his  verse  translations  of 
the  Song  of  Solomon  and  Ecclesiastes  they  also  were  pubHcly 
burned,  though  he  had  actually  softened  instead  of  heightening  the 
eroticism  of  the  first  and  the  **  materialism  "  of  the  second. 

9.  It  is  thus  a  complete  mistake  on  the  part  of  Buckle  to  aflirin 
that  the  activity  of  the  French  reformers  up  to  1750  was  directed 

1  In  his  Emay  upon  the  Civil  Wars  of  France,  and..,...upon  Epick  Poetry  (2nd  ed.  17-28. 
"corrected  by  himself  "),  written  and  published  in  English,  he  begins  his  "Advertisement 
with  the  remark:  "It  has  the  appearance  of  too  great  a  presumption  in  a  traveller  wlio 
hath  been  but  eighteen  months  in  England,  to  attempt  to  write  in  a  language  which  lie 
cannot  pronounce  at  all,  and  which  he  hardly  understands  in  conversation."  As  the  dook 
is  remarkably  well  written,  he  must  have  read  much  English.  , 

•i  Lord  Morley  {Voltaire,  4th  ed.  p.  40)  speaks  of  the  English  people  as  having  then  won 
"a  full  liberty  of  thought  and  speech  and  person."  This,  as  we  have  seen,  somewliat 
overstates  the  case.    But  discussion  was  much  more  nearly  free  than  in  France. 

3  Probably  as  much  on  political  as  on  religious  grounds.  The  8th  letter,  »'>"''  '^ 
Parlement.  must  have  been  very  ofifensive  to  the  French  Government;  and  in  1739.  ii^°y|^*;J 
by  angry  criticisms,  Voltaire  saw  fit  to  modify  its  language.  See  Lanson'a  ed.  oi  me 
ie«re«,  1909,  i,  92, 110.  ^.^,    ,  „.^,. , . 

4  Condorcet.  Vie  de  Voltaire,  ed.  1792,  p.  92.  In  reprints  the  poem  was  entitled  bui  la 
religion  naturelle,  and  was  so  commonly  cited.  *  Condorcet,  p.  99. 


FKENCH  FEEETHOUGHT 


225 


against  religion,  and  that  it  was  thereafter  turned  against  the  State. 
Certainly  there  was  much  freethinking  among  instructed  men  and 
others,  but  it  proceeded,  as  under  Louis  XIV,  mainly  by  way  of 
manuscripts  and  conversation,  or  at  best  by  the  circulation  of 
English  books  and  a  few  translations  of  these ;  and  only  guardedly 
before  1745  by  means  of  pubhshed  French  books.^  The  Abb6 
Ranchon,  in  his  MS.  Life  of  Cardinal  Fleury,  truly  says  that  "  the 
time  of  the  Kegency  was  a  period  of  the  spirit  of  dissoluteness  and 
irreligion  ";  but  when  ho  ascribes  to  "  those  times  "  many  "  licentious 
and  destructive  writings  "  he  can  specify  only  those  of  the  English 
deists.  "  Precisely  in  the  time  of  the  Kegency  a  multitude  of  those 
offensive  and  irreligious  books  were  brought  over  the  sea:  France 
was  deluged  with  them."^  It  is  incredible  that  multitudes  of 
Frenchmen  read  English  in  the  days  of  the  Regency.  French 
freethinkers  like  Saint  Evremond  and  Deslandes,  who  visited  or 
sojourned  in  London  before  1715,  took  their  freethought  there 
with  them  ;  and  the  only  translations  then  in  print  were 
those  of  CoUins's  Discourse  of  Freethinking  and  Shaftesbury's 
essays  on  the  Use  of  Eidicule  and  on  Enthusiasm.  Apart  from 
these,  the  only  known  French  freethinking  book  of  the  Regency 
period  was  the  work  of  Vroes,  a  councillor  at  the  court  of  Brabant, 
on  the  Spirit  of  Spinoza,  reprinted  as  Des  trois  imposteiirs,  Meslier 
died  not  earlier  than  1729  ;  the  Histoire  de  la  philosophie  paycjine  of 
Burigny  belongs  to  1724  ;  the  Lettres  philosophiqnes  of  Voltaire  to 
1734 ;  the  earlier  works  of  d'Argens  to  1737-38 ;  the  Nouvelles 
libertds  de  2)enser,  edited  by  Dumarsais,  to  1743 ;  and  the  militant 
treatise  of  De  la  Serre,  best  known  as  the  Examen  de  la  Beligion, 
to  1745. 

The  ferment  thus  kept  up  was  indeed  so  great  that  about  1748 
the  ecclesiastical  authorities  decided  on  the  remarkable  step  of 
adopting  for  their  purposes  the  apologetic  treatise  adapted  by  Jacob 
Vernet,  professor  of  belles  lettres  at  Geneva,  from  the  works  of 
Jean-Alphonse  Turrettin,^  not  only  a  Protestant  but  a  substantially 
Socinian  professor  of  ecclesiastical  history  at  the  same  university. 
The  treatise  is  itself  a  testimony  to  the  advance  of  rationalism  in 
the  Protestant  world ;  and  its  adoption,  even  under  correction,  by 
the  CathoHc  Church   in   France  tells  of  a  keen  consciousness  of 

1  See  above,  pp.  213-14,  as  to  the  works  of  Baulaiavilliers,  Tyssot  de  Patot,  Deslandes, 
and  others  who  wrote  between  1700  and  1715. 

^  Cited  by  Schlosser,  Hist,  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  Eng.  tr.  i,  146-47. 

^  Traite  de  la  verite  de  la  religion  chretienyie,  tire  en  partie  du  latin  de  M.  J.  Alphonse 
Turrettia.  professeur en  I'academie  de  Gen6ve,  par  M.  J.  Vernet.  professeur  de  belles- 
lettres  en  la  m6me  Academie.  Revue  et  corrig6  par  un  Tbeologien  Catholique.  le  6d. 
Geneve,  1730.  Rep.  in  2  torn.  1753.  Ecclesiastical  approbation  given  15  janv.  1749; 
privilege,  iuillet.  1751. 

VOL.  H  Q 


226 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


need.  But  the  dreaded  advance,  as  we  have  seen,  was  only  to  a 
small  extent  yet  traceable  by  new  literature.  The  Exavicn  critique 
des  apologistes  de  la  religion  chretienne  of  L^vesque  de  Burigny  was 
probably  written  about  1732,  and  then  and  thereafter  circulated  in 
manuscript,  but  it  was  not  published  till  1766 ;  and  even  in  manu- 
script its  circulation  was  probably  small,  though  various  apologetic 
works  had  testified  to  the  increasing  uneasiness  of  the  orthodox 
world.  Such  titles  as  La  religion  chrdtienne  dernontree  par  la 
Besurrection  (by  Armand  de  la  Chapelle,  1728)  and  La  religion 
chrdtienne  prouvSe  par  V accomplissement  des  propMties  (by  Pero 
Baltus,  1728)  tell  of  private  unbelief  under  the  Kegency.  In  1737 
appeared  the  voluminous  treatise  (anonymous)  of  the  khhk.  de  la 
Chambre,  TraiU  de  la  veritable  religion  contre  les  athdes,  les  daisies, 
etc.  (5  vols.).  In  1747,  again,  there  appeared  a  learned,  laborious, 
and  unintelligent  work  in  three  volumes  (authorized  in  1742),  Le 
Lihertinage  comhattu  par  la  Umoignage  des  auteurs  profanes,  by  an 
unnamed  Benedictine^  of  the  Congregation  of  St.  Vanne.  It  declares 
that,  between  atheism  and  deism,  there  has  never  been  so  much 
unbelief  as  now ;  but  it  cites  no  modern  books,  and  is  devoted  to 
arraying  classic  arguments  in  support  of  theism  and  morals.  Part 
of  the  exposition  consists  in  showing  that  Epicurus,  Lucian,  and 
Euripides,  whom  modern  atheists  are  wont  to  cite  as  their  masters, 
were  not  and  could  not  have  been  atheists ;  and  the  pious  author 
roundly  declares  in  favour  of  paganism  as  against  atheism. 

So  much  smoke  tells  of  fire ;  but  only  in  1745  and  1746  did  the 
printed  Examen  of  De  la  Serre  and  the  Pens6es  philosophiqiics  of 
Diderot  begin  to  build  up  in  France  the  modern  school  of  critical 
and  philosophic  deism.  When  in  1751  the  Abb6  Gauchat  began 
his  series  of  Lettrcs  critiques,  he  set  out  by  attacking  Voltaire's 
Lettres  philosophiqnes,  Diderot's  Pensees  philosophiqnes,  the  anony- 
mous Discours  sur  la  vie  heureuse  (1748),  Les  Moeiirs^  (1748),  and 
Pope's  Essay  on  Man ;  taking  up  in  his  second  volume  the  Lettres 
Persanes  of  Montesquieu  (1721),  and  other  sets  of  Lettres  written  in 
imitation  of  them.  In  the  third  volume  he  has  nothing  more 
aggressive  of  Voltaire's  to  deal  with  than  La  Henriade,  the  Mahormt, 
and  some  of  his  fugitive  pieces.  And  the  Bishop  of  Puy,  writing 
in  1754  his  La  Devotion  concilide  avec  V esprit,  could  say  to  the 
faithful :  "  You  live  in  an  age  fertile  in  pretended  esprits  forts,  who, 
too  weak  nevertheless  to  attack  in  front  an  invincible  religion, 
skirmish  lightly  around  it,  and  in  default  of  the  reasons  they  lack, 

1  Dom  Remi  Desmonts.  according  to  Barbier. 

a  "  Par  Panage  "  ( =  Toussaint  ?).    Rep.  1755  and  1767  (Berlin). 


FEENOH  FREETHOUGHT 


227 


employ  raillery."  *  The  chivalrous  bishop  knew  perfectly  well  that 
had  a  serious  attack  been  published  author  and  publisher  would 
have  been  sent  if  possible  to  the  Bastille,  if  not  to  the  scaffold. 
But  his  evidence  is  explicit.  There  is  here  no  recognition  of  any 
literary  bombardment,  though  there  was  certainly  an  abundance 
of  unbelief.'' 

Buckle  has  probably  mistaken  the  meaning  of  the  summing  up 
of  some  previous  writer  to  the  effect  that  up  to  1750  or  a  few  years 
later  the  political  opposition  to  the  Court  was  religious,  in  the 
sense  of  ecclesiastical  or  sectarian  (Jansenist),^  and  that  it  after- 
wards turned  to  matters  of  public  administration.*  It  would  be 
truer  to  say  that  the  early  Lettres  philosophiques,  the  reading  of 
which  later  made  the  boy  Lafayette  a  republican  at  nine,  were  a 
polemic  for  political  and  social  freedom,  and  as  such  a  more  direct 
criticism  of  the  French  administrative  system  than  Voltaire  ever 
penned  afterwards,  save  in  the  Voix  du  Sage  et  du  Peuple  (1750). 
In  point  of  fact,  as  will  be  shown  below,  only  some  twenty  scattered 
freethinking  works  had  appeared  in  French  up  to  1745,  almost  none 
of  them  directly  attacking  Christian  beliefs  ;  and,  despite  the  above- 
noted  sallies  of  Voltaire,  Condorcet  comes  to  the  general  conclusion 
that  it  was  the  hardihood  of  Rousseau's  deism  in  the  "  Confession 
of  a  Savoyard  Vicar"  in  his  Ernile  (1762)  that  spurred  Voltaire  to 
new  activity.*  This  is  perhaps  not  quite  certain;  there  is  some 
reason  to  believe  that  his  **  Sermon  of  the  Fifty,"  his  "  first  frontal 
attack  on  Christianity,"  ^  was  written  a  year  before  ;  but  in  any 
case  that  and  other  productions  of  his  at  once  left  Rousseau  far  in 
the  rear.  Even  now  he  had  no  fixed  purpose  of  continuous  warfare 
against  so  powerful  and  cruel  an  enemy  as  the  Church,  which  in 
1757  had  actually  procured  an  edict  pronouncing  the  death  penalty 
against  all  writers  of  works  attacking  religion  ;  though  the  fall  of 
the  Jesuits  in  1764  raised  new  hopes  of  freedom.  But  when,  after 
that  hopeful  episode,  there  began  a  new  movement  of  Jansenist 
fanaticism;  and  when,  after  the  age  of  religious  savagery  had  seemed 
to  be  over,  there  began  a  new  series  of  reHgious  atrocities  in  France 

J  Work  cited,  ed.  1755,  p.  252. 
thfinrAvi^-^^^i*-^  old  Paris  before  or  about  1750  is  afforded  by  Fontenelle's  remark  that 
be  siifn  yti    I  diseases  might  be  known  from  the  affi,ches.    At  every  street  corner  were  to 
oeseen  two^  of  which  one  advertised  a  Traite  mr  V  incridulite.   (Grimm,  Corr.  lift.  iii.  373.) 
Jmseni^tC^nr^^f  T^^'^^^'^^}'^^  ^''■f'^ir^  (I8ted.l852)  that  in  the  work  of  the 

reSufe-Ted  Sofi  2^)       ^^^"    d'opposition  politique  se  cacha   sous   I'opposition 

"de  r^H?,fn!f  ?^  iV^^.'i  ^?",^  correctly  put  by  M.  Rocquain,  who.  however,  decides  that 
L'P»nri/S;,^/-  ^  etait.  1  opposition  devient  politique"  as  early  as  about  1724-1733. 
^o^lmlst^^^^^^^  ^^^8  •  *«^^^  ^«  ^«"^^^«'  liv-  2e.    Duruy  (last 

6  ^u^®r/f««.mw^^^  6tonna  Voltaire,  et  excita  son  Emulation"  (ed.  cited,  p.  118). 
A  vertissemeiU  des  ed%teurs,  m  Basle  ed.  of  1792.  vol.  xlv,  p.  92. 


228 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


itself  (1762-66),  he  girded  on  a  sword  that  was  not  to  bo  laid  down 
till  his  death. 

Even  so  late  as  1768,  in  his  last  letter  to  Damilaville  (8  fev.), 
Voltaire  expresses  a  revulsion  against  the  aggressive  freethought 
propaganda  of  the  time  which  is  either  one  of  his  epistolary 
stratagems  or  the  expression  of  a  nervous  reaction  in  a  time  of 
protracted  bad  health.  "  Mes  chagrins  redoublent,"  he  writes, 
"  par  la  quantity  incroyable  d'^crits  contre  la  religion  chretienne, 
qui  se  succedent  aussi  rapidement  en  HoUande  que  les  gazettes 
et  les  journaux."  His  enemies  have  the  barbarism  to  impute 
to  him,  at  his  age,  "  une  partie  de  ces  extravagances  composees 
par  de'jeunes  gens  et  par  des  moines  d6froqu6s."  His  imme- 
diate ground  for  chagrin  may  have  been  the  fact  that  this  out- 
break of  anti-Christian  literature  was  likely  to  thwart  him  in 
the  campaign  he  was  then  making  to  secure  justice  to  the 
Sirven  family  as  he  had  already  vindicated  that  of  Galas. 
Sirven  barely  missed  the  fate  of  the  latter. 

The  misconception  of  Buckle,  above  discussed,  has  been 
widely  shared  even  among  students.  Thus  Lord  Morley.  dis- 
cussing the  "  Creed  of  the  Savoyard  Vicar "  in  Kousseau's 
Emile  (1762),  writes  that  **  Souls  weary  of  the  fierce  mockeries 
that  had  so  long  been  flying  like  fiery  shafts  against  the  far 
Jehovah  of  the  Hebrews,  and  the  silent  Christ  of  the  later 
doctors  and  dignitaries,"  may  well  have  turned  to  it  with 
ardour  {Rousseau,  ed.  1886,  ii,  266).  He  further  speaks  of  the 
"  superiority  of  the  sceptical  parts  of  the  Savoyard  Vicar  s  pro- 
fession ....over  the  biting  mockeries  which  Voltaire  1iad  mado 
the  fashionable  method  of  assault "  (p.  294).  No  specifications 
are  offered,  and  the  chronology  is  seen  to  be  astray.  The  only 
mockeries  which  Voltaire  could  be  said  to  have  made  fashion- 
able before  1760  were  those  of  his  Lett-res  philosopJnqn^s  his 
Mondain,  his  Defense  de  Milord  Bolinghroke,  and  his  philoso- 
phically humorous  tales,  as  Caiidide,  Zadig,  Micromegas,  etc.: 
all  his  distinctive  attacks  on  Judaism  and  Christianity  were 
yet  to  come.  [The  Abb6  Guyon.  in  his  L'Oracle  des  nouveaiix 
philosophes  (Berne,  1759-60,  2  tom.),  proclaims  an  attack  on 
doctrines  taught  "  dans  les  livres  de  nos  beaux  esprits  [Avcn. 
p  xi)  ;  but  he  specifies  only  denials  of  (l)  revelation,  (2)  immor- 
tality, and  (3)  the  Biblical  account  of  man's  creation  ;  and  no 
is  largely  occupied  with  Diderot's  Pensdes  pliilosopfiiqucs, 
though  his  book  is  written  at  Voltaire.  The  second  volume  ib 
devoted  to  Caiidide  and  the  Prdcis  of  Ecclesiastes  and  the 
Song  of  Solomon— not  very  fierce  performances.]  Lord  Moiie> , 
as  it  happens,  does  not  make  this  chronological  mistake  in  ms 
earlier  work  on  Voltaire,  where  he  rightly  represents  him  as 
beginning  his  attack  on  "the  Infamous"  after  he  had  set Uec 
at  Eerney  (1758).     His  "  fierce  mockeries  "  begin  at  the  earliest) 


EKENCH  FEEETHOUGHT 


229 


in  1761.  The  mistake  may  have  arisen  through  taking  as  true 
the  fictitious  date  of  1736  for  the  writing  of  the  Examen 
Mportant  de  Milord  Bolinghrohe.  It  belongs  to  1767.  Buckle's 
error,  it  may  be  noted,  is  repeated  by  so  careful  a  student  as 
Dr.  Kedlich,  Local  Government  in  England,  Eng.  tr.  1903,  i,  64. 

10.  The  rest  of  Voltaire's  long  life  was  a  sleepless  and  dexterous 
warfare,  by  all  manner  of  literary  stratagem,^  facilitated  by  vast 
literary  fame  and  ample  acquired  wealth,  against  what  he  called 
"  the  Infamous  "—the  Church  and  the  creed  which  he  found  still 
swift  to  slay  for  mere  variation  of  belief,  and  slow  to  let  any  good 
thing  be  wrought  for  the  bettering  of  men's  lives.  Of  his  prodigious 
literary  performance  it  is  probably  within  the  truth  to  say  that  in 
respect  of  rapid  influence  on  the  general  intelligence  of  the  w^orld  it 
has  never  been  equalled  by  any  one  man's  writing ;  and  that,  what- 
ever its  measure  of  error  and  of  personal  misdirection,  its  broader 
influence  was  invariably  for  peace  on  earth,  for  tolerance  among 
men,  and  for  reason  in  all  things.  His  faults  were  many,  and  some 
wore  serious ;  but  to  no  other  man  of  his  age,  save  possibly  Beccaria, 
can  be  attributed  so  much  beneficent  accompHshment.  He  can 
perliaps  better  be  estimated  as  a  force  than  as  a  man.  So  great 
was  the  area  of  his  literary  energy  that  he  is  inevitably  inadequate 
at  many  points.  Lessing  could  successfully  impugn  him  in  drama  ; 
Diderot  in  metaphysic ;  Gibbon  in  history;  and  it  is  noteworthy 
that  all  of  these  men^  at  different  times  criticized  him  with  asperity, 
testing  him  by  the  given  item  of  performance,  and  disparaging  his 
pcrsonahty.  Yet  in  his  own  way  he  was  a  greater  power  than  any 
of  them  ;  and  his  range,  as  distinguished  from  his  depth,  outgoes 
theirs.  In  sum,  ho  was  the  greatest  mental  fighter  of  his  age, 
perhaps  of  any  age :  in  that  aspect  he  is  a  *'  power-house  "  not  to 
be  matched  in  human  history ;  and  his  polemic  is  mainly  for  good. 
It  was  a  distinguished  English  academic  who  declared  that  "  civiliza- 
tion owes  more  to  Voltaire  than  to  all  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  put 

*  It  has  been  counted  that  he  used  no  fewer  than  a  hundi-ed  and  thirty  diflferent 
pseudonyms;  and  the  perpetual  prosecution  and  confiscation  of  his  books  explains  the 
procedure.  As  we  have  seen,  the  Lettres  philosopiiiquefi  (otlierwise  the  Lettres  anglaises) 
were  burned  on  their  appearance,  in  1734,  and  the  bookseller  put  in  the  Bastille ;  the 
lieceuil  des  pieces  fugitives  was  suppressed  in  1739;  the  Voix  du  Sage  et  du  Peuplew&s 
officially  and  clerically  condemned  in  1751 ;  the  poem  on  Natural  Law  was  burned  at  Paris 
in  1758;  Candide  at  Geneva  in  1759 ;  the  Dictionnaire  philosophique  at  Geneva  in  1764,  and 
at  Paris  in  1765;  and  many  of  his  minor  pseudonymous  performances  had  the  same  adver- 
tisement. But  even  the  Henriade,  the  Charles  XII,  and  the  first  chapters  of  the  Si^cle  de 
Louis XIV were  prohibited;  and  in  1785  the  thirty  volumes  published  of  the  1784  edition 
of  his  works  were  condemned  en  masse. 

2  Diderot,  critique  of  Le  philosophe  ignorant  in  Grimm's  Co7'r.  Litt.  1  juin  1766; 
Leasing,  Hamburgische  Dramaturgie,  Stiick  10-12,  15;  Gibbon,  ch.  i,  note  near  end; 
ch.  li,  note  on  siege  of  Damascus.  Rousseau  was  as  hostile  as  any  (see  Morley's  Bousseau, 
ch.  ix.  §  1).  But  Rousseau's  verdict  is  the  least  important,  and  the  least  judicial.  He  had 
himself  earned  the  detestatiou  of  Voltaire,  as  of  many  other  men.  In  a  moment  of  pique, 
Diderot  wrote  of  Voltaire :  "  Get  homme  n'est  que  le  second  dans  tous  les  genres " 
(Lettre  71  k  Mdlle.  Voland,  12  aoat,  1762).    He  forgot  wit  and  humour  1 


# 


230 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


FRENCH  EREETHOUGHT 


231 


together."  *  If  in  a  literary  way  he  hated  his  personal  foes,  much 
more  did  he  hate  cruelty  and  bigotry ;  and  it  was  his  work  more 
than  any  that  made  impossible  a  repetition  in  Europe  of  such 
clerical  crimes  as  the  hanging  of  the  Protestant  pastor,  La  Rochette ; 
the  execution  of  the  Protestant,  Galas,  on  an  unproved  and  absurdly 
false  charge ;  the  torture  of  his  widow  and  children  ;  the  beheadhig 
of  the  lad  La  Barre  for  ill-proved  blasphemy.*  As  against  his  many 
humanities,  there  is  not  to  be  charged  on  him  one  act  of  public 
malevolence.  In  his  relations  with  his  fickle  admirer,  Frederick 
THE  Great,  and  with  others  of  his  fellow-thinkers,  he  and  they 
painfully  brought  home  to  freethinkers  the  lesson  that  for  them  as 
for  all  men  there  is  a  personal  art  of  life  that  has  to  be  learned,  over 
and  above  the  rectification  of  opinion.  But  he  and  the  others 
wrought  immensely  towards  that  liberation  alike  from  unreason 
and  from  bondage  which  must  precede  any  great  improvement  of 
human  things. 

Voltaire's  constant  burden  was  that  religion  was  not  only  untrue 
but  pernicious,  and  when  he  was  not  dramatically  showing  this  of 
Christianity,  as  in  his  poem  La  Ligue  (1723),  he  was  saying  it  by 
implication  in  such  plays  as  Zaire  (1732)  and  Mahomet  (1742),  dealing 
with  the  fanaticism  of  Islam;  while  in  the  Essai  sur  les  moeurs 
(1756),  really  a  broad  survey  of  general  history,  and  in  the  SUcle  de 
Louis  XIV,  he  applied  the  method  of  Montesquieu,  with  pungent 
criticism  thrown  in.  Later,  he  added  to  his  output  direct  criticisms 
of  the  Christian  books,  as  in  the  Examen  important  de  Milord 
Bolingbroke  (1767),  and  the  Becherches  historiques  sur  le  Chris- 
tianisnie  (?  1769),  continuing  all  his  former  lines  of  activity.  Mean- 
while, with  the  aid  of  his  companion  the  MARQUISE  DU  Chatelet, 
an  accomplished  mathematician,  he  had  done  much  to  popularize  the 
physics  of  Newton  and  discredit  the  scientific  fallacies  of  the  system 
of  Descartes  ;  all  the  while  preaching  a  Newtonian  but  rather  agnostic 
deism.  This  is  the  purport  of  his  Philosophe  Ignorant,  his  longest 
philosophical  essay.^     The  destruction  of  Lisbon  by  the  earthquake 

1  Prof.  Jowett.  of  Balliol  College.  See  L.  A.  Tollemache.  BenSamin  Jowett,  Master  of 
Balliol,  4th  ed.  pp.  27-28.  „,  ^.       ,  „  .,,. 

■i  See  details  in  Lord  Morley's  Voltaire,  4th  ed.  pp.  165-70.  257-58.  The  erection  by  the 
French  freethinkers  of  a  monument  to  La  Barre  in  1905.  opposite  the  Cathedral  or  uie 
Sacred  Heart.  Moutmartre.  Paris,  is  an  expression  at  once  of  the  old  feud  with  the  ^"U^^" 
and  the  French  appreciation  of  high  personal  courage.  La  Barre  was  in  truth  somecninB 
of  a  scapegrace,  but  his  execution  was  an  infamy,  and  he  went  to  his  death  as  to  a  •j>riaai- 
The  erection  of  the  monument  has  been  the  occasion  of  a  futile  pretence  on  'pe  ciericai 
side  that  for  La  Barre's  death  the  Church  had  no  responsibility,  the  movers  in  the  case 
being  laymen.  Nothing,  apparently,  can  teach  Catholic  Churchmen  that  the  ^n^^^ns 
past  sins  ought  to  be  confessed  like  those  of  individuals.  It  is  quite  true  that  it  was  » 
Parlement  that  condemned  La  Barre.  But  what  a  religious  training  was  it  that  tuineu 
laymen  into  murderous  fanatics  I  „  .        ^         ..       ^t  r^^A 

8  M.  Lanson  seems  to  overlook  it  when  he  writes  (p.  747)  that  the  affirmation  of  Cioti. 
the  denial  of  Providence  and  miracles,  is  the  whole  metaphysic  of  Voltaire. 


of  1755  seems  to  have  shaken  him  in  his  deistic  faith,  since  the 
upshot  of  his  poem  on  that  subject  is  to  leave  the  moral  government 
of  the  universe  an  absolute  enigma  ;  and  in  the  later  Candide  (1759) 
he  attacks  theistic  optimism  with  his  matchless  ridicule.     Indeed,  as 
early  as  1749.  in  his   Trait&  de  la  Metaphysique,  written  for  the 
Marquise  du  Chatelet,  he  reaches  virtually  pantheistic  positions  in 
defence  of  the  God-idea,  declaring  with  Spinoza  that  deity  can  be 
neither  good  nor  bad.     But,  like  so  many  professed  pantheists,  he 
relapsed,  and  he  never  accepted  the  atheistic  view ;  on  the  contrary, 
we  find  him  arguing  absurdly  enough,  in  his  Homily  on  Atheism^ 
(1765),  that  atheism  had  been  the  destruction  of  morality  in  Kome  ;* 
on  the  pubUcation  of  d'Holbach's  System  of  Nature  in  1770  he  threw 
off  an  article  Bieu  :  ripofise  au  Systdme  de  la  Nature,  where  he  argued 
on  the  old  deistic  lines  ;  and  his  tale  of  Jenni ;  or,  the  Sage  and  the 
AtJieist  (1775),  is  a  polemic  on  the  same  theme.     By  this  time  the 
inconsistent  deism  of  his  youth  had  itself  been  discredited  among 
the  more  thoroughgoing  freethinkers  ;  and  for  years  it  had  been  said 
in  one  section  of  literary  society  that  Voltaire  after  all  '*  is  a  bigot ; 

he  is  a  deist !  "  ^ 

But  for  freethinkers  of  all  schools  the  supreme  service  of  Voltaire 
lay  in  his  twofold  triumph  over  the  spirit  of  religious  persecution. 
He  had  contrived  at  once  to  make  it  hateful  and  to  make  it  ridicu- 
lous ;  and  it  is  a  great  theistic  poet  of  our  own  day  that  has  pro- 
nounced his  blade  the 

sharpest,  shrewdest  steel  that  ever  stabbed 
To  death  Imposture  through  the  armour  joints.  ^ 

To  be  perfect,  the  tribute  should  have  noted  that  he  hated  cruelty 
much  more  than  imposture  ;  and  such  is  the  note  of  the  whole 
movement  of  which  his  name  was  the  oriflamme.  Voltaire  personally 
was  at  once  the  most  pugnacious  and  the  most  forgiving  of  men. 
Few  of  the  Christians  who  hated  him  had  so  often  as  he  fulfilled 
their  own  precept  of  returning  good  for  evil  to  enemies ;  and  none 
excelled  him  in  hearty  philanthropy.  It  is  notable  that  most  of  the 
humanitarian  ideas  of  the  latter  half  of  the  century— the  demand  for 
the  reform  of  criminal  treatment,  the  denunciation  of  war  and  slavery, 
the  insistence  on  good  government,  and  toleration  of  all  creeds— are 

1  Lord  Morley  writes  (p.  209) :  "  We  do  not  know  how  far  he  ever  seriously  approached 

the  question whether  a  society  can  exist  without  a  religion."    This  overlooks  both  the 

Honielie  sur  I'AthHsme  and  the  article  Atheisme  in  the  Dictionnaire  Philosophtque,  where 
the  question  is  discussed  seriously  and  explicitly.  ,  ,      -       -i.-  •  « 

2  Horace  Walpole.  Letter  to  Gray.  Nov.  19. 1765.  Compare  the  mordant  criticism  of 
Grimm  (Corr.  litt.  vii.  54  sq.)  on  his  tract  Dieu  in  reply  to  d'Holbach.  II  raisoune  li- 
dessus  comme  un  enfant."  writes  Grimm,  "mais  comme  un  joli  enfant  qu  il  est. 

*  Browning,  The  Two  Poets  of  Croisic,  st.  cvii. 


232 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


more  definitely  associated  with  the  freethinking  than  with  any  religious 
party,  excepting  perhaps  the  laudable  but  uninfluential  sect  of  Quakers. 

The  character  of  Voltaire  is  still  the  subject  of  chronic  del)ate ; 
but  the  old  deadlock  of  laudation  and  abuse  is  being  solved  in  a 
critical  recognition  of  him  as  a  man  of  genius  flawed  by  the 
instabihty  which  genius  so  commonly  involves.  Carlyle  (that 
model  of  serenity),  while  dwelling  on  his  perpetual  perturbatioDs, 
half-humanely  suggests  that  we  should  think  of  him  as  one  con- 
stantly hag-ridden  by  maladies  of  many  kinds  ;  and  this  recoj:^ni- 
tion  is  really  even  more  important  in  Voltaire's  case  than  in 
Carlyle's  own.  He  was  "  a  bundle  of  nerves,"  and  the  clear 
light  of  his  sympathetic  intelligence  was  often  blown  aside  by 
gusts  of  passion — often  enough  excusably.  But  while  his 
temperamental  weaknesses  exposed  him  at  times  to  humilia- 
tion, and  often  to  sarcasm  ;  and  while  his  compelled  resort  to 
constant  stratagem  made  him  more  prone  to  trickery  than  his 
admirers  can  well  care  to  think  him,  the  balance  of  his  character 
is  abundantly  on  the  side  of  generosity  and  humanity. 

One  of  the  most  unjustifiable  of  recent  attacks  upon  him  (one 
regrets  to  have  to  say  it)  came  from  the  pen  of  the  late  VnA. 
Churton  Collins.  In  his  book  on  Voltaire,  Montesquieu,  and 
Botisseau  in  England  (1908)  that  critic  gives  in  the  main  an 
unbiassed  account  of  Voltaire's  Enghsh  experience ;  but  at  one 
point  (p.  39)  he  plunges  into  a  violent  impeachment  with  the 
slightest  possible  justification.  He  in  effect  adopts  the  old 
allegation  of  Ruff  head,  the  biographer  of  Pope — a  statement 
repeated  by  Johnson— that  Voltaire  used  his  acquaintance  with 
Pope  and  Bohngbroke  to  play  the  spy  on  them,  conveying 
information  to  Walpole,  for  which  he  was  rewarded.  The 
whole  story  collapses  upon  critical  examination.  Ruffhead's 
story  is,  in  brief,  that  Pope  purposely  lied  to  Voltaire  as  to  the 
authorship  of  certain  pubhshed  letters  attacking  Walpole.  They 
were  by  Bolingbroke ;  but  Pope,  questioned  by  Voltaire,  said 
they  were  his  own,  begging  him  to  keep  the  fact  absolutely 
secret.  Next  day  at  court  everyone  was  speaking  of  the  letters 
as  Pope's ;  and  Pope  accordingly  knew  that  Voltaire  was  a 
traitor.  For  this  tale  there  is  absolutely  nothing  but  hearsay 
evidence.  Euffhead,  as  Johnson  declared,  knew  nothing  of 
Pope,  and  simply  used  Warburton's  material.  The  one  quasi- 
confirmation  cited  by  Mr.  Collins  is  Bolingbroke's  letter  to 
Swift  (May  18, 1727)  asking  him  to  "  insinuate  "  that  Walpole's 
only  ground  for  ascribing  the  letters  to  Bohngbroke  "  is  the 

authority  of  one  of  his  spies wdio  reports,  not  tvhat  he  hears 

hut  n-hat  he  guesses.''     This  is  an  absolute  contradiction  of 

the  Pope  story,  at  two  points.  It  refers  to  a  guess  at  Boling- 
broke, and  tells  of  no  citation  from  Pope.  To  put  it  as  con- 
firming the  charge  is  to  exhibit  a  complete  failure  of  judgment. 


FRENCH  FREETHOUGHT 


233 


After  this  irrational  argument,  Mr.  Collins  offers  a  worse.  He 
admits  (p.  43)  that  Voltaire  always  remained  on  friendly  terms 
with  both  Pope  and  Bolingbroke  ;  but  adds  that  this  **  can 
scarcely  be  alleged  as  a  proof  of  his  innocence,  for  neither  Pope 
nor  Bohngbroke  w^ould,  for  such  an  offence,  have  been  likely  to 
quarrel  with  a  man  in  a  position  so  peculiar  as  that  of  Voltaire. 

His  flattery  was  pleasant **     Such  an  argument  is  worse 

than  nugatory.  That  Bolingbroke  spoke  ill  in  private  of 
Voltaire  on  general  grounds  counts  for  nothing.  He  did  the 
same  of  Pope  and  of  nearly  all  his  friends.  Mr.  Collins  further 
accuses  Voltaire  of  baseness,  falsehood,  and  hypocrisy  on  the 
mere  score  of  his  habit  of  extravagant  flattery.  This  w^as  notori- 
ously the  French  mode  in  that  age  ;  but  it  had  been  just  as 
much  the  mode  in  seventeenth-century  England,  from  the 
Jacobean  translators  of  the  Bible  to  Dry  den — to  name  no 
others.  And  Mr.  Collins  in  effect  charges  systematic  hypocrisy 
upon  both  Pope  and  Bolingbroke. 

Other  stories  of  Ruffhead's  against  Voltaire  are  equally 
improbable  and  ill-vouched — as  Mr.  Collins  incidentally  admits, 
though  he  forgets  the  admission.  They  all  come  from  War- 
burton,  himself  convicted  of  double-deahng  with  Pope  ;  and 
they  finally  stand  for  the  hatred  of  Frenchmen  which  was  so 
common  in  eighteenth-century  England,. and  is  apparently  not 
yet  quite  extinct.  Those  who  would  have  a  sane,  searching, 
and  competent  estimate  of  Voltaire,  leaning  humanely  to  the 
side  of  goodwill,  should  turn  to  the  Voltaire  of  M.  Champion. 
A  brief  estimate  was  attempted  by  the  present  writer  in  the 
B.  P.  A.  Annual  for  1912. 


11.  It  is  difficult  to  reahze  how  far  the  mere  demand'  for 
tolerance  which  sounds  from  Voltaire's  plays  and  poems  before  he 
has  begun  to  assail  credences  was  a  signal  and  an  inspiration  to 
new  thinkers.  Certain  it  is  that  the  principle  of  toleration,  passed 
on  by  Holland  to  England,  was  regarded  by  the  orthodox  priesthood 
in  France  as  the  abomination  of  desolation,  and  resisted  by  them 
with  all  their  power.  But  the  contagion  was  unquenchable.  It 
was  presumably  in  Holland  that  there  were  printed  in  1738  the  two 
volumes  of  Lettres  snr  la  religion  essentielle  a  Vhomme,  distingu6e  de 
ce  q2ii  n'en  est  que  Vaccessoire,  by  Marie  Huber,  a  Genevese  lady 
living  in  Lyons ;  also  the  two  following  parts  (1739),  replying  to 
criticisms  on  the  earlier.  In  its  gentle  way,  the  book  stands  very 
distinctly  for  the  *'  natural  "  and  ethical  principle  in  rehgion,  denying 
that  the  deity  demands  from  men  either  service  or  worship,  or  that 
he  can  be  WTonged  by  their  deeds,  or  that  he  can  punish  them 
eternally  for  their  sins.     This  was  one  of  the  first  French  fruits, 


234 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


after  Voltaire,  of  the  English  deistic  influence;*  and  it  is  difficult  to 
understand  how  the  authoress  escaped  molestation.  Perhaps  the 
memory  of  the  persecution  inflicted  on  the  mystic  Madame  Guyon 
withheld  the  hand  of  power.  As  it  was,  four  Protestant  theologians 
opened  fire  on  her,  regarding  her  doctrine  as  hostile  to  Cliristianity. 
One  pastor  wrote  from  Geneva,  one  from  Amsterdam,  and  two 
professors  from  Zurich— the  two  last  in  Latin.* 

From  about  1746  onwards,  the  rationalist  movement  in  eighteenth- 
century  France  rapidly  widens  and  deepens.  The  number  of  ration- 
alistic writers,  despite  the  press  laws  which  in  that  age  inflicted  the 
indignity  of  imprisonment  on  half  the  men  of  letters,  increased  from 
decade  to  decade,  and  the  rising  prestige  of  the  philosophes  in  con- 
nection with  the  Encyclopedie  (1751-72)  gave  new  courage  to  writers 
and  printers.  At  once  the  ecclesiastical  powers  saw  in  the  Encyclo- 
pedie a  dangerous  enemy;  and  in  January,  1752,  the  Sorbonne 
condemned  a  thesis  "  To  the  celestial  Jerusalem,"  by  the  Abbe  de 
Prades.  It  had  at  first  (1751)  been  received  with  official  applause, 
but  was  found  on  study  to  breathe  the  spirit  of  the  new  work,  to 
which  the  Abb6  had  contributed,  and  whose  editor,  Diderot,  was  his 
friend.  Sooth  to  say,  it  contained  not  a  little  matter  calculated  to 
act  as  a  solvent  of  faith.  Under  the  form  of  a  vindication  of  orthodox 
Catholicism,  it  negated  alike  Descartes  and  Leibnitz ;  and  declared 
that  the  science  of  Newton  and  the  Dutch  physiologists  was  a  better 
defence  of  religion  than  the  theses  of  Clarke,  Descartes,  Cudworth, 
and  Malebranche,  which  made  for  materialism.  The  handling,  too, 
of  the  question  of  natural  versus  revealed  religion,  in  which  "  theism  " 
is  declared  to  be  superior  to  all  religions  si  unam  excipias  veram,  if 
you  except  the  one  true,"  might  well  arouse  distrust  in  a  vigilant 
Catholic  reader.*  The  whole  argument  savours  far  more  of  the 
scientific  comparative  method  than  was  natural  in  the  work  of  an 
eighteenth-century  seminarist ;  and  the  principle,  "  Either  we  are 
ocular  witnesses  of  the  facts  or  we  know  them  only  by  hearsay, 
was  plainly  as  dangerous  to  the  Christian  creed  as  to  any  other. 
According  to  Naigeon,**  the  treatise  was  wholly  the  work  of  de  Prades 


1  Cp.  Staudlin.  Gesch.  des  Rationaliimus  nnd  Stipenmturahs^nus    im,VP.  2b7  90 
Hagenbach.  Kirchetigeschichte  des  18.  und  19.  Jahrhundert8.2te  Aufl.  1848,  ^'/^f\    ^   -^ 

2  Zimmerman.  De  cau.ns  magis  magisqite  invalescentts  ti^creduhtatu.  f^^ff/;lL"'^g 
malo  adhibenda.  Tiguri.  1739. 4to.    Prof.  Breitinger  of  Zurich  wrote  a  criticism  f^^rwarua 
tr.  (1741)  as  Examen  des  Lettres  mrla  religion  esseiittelle.    De  RocbeB.  P^^tor  at  tjenevu,. 
published  in  letter-form  3  vols,  entitled  Defense  du  Christiamsmf.  as    Pi^^servatir  coni"  _ 
the  Lettres  of  Mdlle.  Huber  (1740);  and  Bouillierof  Amsterdam  also 2  vo^.  of  X.ettre«  u  h  ^• 

8  Cp.  Bouillier.  Hist,  de  la  philos.  cartas,  ii,  624-25;  D'Argenson.  Mimotres,  ed.  Jannei. 

*  See  the  thesis  {Jerusalem  Coelestt)  as  printed  in  the  Apologie  de  M.  I'Ahbi  De  Prades, 

"Amsterdam,"  1752,  pp.  4, 6.  ,  _    t^-j^-^*  leoi   n  IfiO 

5  Id.  p.  10.  «  Mimoirea  sur  la  vie  et  les  ouvragea  de  Dtderot,  1821,  p.  iw- 


FEENCH  FEEETHOUGHT 


235 


and  another  Abb6,  Yvon;^  but  it  remains  probable  that  Diderot 
inspired  not  a  little  of  the  reasoning ;  and  the  clericals,  bent  on 
putting  down  the  EncijclopMie,  professed  to  have  discovered  that  he 
was  the  real  author  of  the  thesis.  Either  this  belief  or  a  desire  to 
strike  at  the  Encyclopidie  through  one  of  its  collaborators^  was  the 
motive  of  the  absurdly  belated  censure.  Such  a  fiasco  evoked  much 
derision  from  the  philosophic  party,  particularly  from  Voltaire  ;  and 
the  Sorbonne  compassed  a  new  revenge.  Soon  after  came  the  formal 
condemnation  of  the  first  two  volumes  of  the  Encyclopedia,  of  which 
the  second  had  just  appeared.* 

D'Argenson,  watching  in  his  vigilant  retirement  the  course  of 
things  on  all  hands,  sees  in  the  episode  a  new  and  dangerous 
development,  "  the  establishment  of  a  veritable  inquisition  in 
France,  of  which  the  Jesuits  joyfully  take  charge,"  though  he 
repeatedly  remarks  also  on  the  eagerness  of  the  Jansenists  to 
outgo  the  Jesuits.*  But  soon  the  publication  of  the  Encyclopedie 
is  resumed ;  and  in  1753  D'Argenson  contentedly  notes  the  ofiicial 
bestowal  of  **  tacit  permissions  to  print  secretly"  books  which 
could  not  obtain  formal  authorization.  The  permission  had  been 
given  first  by  the  President  Malesherbes ;  but  even  when  that 
official  lost  the  king's  confidence  the  practice  was  continued  by  the 
lieutenant  of  police.*^  Despite  the  staggering  blow  of  the  suppression 
of  the  Encyclopedie,  the  philosophes  speedily  triumphed.  So  great 
was  the  discontent  even  at  court  that  soon  (1752)  Madame  de 
Pompadour  and  some  of  the  ministry  invited  D'Alembert  and  Diderot 
to  resume  their  work,  '*  observing  a  necessary  reserve  in  all  tbings 
touching  religion  and  authority."  Madame  de  Pompadour  was  in 
fact,  as  D'Alembert  said  at  her  death,  "  in  her  heart  one  of  ours,"  as 
was  D'Argenson.  But  D'Alembert,  in  a  long  private  conference  with 
D'Argenson,  insisted  that  they  must  write  in  freedom  like  the  English 
and  the  Prussians,  or  not  at  all.  Already  there  was  talk  of  sup- 
pressing the  philosophic  works  of  Condillac,  which  a  few  years  before 
had  gone  uncondemned ;  and  freedom  must  be  preserved  at  any  cost. 
I  acquiesce,"  writes  the  ex-Minister,  "in  these  arguments."^ 
Curiously  enough,  the  f ree thinking  Fontenelle,  who  for  a  time  (the 
dates  are  elusive)  held  the  ofiice  of  royal  censor,  was  more  rigorous 

^  Cp.  Bachaumont,  M^moires  secrets,  4  f6v.  1762 ;  22  avril,  1768.  In  the  latter  entry, 
v7co°  i^  described  as  "poursuivi  comme  infid^le.  quoique  le  plus  croyant  de  France."  In 
1768.  after  the  Belisaire  scandal,  he  was  refused  permission  to  proceed  with  the  publication 
01  his  Hifttoire  eccUHastique. 

■^  This  was  de  Prades's  own  view  of  the  matter  {Apologie,  as  cited,  p.  v) ;  and  D'Argenson 
repeatedly  says  as  much.    Memoires,  iv.  57.  65,  66.  74,  77. 

^  Rocquain.  L' esprit  revolutionnaire  avant  la  rHolution,  1878,  pp.  149-51;  Morley, 
Diderot,  ch.  v ;  D'Argenson,  iv,  78.    The  decree  of  suppression  was  dated  13  f6v.  1752. 

*  Memoires,  iv,  64,  74.  «  Id.  iv,  129, 140.  ^  Id.  iv,  92-93. 


236 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


than  other  officials  who  had  not  his  reputation  for  heterodoxy.  One 
day  he  refused  to  pass  a  certain  manuscript,  and  the  author  put  the 
challenge :  "  You,  sir,  who  have  published  the  Histoire  des  Oracles, 
refuse  mo  this  ?  "  "  If  I  had  been  the  censor  of  the  Oracles/'  replied 
Fontenelle,  "  I  should  not  have  passed  it."  '  And  he  had  cause  for 
his  caution.  The  unlucky  Tercier,  who,  engrossed  in  "  foreign  affairs," 
had  authorized  the  pubhcation  of  the  De  V Esprit  of  Helv6tius.  was 
compelled  to  resign  the  censorship,  and  severely  rebuked  by  the  Paris 
Parlement.'  But  the  culture-history  of  the  period,  like  the  pohtical, 
was  one  of  ups  and  downs.  From  time  to  time  the  philosophic  party 
had  friends  at  court,  as  in  the  persons  of  the  Marquis  D'Argenson, 
Malesherbes,  and  the  Due  de  Choiseul,  of  whom  the  last-named 
engineered  the  suppression  of  the  Jesuits.'  Then  there  were  chocks 
to  the  forward  movement  in  the  press,  as  when,  in  1770,  Choiseul 
w\as  forced  to  retire  on  the  advent  of  Madame  Du  Barry.  The 
output  of  freethinking  books  is  after  that  year  visibly  curtailed.  But 
nothing  could  arrest  the  forward  movement  of  opinion. 

12.  A  new  era  of  propaganda  and  struggle  had  visibly  begun. 
In  the  earlier  part  of  the  century  freethought  had  been  disseminated 
largely  by  way  of  manuscripts*  and  reprints  of  foreign  books  in 
translation  ;  but  from  the  middle  onwards,  despite  denunciations 
and  prohibitions,  new  books  multiply.  To  the  poHcy  of  tacit 
toleration  imposed  by  Malesherbes  a  violent  end  was  tem- 
porarily put  in  1757,  when  the  Jesuits  obtained  a  proclamation 
of  the  death  penalty  against  all  writers  who  should  attack  the 
Christian  religion,  directly  or  indirectly.  It  was  doubtless  uncler 
the  menace  of  this  decree  that  Deslandes,  before  dying  in  17;j7, 
caused  to  be  drawn  up  by  two  notaries  an  acte  by  which  he  dis- 
avowed and  denounced  not  only  his  Grands  homvies  viorts  en 
Vlaisantant  but  all  his  other  works,  whether  printed  or  in  MS., 
in  which  he  had  "laid  down  principles  or  sustained  sentiments 
contrary  to  the  spirit  of  religion." '  But  in  1764,  on  the  suppression 
of  the  Jesuits,  there  was  a  vigorous  resumption  of  propaganda. 
"There  are  books,"  writes  Voltaire  in  1765.  "  of  which  forty  years 
ago  one  would  not  have  trusted  the  manuscript  to  one's  friends,  ami 
of  which  there  are  now  pubHshed  six  editions  in  eighteen  months. 

1  Maury.  Hist,  de  Vancieime  Aeademie  des  Liscriptimis^  1864,  pp.  312-13. 

2  Journal  hifttorique  de  Barbier,  1S47-56,  iv,  301.  ■„fl„onr.p  of  the 

3  Astruc.  we  learn  from  D\41embert.  connected  their  decline  with  the  influenc^^^^^^^^ 

new  opinions.    "  Ce  ne  sont  pas  les  jansenistes  qui  tuent  le.s  j^smtes.  c  est  »/'^"^f^*l'"Vr;,ssez 
"Le  maroufle  Astruc,"  adds  D'Alembert.  "est  comme  Pasquin.  il  parle  quelqueiois  a  a^s 
bon  sens."    Lettre  &  Voltaire.  4  mai.  1762.  ,  t  i,o,t«  oAon  MS. 

<  Cp.  pref.  (La  Vie  de  Salvien)  to  French  tr.  of  Salvian.  1734.  p.  Ixix.    I  have  seen  m^ 
translations  of  Toland  and  Woolston.  ,    __^     -^    „*  f]ie 

5  MS.  statement,  in  eiyliteenth-century  band,  on  flyleaf  of  a  coPy  .°\i'^"^,.^,;"  170.3. 
Orands  honifnea,  in  the  writers  possession.  ^  Lettre  k  D'Alembert,  16  Octoure.  ku 


FRENCH  FEEETHOUGHT 


237 


Voltaire  single-handed  produced  a  library ;  and  d'Holbach  is  credited 
with  at  least  a  dozen  freethinking  treatises,  every  one  remarkable  in 
its  day.  But  there  were  many  more  combatants.  The  reputation 
of  Voltaire  has  overshadowed  even  that  of  his  leading  contemporaries, 
and  theirs  and  his  have  further  obscured  that  of  the  lesser  men ;  but 
a  list  of  miscellaneous  freethinking  works  by  French  writers  during 
the  century,  up  to  the  Revolution,  will  serve  to  show  how  general 
was  the  activity  after  1750.  It  will  bo  seen  that  very  little  was 
published  in  France  in  the  period  in  which  English  deism  was  most 
fecund.  A  noticeable  activity  of  publication  begins  about  1745.  But 
it  was  when  the  long  period  of  chronic  warfare  ended  for  France 
with  the  peace  of  Paris  (1763) ;  when  she  had  lost  India  and  North 
America ;  when  she  had  suppressed  the  Jesuit  order  (1764) ;  and 
when  England  had  in  the  main  turned  from  intellectual  interests  to 
the  pursuit  of  empire  and  the  development  of  manufacturing  industry, 
that  the  released  French  intelligence'  turned  with  irresistible  energy 
to  the  rational  criticism  of  estabhshed  opinions.  The  following  table 
is  thus  symbolic  of  the  whole  century's  development  :-— 

1700.    Lettre  d'Hi/pocrate  a  Damagite,  attributed  to  the  Comte  de  Boulainvilliers. 

(Cologne.)    Rep.  in  BihliotMque  Volante,  Amsterdam,  1700. 
[Claude  Gilbert.]     Histoire  de  Calejava,  ou  de  Visle  des  liommes  raison- 

nables,  avec  le  paralUle  de  leur  morale  et  du  Christianisme.    Dijon. 

Suppressed  by  the  author :  only  one  copy  known  to  have  escaped. 
1704.     [Gueudoville.]     Dialogues  de  M.  le  Baron  de  la  Houtan  et  d'un  sauvage 

dans  VAm^rique.     (Amsterdam.) 

1709.  Lettre  sur  Venthousiasme  (Fr.  tr.  of  Shaftesbury,  by  Samson).     La  Haye. 

1710.  [Tyssot   de  Patot,  Symon.]     Voyages   et    Avantures  de    Jaques   Massd, 

(Bourdeaux.) 
'   ,,       Essai  sur  Vusage  de  la  raillerie  (Fr.  tr.  of  Shaftesbury,  by  Van  EfEen). 

La  Haye. 

1712.  [Deslandes,  A.  F.  B.]  Reflexions  sur  les  grands  liommes  qui  sont  morts 
en  plaisantant.^     (Amsterdam.) 

1714.  Discours  sur  la  liberti  de  pcnser  [French  tr.  of  Collins's  Discourse  of  Free- 
thinking']  ,  traduit  de  I'anglois  et  augmente  d'une  Lettre  d'un  M^decin 
Arabe.     (Tr.  by  Henri  Scheurl^er  and  Jean  Rousset.)     [Rep.  1717.]^ 

1  Of  the  works  noted  below,  the  majority  appear  or  profess  to  have  been  printed  at 
Amsterdam,  though  many  bore  the  imprint  Londres.  AU  the  freethmkmg  books  and 
translations  ascribed  to  d'Holbach  bore  it.  The  Aretin  of  Abbe  Dulaurens  bore  the 
imprint :  "Rome,  aux  d^pens  de  la  Cont'r^gation  de  r Index."  Mystifications  concernmg 
authorship  have  been  as  far  as  possible  cleared  up  in  the  present  edition.  ,4.^ 

'■»  Given  by  Brunet,  who  is  followed  by  Wheeler,  as  appearing  in  1732.  and  as  translated 
into  English,  under  the  title  Dying  Merrily,  in  1745.  But  I  possess  an  English  translation 
of  I?i3  (pref.  dated  March  25).  entitled  A  Philological  Essay :  or,  Bsjiections  on  the  Death  of 

Freethinkers By  Monsieur  D ,  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Sciences  in  France,  and 

author  of  the  Poetae  Busticantis  Literatum  Otium.    Translated  from  the  French  by 

Mr.  B ,  with  additions  by  the  author,  now  in  London,  and  the  translator.     LA  note  in 

a  contemporary  hand  makes  "  B  "  Boyer.]  Barbier  gives  1712  for  the  first  edition,  1732  for 
the  second.    Rep.  1755  and  1776. 

3  There  is  no  sign  of  any  such  excitement  in  France  over  the  translation  as  was  aroused 
in  England  by  the  original ;  but  an  Examen  du  traiti  de  la  liberty  de  jpenser,  by  De  Crousaz. 
was  published  at  Amsterdam  in  1718. 


238 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


1719.  [Vroes.]     La  Vie  et  V Esprit  de  M.  Benoit  de  SpiJioza. 

1720.  Same  work  rep.  under  the  double  title  :  De  tribiis  impostoribus  :  Des  trois 

imposteurs.    Frankfort  on  Main. 
1724.     [L6vesquedeBurigny.]  Histoiredelaphilosophiepayenne.  Lallaye,  2 torn. 

1730.  [Bernard,  J.-F.]     Dialogues  critiques  et  philosophiqiies.     "  Par  I'Abbe  de 

Charte-Livry."     (Amsterdam.)     Rep.  1735. 

1731.  Rtlfiitatiofi  des  erreurs  de  Benoit  de  Spinoza,  par  F^nelon,  le  P.  Laury, 

benedictin,  et  Boulainvilliers,  avec  la  vie  do  Spinoza par  Colerus, 

etc.  (collected  and  published  by  Lenglet  du  Fresnoy).  Bruxclles 
(really  Amsterdam).  The  treatise  of  Boulainvilliers  is  really  a 
popular  exposition. 

1732.  Re-issue  of  Deslandes's  Reflexions. 

1731.     [Voltaire.]     Lettres philosophiqiies .   4  edd.  within  the  year.   [Condemned 
to  be  burned.     Publisher  imprisoned.] 
„       [Longue,  Louis-Pierre  de.]     Les  Princesses  Malabares,  on  le  Cilibat  Phi- 
losophique.     [Deistic  allegory.     Condemned  to  be  burned.] 

1737.  Marquis  D'Argens.    La  Philosophie  du  Bon  Sens.     (Berlin  :  8th  edition, 

Dresden,  1754.) 

1738.     ,  Lettres  Juives.     6  torn.     (Berlin.) 

,,  [Marie  Huber.]  Lettres  sur  la  religion  essentielle  a  Vhomme,  distingue  de 
ce  qui  n'en  est  que  Vaccessoire.  2  tom.  (Nominally  London.)  Rep. 
1739  and  1756. 

1739.    ,  Suite  to  the  foregoing,  "servant  de  reponse  aux  objections,"  etc. 

Also  Suite  de  la  troisiinie  partie. 

1741.     [Deslandes.]     Pigmalion,  ou  la  Statue  animde.     [Condemned  to  be  burnt 
by  Parlement  of  Dijon,  1742.] 
,,       ,  De  la  Certitude  des  connaissa)ices  humaines traduit  de  Tauglais 

par  F.  A.  D.  L.  V. 
1743.     Nouvelles  libert^s  de  penser.     Amsterdam.     [Edited  by  Dumarsais.    Con- 
tains the  first  print  of  Fontenelle's  Traits  de  la  Li6^r/^,-Dumarsais's 
short  essays  Le  PhilosopJie  and  De  la,  raison,  Mirabaud's  Sentimens 
des  philosophes  sur  la  nature  de  Vdme,  etc.] 
1745.     [Lieut.  De  la  Serre.]    La  vraie  religion  traduite  de  VEcriture  Sainte,  i)ar 
permission  de  Jean,  Lm,  Marc,  et  Matthieu.     (Nominally  Trevoux, 
"aux  depens  des  Peres  de  la  Soci6t^  de  J(^sus.")     [Appeared  later  as 
Examen,  etc.     Condemned  to  be  burnt  by  Parlement  of  Paris.] 
[This  book  was  republished  in  the  same  year  with  "demontree  par"  substituted 
in  the  title  for  "traduite  de,"  and  purporting  to  be  "traduit  de  1' Anglais  de 
Gilbert   Burnet,"  with  the  imprint    "  Londres,  G.  Cock,   1745."     It  appeared 
again  in  1761  as  Examen  de  la  religion  dont  on  clierclie  V iclaircissement  de  bonne 
foi.    AttribiU  a  M.  de  Saint-Evremont,  traduit,  etc.,  with  the  same  imprint.    It 
again  bore  the  latter  title  when  reprinted  in  1763,  and  again  in  the  Evangile  de 
la  Raison  in  1764.     Voltaire  in  1763  declared  it  to  be  the  work  of  Dumarsais, 
pronouncing  it  to  be  assuredly  not  in  the  style  of  Saint-Evremond  (Grimm,  iv, 
85-88;  Voltaire,   Lettre  a  Damilaville,  6  dec.  1763),  adding  "mais  il  est  fort 
tronqu^  et  d^testablement  imprim^."    This  is  true  of  the  reprints  in  the  Evangile 
de  la  Raison  (1764,  etc.),  of  one  of  which  the  present  writer  possesses  a  copy  to 
which  there  has  been  appended  in  MS.  a  long  section  which  had  been  lackmg. 
The  Evangile  as  a  whole  purports  to  be  "  Ouvrage  posthume  de  M.  D.  M y. 


1  This  was  probably  meant  to  point  to  the  Abb6  de  Marsy.  who  died  in  1763. 


FKENCH  FKEETHOUGHT 


239 


But  its  first  volume  includes  four  pieces  of  Voltaire's,  and  his  abridged  Testament 
de  Jean  Meslier.  Further,  De  la  Serre  is  recorded  to  have  claimed  the  authorship 
in  writing  on  the  eve  of  his  death.  Barbier,  Diet,  des  Anonymes,  2e  ^d,  No.  6158. 
He  is  said  to  have  been  hanged  as  a  spy  at  Maestricht,  April  11,  1748.] 

1745.  [La  Mettrie.]     Histoire  naturelle  de  Vdme.     [Condemned  to  be  burnt, 

1746.]     Rep.  as  Traits  de  VAme. 

1746.  [Diderot.]     Pensdes  philosophiques.     [Condemned  to  be  burnt.] 

1748.     [P.  Esteve.]    L'Origine  de  V  Univers  expliqu^e  par  un  principe  de  matiire. 
(Berlin.) 
[Benoit  de  Maillet.]    Telliamed,  ouEntretiens  d'un  philosoplie  indien  avec 
un  missionaire  frajigais.     (Printed  privately,  1735  ;  rep.  1755.) 
,,       [La  Mettrie.]     L' Homme  Machine. 

1750.  Nouvelles  libertds  de  penser.     Rep. 

1751.  [Mirabaud,  J.  B.  de.]     Le  Monde,  son  origine  et  son  antiquity.     [Edited 

by  the  Abb6  Le  Mascrier  (who  contributed  the  preface  and  the  third 
part)  and  Dumarsais.] 
,,     De  Prades.     Sorbomie  TJiesis. 

1752.  [Gouvest,  J.  H.  Maubert  de.]     Lettres  Iroquoises.     "  Irocopolis,  chez  les 

V^n^rables."     2  tom.     (Rep.  1769  as  Lettres  cheralcdsiennes.) 
■   ,,       [Genard,  F.]     L'Ecole  de  Vhomme,  ou  ParalUle  des  Portraits  du  siicle 
et  des  tableaux  de  VEcriture  sainte.^    Amsterdam,  3  tom.     [Author 
imprisoned.] 

1753.  [Baume-Desdossat,   Canon   of    Avignon.]     La   Christiade.     [Book   sup- 

pressed.   Author  fined.]'* 
,,       Maupertuis.     Syst^me  de  la  nature. 
,,       Astruc,  Jean.     Conjectures  sur  les  mdimires  originaux  dont  il  parait  que 

Mo'ise  s'est  servi  pour  composer  le  livre  de  la  Genise.    Bruxelles. 

1754.  Premontval,  A.  I.  le  Guay  de.     Le  Diog^m  de  d'Alembert,  ou  Pensies 

libres  sur  VJiomine.     Berlin.     (2nd  ed.  enlarged,  1755.) 
Burigny,  J.  L.     Thdologie  payenm.     2  tom.     (New  ed.  of  his  Histoire  de 

la  philosophie,  1724.) 
[Diderot.]     Pens^es  sur  V interpretation  de  la  nature. 
Beausobre,  L.  de  (the  younger).    Pyrrlwnismedu  Sage.    Berlin.    (Burned 

by  Paris  Parlement.) 

1755.  RecJierches  philosophiques  sur  la  libertd  de  Vlwmme.     Trans,  of  Collins's 

Philosophical  Inquiry  concerning  Human  Liberty. 
[Voltaire.]     Po^me  Sur  la  hi  naturelle. 

Analyse  raisonnie  de  Bayle.     4  tom.     [By  the   Abb^  de  Marsy.     Sup- 
pressed.^   Continued  in  1773,  in  4  new  vols.,  by  Robinet.] 
Morelly.     Code  de  la  Nature. 

[Deleyre.]     Analyse  de  la  philosophie  de  Bacon.     (Largely  an  exposition 
of  Deleyre 's  own  views.) 
1757.    Premontval.     Vues  Philosophiques.     (Amsterdam.) 

[In  this  year — apparently  after  one  of  vigilant  repression — was  pronounced 
the  death  penalty  against  all  writers  attacking  religion.     Hence  a  general  suspen- 


•  I 


n 


»f 


»» 


>» 


It 


J  The  Abb*  Sepher  ascribed  this  book  to  one  Dupuis,  a  Royal  Guardsman. 

^  This    prose  poem  "  was  not  an  intentional  burlesque,  as  the  ecclesiastical  authorities 
alleged ;  but  it  did  not  stand  for  orthodoxy.    See  Grimm's  Correspondance,  i,  113. 

A  eu  les  honneurs  de  la  brMure.  et  toutes  les  censures  cumulees  des  Facultes  de 
Th6ologie.  de  la  Sorbonne  et  des  6v^ques."  Bachaumont,  d^c.  23. 1763.  Marsy,  who  was 
expelled  from  the  Order  of  Jesuits,  was  of  bad  character,  and  was  hotly  denounced  by 
Voltaire. 


240 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


>i 


It 


sion  of  publication.     In  1764  tho  Jesuits  were  suppressed,  and  the  policy  of 
censorship  was  soon  paralysed.] 

1758.  Helvetius.     De  VEsprit.     (Authorized.     Then  condemned.) 

1759.  [Voltaire.]     Candick.     ("Geneve.") 

Translation  of  Hume's  Natural  History  of  Religion  and  Philosophical 
Essays.     (By  Merian.)     Amsterdam. 

1761.  [N.-A.  Boulanger.^]     RecJwrclies  sur  Vorigine  du  despotismc  oriental,  et 

des  superstitions.    "  Ouvrage  posthume  de  Mr.  D.  J.  D.  P.  E.  C." 
Rep.  of  Do  la  Serre's  La  vraie  religion  as  Examen  de  la  religion,  etc. 
[D'Holbach.]     Le  Christianisme  deuoiU.     [Imprint:  "Londres,  1T5G." 
Really  printed  at  Nancy  in  1761.      Wrongly  attributed  to  Boulangcr 
and  to  Damilaville.]     Rep.  1767  and  1777. 
[Grimm  {Corr.  in^dite,  1829,  p.  194)  speaks  in  1763  of  this  book  in  his  notice 
of  Boulanger,   remarking  that  the  title  was  apparently  meant  to  suggest  the 
author  of  UAntiquiti  dt'voilie,  but  that  it   was   obviously  by  another  baud. 
The  Antiquiti',  in   fact,  was  tho  concluding  section  of  Boulanger's  posthumoiH 
Despotisnie  Oriental  (1761),  and  was  not  published  till  1766.     Grimm  professed 
ignorance  as  to  the  authorship,  but  must  have  known  it,  as  did  Voltaire,  who 
by  way  of  mystification  ascribed  the  book  to  Damilaville.     See  Barbier.] 

1762.  Rousseau.     Emile.     [Publicly   burned  at   Paris   and  at  Geneva.    Cou- 

demned  by  the  Sorbonne.] 
„       BoVmet,J. B.   Dela7iature.    Vol.i.    (Vol.  ii  in  1764  ;  iiiand  iv  in  176G.) 

1763.  [Voltaire.]     Saill.     Geneve. 
Dialogue  entre  un  Caloyer  et  un  Jwnnite  homme. 


11 


ti 


If 


It 


n 


If 


It 


Rep.  of  De  la  Serres'  Examen. 

1764.  Discours  sur  la  liberti  de  penscr.     (Rep.  of  trans,  of  Collins.) 
[Voltaire.]     Dictionnaire   philosophique   portatif.^     [First   form   of  the 

Dictionnaire  philosophique.     Burned  in  1765.] 

Lettres  secrites  de  M.  de  Voltaire.  [Holland.  Collection  of  tracts  made 
by  Robinet,  against  Voltaire's  will.] 

[Voltaire.]     Melanges,  3  torn.     Geneve. 

[Dulaurens,  Abbe  H.  J.]     UArHin. 

UEvangile  de  la  Raison.     Ouvrage  posthume  de  M.  D.  M y.    [Ed.  by 

Abb'i  Dulaurens  ;  containing  the  Testament  de  Jean  Meslier  (greatly 
abridged  and  adapted  by  Voltaire)  ;  Voltaire's  Catcchisme  de  Vhonnetc 
homme,  Sermon  des  cinquante,  etc.;  the  Examen  de  la  rciijion, 
attribiU  a  M.  dc  St.  Evremond;  Rousseau's  Vicaire  Savoyard,  from 
Emile;  Dumarsais's  Analyse  de  la  religion  chrHienne,  etc.  Ecp. 
1765  and  1766.] 

1765.  Recueil  Necessaire,  avec  L'Evangile  de  la  Raison,  2  tom. 

[Rep.  of  parts  of  the  Evangile.  Rep.  1767,»  1768,  with  Voltaire's  Examen 
important  de  Milord  Bolingbroke  substituted  for  that  of  De  la  Serre  {attnbiic  a 
M.  de  St.  Evremond),  and  with  a  revised  set  of  extracts  from  Meslier.] 

,,       Castillon,  J.  L.     Essai  de  philosophie  morale, 

1766.  Boulanger,  N.  A.     L'Antiquiti  divoiUe.*    3  tom.     [Recast  by  d'Holbach. 

Life  of  author  by  Diderot.] 

1  See  Grimm,  Corr.  v.  15.  „         .  .,  „„^  «orfnnt  it 

a  A  second  edition  appeared  within  the  year.    "Quoique  proscrit  PresQue  paicout. 

mdme  en  HoUande,  c'est  de  14  Qu'il  nous  arrive."    Bacbaumont,  dec.  z7.  itbi. 

.    3  Bacbaumont.  mai  7,  1767.  _     ,  .   ---,,,  -irjcc 

*  "  Se  repand  a  Paris  avec  la  permission  de  la  police."    Bacbaumont,  13  lev.  kw- 


FEENCH  FKEETHOUGHT 


241 


1766.  Voyage  de  Robertson  aux  terres  australes.  Traduit  sur  le  Manuscrit 
Anglois.  Amsterdam. 
[Barbier  [Diet,  des  Ouvr.  Anon.,  2e  6d.  iii,  437)  has  a  note  concerning  this 
Vome  which  pleasantly  illustrates  the  strategy  that  went  on  in  the  issue  of 
freethinking  books.  An  ex-censor  of  the  period,  he  tells  us,  wrote  a  note  on  the 
original  edition  pointing  out  that  it  contains  (pp.  145-54)  a  tirade  agamst 
"Parlements."  This  passage  was  "suppressed  to  obtam  permission  to  bring  the 
book  into  France,"  and  a  new  passage  attacking  the  Encyclopedistes  under  the 
name  of  Pansophistes  was  inserted  at  another  point.  The  ex-censor  had  a  copy 
of  an  edition  of  1767,  in  12mo,  better  printed  than  the  first  and  on  better  paper. 
In  this,  at  p.  87,  line  30,   begins  the  attack   on   the  Encyclopedistes,  which 

continues  to  p.  93. 

If  this  is  accurate,  there  has  taken  place  a  double  mystification.  I  possess  a 
copy  dated  1767,  in  12mo,  in  which  no  page  has  so  many  as  30  lines,  and  in 
which  there  has  been  no  typographical  change  whatever  in  pp.  87-93,  where 
there  is  no  mention  of  Encyclopedistes.  But  pp.  145-54  are  clearly  a  typogra- 
phical  substitution,  in  different  type,  with  fewer  lines  to  the  page.  Here  there 
is  a  narrative  about  the  Pansophistes  of  the  imaginary  "  Australie  ";  but  while  it 
begins  with  enigmatic  satire  it  ends  by  praising  them  for  bringing  about  a  great 
intellectual  and  social  reform. 

If  the  censure  was  induced  to  pass  the  book  as  it  is  in  this  edition  by  this 
insertion,  it  was  either  very  heedless  or  very  indulgent.  There  is  a  sweeping 
attack  on  the  papacy  (pp.  91-99),  and  another  on  the  Jesuits  (pp.  100-102)  ;  and 
it  leans  a  good  deal  towards  republicanism.  But  on  a  balance,  though  clearly 
anti-clerical,  it  is  rather  socio-political  than  freethinking  in  its  criticism.  The 
words  on  the  title-page,  traduit  sur  le  manuscrit  anglois,  are  of  course  pure 
mystification.     It  is  a  romance  of  the   Utopia  school,  and   criticizes    English 

conditions  as  well  as  French.]  \    r,    f 

1766.  DePrades.    Abr4g^  de  Vhistoire  ecclesiastique  de  Fleury.    (Berlin.)    Pref. 

by  Frederick  the  Great.     (Rep.  1767.) 
„       [Burigny.]     Examen  critique  des  Apologistes  de  la  religion  chrdtienne. 

Published  (by  Naigeon  ?)  under  the  name  of  Freret.^     [Twice  rep.  m 

1767.     Condemned  to  be  burnt,  1770.] 
„       [Voltaire.]     Le  philosophe  ignorant. 

[Abb6  Millot.]     Histoire  philosophique  de  Vhomme.     [Naturalistic  theory 

of  human  beginnings.] 

1767.  Castillon.     Almanach  Philosophique. 

„  Doutes  sur  la  re%io7i  (attributed  to  Gueroult  de  Pival),  suivide  V Analyse 
du  Traits  tMologique-politique  de  Spinoza  (by  Boulainvilliers) .  [Rep. 
with  additions  in  1792  under  the  title  Doutes  sur  les  religious  r^v4Ues, 
adress^s  a  Voltaire,  par  Emilie  du  Chatelet.     Ouvrage  posthume.] 

,,       [Dulaurens.]     L' antipapisme  riv^U. 

„  Lettre  de  ThrasybuU  a  Leucippe.  [Published  under  the  name  of  Freret 
(d.  1749).     Written  or  edited  by  Naigeon. ^1 

»  "II  est  facile  de  se  convaincre  que  les  parties  les  plus  importantes  et  les  plus  solides 
de  cet  ouvrage  sont  empruntees  aux  travaux  de  Buri^iny."  L.-F.  Alfred  Maury,  i.  ancienne 
Acadhnie  den  Imcriptions  et  belles-lettres,  1864.  p.  316.  Maury  leaves  it  an  open  question 
whetber  tbe  compilation  was  made  by  Burigny  or  by  Naigeon.  Tbe  Abbe  Bergier  accepted 
it  witliout  hesitation  as  tbe  work  of  Freret.  wbo  was  known  to  bold  some  bereticai  views. 
(Maury,  p.  317.)    Barbier  confidently  ascribes  tbe  work  to  Burigny.         ,    ,     ,     .         i„*.„;i 

^  The  mystification  in  regard  to  this  work  is  elaborate.  It  purports  to  be  translated 
from  an  English  version,  declared  in  turn  by  its  translator  to  be  made    from  tbe  (jreeK. 

VOL.   II  R 


242 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


FRENCH  FREETHOUGHT 


243 


1767.     [D'Holbach.]    L' Imposture  sacerdotale,  ou  Recueil  de  pUces  sur  la  clerg,\ 
traduites  de  Vanglois. 
[Voltaire.]     Collection  des  lettres  sur  les  7niracles. 
Examen  important  de  milord  Bolinghroke. 


II 


It 


»> 


»i 


Marmontel.     Bdisaire,     (Censured  by  the  Sorbonnc.) 

[Damilaville.]     LlionnHeti  thiologique. 

Reprint  of  Le  Christianisme  divoili.     [Condemned  to  be  burnt,  1768 

and  1770.] 
[Voltaire.]     Questions  sur  Us  Miracles,     Par  un  Proposant. 
,,       Secofide  partie  of  the  RecliercJies  sur  Vorigine  du  despotisme. 
1768.     Meister,  J.  H.     De  Vorighie  des  principles  religieux. 

[Author  banished  from  his  native  town,  Zurich,  "in  perpetuity"  (decree 
rescinded  in  1772),  and  book  publicly  burned  there  by  the  hangman.^  Meister 
published  a  modified  edition  at  Zurich  in  1769.  Orig.  rep.  in  the  Rccucil 
Philosophiqtie,  1770.] 

1768.     Catalogue  raisonn^  des  esprits  forts,  depuis  le  cur&  Rabelais  jusqu' an  curi 
Meslier. 
[D'Holbach.]     La  Contagion   sacr^e,  ou  histoire  naturelle  de  la  super- 
stition.    [Condemned  to  be  burnt,  1770.] 
Lettres  philosophiques  sur  Vorigine  des  pr^jugis,  etc.,  traduites  de 


f  I 


i> 


>} 


i» 


Vanglois  (of  Toland). 

-  Lettres  a  Eugenie,  ou  preservatif  contre  les  pri{}ugis.     2  tom. 
TMologie  Portative.     "Par  Fabbe  Bernier."     [Also  burnt,  1776.] 


») 


»» 


II 


II 


II 


Traiti  des  trots  Imposteurs.     (See  1719  and  1720.)     Rep.  1775,  1777, 1793. 
Naigeon,  J.  A.     Le  militaire  philosoplw.     [Adaptation  of  a  MS.    The 

last  chapter  by  d'Holbach.] 
D'Argens.     (Euvres  compUtes,  24  tom.     Berlin. 
Examen  des  propMties  qui  servent  de  fojidement  a  la  religion  chrHiemie 

(tr.  from  Collins  by  d'Holbach). 
Robinet.     Considh'ations  philosophiques. 
1769-1780.     L'Evangile  dujour.     18  tom.     Series  of  pieces,  chiefly  by  Voltaire. 
1769.     [Diderot.     Also   ascribed   to   Castillon.]     Histoire   g(hUrale  des  dogmes 

et  opinions   2^^^^^o^^P^''W''^^ ^^'^'^^  ^^*  Dictionnaire  encyclopkligiie. 

Londres,  3  tom. 
„        [Mirabaud.]     Ojmiions  des  afwiens  sur  les  juifs,  and  Rt^Jlcxions  iinpar- 
tiales  sur  VEvangile^  (rep,  in  1777  as  Examen  critique  du  Nouveau 
Testament) . 
, ,        [Isoard-Delisle,  otherwise  Delisle  de  Sales.]  De  la  Philosophie  de  la  Nature. 
^  6  tom.     [Author  imprisoned.     Book  condemned  to  be  burnt,  1775.] 

„  [Seguier  de  Saint-Brissou.]  Traitt^  des  Droits  de  Genie,  dans  lequel  on 
examine  si  la  connoissance  de  la  verity  est  avantageuse  aux  liommcset 
possible  au  philosophe.  "Carolsrouhe,"  1769.  [A  strictly  naturalistic- 
ethical  theory  of  society.  Contains  an  attack  on  the  doctrine  of 
Rousseau,  in  Emile,  on  the  usefulness  of  religious  error.] 

It  is  now  commonly  ascribed  to  Naigeon.  (Maury,  as  cited,  p.  317.)  Its  machinery,  ana 
its  definite  atheism,  mark  it  as  of  the  school  of  d'Holbach.  though  it  is  alleged  to  ia\B 
been  written  by  Freret  as  early  as  1722.  It  is  however  reprinted,  with  the  ^•''«'"^",^.''*"-:' ' 
des  Apologistes,  in  the  1796  edition  of  Preret's  works  without  comment ;  and  Kar bier  was 
satisfied  that  it  was  the  one  genuine  "philosophic"  work  ascribed  to  Freret.  but  tnai  n. 
was  redacted  by  Naigeon  from  imperfect  MSS.  ,     „^  ...  ,  Tr»„w 

1  Notice  sur  Henri  Meister.  pref.  to  Lettres  itiSdites  de  Madame  de  Stael  a  uenn, 
Meister  1903  d.  17.  f 

'■*  "Deux  nouveaux  livres  infernaux connus  comme  manuscrits  depuis  longtemps e 

gardes  dans  robscurit^  des  portefeuilles "    Bachaumont.  22  mars,  1769. 


if 


1769.  L'enfer  dMruit,  traduit  de  I'Anglois  [by  d'Holbach.] 

1770.  [D'Holbach.]     Histoire  critique  de  Jisus  Christ. 
Examen  critique  de  la  vie  et  des  ouvrages  de  Saint  Paul  (tr.  from 

English  of  Peter  Annet). 
Essai  sur  les  Pr^jugds.     (Not  by  Dumarsais,  whose  name  on  the 


II 


»i 


II 


title-page  is  a  mystification.) 
—  Sijstime  de  la  Nature.     2  tom. 


n 


II 


}> 


Recueil  Philosophique .  2  tom.  [Edited  by  Naigeon.  Contains  a  rep. 
of  Dumarsais's  essays  Le  PhilosopJie  and  De  la  raison,  an  extract 
from  Tiudal,  essays  by  Vauvenargues  and  Freret  (or  Fontenelle),  three 
by  Mirabaud,  Diderot's  Pensies  sur  la  religion,  several  essays  by 
d'Holbach,  Meister's  De  Vorigine  des  principes  religieux,  etc.] 
Analyse  de  Bayle.    Rep.  of  the  four  vols,  of  De  Marsy,  with  four  more 

by  Robinet. 
L^Esprit  du  Judaisme.     (Trans,  from  Collins  by  d'Holbach.) 
Raynal  (with  Diderot  and  others).     Histoire  philosophiqtie  des  deux  Indes. 
(Containing  atheistic  arguments  by  Diderot.     Suppressed,  1772.) 
[In  this  year  there  were  condemned  to  be  burned  seven  freethinking  works  : 
d'Holbach's  Contagion   Sacr6e  \    Voltaire's  Dieu  et   les  Homvies ;    the   French 
translation  (undated)  of  Woolston's  Discourses  on  the  Miracles  of  Jesus  Christ ; 
Freret's  (really  Burigny's)  Examen  critiqtie  de  la  religion  chrHienne ;  an  Examen 
impartial  des priiwipalcs  religions  dumonde,  undated  ;  d'Holbach's  Christianisme 
devoilc ;  and  his  Systdme  de  la  Nature.] 

1772.  Le  Bon  Sens.     [Adaptation   from   Meslier   by  Diderot  and  d'Holbach. 

Condemned  to  be  burnt,  1774.] 
,,       De  la  nature  humaine.     [Trans,  of  Hobbes  by  d'Holbach.] 

1773.  Helvetius.     De  V Homme.     Ouvrage  posthume.     2  tom.     [Condemned  to 

be  burnt,  Jan.  10,  1774.     Rep.  1775.] 
Carra,  J.  L.     Syst^me  de  la  Raison,  ou  le  propMte  yhilosophe. 
[Burigny  (?).]     Reclierches  sur  les  miracles. 
[D'Holbach.]     La  politique  naturelle.     2  tom. 
,,       .     Systime  Sociale.     3  tom. 

1774.  Abauzit,  F.    Pu^flcxions  impartiales  sur  les  Evangiles,  suivies  d'un   essai 

sur  V Apocalypse.     (Abauzit  died  1767.) 
[Condorcet.]     Lettres  d'un  Theologien.     (Atheistic.) 
New  edition  of  Theologie  Portative.     2  tom.     [Condemned  to  be  burnt.] 

1775.  [Voltaire.]    Histoire  de  Jenni,ouLe  Sage  etVAtMe.   [Attack  on  atheism.] 

1776.  [D'Holbach.]     La  morale  universelle.     3  tom. 
n       .     Ethocratie. 

1777.  Examen  critique  du  Nouveau   Testament,  "par  M.  Freret."      [Not  by 

Freret.     A  rep.  of  Mirabaud's  Reflexions  impartiales  sur  VEvangile, 
1769,  which  was  probably  written  about  1750,  being  replied  to  in  the 
Refutation  du  Celse  moderne  of  the  Abbe  Gautier,  1752  and  1765.] 
M       Carra.     Esprit  de  la  quorate  et  de  la  philosophie. 

1778.  Barthez,  P.  J.     Nouveaux  dements  de  la  science  de  Vho7nme. 

1779.  Vie  d'Apollonius  de  Tyane  par  Philostrate,  avec  les  commentaires  donnas 

en  anglois  par  Charles  Blount  sur  les  deux  premiers  livres.  [Trans, 
by  J.-F.  Salvemini  de  Castillon,  Berlin.]  Amsterdam,  4  tom.  (In 
addition  to  Blount's  pref.  and  notes  there  is  a  scofiing  dedication  to 
Pope  Clement  XIV.) 


II 


II 


II 


II 


II 


244 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


i» 


ji 


it 


II 


1780.  Duveraet,  Abbe  Th.  J.    UlntoUrance  religieuse. 
Clootz,  Anacharsis.     La  Certitude  des  preuves  du  Malwmetisme.     [Reply 

by  way  of  parody  to  Bergier's  work,  noted  on  p.  250.] 
Second  ed.  of  Eaynal's  Histoire  philosophiq^ue,  with  additions.     (Con- 
demned to  be  burnt,  1781.) 

1781.  Mar^chal,  Sylvain.     Le  nouveau  Lucn^ce. 

1783.  Brissot  de  Warville.     Lettrea  pJiilosophiqiies  sur  S.  Paul. 

1784.  Doray  de  Longrais.     Faustin,  on  le  siicle  philosophiqiw, 
Pougens,  M.  C.  J.  de.     Recreations  de  philomphie  et  de  mm-ale. 

1785.  Mar^chal.     Livre  ediappS  au  Deluge.     [Author  dismissed.] 

1787.  Marquis  Pastoret.     Zoroastre,  Cmifuciiis,  et  Mahomet. 

1788.  Meister.     De  la  morale  naturelle. 

Pastoret.     Moise  considers  comrne  legislateur  et  comme  moraliste. 
ii       Marechal.     Almanack  des  Iwnnites  gens.      [Author   imprisoned;    book 
burnt.] 

1789.  Volney.     Lcs  Raines  des  Empires. 
Duvernet,  Abbe.     Lcs  Devotions  de  Madame  de  Bctzamooth. 
Cerutti    {Jesuit    Father).      Briviaire    Pliilosophigue,    ou    Histoire    <hi 

Judaisme,  du  Christianisme,  et  du  Deisme. 
1791-3.  Naigeon.     Dictionnaire  de  la  philosophic  anciennc  et  modcrne. 
1795.    Dupuis.     De  Vorigine  de  tous  les  Cultes.     5  torn. 

La  Fable  de  Christ  de  voile  e ;  ou  Lettre  du  muphti  de  Constantinople  a 
Jean  Ange  Braschy,  muphti  de  Rome. 

1797.  Rep.  of  d'Holbaeh's  Contagion  sacree,  with  notes  by  Lemaire. 

1798.  Marechal.     Pensees  libres  sur  les  pritres.     A  Rome,  et  se  trouve  a  Pans, 

chez  les  Marchands  de  Nouveautes.     L'An  ler  de  la  Raison,  et  VI  de 
la  Republique  Fran(,*aise. 

13.  It  will  be  noted  that  after  1770— coincidently,  indeed,  with  a 
renewed  restraint  upon  the  press — there  is  a  notable  falling-off  in 
the  freethinking  output.  Kationalism  had  now  permeated  educated 
France ;  and,  for  different  but  analogous  reasons,  the  stress  of  discus- 
sion gradually  shifted  as  it  had  done  in  England.  France  in  1760 
stood  to  the  religious  problem  somewhat  as  England  did  in  1730, 
repeating  the  deistic  evolution  with  a  difference.  By  that  time 
England  was  committed  to  the  new  paths  of  imperialism  and 
commercialism ;  whereas  France,  thrown  back  on  the  life  of  ideas 
and  on  her  own  politico-economic  problems,  went  on  producing  the 
abundant  propaganda  we  have  noted,  and,  alongside  of  it,  an  inde- 
pendent propaganda  of  economics  and  politics.  At  the  end  of  1767, 
the  leading  French  diarist'  notes  that  "there  is  formed  at  Paris  a 
new  sect,  called  the  Economists."  and  names  its  leading  personages, 
Quesnay,  Mirabeau  the  elder,  the  Abb6  Baudeau,  Mercier  de  la 
Kivi^re,  and  Turgot.  These  developed  the  doctrine  of  agricultural  or 
"  real  "  production  which  so  stimulated  and  influenced  Adam  Smith. 
But  immediately  afterwards'  the  diarist  notes  a  rival  sect,  the  school 


*  Bachaumont,  Memoires  Secrets,  d6c.  20, 1767. 


a  Id.  Jan.  18. 1768. 


FKENCH  FREETHOUGHT 


245 


of  Forbonnais,  who  founded  mainly  on  the  importance  of  commerce 
and  manufactures.  Each  "sect"  had  its  journal.  The  intellectual 
ferment  had  inevitably  fructified  thought  upon  economic  as  upon 
historical,  religious,  and  scientific  problems ;  and  there  was  in 
operation  a  fourfold  movement,  all  tending  to  make  possible  the 
immense  disintegration  of  the  State  which  began  in  1789.  After 
the  Economists  came  the  "Patriots,"  who  directed  towards  the 
actual  political  machine  the  spirit  of  investigation  and  reform.  And 
the  whole  effective  movement  is  not  unplausibly  to  be  dated  from 
the  fall  of  the  Jesuits  in  1764.'  Inevitably  the  forces  interacted  : 
Montesquieu  and  Eousseau  alike  dealt  with  both  the  religious  and 
the  social  issues  ;  d'Holbach  in  his  first  polemic,  the  Christianisme 
d&voiU,  opens  the  stern  impeachment  of  kings  and  rulers  which  he 
develops  so  powerfully  in  the  Essai  sur  les  Prejug&s ;  and  the 
Encyclopedie  sent  its  search-rays  over  all  the  fields  of  inquiry.  But 
of  the  manifold  work  done  by  the  French  intellect  in  the  second  and 
third  generations  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  most  copious  and 
the  most  widely  influential  body  of  writings  that  can  be  put  under 
one  category  is  that  of  which  we  have  above  made  a  chronological 
conspectus. 

Of  these  works  the  merit  is  of  course  very  various  ;  but  the  total 
effect  of  the  propaganda  was  formidable,  and  some  of  the  treatises 
are  extremely  effective.  The  Examen  critique  of  Burigny,^  for 
instance,  which  quickly  won  a  wide  circulation  when  printed,  is  one 
of  the  most  telling  attacks  thus  far  made  on  the  Christian  system, 
raising  as  it  does  most  of  the  issues  fought  over  by  modern  criticism. 
It  tells  indeed  of  a  whole  generation  of  private  investigation  and 
debate ;  and  the  Abb6  Bergier,  assuming  it  to  be  the  work  of  Freret, 
in  whose  name  it  is  published,  avows  that  its  author  "  has  written  it 
in  the  same  style  as  his  academic  dissertations :  he  has  spread  over 
it  the  same  erudition ;  he  seems  to  have  read  everything  and  mastered 
everything."  ^  Perhaps  not  the  least  effective  part  of  the  book  is  the 
chapter  which  asks  :  "  Are  men  more  perfect  since  the  coming  of 
Jesus  Christ  ?";  and  it  is  here  that  the  clerical  reply  is  most  feeble, 
The  critic  cites  the  claims  made  by  apologists  as  to  the  betterment 
of  life  by  Christianity,  and  then  contrasts  with  those  claims  the 
thousand-and-one  lamentations  by  Christian  writers  over  the  utter 
badness  of  all  the  life  around  them.  Bergier  in  reply  follows  the 
tactic  habitually  employed  in  the  same  difficulty  to-day  :  he  ignores 

«f  i  ^<^P^^a°Bat  de  Mairobert  in  hia  preface  to  the  first  ed.  (1777)  of  the  Memoires  Secrets 
^afiiaumont.  continued  by  him.    See  pref.  to  the  abridged  ed.  by  Bibliophile  Jacob. 
AS  to  the  authorship  see  above,  p.  241. 
La  Certitude  des  preuves  du  Christianisme  (1767),  2e  6dit.  1768,  Avertissement. 


246 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUBY 


the  fact  that  his  own  apologists  have  been  claiming  a  vast  better- 
ment, and  contends  that  religion  is  not  to  be  blamed  for  the  evils  it 
condemns.  Not  by  such  furtive  sophistry  could  the  Church  turn  the 
attack,  which,  as  Bergier  bitterly  observes,  was  being  made  by 
Voltaire  in  a  new  book  every  year. 

As  always,  the  weaker  side  of  the  critical  propaganda  is  its  effort 
at  reconstruction.    As  in  England,  so  in  France,  the  faithful  accused 
the  critics  of  "  puUing  down  without  building  up,"  when  in  point  of 
fact  their  chief  error  was  to  build  up— that  is,  to  rewrite  the  history 
of  human  thought— before  they  had  the  required  materials,  or  had 
even  mastered  those  which  existed.     Thus  Voltaire  and  Rousseau 
alike  framed  a  priori  syntheses  of  the  origins  of  reUgion  and  society. 
But  there  were  closer  thinkers  than  they  in  the  rationalistic  ranks. 
Fontenelle's  essay  De  Vorigine  des  fables,  though  not  wholly  exempt 
from  error,  admittedly  lays  aright  the  foundations  of  mythology  and 
hierology  ;  and  De  Brosses  in  his  treatise  Du  Cultedes  dieux  fetiches 
(1760)  does  a  similar  service  on  the  side  of  anthropology.^    Meisters 
essay  Be  Vorigine   des   principes  religieux  is    full  of   insight  and 
breadth ;  and,    despite    some    errors   due    to   the  backwardness  of 
anthropology,  essentially  scientific  in  temper  and  standpoint.     His 
later  essay,  De  la  morale  naturelle,  shows  the  same  independence 
and  fineness  of  speculation,  seeming  indeed  to  tell  of  a  character 
which  missed  fame  by   reason  of  over-dehcacy  of  fibre  and  lack  of 
the    driving    force  which    marked  the  foremost  men  of   that  tem- 
pestuous time.     Vauvenargues's  essay  De  la  suffisance  de  la  religion 
naturelle  is  no  less  clinching,  granted  its  deism.       So,  on  the  side 
of  philosophy,  Mirabaud,  who  was  secretary  of  the  Academie  from 
1742   to    1755,   handles   the   problem  of   the  relation  of  deism  to 
ethics— if  the  posthumous  essays  in  the  Recueil  philosophique  he 
indeed  his— in  a  much  more  philosophic  fashion  than  does  Voltaire, 
arguing  unanswerably  for  the  ultimate  self-dependence  of  morals. 
The  Lettre  de  Thrasyhule  a  Leiicippe,  ascribed  to  Freret,  again,  is  a 
notably  skilful  attack  on  theism. 

14.  One  of  the  most  remarkable  of  the  company  in  some  respects 
is  Nicolas-Antoine  Boulanger  (1722-1759),  of  whom  Diderot 
gives  a  vivid  account  in  a  sketch  prefixed  to  the  posthumous 
UAntiquiU  devoiUe  par  ses  usages  (1766).  At  the  College  de 
Beauvais,  Boulanger  was  so  little  stimulated  by  his  scholastic 
-  teachers  that  they  looked  for  nothing  from  him  in  his  maturity. 
When,  however,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  he  began  to  study  mathe- 
matics and  architecture,  his  faculties  began  to  develop;  and  the 
life,  first  of  a  miHtary  engineer  in  1743-44,  and  later  in  the  service 


FEENCH  FREETHOUGHT 


247 


V 


of  the  notable  department  of  Roads  and  Bridges — the  most  efficient 
of  all  State  services  under  Louis  XV — made  him  an  independent 
and  energetic  thinker.  The  chronic  spectacle  of  the  corvee,  the 
forced  labour  of  peasants  on  the  roads,  moved  him  to  indignation ; 
hut  he  sought  peace  in  manifold  study,  the  engineer's  contact  with 
nature  arousing  in  him  all  manner  of  speculations,  geological  and 
sociological.  Seeking  for  historic  light,  he  mastered  Latin,  which 
he  had  failed  to  do  at  school,  reading  widely  and  voraciously ;  and 
when  the  Latins  failed  to  yield  him  the  light  he  craved  he  syste- 
matically mastered  Greek,  reading  the  Greeks  as  hungrily  and  with 
as  little  satisfaction.  Then  he  turned  indefatigably  to  Hebrew, 
Syriac,  and  Arabic,  gleaning  at  best  verbal  clues  which  at  length 
he  wrought  into  a  large,  loose,  imaginative  yet  immensely  erudite 
schema  of  ancient  social  evolution,  in  which  the  physicist's  pioneer 
study  of  the  structure  and  development  of  the  globe  controls  the 
anthropologist's  guesswork  as  to  the  beginnings  of  human  society. 
The  whole  is  set  forth  in  the  bulky  posthumous  work  Becherches 
sur  Vorigine  du  dcspotisme  oriental  (1761),  and  in  the  further  treatise 
L'antiquitd  devoilee  (3  tom.  1766),  which  is  but  the  concluding 
section  of  the  first-named. 

It  all  yields  nothing  to  modern  science  ;  the  unwearying  research 
is  all  carried  on,  as  it  were,  in  the  dark ;  and  the  sleepless  brain  of 
the  pioneer  can  but  weave  webs  of  impermanent  speculation  from 
masses  of  unsifted  and  unmanageable  material.  Powers  which 
to-day,  on  a  prepared  ground  of  ascertained  science,  might  yield  the 
greatest  results,  were  wasted  in  a  gigantic  effort  to  build  a  social 
science  out  of  the  chaos  of  undeciphered  antiquity,  natural  and 
human.  But  the  man  is  nonetheless  morally  memorable.  Diderot 
pictures  him  with  a  head  Socratically  ugly,  simple  and  innocent 
of  life,  gentle  though  vivacious,  reading  Rabbinical  Hebrew  in  his 
walks  on  the  high  roads,  suffering  all  his  life  from  "  domestic 
persecution,"  "little  contradictory  though  infinitely  learned,"  and 
capable  of  passing  in  a  moment,  on  the  stimulus  of  a  new  idea, 
into  a  state  of  profound  and  entranced  absorption.  Diderot  is 
always  enthusiastically  generous  in  praise ;  but  in  reading  and 
reviewing  Boulanger's  work  we  can  hardly  refuse  assent  to  his 
friend's  claim  that  *'  if  ever  man  has  shown  in  his  career  the  true 
characters  of  genius,  it  was  he."  His  immense  research  was  all 
compassed  in  a  life  of  thirty-seven  years,  occupied  throughout  in 
an  active  profession;  and  the  diction  in  which  he  sets  forth  his 
imaginative  construction  of  the  past  reveals  a  constant  intensity 
of  thought  rarely  combined  with  scholarly  knowledge.     But  it  was 


248 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


an  age  of  concentrated  energy,  carrying  in  its  womb  the  Kevolution. 
The  perusal  of  Boulanger  is  a  sufficient  safeguard  against  the  long- 
cherished  hallucination  that  the  French  freethinking  of  his  age  was 
but  a  sparkle  of  raillery. 

Even  among  some  rationalists,  however,  who  are  content  to 
take  hearsay  report  on  these  matters,  there  appears  still  to  subsist 
a  notion  that  the  main  body  of  the  French  freethinkers  of  the 
eighteenth  century  were  mere  scoffers,  proceeding  upon  no  basis 
of  knowledge  and  with  no  concern  for  research.  Such  an  opinion 
is  possible  only  to  those  who  have  not  examined  their  work.  To 
say  nothing  more  of  the  effort  of  Boulanger,  an  erudition  much 
more  exact  than  Voltaire's  and  a  deeper  insight  than  his  and 
Eousseau's  into  the  causation  of  primitive  religion  inspires  the 
writings  of  men  like  Burigny  and  Freret  on  the  one  hand,  and 
Fontenelle  and  Meister  on  the  other.  The  philosophic  reach  of 
Diderot,  one  of  the  most  convinced  opponents  of  the  ruHng  rehgion, 
was  recognized  by  Goethe.  And  no  critic  of  the  ''  philosophes'' 
handled  more  uncompromisingly  than  did  Dumarsais^  the  vanity  of 
the  assumption  that  a  man  became  a  philosopher  by  merely  setting 
himself  in  opposition  to  orthodox  belief.  Dumarsais,  long  scholas- 
tically  famous  for  his  youthful  treatise  Des  Tropes,  lived  up  to  his 
standard,  whatever  some  of  the  more  eminent  philosophes  may  have 
done,  being  found  eminently  lovable  by  pietists  who  knew  him; 
while  for  D' Alembert  he  was  "  the  La  Fontaine  of  the  philosophers  " 
in  virtue  of  his  lucid  simplicity  of  style/'  The  Analyse  de  la  religion 
chretienne  printed  under  his  name  in  some  editions  of  the  Evangile 
de  la  Raison  has  been  pronounced  supposititious.  It  seems  to  be 
the  work  of  at  least  two  hands^  of  different  degrees  of  instruction  ; 

1  In  the  sliort  essay  Le  Philosojihe.  which  appeared  in  the  ^o?<ren^;S  Li^^erft^.s  tj^ 
Penser,  1743  and  1750,  and  in  the  Becueil  Fhilosaphique,  1770.  In  the  1793  rfP- of.^^^ 
Essai  sur  les  prejuges  (again  rep.  in  lb22)  it  is  unhesitatingly  afhrmed,  on  the  strengtn  oi 
its  title-page  and  the  prefixed  letter  of  Dumarsais.  dated  l^SO.that  that  book  is  an  eximn- 
sion  of  the  essay  ie  P;u/o.wp?ie,  and  that  tliis  was  published  in  1760.  .^ut  ie  P^.jioW^ 
is  an  entirely  different  production,  which  to  a  certain  extent  criticizes  les  Pl^^^osophes 
so-called.  The  Essai  sur  les  pHjugH  published  in  1770  is  not  the  work  of  Dumaisais .  it 
is  a  new  work  by  d'Holbach.  This  was  apparently  known  to  Frederick,  who  inf  ^^  raiuer 
angry  criticism  of  the  book  writes  that,  whereas  Dumarsais  had  always  respectea  con 
stituted  authorities,  others  had  "  put  out  in  his  name,  two  years  after  he  was  aeaa  anu 
buried,  a  libel  of  which  the  veritable  author  could  only  be  a  schoolboy  as  new  to  ine 
world  as  he  was  puzzle-headed."  [MHanges  en  vers  et  en  pro.se  de  Frederic  II,  }'Ytl;hjnI'<t 
Dumarsais  died  in  1754.  but  I  can  find  no  good  evidence  that  the  Es sat  sur  les  vrmoes 
was  ever  printed  before  1770.  As  to  d'Holbach's  authorship  see  the  (Exivres  deJ)vU)')t. 
ed.  1821,  xii,  115  «a .-passage  copied  in  the  18-29-31  ed.  of  the  ^^flj^^'^^jf  jJVs  {^iitai?e 
Grimm  and  Diderot,  xiv.  293  sq.  In  a  letter  to  D' Alembert  dated  Mars  27. 1773,  vouaire 
writes  that  in  a  newly-printed  collection  of  treatises  containing  his  own  potsde  -J^^^'^s  ib 
included  "le  philosophe  de  Dumarsais,  qui  n'a  jamais  6t6  imprim6  jusqu  ft  piesenii. 
This  seems  to  be  a  complete  mistake.   .         .,.         „  ,     „„  ^ov  timt  he  had 

a  Grimm  (iv.  86)  has  some  good  stories  of  him.  He  announced  one  day  that  nena" 
found  twenty-five  fatal  flaws  in  the  story  of  the  resurrection  of  Lazarus,  the  nrsc  ub  s 
that  the  dead  do  not  rise.  His  scholarly  friend  Nicolas  Boindin  (see  above,  p.  2-;  sam  . 
"  Dumarsais  is  a  Jansenist  atheist ;  as  for  me.  I  am  a  Molinist  atheist.  „      , 

8  On  two  successive  pages  the  title  Messiah  is  declared  to  mean  simply  one  senii  auu 
simply  "anointed." 


FEENCH  FKEETHOUGHT 


249 


but,  apart  from  some  errors  due  to  one  of  these,  it  does  him  no 
discredit,  being  a  vigorous  criticism  of  Scriptural  contradictions  and 
anomalies,  such  as  a  "Jansenist  atheist"  might  well  compose, 
though  it  makes  the  usual  profession  of  deistic  belief. 

Later  polemic  works,  inspired  by  those  above  noticed,  reproduce 
some  of  their  arguments,  but  with  an  advance  in  literary  skill,  as 
in  the  anonymous  Bo7i  Sens  given  forth  (1772)  by  Diderot  and 
d'Holbach  as  the  work  of  Jean  Meslier,  but  really  an  independent 
compilation,  embodying  other  arguments  with  his,  and  putting  the 
whole  with  a  concision  and  brilliancy  to  which  he  could  make  no 
approach.  Pr^montval,  a  bad  writer,^  contrives  nonetheless  to  say 
many  pungent  things  of  a  deistic  order  in  his  Diogene  de  d'Alembert, 
and,  following  Marie  Huber,  puts  forward  the  formula  of  religion 
versus  theology,  which  has  done  so  much  duty  in  the  nineteenth 
century.  Of  the  whole  literature  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
it  covered  cogently  most  of  the  important  grounds  of  latter-day 
debate,  from  the  questions  of  revelation  and  the  doctrine  of  torments 
to  the  bases  of  ethics  and  the  problem  of  deity ;  and  it  would  be 
hard  to  show  that  the  nineteenth  century  has  handled  the  main 
issues  with  more  sincerity,  lucidity,  or  logic  than  were  attained  by 
Frenchmen  in  the  eighteenth.  To-day,  no  doubt,  in  the  light  of  a 
century  and  a-half  of  scientij&c,  historic,  and  philosophic  accumula- 
tion, the  rationalist  case  is  put  with  more  profundity  and  accuracy 
by  many  writers  than  it  could  be  in  the  eighteenth  century.  But 
we  have  to  weigh  the  freethinkers  of  that  age  against  their  opponents, 
and  the  French  performers  against  those  of  other  countries,  to  make 
a  fair  estimate.  When  this  is  done  their  credit  is  safe.  When 
German  and  other  writers  say  with  Tholuck  that  "  unbelief  entered 
Germany  not  by  the  weapons  of  mere  wit  and  scoffing  as  in  France ; 
it  grounded  itself  on  learned  research,"  ^  they  merely  prove  their 
ignorance  of  French  culture-history.  An  abundance  of  learned 
research  in  France  preceded  the  triumphant  campaign  of  Voltaire, 
who  did  most  of  the  witty  writing  on  the  subject ;  and  whose  light 
artillery  was  to  the  last  reinforced  by  the  heavier  guns  of  d'Holbach. 
It  is  only  in  the  analysis  of  the  historical  problem  by  the  newer 
tests  of  anthropology  and  hierology,  and  in  the  light  of  latterly 
discovered  documents,  that  our  generation  has  made  much  advance 
on  the  strenuous  pioneers  of  the  age  of  Voltaire.     And  even  in  the 


donhtlH  iSf         ^°?  Huard.  however,  he  strives  for  a  reform  in  spe'ling,  dropping  many 

2  itwf"^'^^'  ^^d  writing  home,  boiie,  acu8e,fole,  apelle,  hwiHe,  afrenx,  etc. 
tn  n7ijL\hi2^^^ rf^^^^^^i  ^^^  UmwCilzungwelche  seit  1750  auf  dem  Qebiete  der  Theologie 
siti^ris  rSited  p^^  ^24"^    "'  '"^  '^^°^"°^'s  Vermischte  SchHften,  1839,  ii.  5.    The  propo- 


250 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


field  of  anthropology  the  sound  thinking  of  Fontenelle  and  De 
Brosses  long  preceded  any  equally  valid  work  by  rationalists  in 
Germany ;  though  Spencer  of  Cambridge  had  preceded  them  in  his 
work  of  constructive  orthodoxy. 

15.  Though  the  bibliographers  claim  to  have  traced  the  author- 
ship in  most  cases,  such  works  were  in  the  first  instance  generally 
published  anonymously/  as  were  those  of  Voltaire,  d'Holbach,  and 
the  leading  freethinkers  ;  and  the  clerical  policy  of  suppression  had 
the  result  of  leaving  them  generally  unanswered,  save  in  anonymous 
writings,  when  they  nevertheless  got  into  private  circulation.     It 
was  generally  impohtic  that  an  official  answer  should  appear  to  a 
book  which  was  officially  held  not  to  exist ;  so  that  the  orthodox 
defence  was  long  confined  mainly  to  the  classic  performances  of 
Pascal,  Bossuet,  Huet,  F^nelon,  and  some  outsiders  such  as  the 
Protestant  Abbadie,  who  settled  first  in  Berlin  and  later  in  London. 
The  polemic  of  every  one  of  the  writers  named  is  a  work  of  ability  ; 
even  that  of  Abbadie  {Traitc  de  la  Verite  de  la  religion  chretienne,^ 
1684),  though  now  little  known,  was  in  its  day  much  esteemed.' 
In  the  age  of  Louis  XIV  those  classic  answers  to  unbelief  were  by 
behevers  held  to  be  conclusive  ;  and  thus  far  the  French  defence 
was  certainly  more  thorough  and  philosophical  than  the  English. 
But  French  freethought,  which  in  Herbert's  day  had  given  the  lead 
to  English,  now  drew  new  energy  from  the  English  growth  ;  and 
the  general  arguments  of  the  old  apologists  did  not  explicitly  meet 
the  new  attack.     Their   books    having  been  written   to   meet  the 
mostly  unpubHshed  objections  of  previous  generations,  the  Church 
through  its  chosen  policy  had  the  air  of  utter  inability  to  confute 
•  the   newer   propaganda,  though   some   apologetic   treatises  of   fan- 
power  did  appear,  in  particular  those  of  the  AhU  Bergier.'     By  the 
avowal  of  a  Christian  historian.  "  So  low  had  the  talents  of  the 
once  illustrious  Church  of  France  fallen  that  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  when  Christianity  itself  was  assailed,  not 
one  champion  of  note  appeared  in  its  ranks  ;  and  when  the  convo- 
cation  of   the   clergy,  in    1770,  published  their  famous  anathema 
against  the  dangers  of  unbelief,  and  offered  rewards  for  the  best 

»  The  exceptions  were  books  publislied  ontside  of  France.  ,  . 

2  Madame  deS°vigne.  for  instance,  declared  that  she  would  not  let  pass  a  year  of  her 
life  without  re-reading  the  second  volume  of  Abbadie.  Annloaie  de  la 

8  Le  DHsrm  refuU  par  lui-meme  largely  a  reply  <^«  Ro"^f,t»iimV    in  1759  had  a^ 
religion  chretienne ;  1773,  La  certitude  despreuyes  du  ^^  "s'^f'f^  "f '    ^^  "j^  deals  chiefly 
theLettres  sur  le  Deisnie  of  the  younger  Salchi.  professor  at  ^J'^'^J^^^-^^iJfA  began  in 
with  the  English  deists,  and  with  D'Argens.    A^^efore noted  the  Abb^Gauchat  D^^^^ 
1751  his  Lettres  Critiques,  which  in  tiuae  ran  to  15  volumes  (1751^1).    There  were^^^^^ 
journals.  Jesuit  and  .Jansenist.  which  fought  the  phtlos(^^^^^^^  Abb6 

times  even  a  manuscript  was  answered-e.flr.the  ^^/»*«^*o'*^l?*,^f,*5^  moaerne  oi 
Gautier  (1752).  a  reply  to  Mirabaud's  unpublished  Exatnen  critique. 


i 


FEENCH  FEEETHOUGHT 


251 


essays  in  defence  of  the  Christian  faith,  the  productions  called  forth 
were  so  despicable  that  they  sensibly  injured  the  cause  of  rehgion."  ^ 
The  freethinking  attack,  in  fact,  had  now  become  overwhelming. 
After  the  suppression  of  the  Jesuit  Order  (1764)^  the  press  grew 
practically  more  and  more  free ;  and  when,  after  the  accession  of 
Pope  Clement  XIV  (1769),  the  freethinking  books  circulated  with 
less  and  less  restraint,  Bergier  extended  his  attack  on  deism,  and 
deists  and  clerics  joined  in  answering  the  atheistic  Systdvie  de  la 
Nature  of  d'Holbach.  But  by  this  time  the  deistic  books  were 
legion,  and  the  political  battle  over  the  taxation  of  Church  property 
had  become  the  more  pressing  problem,  especially  seeing  that  the 
mass  of  the  people  remained  conforming.  The  manifesto  of  the 
clergy  in  1770  was  accompanied  by  an  address  to  the  king  "  On  the 
evil  results  of  liberty  of  thought  and  printing,"  following  up  a 
previous  appeal  by  the  pope;^  and  in  consideration  of  the  donation 
by  the  clergy  of  sixteen  million  livres  the  Government  recommended 
the  Parlement  of  Paris  to  proceed  against  impious  books.  There 
seems  accordingly  to  have  been  some  hindrance  to  publication  for 
a  year  or  two ;  but  in  1772  appeared  the  Bo7i  Seiis  of  d'Holbach 
and  Diderot ;  and  there  was  no  further  serious  check,  the  Jesuits 
being  disbanded  by  the  pope  in  1773. 

The  English  view  that  French  orthodoxy  made  a  **  bad  " 
defence  to  the  freethinking  attack  as  compared  with  what  was 
done  in  England  (Sir  J.  F.  Stephen,  Horce  SabbaticcB,  2nd.  ser. 
p.  281 ;  Alison,  as  cited  above)  proceeds  on  some  misconception 
of  the  circumstances,  which,  as  has  been  shown,  were  substantially 
different  in  the  two  countries.  Could  the  English  clergy  have 
resorted  to  ofiQcial  suppression  of  deistic  literature,  they  too 
would  doubtless  have  done  so.  Swift  and  Berkeley  bitterly 
desired  to.  But  the  view  that  the  English  defence  was  relatively 
good,"  and  that  Butler's  in  particular  was  decisive,  is  also,  as 
we  have  seen,  fallacious.  In  Sir  Leslie  Stephen's  analysis,  as 
apart  from  his  preamble,  the  orthodox  defence  is  exhibited  as 
generally  weak,  and  often  absurd.  Nothing  could  be  more 
futile  than  the  three  "Pastoral  Letters"  published  by  the 
Bishop  of  London  (1728,  1730,  1731)  as  counterblasts  to  the 
freethinking  books  of  this  period.  In  France  the  defence  began 
sooner,  and  was  more  profound  and  even  more  methodical. 
Pascal  at  least  went  deeper,  and  Bossuet  (in  his  Discoicrs  sur 


\  m^^^^^jJ^i'^^^^y  ^f  Europe,  ed.  1849.  i,  180-81. 


17RR  ^.^^  Jesuits  were  expelled  from  Portugal  in  1759;  from  Bohemia  and  Denmark  in 
vao^'  °^  *  whole  dominions  of  Spain  in  1767 ;  from  Genoa  and  Venice  in  the  same 
17R4    ft°  °^  Naples.  Malta,  and  Parma  in  1768.    Officially  suppressed  in  France  in 

in  i77Qf^^  were  expelled  thence  in  1767.    Pope  Clement  XIII  strove  to  defend  them;  but 
y-«f;,i   V^e  Society  was  suppressed  by  papal  bull  by  Clement  XIV ;  whereafter  they  took 
3  S.i^fif^'^^^^^  ^^^  Russia,  ruled  by  the  freethinking  Frederick  and  Catherine, 
bee  the  Correspondance  de  Qrimm,  ed.  1829-31,  vii.  51  sq. 


252 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUBY 


VHistoire  Universellc)  more  widely,  into  certain  inward  and 
outward  problems  of  the  controversy  than  did  any  of  the 
English  apologists  ;  Huet  produced,  in  his  Denionstmtio  Evan- 
gelica,  one  of  the  most  methodical  of  all  the  defensive  treatises 
of  the  time ;  Abbadie,  as  before  noted,  gave  great  satisfaction, 
and  certainly  grappled  zealously  with  Hobbes  and  Spinoza; 
AUix,  though  no  great  dialectician,  gave  a  lead  to  EngUsh 
apologetics  against  the  deists  (above,  p.  97),  and  was  even 
adapted  by  Paley  ;  and  Ft^nelon,  though  his  TraitA  del' Existence 
et  des  Attributs  de  Dieti  (1712)  and  Lettres  sur  la  Beligion  (1716) 
are  not  very  powerful  processes  of  reasoning,  contributed  througli 
his  reproduced  conversations  (1710)  with  Ramsay  a  set  of  argu- 
ments at  least  as  plausible  as  anything  on  the  Enghsh  side,  and, 
what  is  more  notable,  marked  by  an  amenity  which  almost  no 
English  apologist  attained.  ,      .  , 

The  ground  had  been  thus  very  fully  covered  by  the  defence 
in  France  before  the  main  battle  in  England  began  ;  and  when 
a  new  French  campaign  commenced  with  Voltaire,  the  defence 
against  that  incomparable  attack,  so  far  as  the  system  allo\v(xl 
of  any,  was  probably  as  good  as  it  could  have  been  made  ni 
England,    save   insofar   as    the   Protestants   gave   up   modern 
miracles,  while  most  of  the  Catholics  claimed  them  for  their 
Church.     Counterblasts    such    as    the   essay   of    Linguet,   Le 
Fanatisme  des  PhilosopJies  (1764),  were  but  general  indictments 
of   rationalism;    and   other   apologetic   treatises,    as   we   saw, 
handled  only  the  most  prominent  books  on  the  other  side.     It 
should  be  noted,  too.  that  as  late  as  1764  the  police  made  it 
almost  impossible  to  obtain  in  Paris  works  of  Voltaire-  recently 
printed    in    Holland    (Grimm,    vii,    123,    133.    434).     But.   as 
Paley  admitted  with  reference  to  Gibbon  ("  Who  can  refute  a 
sneer?"),  the  new  attack  was  in  any  case  very  hard  to  meet. 
A  sneer  is  not  hard  to  refute  when  it  is  unfounded,  masmuch 
as  it  implies  a  proposition,  which  can  be  rebutted  or  turned  by 
another  sneer.     The  Anglican  Church  had  been  well  enough 
pleased  by  the  polemic  sneers  of  Swift  and  Berkeley ;  but  the 
other  side  had  the  heavier  guns,  and  of  the  mass  of  defences 
produced  in  England  nothing  remains  save  in  the  neat  compila- 
tion of  Paley.     Alison's  whole  avowal  might  equally  well  ai)ply 
to   anything   produced  in  England  as   against  Voltaire.     Ine 
skeptical  line  of  argument  for  faith  had  been  already  employed 
by  Huet  and  Pascal  and  Fenelon,  with  visibly  small  success ; 
Berkeley  had  achieved  nothing  with  it  as  against  English  deism  , 
and  Butler  had  no  such  effect  in  his  day  in  England  as  to  induce 
French  Catholics  to  use  him.    (He  does  not  appear  to  have  been 
translated  into  French  till  1821.)  ..... 

An  Oratorian  priest,  again,  translated  the  anti-deistic  essays 
of  President  Forbes  ;  and  the  Perisies  Theologiques  relatives  aux 
erretirs  du  temps  of  P6re  Jamin  (1768;  4©  6dit.  1773J  were 


FEENCH  FREETHOUGHT 


253 


thought  worthy  of  being  translated  into  German,  poor  as  they 
were.  With  their  empty  affirmation  of  authority  they  suggest 
so  much  blank  cartridge,  which  could  avail  nothing  with  thinking 
men ;  and  here  doubtless  the  English  defence  makes  a  better 
impression.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  Voltaire  circulated  widely 
in  England,  and  was  no  better  answered  there  than  in  France. 
His  attack  was.  in  truth,  at  many  points  peculiarly  baffling, 
were  it  only  by  its  inimitable  wit.  The  Enghsh  replies  to 
Spinoza,  again,  were  as  entirely  inefficient  or  deficient  as  the 
French ;  the  only  intelligent  English  answers  to  Hume  on 
Miracles  (the  replies  on  other  issues  were  of  no  account)  made 
use  of  the  French  investigations  of  the  Jansenist  miracles ;  and 
the  replies  to  Gibbon  were  in  general  ignominious  failures. 

Finally,  though  the  deeper  reasonings  of  Diderot  were  over 
the  heads  alike  of  the  French  and  the  English  clergy,  the 
Systeme  de  la  Nature  of  d'Holbach  was  met  skilfully  enough  at 
many  points  by  G.  J.  Holland  (1772),  who,  though  not  a  French- 
man, w^rote  excellent  French,  and  supplied  for  French  readers  a 
very  respectable  rejoinder;^  whereas  in  England  there  was 
practically  none.  In  this  case,  of  course,  the  defence  was 
deistic  ;  as  was  that  of  Voltaire,  who  criticized  d'Holbach  as 
Bolingbroke  attacked  Spinoza  and  Hobbes.  But  the  Examen 
die  Materialisme  of  the  Abb6  Bergier  (1771),  who  was  a  member 
of  the  Academy  of  Sciences,  was  at  least  as  good  as  anything 
that  could  then  have  been  done  in  the  Church  of  England  ;  and 
the  same  may  be  said  of  his  reply  to  Freret's  (really  Burigny's) 
Examen.  It  is  certainly  poor  enough  ;  but  Bishop  Watson  used 
some  of  its  arguments  for  his  reply  to  Paine.  Broadly  speaking, 
as  we  have  said,  much  more  of  French  than  of  English  intelli- 
gence had  been  turned  to  the  dispute  in  the  third  quarter  of  the 
century.  In  England,  political  and  industrial  discussion  relieved 
the  pressure  on  creed ;  in  France,  before  the  Revolution,  the 
whole  habit  of  absolutism  tended  to  restrict  discussion  to 
questions  of  creed  ;  and  the  attack  would  in  any  case  have  had 
the  best  of  it.  because  it  embodied  all  the  critical  forces  hitherto 
available.  The  controversy  thus  went  much  further  than  the 
pre-Humian  issues  raised  in  England  ;  and  the  English  ortho- 
doxy of  the  end  of  the  century  was,  in  comparison,  intellectually 
as  weak  as  politically  and  socially  it  w^as  strong.  In  France, 
from  the  first,  the  greater  intellectual  freedom  in  social  inter- 
course, exemplified  in  the  readiness  of  women  to  declare  them- 
selves freethinkers  (cp.  Jamin,  as  cited,  ch.  xix,  §  l).  would  have 
made  the  task  of  the  apologists  harder  even  had  they  been  more 
competent. 

16.  Above  the  scattered  band  of  minor  combatants  rises  a  group 

-nw, „T£.!f  J^^^^^^^'^i*^  ^°''^'  ^^*®^  having  been  praised  by  the  censor  and  registered  with 
ann««t  vof  ^'^^1'^  November,  1772.  was  officially  suppressed  on  Jan.  17. 1773,  and.  it  would 
appear,  reissued  in  that  year. 


254 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


FKENCH  FEEETHOUGHT 


255 


of  writers  of  special  power,  several  of  whom,  without  equalling 
Voltaire  in  ubiquity  of  influence,  rivalled  him  in  intellectual  power 
and  industry.  The  names  of  DiDEEOT.  D'HOLBACH,  D'Alembert, 
HelvETIUS,  and  CONDORCET  are  among  the  first  in  literary  France 
of  the  generation  before  the  Eevolution ;  after  them  come  VOLNEY 
and  DUPUIS  ;  and  in  touch  with  the  whole  series  stands  the  line 
of  great  mathematicians  and  physicists  (to  which  also  belongs 
D'Alembert),  LAPLACE,  LAGRANGE,  Lalande,  DelAMBRE.  When 
to  these  we  add  the  names  of  MONTESQUIEU,  BUFFON,  Chamfort. 
ElVAROL,  Vauvenargues  ;  of  the  materialists  LA  Mettrie  and 
Cabanis  •  of  the  philosophers  CoNDiLLAC  and  Destutt  de  Tracy  ; 
of  the  historian  Eaynal  ;  of  the  poet  Andre  Chenier  ;  of  the 

politicians  TURGOT.  MiRABEAU,  DANTON,  DESMOULINS,  EOBES- 
PIERRE— all  (save  perhaps  Eaynal)  deists  or  else  pantheists  or 
atheists^it  becomes  clear  that  the  intelligence  of  France  was 
predominantly  rationaUstic  before  the  Eevolution,  though  the  mass 
of  the  nation  certainly  was  not. 

It  is  necessary  to  deprecate  Mr.  Lecky's  statement  [Ration- 
alism in  Europe,  i,  176)  that  "  Eaynal  has  taken,  with  Diderot, 
a  place  in  French  Uterature  which  is  probably  permanent   --an 
estimate  as  far  astray  as  the  declaration  on  the  same  page  that 
the  English  deists  are  buried  in  "  unbroken  silence."     Eaynal  s 
vogue  in  his  day  was  indeed    immense  (cp.  Morley,  DidcroU 
ch.  xv) ;  and  Edmond  Scherer  {Etudes  sur  la  litt.  du  18e  Siecle, 
1891   pp.  277-78)  held  that  Eaynal's  Histoire  philosopJiique  des 
deux  hides  had  had  more  influence  on  the  French  Eevolution 
than  even  Eousseau's  Contrat  Social     But  the  book  has  long 
been   discredited   (cp.    Scherer,   pp.    275-76).     A  biographical 
Dictionary  of  1844  spoke  of  it  as  *  cet  ouvrage  ampoule  qu  on 
ne  lit  pas  aujourd'hui."      Although   the   first  edition    {iiiW 
passed  the  censure  only  by  means  of  bribery,  and  the  second 
(1780)  was   publicly  burned,  and  its   author   forced  to  leave 
France,  he  was  said  to  reject,  in  religion,  *'  only  the  pope,  hell, 
and  monks"  (Scherer.  p.  286) ;  and  most  of  the  anti-religious 
declamation  in  the  first  edition  of  the  Histoire  is  said  to  bo 
from  the  pen  of  Diderot,  who  wrote  it  very  much  at  random, 
at  Eaynal's  request. 
No  list  of  orthodox  names  remotely  comparable  with  these  can 
be  drawn   from   the  literature  of   France,  or  indeed  of  any  other 
country  of  that  time.     JEAN  JACQUES  EOUSSEAU  (1712-1778),  the 
one  other  pre-eminent  figure,  though  not  an  anti-Christian  propa- 
gandist, is  distinctly  on  the  side  of  deism.     In  the  Contrat  Social. 

1  Iiiv.  i,  oh.  viil. 


V 


writing  with  express  approbation  of  Hobbes,  he  declares  that  the 
Christian  law  is  at  bottom  more  injurious  than  useful  to  the  sound 
constitution  of  the  State  ";  and  even  the  famous  Confession  of  Faith 
of  a  Savoyard  Vicar  in  the  Emile  is  anti-revelationist,  and  practically 
anti-clerical.  He  was  accordingly  anathematized  by  the  Sorbonne, 
which  found  in  Emile  nineteen  heresies ;  the  book  was  seized  and 
burned  both  at  Paris  and  at  Geneva  within  a  few  weeks  of  its 
appearance,^  and  the  author  decreed  to  be  arrested ;  even  the 
Contrat  Social  was  seized  and  its  vendors  imprisoned.  All  the 
while  he  had  maintained  in  Emile  doctrines  of  the  usefulness  of 
reUgious  delusion  and  fanaticism.  Still,  although  his  temperamental 
way  of  regarding  things  has  a  clear  affinity  with  some  later  religious 
philosophy  of  a  more  systematic  sort,  he  undoubtedly  made  for 
freethought  as  well  as  for  the  revolutionary  spirit  in  general.  Thus 
the  cause  of  Christianity  stood  almost  denuded  of  intellectually 
eminent  adherents  in  the  France  of  1789 ;  for  even  among  the 
writers  who  had  dealt  with  public  questions  without  discussing 
rehgion,  or  who  had  criticized  Eousseau  and  the  philosophes — as  the 
Abbes  Mably,  Morellet,  Millot — the  tone  was  essentially  rationalistic. 

It  has  been  justly  enough  argued,  concerning  Eousseau  (see 
below,  p.  287),  that  the  generation  of  the  Eevolution  made  him 
its  prophet  in  his  own  despite,  and  that  had  he  lived  twenty 
years  longer  he  would  have  been  its  vehement  adversary.  But 
this  does  not  alter  the  facts  as  to  his  influence.  A  great  writer 
of  emotional  genius,  like  Eousseau,  inevitably  impels  men 
beyond  the  range  of  his  own  ideals,  as  in  recent  times  Euskin 
and^  Tolstoy,  both  anti-Sociahsts,  have  led  thousands  towards 
Socialism.  In  his  own  generation  and  the  next,  Eousseau 
counted  essentially  for  criticism  of  the  existing  order  ;  and  it 
was  the  revolutionaries,  never  the  conservatives,  who  acclaimed 
him.  De  Tocqueville  (ffis^.  pJiilos.  du  regne  de  Louis  XV,  1849, 
i,  33)  speaks  of  his  "  impi6t6  dogmatique."  Martin  du  Theil, 
in  his  /.  /.  Rousseau  apologiste  de  la  religion  chretienne  (2e  6dit. 
1840),  makes  out  his  case  by  identifying  emotional  deism  with 
Christianity,  as  did  Eousseau  himself  when  he  insisted  that 
the  true  Christianity  is  only  natural  religion  well  explained." 
Eousseau's  praise  of  the  gospel  and  of  the  character  of  Jesus 
was  such  as  many  deists  acquiesced  in.  Similar  language,  in 
the  mouth  of  Matthew  Arnold,  gave  rather  more  offence  to 
Gladstone,  as  a  believing  Christian,  than  did  the  language  of 
simple  unbehef ;  and  a  recent  Christian  polemist,  at  the  close 
of  a  copious  monograph,  has  repudiated  the  association  of 
Eousseau  with  the  faith  (see  J.  F.  Nourrisson,  /.  /.  Rousseau 
et  le  Roicsseauisme,  1903,  p.  497  sq.).     What  is  true  of  him  is 

1  Bachaumont,  juin  22 ;  juillet  9.  20,  27;  novembre  14, 1762. 


256 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


that  he  was  more  religiously  a  theist   than  Voltaire,  whose 
imoeachment  of  Providence  in  the  poem  on  the  Earthquake  of 
Lisbon  he  sought  strenuously  though  not  very  persuasively  to 
refute  in  a  letter  to  the  author.     But,  with  all  liis  manifold 
inconsistencies,  which   may  be  worked  down  to  the  neurosis 
so  painfully  manifest  in  his  life   and  in  his  relations  to  his 
contemporaries,  he  never  writes  as  a  believer  m  the  dogmas 
of  Christianity  or  in  the  principle  of  revelation  ;  and  it  was  as 
a  deist  that  he  was  recognized  by  his  Christian  contemporaries. 
A  demi-Christian  is  all  that  Michelet  will  call  him      His  com- 
patriot the  Swiss  pastor  Roustan,  located  in  London,  directed 
against  him  his  Offranda  aux  Autels  et  a  la  Patne,  ou  Defense 
du  Christianisme  (1764),  regarding  him  as  an  assailant.    The 
work  of  the  Abb6  Bergier,  Le  Deisms  refuU  par  hii-meme  (176o 
and  later),  takes  the  form  of  letters  addressed  to  Rousseau,  and 
is  throughout  an  attack  on  his  works    especially  the  Lmde. 
When,  therefore.  Buckle  (1-vol.  ed.  P-  475)  speaks  of  him  as 
not  having  attacked  Christianity,  and  Lord  Morley  (Bomseau, 
ch  xiv)  treats  him  as  creating  a  religious  reaction  agamst  the 
deists,  they  do  not  fully  represent  his  influence  on  his  time. 
As  we  have  seen,  he  stimulated  Voltaire  to  new  audacities  by 
his  example. 
17    An  interlude  in  the  critical  campaign,  little  noticed  at  the 
time,   developed    importance  a   generation  later.     In    1753  Jean 
ASTRUC,  doctor  of    medicine.  pubHshed  after  long   hesitation  his 
Conjectures  on  the  original  documents  which   Moses  seems  to  te 
used  in  composing  the  book  of  Genesis.     Only  m  respect  -of  his  flash 
of  insight  into  the  composite  structure  of  the  Pentateuch  was  As  " 
a  freethinker.     His  hesitation  to  publish  was  due  to  ^^^^^^'f^ 
Uspretendus  esprUs  forts  might  make  a  ^^d  ^se  of  his  work  .and  h 
was  quite  satisfied  that  Moses  was  the  author  of  the  P«°tateu  h  a 
Tstands.     The  denial  of  that  authorship,  implied  m  the  -« 
of  Hobbes  and  Spinoza,  he  described  as      the  disease  of  th    las 
century."     This  attitude  may  explain  the  lack  of  interest  in  Astiu  s 
work  shown  by  the  freethinkers  of  the  time.'     Nonetheless,  by  li 
perception  of  the  clue  given  by  the  narrative  use  of  the  two  nam 
Yahweh  and  Elohim  in  Genesis,  he  laid  a  new  fo-^f '  ^  ^^^^^^ 
Higher  Criticism  of  the  Bible  in  modern  times  -/y.-^^'^JfS  f .^I^; 
Spfnoza  and  on  Simon.     For  freethought  he  had      budded  better 

than  he  knew." 

.  Grimm  notices  Astrnc's  Dissertations  ™; '[""r^'S-^rArhts'd^^^^^^ 

emport6.  et  d'une  avarice  sprdide.      f^^^'J^yVp^nits  in  their  day  of  power.    Corr.  v.  Je- 
"Zt  le  d^vot-  and  attached  himself  lll^^^lllZsiofhS^^^^^^ 
But  Grimm  was  a  man  of  many  naiies.  ana  uuu  uuo  uoo- 


FKENCH  FKEETHOUGHT 


257 


18.  In  the  select  Parisian  arena  of  the  Academie,  the  intellectual 
movement  of  the  age  is  as  it  were  dramatized ;  and  there  more  clearly 
than  in  the  hterary  record  we  can  trace  the  struggle  of  opinions,  from 
the  admission  of  Voltaire  (1746)  onwards.  In  the  old  days  the 
Academic  had  been  rather  the  home  of  convention,  royalism,  and 
orthodoxy  than  of  ideas,  though  before  Voltaire  there  were  some 
freethinking  members  of  the  lesser  Academies,  notably  Boindin. 
The  admission  of  Montesquieu  (1728),  after  much  opposition  from 
the  court,  preludes  a  new  era ;  and  from  the  entrance  of  Voltaire, 
fourteen  years  after  his  first  attempt,^  the  atmosphere  begins  per- 
ceptibly to  change.  When,  in  1727,  tlie  academician  Bonamy  had 
read  a  memoir  0?i  the  character  and  the  paganism  of  the  emperor 
Julian,  partly  vindicating  him  against  the  aspersions  of  the  Christian 
Fathers,  the  Academy  feared  to  print  the  paper,  though  its  author 
was  a  devout  CathoHc.^  When  the  Abbe  La  Bletterie,  also  orthodox, 
read  to  the  Academy  portions  of  his  Vie  de  Julien,  the  members  were 
not  now  scandalized,  though  the  Abb6's  Jansenism  moved  the  King 
to  veto  his  nomination.  So,  when  Blanchard  in  1735  read  a  memoir 
on  Les  exorcismes  magiques  there  was  much  trepidation  among  the 
members,  and  again  the  Secretary  inserted  merely  an  analysis, 
concluding  with  the  words  of  Philetas,  "  Believe  and  fear  God ; 
beware  of  questioning."^  Even  such  a  play  of  criticism  as  the 
challenging  of  the  early  history  of  Eome  by  L6vesque  de  Pouilly 
(brother  of  L^vesque  de  Burigny)  in  a  dissertation  before  the 
Academic  in  1722,  roused  the  fears  and  the  resentment  of  the 
orthodox ;  the  Abbe  Sallier,  in  undertaking  to  refute  him,  insinuated 
that  he  had  shown  a  spirit  which  might  be  dangerous  to  other 
beliefs  ;  and  whispers  of  atheism  passed  among  the  academicians.^ 
Pouilly,  who  had  been  made  a  freethinker  by  English  contacts,  went 
again  to  England  later,  and  spent  his  last  years  at  Eheims.^  His 
thesis  was  much  more  powerfully  sustained  in  1738  by  Beaufort,  in 
the  famous  dissertation  Sur  V incertitude  des  cijiq  premiers  siecles  de 
Vhistoire  romaine ;  but  Beaufort  was  of  a  refugee-Huguenot  stock  ; 
his  book  was  pubHshed,  under  his  initials,  at  Utrecht ;  and  not  till 
1753  did  the  Academic  award  him  a  medal — on  the  score  of  an 
earlier  treatise.  And  in  1748  the  Beligio  veterum  Persarum  of  the 
English  Orientahst  Hyde,  published  as  long  before  as  1700,  found  a 

a  &i?^^"P'  ^'nncienne  Academie  des  inscrwtions  et  belles-lettres,  1864,  pp.  55-56. 
Mpcno r/i    u  ^*  ^^''^°,^^  stratagems  to  secure  election  are  not  to  his  credit.    See  Paul 
toh^vl:^iw.Vf  ^^  ^  ^(^(^demie  frangaise,  1857,  pp.  68-74.    But  even  Montesquieu  is  said 

3  Mo  M.,?  r .     ^°  ^°"^®  questionable  devices  for  the  same  end.    Id.  p.  62. 

4  TV?  ,y^    ""^*^«^^«  Academie  des  inscriptions,  pp.  ,54-55.  94,  308. 

w  here  he  was  lieutenant-g6n^ral,  and  died  in  1750. 
VOL.    II  g 


258 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


vehement  assailant  within  the  Academy  in  the  AhU  Foucher,  who 
saw  danger  in  a  favourable  view  of  any  heathen  religion. 

Yet  even  in  the  time  of  Louis  XIV  the  Abbo  Mongault,  tutor  of 
the  son  of  the  Regent,  and  noted  alike  for  his  private  freethinking 
and  for  the  rigid  orthodoxy  which  he  instilled  into  his  pupil,  treated 
the   historic   subject   of    the   divine   honours   rendered   to   Roman 
governors  with  such  latitude  as  to  elicit  from  Freret,  in  his  doge  of 
Mongault,  the  remark  that  the  tutor  had  reserved  to  himself  a  liberty 
of  thought  which  he  doubtless  felt  to  be  dangerous  in  a  prince/ 
And  after  1750  the  old  order  can  be  seen  passing  away.    D'Argenson 
notes  in  his  diary  in  1754  :  "  I  observe  in  the  Academic  de  belles- 
lettres,  of  which  I  am  a  member,  that  there  begins  to  be  a  decided 
stir  against  the  priests.     It  began  to  show  itself  at  the  death  of 
Boindin,  to  whom  our  bigots  refused  a  service  at  the  Oratory  and  a 
public  commemoration.     Our  deist  philosophers  were  shocked,  and 
ever  since,  at  each  election,  they  are  on  guard  against  the  priests  and 
the  bigots.     Nowhere  is  this  division  so  marked,  and  it  begins  to 
bear  fruits."'     The  old  statesman  indicates  his  own  sympathies  by 
adding :  "  Why  has  a  bad  name  been  made  of  the  title  of  deist  ?     It 
is  that  of  those  who  have  true  religion  in  their  hearts,  and  who  have 
abjured  a  superstition  that  is  destructive  to  the  whole  world."     It 
was  in  this  year  that  D'xUembert,  who  took  nearly  as  much  pains  to 
stay  out  as  Voltaire  had  done  to  enter,'  was  elected  a  member ;  and 
with  two  leading  encyclopedistes  in  the  forty,  and  a  friendly  abb6 
(Duclos)  in  the  secretaryship  (1755),  and  another  zealous  freethinker, 
L^vesque  de  Burigny,  admitted  in  1756,'  the  fortunes  of  freethought 
were  visibly  rising.     Its  influence  was  thrown  on  the  side  of  the 
academic  orator  Thomas,  a  sincere  believer  but  a  hater  of  all  perse- 
cution, and  as  such  offensive  to  the  Church  party.' 

19.  In  1759  there  came  a  check.  The  Encyclopedie,  which  had 
been  allowed  to  resume  publication  after  its  first  suppression  in 
1752,  was  again  stopped;  and  the  battle  between  philosophes  and 
fanatics,  dramatized  for  the  time  being  in  Palissot's  comedy  Lcs 
Philosophes  and  in  Voltaire's  rejoinder  to  Fr^ron,  L'Ecossaise,  came 
to  be  fought  out  in  the  Academy  itself.  The  poet  Lefranc  de 
Pompignan,'  elected  in  1759  without  any  opposition  from  the  free- 
thinkers,  had  in  his  youth  translated  Pope's  "  Deist's  Prayer,"  and 
had  suffered  for  it  to  the  extent  of  being  deprived  by  D'Aguesseau  of 


1  Maury,  pp.  53.  86-87.  I  Memotres.ed  Jannet.  iv.  181. 

8  Cp.  Mesnard,  as  cited,  pp.  79-80.  ,     ^  *  ^L^"*^^'  ^'  ^^^'i   „^f  „„„  nf  the 

s  Id,  pp.  82-84.    It  is  noteworthy  that  the  orthodox  Thomas,  and  not  any  ^ofW^^ 

philosophes,  was  the  first  to  impeach  the  Government  in  academic  discourses. 

pp.  82-84.  100  sq. 

fi  "  L'excellent  Pompignan,"  M.  Lanson  calls  him.  p.  723. 


Mesnard, 


FKENCH  FEEETHOUGHT 


259 


his  oflQcial  charge'  for  six  months.  With  such  a  past,  with  a  keen 
concern  for  status,  and  with  a  character  that  did  not  stick  at  tergi- 
versation, Pompignan  saw  fit  to  signalize  his  election  by  making  his 
discours  do  reception  (March,  1760)  a  violent  attack  on  the  whole 
philosophic  school,  which,  in  his  conclusion,  he  declared  to  be  under- 
mining "equally  the  throne  and  the  altar."  The  academicians 
heard  him  out  in  perfect  silence,  leaving  it  to  the  few  pietists 
among  the  audience  to  applaud ;  but  as  soon  as  the  reports  reached 
Ferney  there  began  the  vengeance  of  Voltaire.  First  came  a  leaflet 
of  stinging  sentences,  each  beginning  with  Quand  :  "  When  one  has 
translated  and  even  exaggerated  the  *  Deist's  Prayer  '  composed  by 

^°PQ »"  and   so   on.     The  maddened   Pompignan   addressed   a 

fatuous  memorial  to  the  King  (who  notoriously  hated  the  philosophes, 
and  had  assented  only  under  petticoat  influence  to  Voltaire's  elec- 
tion') ;  and,  presuming  to  print  it  without  the  usual  official  sanction, 
suftered  at  the  hands  of  Malesherbes  the  blow  of  having  the  printer's 
plant  smashed.  Other  combatants  entered  the  fray.  Voltaire's 
leaflet  "les  quand'"  was  followed  by  "les  si,  les  pour,  les  qui,  les 
quoi,  les  car,  les  a/i .' "— by  him  or  others— and  the  master-mocker 
produced  in  swift  succession  three  satires  in  verse,^  all  accompanied 
by  murderous  prose  annotations.  The  speedy  result  was  Pompignan's 
retirement  into  provincial  Hfe.  He  could  not  face  the  merciless  hail 
of  rejoinders  ;  and  when  at  his  death,  twenty-five  years  later,  the 
Abb6  Maury  had  to  pronounce  his  eloge,  the  mention  of  his  famous 
humiliation  was  hardly  tempered  by  compassion.^ 

20.  Voltaire  could  not  compass,  as  he  for  a  time  schemed,  the 
election  of  Diderot ;  but  other  philosophes  of  less  note  entered  from 
time  to  time  ;^  Marmonfcel  was  elected  in  1763  ;  and  when  in  1764 
the  Academy's  prize  for  poetry  was  given  to  Chamfort  for  a  piece 
which  savoured  of  what  were  then  called  "  the  detestable  principles 
of  Montesquieu,  Kousseau,  and  Helvetius,"  and  in  1768  its  prize 
for  eloquence  went  to  the  same  writer,  the  society  as  a  whole  had 
acquired  a  certain  character  for  impiety.*^  In  1767  there  had 
occurred  the  famous  ecclesiastical  explosion  over  Marmontel's 
philosophic  romance  Belisaire,  a  performance  in  which  it  is  some- 
what difficult  to-day  to  detect  any  exciting  quality.  It  was  by  a 
chapter  in  praise  of   toleration  that  the  "universal  and  mediocre 


T^.-j,    .I^es  provisions  de  sa  charge  pendant  six  mois  en  1736."    Voltaire,  Lettre  k  Mme. 

^Pinay.  13  juin,  1760.    *'  Je  le  servis  dans  cette  affaire."  adds  Voltaire. 

^  Mesnard.  pp.  67,  71,  73,  89. 
17 , ,  f*^  Pauvre  Biable,  ouvrage  en  vers  ais^s  de  feu  M.  Vade,  mis  en  lumUre  par  Catherine 

iH'/*  co?/st7je  (falsely  dated  1758) ;  La  VaniU ;  and  Le  Busse  d  Paris. 


Mesnard,  pp.  86-92." 


260 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


Marmontel"'  secured  from  the  Sorbonne  the  finest  advertisement 
ever  given  to  a  work  of  fiction,  the  ecclesiastics  of  the  old  school 
being  still  too  thoroughly  steeped  in  the  past  to  realize  that  a  gospel 
of  persecution  was  a  bad  warcry  for  a  rehgion  that  was  being  more 
and  more  put  on  the  defensive.     Only  an  angry  fear  before  the 
rising  flood  of  unlicensed  literature,  combining  with  the  long-baffled 
desire  to  strike  some  blow  at  freethinking,  could  have  moved  the 
Sorbonne  to  select  for  censure  the  duly  licensed  work''  of  a  popular 
academician  and  novelist ;  and  it  should  be  remembered  that  it  was 
at  a  time  of  great  activity  in  the  unlicensed  production  of  freethink- 
ing literature  that  the  attack  was  made.     The  blow  recoiled  signally. 
The  book  was  of  course  promptly  translated  into  all  the  languages 
of  Europe,  seUing  by  tens  of  thousands;*  and  two  sovereigns  took 
occasion  to  give  it  their  express  approval.     These  were  the  Empress 
Catherine  (who  caused  the  book  to  be  translated  by  members  of 
her  court  while  she  was  making  a  tour  of  her  empire,  she  herself 
taking  a  chapter) ,  and  the  Empress  Maria-Theresa.     From  Catherine, 
herself  a  freethinker,  the  approbation  might  have  been  expected ; 
but  the  known  orthodoxy  and  austerity  of  Maria-Theresa  made  her 
support  the  more  telling.     In  France  a  small  literary  tempest  raged 
for  a  year.     Marmontel  published  his  correspondence  with  the  syndic 
of  the  Sorbonne  and  with  Voltaire  ;  and  in  all  there  appeared  some 
dozen  documents  pro  and  con,  among  them  an  anonymous  satire  by 
Turgot,  Les  xxxvii  verites  oppos^es  mix  xxxvii  impiHes  de_  Bilisairc, 
"Par  un  Bachelier  Ubiquiste,'"  which,  with  the  contributions  of 
Yoltaire,  gave  the  victim  very  much  the  best  of  the  battle. 

21.  Alongside  of  the  more  strictly  literary  or  humanist  move- 
ment, too,  there  went  on  one  of  a  scientific  kind,  which  divided  into 
two  lines,  a  speculative  and  a  practical.  On  the  former  the  free- 
lance philosopher  JULIEN  Offkay  LA  Mettrie  gave  a  powerful 
initial  push  by  his  materialistic  theses,  in  which  a  medical  know- 
ledge that  for  the  time  was  advanced  is  applied  with  a  very  keen 
if  unsystematic  reasoning  faculty  to  the  primary  problem  of  mind 
and  body  ;  and  others  after  him  continued  the  impulse.  La  Mettrie 
produced  his  Natural  History  of  the  Mind  in  1745  ;'  and  in  1746 

1  Lanson,  Hist,  de  la  liit.franqaise,  p.  725.  rx  <•      /i  u .  n„«fi.ov  cova 

2  The  formal  approval  of  a  Sorbonmst  was  necessary.  One  refused  it;  anottier  ga\e 
it.    Marmontel.  Jkf^nioires,  1804,  iii,  35-36.  .         -.i,  fv,«  o,,r,/i,P 

8  Marmontel  mentions  that  while  he  was  still  discussing  a  compromise  with  the  syndic 
of  the  Sorbonne.  40.000  copies  had  been  sold  throughout  Europe.    M^moires,  iii.  39. 

*  This  satire  was  taken  by  the  German  freethinker  Eberhard.  in  liis  New  Apology  for 
Socrates,  as  the  actual  publication  of  the  Sorbonne.    Barbier.  Btct.  des  Ouvr.  anaii  et 

Pseud.,  26  edit,  i,  468.  ,      tt-  ^   •  4       n    ^i, 

fi  Published  pseudonymously  as  a  translation  from  the  English  :  HiHtoire  natureiie  ae 
I'dme.  traduite  de  I'Anglais  de  M.  Charp.  par  feu  M.  H — :•  de  I'Acad^mie  des  Sciences. 
A  La  Haye,  1745.    Republished  under  lihe  title  Traits  de  I'Ame. 


FKENCH  FREETHOUGHT 


261 


appeared  the  Essay  on  the  Origiji  of  Human  Knoiuledge  of  the  Abbe 
CONDILLAC,  both  essentially  rationalistic  and  anti-theological  works, 
though  differing  in  their  psychological  positions,  Condillac  being  a 
non-materialist,  though  a  strong  upholder  of  **  sensism."  La  Mettrie 
followed  up  his  doctrine  with  the  more  definitely  materialistic  but 
less  heedfully  planned  works,  L'Homme  Plante  and  UHomme 
Machine  (1748),  the  second  of  which,  published  at  Leyden^  and 
wickedly  dedicated  to  the  pious  Baron  von  Haller,  was  burned  by 
order  of  the  magistrates,  its  author  being  at  the  same  time  expelled 
from  Holland.  Both  books  are  remarkable  for  their  originality  of 
thought,  biological  and  ethical.  Though  La  Mettrie  professed  to 
think  the  "greatest  degree  of  probability"  was  in  favour  of  the 
existence  of  a  personal  God,^  his  other  writings  gave  small  support 
to  the  hypothesis ;  and  even  in  putting  it  he  rejects  any  inference 
as  to  worship.  And  he  goes  on  to  quote  very  placidly  an  atheist 
who  insists  that  only  an  atheistic  world  can  attain  to  happiness. 
It  is  notable  that  he,  the  typical  materialist  of  his  age,  seems  to 
have  been  one  of  its  kindliest  men,  by  the  consent  of  all  who  knew 
him,^  though  heedless  in  his  life  to  the  point  of  ending  it  by  eating 
a  monstrous  meal  out  of  bravado. 

The  conventional  denunciation  of  La  Mettrie  (endorsed  by 
Lord  Morley,  Voltaire,  p.  122)  proceeds  ostensibly  upon  those  of 
his  writings  in  which  he  discussed  sexual  questions  with  absolute 
scientific  freedom.  He,  however,  insisted  that  his  theoretic  dis- 
cussion had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  his  practice  ;  and  there 
is  no  evidence  that  he  lived  otherwise  than  as  most  men  did  in 
his  age,  and  ours.  Still,  the  severe  censure  passed  on  him  by 
Diderot  {Essai  sur  les  Hgnes  de  Claitde  et  de  Neron,  ed.  1782,  ii, 
22-24)  seems  to  convict  him  of  at  least  levity  of  character. 
Voltaire  several  times  holds  the  same  tone.  But  Diderot  writes 
so  angrily  that  his  verdict  incurs  suspicion. 

As  Lange  notes,  there  has  been  much  loose  generalization  as 
to  the  place  and  bearing  of  La  Mettrie  in  the  history  of  French 
thought.  Hettner,  who  apparently  had  not  thought  it  worth 
while  to  read  him,  has  ascribed  his  mental  movement  to  the 
influence  of  Diderot's  Pens6es  philosophiques  (1746),  whereas  it 
had  begun  in  his  own  Histoire  naturelle  de  I'chne,  published  a 
year  before.     La  Mettrie' s  originality  and  influence  in  general 

^  By  Elie  Luzac,  to  whom  is  ascribed  the  reply  entitled  L'Homme  plus  Que  Machine 
(1748  also).  This  is  printed  in  the  iEuvres  philosophiques  of  La  Mettrie  as  if  it  were  his  ; 
and  Lange  (i,  420)  seems  to  think  it  was.  But  the  bibliographers  ascribe  it  to  Luzac,  who 
was  a  man  of  culture  and  ability. 

'2  L' Homme  Machine,  ed.  Assezat,  1865.  p.  97  ;  CEuv.  philos.  ed.  1774,  iii.  51. 

3  Lange,  Oesch.  des  Materialismus,  i.  362  sq.  (Eng.  tr.  ii,  78-80);  Soury.  Br^viare  de 
I' hist,  du  mat^rialisme,  pp.  663,  666-68;  Voltaire,  Homelie  sur  I'atheisme,  end.  Frederick 
the  Great,  who  gave  La  Mettrie  harbourage,  support,  and  friendship,  and  who  was  not  a 
bad  judge  of  men.  wrote  and  read  in  the  Berlin  Academy  the  funeral  eloge  of  La  Mettrie, 
and  pronounced  him  "  une  ame  pure  et  un  cocur  serviable."    By  "  pure  "  he  meant  sincere. 


262  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 

have  been  underestimated  as  a  result  of  the  hostility  set  up  by 
disparagement  of  his  character.     The  idea  of  a  fundamental 
unity  of  type  in  nature— an  idea  underlying  all  the  successive 
steps  of  Lamarck,  Geofi'roy  Saint-Hilaire,  Goethe,  and  others, 
towards  the  complete  conception  of  evolution— is  set  forth  by 
him  in  UHomme  Plante  in  1748,  the  year  in  which  appeared 
De  Maillet's  TelUavied.     Buffon  follows  in  time  as  in  thought, 
only  beginning  his  great  work  in  1749 ;  Maupertuis,  with  his 
pseudonymous  dissertation  on  the  Universal  system  of  Nature. 
applies  La  Mettrie's  conception  in  1751 ;  and  Diderot's  Pensdes 
sur  r interpretation  dc   la  nattire,  stimulated   by  Maupertuis, 
appeared  only  in  1754.     La  Mettrie  proceeded  from  the  classi- 
fication of  Linna3us,  but  did  not  there  find  his  idea.     In  the 
words  of  Lange,  "these  forgotten  writings  are  in  nowise  so 
empty  and  superficial  as  is  commonly  assumed."     Gesch.  des 
Materialismus,  i,  328-29.     Lange  seems  to  have  been  the  first 
to  make  a  judicial  study  of  La  Mettrie's  work,  as  distinguished 
from  the  scandals  about  his  character. 

22.  A  more  general  influence,  naturally,  attached  to  the  simple 
concrete   handling   of    scientific   problems.     The   interest   in   such 
questions,  noticeable  in  England  at  the  Restoration  and  radiating 
thence,  is  seen  widely  diffused  in  France  after  the  publication  of 
Fontenelle's  Entreiicns,  and  thenceforward  it  rapidly  strengthens. 
Barren  theological  disputations  set  men  not  merely  against  theology, 
but  upon  the  study  of  Nature,  where  real  knowledge  was  visibly 
possible.     To  a  certain  extent  the  study  took  openly  heretical  lines. 
The  Abbe  Lenglet  du  Fresnoy,  who  was  four  times  imprisoned  in 
the  Bastille,  supplied  material  of  which  D'xVrgens  made  much  use, 
tending  to  overthrow  the  Biblical  chronology  and  to  discredit  the 
story  of  the  Flood.'     Benolt  de  Maillet  (1656-1738),  who  had  been 
for  fifteen  years  inspector  of  the  French  estabhshments  in  Egypt 
and  Barbary,left  for  posthumous  pubhcation  (1748)  a  work  of  which 
the  first  title  was  an  anagram  of  his  name,  Telliamed,  on  Entretiens 
d'un  vliilosophc  indicn  avec  tin  missionaire  franqais.    Of  this  treatise 
the  thesis  is  that  the  shell  deposits  in  the  Alps  and  elsewhere  showed 
the  sea  to  have  been  where  land  now  was ;  and  that  the  rocks  were 
gradually  deposited  in  their  different  kinds  in  the  fashion  in  which 
even  now  are  being  formed  mud,  sand,  and  shingle.     De  Maillet  had 
thus  anticipated  the  central  conception  of  modern  geology,  albeit 
retaining  many  traditional  delusions.     His  abstention  from  publica- 
tion during  his  lifetime  testifies  to  his  sense  of  the  danger  he  under- 
went, the  treatise  having  been  printed  by  him  only  in  1735,  at  the 

I  aalchi.  Leaves  sur  le  DHsme,  1759,  pp.  177, 197,  239,  283  sq. 


FRENCH  FREETHOUGHT 


263 


age  of  seventy-nine  ;  and  not  till  ten  years  after  his  death  was  it 
given  to  the  world,  with  "  a  preface  and  dedication  so  worded  as,  in 
case  of  necessity,  to  give  the  printer  a  fair  chance  of  falling  back  on 
the  excuse  that  the  work  was  intended  for  a  merejetc  d'esprit^  ^ 

The  thesis  was  adopted,  indeed  plagiarized,^  by  Mirabaud  in  his 
Le  Monde,  son  origine  et  son  antiquitd  (1751).  Strangely  enough, 
Voltaire  refused  to  be  convinced,  and  offered  amazing  suggestions  as 
to  the  possible  deposit  of  shells  by  pilgrims.^  It  is  not  unhkely  that 
it  was  Voltaire's  opposition  rather  than  any  orthodox  argumentation 
that  retarded  in  France  the  acceptance  of  an  evolutionary  view  of 
the  origin  of  the  earth  and  of  life.  It  probably  had  a  more  practical 
effect  on  scientific  thought  in  England* — at  least  as  regards  geology : 
its  speculations  on  the  modification  of  species,  which  loosely  but 
noticeably  anticipate  some  of  the  inferences  of  Darwin,  found  no 
acceptance  anywhere  till  Lamarck.  In  the  opinion  of  Huxley,  the 
speculations  of  Robinet,  in  the  next  generation,  **  are  rather  behind 
than  in  advance  of  those  of  De  Maillet  ";^  and  it  may  be  added  that 
the  former,  with  his  pet  theory  that  all  Nature  is  "  animated,"  and 
that  the  stars  and  planets  have  the  faculty  of  reproducing  themselves 
like  animals,  wandered  as  far  from  sound  bases  as  De  Maillet  ever 
did.  The  very  form  of  De  Maillet's  work,  indeed,  was  not  favourable 
to  its  serious  acceptance ;  and  in  his  case,  as  in  those  of  so  many 
pioneers  of  new  ideas,  errors  and  extravagances  and  oversights  in 
regard  to  matters  of  detail  went  to  justify  "  practical  "  men  in 
dismissing  novel  speculations.  Needless  to  say,  the  common  run  of 
scientific  men  remained  largely  under  the  influence  of  religious  pre- 
suppositions in  science  even  when  they  had  turned  their  backs  on 
the  Church.  Nonetheless,  on  all  sides  the  study  of  natural  fact 
began  to  play  its  part  in  breaking  down  the  dominion  of  creed.  Even 
in  hidebound  Protestant  Switzerland,  the  sheer  ennui  of  Puritanism 
is  seen  driving  the  descendants  of  the  Huguenot  refugees  to  the 
physical  sciences  for  an  interest  and  an  occupation,  before  any  free- 
thinking  can  safely  be  avowed  ;  and  in  France,  as  Buckle  has  shown 
in  abundant  detail,  the  study  of  the  physical  sciences  became  for 
many  years  before  the  Revolution  almost  a  fashionable  mania.  And 
at  the  start  the  Church  had  contrived  that  such  study  should  rank 
as  unbelief,  and  so  make  unbelievers. 

1  Huxley,  essay  on  Darivin  on  the  Origin  of  Species;  R.  P.  A.  ed.  of  Twelve  Lectures  and 
Essays,  p.  94. 

2  See  the  parallel  passages  in  the  Lettres  Critiques  of  the  Abb6  Gauchat,  vol.  xv 
a761).  p.  192  SQ. 

3  See  his  essay  Des  Sirgularit/s  de  la  Nature,  ch.  xii,  and  his  Dissertation  sur  les 
changements  arrives  dam  notre  globe.  ^  Eng.  tr.  1750. 

i*  Essay  cited,  p.  96.    The  criticism  ignores  the  greater  comprehensiveness  of  Eobinet's 
survey  of  nature. 


"-'"'*•  *  ■ 


264 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


When  Buffon^  in  1749-50  published  his  Ilistoire  Naturellc,  the 
delight  which  was  given  to  most  readers  by  its  finished  style  was 
paralleled  by  the  ^vrath  which  its  TUorie  de  la  Terre  aroused  among 
the  clergy.  After  much  discussion  Buffon  received  early  in  1751 
from  the  Sorbonne  an  official  letter  specifying  as  reprehensible  in  his 
book  fourteen  propositions  which  he  was  invited  to  retract.  He 
stoically  obeyed  in  a  declaration  to  the  effect  that  he  had  "  no  inten- 
tion to  contradict  the  text  of  Scripture,"  and  that  he  believed  "  most 
firmly  all  there  related  about  the  creation,"  adding:  "I  abandon 
everything  in  my  book  respecting  the  formation  of  the  earth."  ^ 
Still  he  was  attacked  as  an  unbeliever  by  the  Bishop  of  Auxerre  in 
that  prelate's  pastoral  against  the  thesis  of  de  Prades.^  During  the 
rest  of  his  life  he  outwardly  conformed  to  religious  usage,  but  all 
men  knew  that  in  his  heart  he  believed  what  he  had  written  ;  and 
the  memory  of  the  affront  that  the  Church  had  thus  put  upon  so 
honoured  a  student  helped  to  identify  her  cause  no  less  with 
ignorance  than  with  insolence  and  oppression.  For  all  such  insults, 
and  for  the  long  roll  of  her  cruelties,  the  Church  was  soon  to  pay  a 
tremendous  penalty. 

23.  But  science,  like  theology,  had  its  schisms,  and  the  rational- 
izing camp  had  its  own  strifes.  Maupertuis,  for  instance,  is 
remembered  mainly  as  one  of  the  victims  o!  the  mockery  of 
Voltaire  (which  he  w^ell  earned  by  his  own  antagonism  at  the  court 
of  Frederick) ;  yet  he  was  really  an  energetic  man  of  s&ience,  and 
had  preceded  Voltaire  in  setting  up  in  France  the  Newtonian  against 
the  Cartesian  physics.  In  his  System  of  Nature*  (not  to  be  confused 
with  the  later  w^ork  of  d'Holbach  under  the  same  title)  he  in  1751 
propounded  a  new  version  of  the  hylozoisms  of  ancient  Greece; 
developed  the  idea  of  an  underlying  unity  in  the  forms  of  natural 
life,  already  propounded  by  La  Mettrie  in  his  L' Homme  Plants ; 
connected  it  with  Leibnitz's  formula  of  the  economy  of  nature 
("minimum  of  action" — the  germ  of  the  modern  "line  of  least 
resistance  "),  and  at  the  same  time  anticipated  some  of  the  special 
philosophic  positions  of  Kant.^  Diderot,  impressed  by  but  professedly 
dissenting  from  Maupertuis 's  Systerne  in  his  Pens6es  sur  VinterprUa- 
tion  de  la  nature  (1754),  promptly  pointed  out  that  the  conception 


*  George-Louis  Leclerc.  Comte  de  Buffon,  1707-1788. 

2  Lyell,  principles  of  Geology.  12th  ed.  1875.  i.  57-58. 

8  Suite  de  VApologie  de  M.  I'Abbe  De  Prades,  1752.  p.  37  sq. 

4  Difisertatio  inauaurctHs  metaphysica  de  universnli  natures  systemate,  published 
at  Gottingen  as  the  doctoral  thesis  of  an  imaginary  Dr.  Baumanu.  1751.  In  French, 
1753 

5  "soury.  p.  579.  The  later  speculationa  of  Maupertuis  by  fcbeir  extravagance  discredited 
the  earlier. 


FKENCH  FEEETHOUGHT 


265 


of  a  primordially  vitalized  atom  excluded  that  of  a  Creator,  and  for 
his  own  part  thereafter  took  that  standpoint.^ 

In  1754  came  the  Traite  des  Sensations  of  Condillac,  in  which  is 
most  systematically  developed  the  physio-psychological  conception 
of  man  as  an  "  animated  statue,"  of  which  the  thought  is  wholly 
conditioned  by  the  senses.     The  mode  of  approach  had  been  laid 
down   before   by   La   Mettrie,    by   Diderot,    and   by   Buffon;    and 
Condillac  is  rather  a  developer  and  systematizer  than  an  originator  ;^ 
but  in  this  case  the  process  of  unification  was  to  the  full  as  important 
as  the  first  steps  ;  ^  and  Condillac  has  an  importance  which  is  latterly 
being  rediscovered  by  the  school  of  Spencer  on  the  one  hand  and  by 
that  of  James  on  the  other.     Condillac,  commonly  termed  a  mate- 
rialist, no  more  held  the  legendary  materiahstic  view  than  any  other 
so  named  ;   and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  next  figure  in  the 
"materialistic"    series,  J.  B.  RoBlNET,   a   Frenchman   settled   at 
Amsterdam,   after   having  been,  it  is  said,  a  Jesuit.     His  Nature 
(4  vols.  1761-1768)  is  a  remarkable   attempt  to  reach  a  strictly 
naturahstic  conception  of   things/     But  he  is  a  theorist,  not  an 
investigator.     Even    in    his    fixed    idea   that    the   universe   is   an 
"  animal "  he  had  perhaps  a  premonition  of  the  modern  discovery 
of  the  immense  diffusion  of  bacterial  hfe ;  but  he  seems  to  have  had 
more  deriders  than  disciples.     He  founds  at  once  on  Descartes  and 
on  Leibnitz,  but  in  his  Philosophical  Consider atio7is  on  the  natural 
gradation  of  living  forms  (1768)  he  definitely  sets  aside  theism  as 
illusory,  and  puts  ethics  on  a  strictly  scientific  and  human  footing,^ 
extending  the  arguments  of  Hume  and  Hutcheson  somewhat  on  the 
lines  of  Mandeville.®    On  another  line  of  reasoning  a  similar  applica- 
tion of  Mandeville's  thesis  had  already  been  made  by  Helvetius 
in  his  Traits  de  V Esprit'^  (1758),  a  work  which  excited  a  hostility 
now  difficult  to  understand,  but  still  reflected  in  censures  no  less 
surprising. 

« 

One  of  the  worst  misrepresentations  in  theological  literature 
is  the  account  of  Helvetius  by  the  late  Principal  Cairns  {Unbelief 
in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  1881,  p.  158)  as  appealing  to  govern- 
ment "  to  promote  luxury,  and,  through  luxury,  public  good,  by 
abolishing  all  those  laws  that  cherish  a  false  modesty  and  restrain 

,    .'.."Scheinbar  bekampft  er  Maupertuis  desswsgen,  aber  im  geheimen  stimmt  er  ihm 
bei"  (Rosenkranz,  i,  144). 

1.^^^}^  should  be  noted  that  by  Condillac's  avowal  he  was  much  aided  by  his  friend 
Mdlle.  Ferrand. 

^  Cp.  R6thor6,  CondiUac,  on  Vempirisme  et  le  rationalisme,  1864,  ch.  i. 
fi  ?t^^^^^'  "•  ^'''  ^^  •  ^oury.  pp.  G03-44.  5  Soury,  pp.  596-600;  Lange.  ii,  27. 

°  Oddly  enough  he  became  ultimately  press  censor  I    He  lived  till  1820,  dying  at  Rennes 
at  the  age  of  85. 

■^  This  may  best  be  translated  Treatise  on  the  Mind.    The  English  translation  of  1759 
rep.  1807)  is  entitled  De  V Esprit :  or.  Essays  on  the  Mind,  etc. 


266  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

libertinage."    Helvefcius  simply  pressed  the  consequences  of  the 
existing  theory  of  luxury,  which  for  his  own  part  he  disclaimed. 
De  VEspnU  Disc,  ii,  ch.  xv.     Dr.  Piinjer    i  462)  falls  so    ar 
below  his  usual  standard  as  to  speak  of  Helv^tms  m  a  similar 
fashion.     As  against  such  detraction  it  is  fittmg  to  note  that 
Helv6tius,  like  La  Mettrie,  was  one  of  the  most  lovable  and  most 
beloved  men  of  his  time,  though,  like  him,  sufficiently  licentious 
in  his  youth. 
It  was  at  once  suppressed  by  royal  order  as  scandalous,  licentious, 
and  dangerous,  though  Helv^tius  held  a  post  at  court  as  maitre  d'hotel 
to  the  Queen.     Ordered  to  make  a  public  retractation,  he  did  so  in  a 
letter  addressed  to  a  Jesuit ;  and  this  being  deemed  insufficient,  he 
had  to  sign  another,  "  so  humihating,"  wrote  Grimm.      that  one 
would  not  have  been  astonished  to  see  a  man  take  refuge  with  the 
Hottentots  rather  than  put  his  name  to  such  avowals."     The  wits 
explained  that  the  censor  who  had  passfed  the  book,  being  an  official 
in  the  Bureau  of  Foreign  Affairs,  had  treated  De  V Esprit  as  belonging 
to  that  department.'    A  swarm  of  replies  appeared,  and  the  book  was 
formally  burnt,  with  Voltaire's  poem  Stir  la  loi  naticrelle,  and  several 
obscure  works  of  older  standing.'     The  Be  V Esprit,  appearing  along- 
side of  the  ever-advancing  Encyclopedie*  was  in  short  a  formidable 
challenge  to  the  powers  of  bigotry. 

Its  real  faults  are  lack  of  system,  undue  straining  after  popularity, 
some   hasty  generalization,  and  a  greater   concern   for   the  air  of 
paradox   than   for   persuasion;   but   it    abounds    in'acuteness   and 
critical  wisdom,  and  it  definitely  and  seriously  founds  public  ethics 
on  utility.     Its  most  serious  error,  the  assumption  that  all  men  are 
born  with  equal  faculties,  and  that  education  is  the  sole  differentiat- 
ing force,  was  repeated  in  our  own  age  by  John  Stuart  Mill ;  but  in 
Helv^tius  the  error  is  balanced  by  the  thoroughly  sound  and  pro- 
foundly important  thesis  that  the  general  superiorities  of  nations 
are  the  result  of  their  culture-conditions  and  politics.'     The  over- 
balance of  his  stress  on  self-interest'  is  an  error  easily  soluble.     On 
the  other  hand,  we  have  the  Memorable  testimony  of  Beccaria 
that  it  was  the  work  of  Helv^tius  that  inspired  him  to  his  great 
effort  for  the  humanizing  of  penal  laws  and  policy;'  and  the  only 

1  ?f7^^U^etl^^^^  declared  tha^^de^ot  h^d  coUaborated'in  i:)i'rf  spHt.  .  Tbis 

was  denied  b^GHiXw   o  aTrS  Diderot  and  Helv^ius  were  little  acQuainte.1. 

6  Cp.  Morley'8  criticism.  DtVZfrof.ed.  1884,  pp.  331-.iJ.  ,      .  .,      Crimes  and 

1  Beccaria'8  Letter  to  Morellet.  cited  in  ch.  i  of  J.  A.  Farrer  s  ed.  of  tbe  Yf^*S„,,i"nd 

P«niJS«.  p  6     It  is  noteworthy  that  the  partial  reform  effected  earlier  in  England 


FEENCH  FKEETHOUGHT 


267 


less  notable  testimony  of  Bentham  that  Helvetius  was  his  teacher 
and  inspirer.^  It  may  be  doubted  whether  any  such  fruits  can  be 
claimed  for  the  teachings  of  the  whole  of  the  orthodox  moralists  of 
the  age.  For  the  rest,  Helvetius  is  not  to  be  ranked  among  the 
great  abstract  thinkers  ;  but  it  is  noteworthy  that  his  thinking  went 
on  advancing  to  the  end.  Always  greatly  influenced  by  Voltaire, 
he  did  not  philosophically  harden  as  did  his  master ;  and  though  in 
his  posthumous  work,  Les  Progrds  de  la  Baison  da^is  la  recherche 
du  Vrai  (published  in  1775),  he  stands  for  deism  against  atheism, 
the  argument  ends  in  the  pantheism  to  which  Voltaire  had  once 
attained,  but  did  not  adhere. 

24.  Over  all  of  these  men,  and  even  in  some  measure  over 
Voltaire,  DiDEROT  (1713-1784)  stands  pre-eminent,  on  retrospect, 
for  variety  of  power  and  depth  and  subtlety  of  thought ;  though  for 
these  very  reasons,  as  well  as  because  some  of  his  most  masterly 
works  were  never  printed  in  his  lifetime,  he  was  less  of  a  recognized 
popular  force  than  some  of  his  friends.  In  his  own  mental  history 
he  reproduces  the  course  of  the  French  thought  of  his  time. 
Beginning  as  a  deist,  he  assailed  the  contemporary  materialists ;  in 
the  end,  with  whatever  of  inconsistency,  he  was  emphatically  an 
atheist  and  a  materialist.  One  of  his  most  intimate  friends  was 
Damilaville,  of  w^hom  Voltaire  speaks  as  a  vehement  anti-theist  ;^ 
and  his  biographer  Naigeon,  w^ho  at  times  overstated  his  positions 
but  always  revered  him,  was  the  most  zealous  atheist  of  his  day.  * 

Compare,  as  to  Diderot's  position,  Soury's  contention  (p.  577) 
that  we  shall  never  make  an  atheist  and  a  materialist  out  of 
"this  enthusiastic  artist,  this  poet-pantheist"  (citing  Eosen- 
kranz  in  support),  with  his  own  admissions,  pp.  589-90,  and 
with  Lord  Morley's  remarks,  pp.  33,  401,  418.  See  also  Lange, 
i,  310  sq.;  ii,  63  (Eng.  tr.  ii,  32,  256).  In  the  affectionate  eloge 
of  his  friend  Meister  (1786)  there  is  an  express  avowal  that  "  it 
had  been  much  to  be  desired  for  the  reputation  of  Diderot, 
perhaps  even  for  the  honour  of  his  age,  that  he  had  not  been 
an  atheist,  or  that  he  had  been  so  with  less  zeal."  The  fact 
is  thus  put  beyond  reasonable  doubt.  In  the  Correspondance 
Littcraire  of  Grimm  and  Diderot,  under  date  September  15, 
1765  (vii,  366),  there  is  a  letter  in  criticism  of  Descartes, 
thoroughly  atheistic  in  its  reasoning,  w4iich  is  almost  certainly 
by  Diderot.  And  if  the  criticism  of  Voltaire's  Dieit,  above 
referred  to  (p.  231),  be  not  by  him,  he  was  certainly  in  entire 
agreement   with  it,  as  with  Grimm    in   general.     Eosenkranz 

by  O^'lethorpe.  on  behalf  of  imprisoned  debtors  (1730-32),  belongs  to  the  time  of  propa- 
gandist deism  there.  i  Mori^.y,  Diderot,  p.  329. 

-  Lettre  a  d'Alembert,  9  Janvier,  1773.  ^  (jp,  Rosenkranz,  Vorbericht,  p.  vi. 


268 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


finally   (ii,   421)    sums    up    that   **  Diderot   war    als    Atheist 
Pantheist,"  which   is   merely  a  way  of   saying   that   he   was 
scientifically  monistic   in   his   atheism.     Lange   pomts  out  in 
this  connection  (i,  310)  that  the  Hegelian  schema  of  philosophic 
evolution,  "  with  its  sovereign  contempt  for  chronology,"  has 
wrought  much  confusion  as  to  the  real  developments  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries. 
It  is  recorded  that  Diderot's  own  last  words  in  serious  conver- 
sation were  :  " The  beginning  of  philosophy  is  incredulity";  and  it 
may  be  inferred  from  his  writings  that  his  first  impulses  to  searching 
thought  came  from  his  study  of  Montaigne,  who  must  always  have 
been  for  him  one  of  the  most  congenial  of  spirits/     At  an  early 
stage  of  his  independent  mental  life  we  find  him  turning  to  the 
literature  which  in   that  age  yielded  to  such  a  mind   as    his   the 
largest  measure  both  of  nutriment  and  stimulus— the  English.     In 
1745   he   translated   Shaftesbury's   Inquiry   concerning   Virtue  and 
Merit ;   and  he  must  have  read  with  prompt  appreciation  the  other 
EngHsh  freethinkers  then  famous.     Ere  long,  however,  he  had  risen 
above  the  deistical  plane  of  thought,  and  grappled  with  the  funda- 
mental issues  which  the  deists  took  for  granted,  partly  because  of 
an  innate   bent   to   psychological  analysis,  partly  because  he  was 
more  interested  in  scientific  problems  than  in  scholarly  research. 
The  Fens6es  iMlosophiques,  pubhshed  in   1746,  really  deserve  their 
name ;  and  though  they  exhibit  him  as  still  a  satisfied  deist,  and 
an  opponent  of  the  constructive  atheism  then  beginning  to  suggest 
itself,  they  contain  abstract  reasonings  sufficiently  disturbing  to  the 
deistic  position.'     The  Promenade  du  Sceptique  (written  about  1747, 
published  posthumously)  goes  further,  and  presents  tentatively  the 
reply  to  the  design  argument  which  was  adopted  by  Hume. 

In  its  brilliant  pages  may  be  found  a  conspectus  of  the  intellectual 
life  of  the  day,  on  the  side  of  the  religious  problem.  Every  type  of 
thinker  is  there  tersely  characterized — the  orthodox,  the  deist,  the 
atheist,  the  sheer  skeptic,  the  scoffer,  the  pantheist,  the  sohpsist,  and 
the  freethinking  libertine,  the  last'  figuring  as  no  small  nuisance  to 
the  serious  unbeliever.  So  drastic  is  the  criticism  of  orthodoxy  that 
the  book  was  unprintable  in  its  day ;'  and  it  was  little  known  even 
in  manuscript.  But  ere  long  there  appeared  the  Letter  on  the  Blindy 
for  the  use  of  those  who  see  (1749),  in  which  a  logical  rebuttal  alike  of 
the  ethical  and  the  cosmological  assumptions  of  theism,  developed 
from  hints  in  the  Pensies,  is  put  in  the  mouth  of  the  blind  English 

1  Cd.  Morley,  Diderot,  ed.  1884,  p.  32.  .  ^..      .     ^  ?:^'  K^^'  ^  -4.  i    „i. 

8  A  police  agent  seized  the  MS.  in  Diderot's  library,  and  Diderot  could  not  get  it  back. 
Malesherbes,  the  censor,  kept  it  safe  for  him  1 


FKENCH  FKEETHOUGHT 


269 


mathematician,  Sanderson.  It  is  not  surprising  that  whereas 
the  Pensees  had  been,  with  some  other  books,  ordered  by  the  Paris 
Parlement  to  be  burnt  by  the  common  hangman,  the  Lettre  sur  les 
Aveugles  led  to  his  arrest  and  an  imprisonment  of  six  months*  in  the 
Chiiteau  de  Vincennes.  Both  books  had  of  course  been  published 
without  licence  ;^  but  the  second  book  was  more  than  a  defiance  of 
the  censorship  :  it  was  a  challenge  alike  to  the  philosophy  and  the  faith 
of  Christendom  ;  and  as  such  could  not  have  missed  denunciation.^ 

But  Diderot  was  not  the  kind  of  man  to  be  silenced  by  menaces. 
In  the  famous  Sorbonne  thesis  of  the  Abb6  de  Prades  (1751)  he 
probably  had,  as  wo  have  seen,  some  share ;  and  when  De  Prades 
was  condemned  and  deprived  of  his  licence  (1752)  Diderot  wrote  the 
third  part  of  the  Apologie  (published  by  De  Prades  in  Holland),  which 
defended  his  positions;  and  possibly  assisted  in  the  other  parts.^ 
The  hand  of  Diderot  perhaps  may  be  discovered  in  the  skilful 
allusions  to  the  skeptical  Demonstratio  EvaJigelica  of  Huet,  which 
De  Prades  professes  to  have  translated  when  at  his  seminary,  seeking 
there  the  antidote  to  the  poison  of  the  deists.  The  entire  handling 
of  the  question  of  pagan  and  Christian  miracles,  too,  suggests  the 
skilled  dialectician,  though  it  is  substantially  an  adaptation  of 
Leslie's  Short  and  Easy  Method  with  the  Deists.  The  alternate 
eulogy  and  criticism  of  Locke  are  likely  to  be  his,  as  is  indeed  the 
abundant  knowledge  of  English  thought  shown  alike  in  the  thesis 
and  in  the  Apologie.  Whether  he  wrote  the  passage  which  claims 
to  rebut  an  argument  in  his  own  Pensees  philosophiques^  is  surely 
doubtful.  But  his,  certainly,  is  the  further  reply  to  the  pastoral  of 
the  Jansenist  Bishop  of  Auxerre  against  de  Prades's  thesis,  in  which 
the  perpetual  disparagement  of  reason  by  Catholic  theologians  is 
denounced^  as  the  most  injurious  of  all  procedures  against  religion. 
And  his,  probably,  is  the  peroration^  arraigning  the  Jansenists  and 


J  According  to  Naigeon  (Mt-moires,  1821.  p.  131).  three  months  and  ten  days. 

^  The  Letjtre  purports,  like  so  many  other  books  of  that  and  the  next  generation,  to  be 
published  "A  Londres." 

"  Diderot's  daughter,  in  her  memoir  of  him,  speaks  of  his  imprisonment  in  the  Bastille 
as  brought  about  through  the  resentment  of  a  lady  of  whom  he  had  spoken  slightingly  ; 
and  her  husband  left  a  statement  in  MS.  to  the  same  effect  (printed  at  the  end  of  the 
Memoires  by  Naigeon).  The  lady  is  named  as  Madame  Dupre  de  Saint-Maur,  a  mistress 
of  the  King,  and  the  offence  is  said  to  have  been  committed  in  the  story  entitled  Le  Pigeon 
olanc.  Howsoever  this  may  have  been,  the  prosecution  was  quite  in  the  spirit  of  the 
period,  and  the  earlier  Pensees  were  made  part  of  the  case  against  him.  See  Delort,  Hist, 
ae  la  dHention  des  philosophes,  1829.  ii,  208-16.  M.  de  Vandeul-Diderot  testifies  that  the 
Marquis  Du  Chatelet,  Governor  of  Vincennes,  treated  his  prisoner  very  kindly.  Buckle 
U-vol.  ed.  p.  425)  does  not  seem  to  have  fully  read  the  Lettre,  which  he  describes  as  merely 
"^scussing  the  differentiation  of  thought  and  sensation  among  the  blind. 

His  friend  Meister  (A  la  memoire  de  Diderot.  1786,  app.  to  Naigeon's  Memoires  de 
rrt  lu^'  ^^^^'  ^"  ^'^^  writes  as  if  Diderot  had  written  the  whole  Apologie  " in  a  few  days." 
1  he  third  part,  a  reply  to  the  pastoral  of  the  Bishop  of  Auxerre,  appeared  separately  as  a 

fi  ^1°  tbe  others.  s  Apologie,  as  cited.  2e  partie,  p.  87  sq. 

Observations  sur  Vinstruction  pastorale  de  Mons.  I'^vique  d' Auxerre,  Berlin,  1752,  p.  17. 

'  Id.  p.  102  sq. 


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imputing  to  thoir  fanaticism  and  superstition,  tlieir  miracle-monger- 
ing  and  their  sectarian  bitterness,  the  discredit  which  among  thinking; 
men  had  latterly  fallen  upon  Church  and  creed  alike.' 

De  Prades,  who  in  his  thesis  and  Apologic  had  always  professed 
to  be  a  believing  Christian,  was  not  a  useful  recruit  to  rationalism. 
Passing  froai  Holland  to  Berlin,  he  was  there  appointed,  through  the 
influence  of  Voltaire,  reader  and  amanuensis  to  the  King,  who  m 
1754  arranged  for  him  an  official  reconciliation  with  the  Church. 
A  formal  retractation  was  sent  to  the  Pope,  the  Sorbonne,  and  the 
Bishop  of  Montauban  ;'  and  Frederick  in  due  course  presented  him 
to  a  Catholic  canonry  at  Glogau.     In  1757,  however,  he  was  put 
under  arrest  on  the  charge,  it  is  commonly  said,  of  supplying  military 
information  to  his  countrymen;'  and  thereafter,  returning  to  France 
in  1759,  he  obtained  a  French  benefice.     Diderot,  who  was  now  a 
recognized  champion  of  freethought,  turned  away  with  indignation. 
Thenceforward  he  never  faltered  on  his  path.     It  is  his  peculiar 
excellence   to  be  an  original  and  innovating  thinker  not  only  in 
philosophy  but  in  psychology,  in  aBsthetics,  in  ethics,  in  dramatic 
art ;  and  his  endless  and  miscellaneous  labours  in  the  Encijclopcdie, 
of  which  he  was  the  most  loyal  and  devoted  producer,  represent  an 
extraordinary  range  of  interests.     He  suffered  from  his  position  as  a 
hack  waiter  and  as  a  forced  dissembler  in  his  articles  on  religious 
matters  ;  and  there  is  probably  a  very  real  connection  between  his 
compulsory  insincerities^  in  the  Encyclopedie— to  say  nothing  of  the 
official  prosecution  of  that  and  of  others  of  his  works— and  his 
misdeeds  in  the  way  of  indecent  fiction.     When  organized  society  is 
made  to  figure  as  the  heartless  enemy  of  thinking  men,  it  is  no  great 
wonder  if  they  are  careless  at  times  about  the  effect  of  their  writings 
on  society.     But  it  stands  to  his  lasting  honour  that  his  sufferings 
at  the  hands  of  priests,  printers,  and  parlements  never  soured  his 
natural  goodness  of  heart.''     Having  in  his  youth  known  a  day's 
unrelieved  hunger,  he  made  a  vow  that  he  would  never  refuse  help 
to  any  human  being ;  and,  says  his  daughter,  no  vow  was  ever  more 
faithfully  kept.     No  one  in  trouble  was  ever  turned  away  from  his 

1  Cp.  Morley.  Diderot,  pp.  98-09.  «  Carlyle.  Frederick,  bk.  xviii.  ch.  ix,  end 

I  ^;^:X;^^}:^o^^^'  he  wntes  to  M^dtri?^V^oirn^^  a5  iuillet,  1759) ;  and  Lord 
Morley  pronounces  de  Prades  a  rascal  (Diderot,  p.  98).  Carlyle  is  inarticulate  with  disgust 
-but  as  much  against  the  original  heresy  as  against  the  treason  ^^  t.re'l^''^c^-  J^jf^^H^t 
Thi6bault  was  convinced  that  de  Prades  was  innocent  and  calumniated.  Every boa>  at 
court,  he  declares,  held  the  same  view.    Mes  Souvenirs  de  vmgt  am  de  s^jour  d  iStnin, 

^^  e'l^-is^ot'^cll^a^h^^^^  these  ere  to  be  distinguished  from  the  mutilations  of  the  later 
volumes  by  his  treacherous  publisher  Le  Breton.    Of  this  treachery  the  details  are  given 
by  Grimm,  Corr.  lift.  ed.  1829.  vii,  144  sa.        .       ...         .         .^.   .    .     ,     ^  •     *  i,:„  ^ovap- 

7  Buckle's  account  of  him  (1-vol.  ed.  p.  426)  as  "  burning  with  hatred  against  his  perse- 
cutors "  after  his  imprisonment  is  overdrawn.    He  was  a  poor  hater. 


door ;  and  even  his  enemies  were  helped  when  they  were  base 
enough  to  beg  of  him.  It  seems  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the 
bulk  of  his  life  was  given  to  helping  other  people  ;  and  the  indirect 
effect  of  his  work,  which  is  rather  intellectually  disinterested  than 
didactic,  is  no  less  liberative  and  humanitarian.  "To  do  good,  and 
to  find  truth,"  w^ere  his  mottoes  for  life. 

His  daughter,  Madame  de  Vandeul,  who  in  her  old  age  remained 
tranquilly  divided  between  the  religion  instilled  into  her  by  her  pious 
mother  and  the  rationalism  she  had  gathered  from  her  father  and 
his  friends,  testified,  then,  to  his  constant  goodness  in  the  home ; 
and  his  father  bore  a  similar  testimony,  contrasting  him  with  his 
pious  brother.^  He  was,  in  his  way,  as  beneficent  as  Voltaire, 
without  Voltaire's  faults  of  private  malice  ;  and  his  life's  work  was 
a  great  ministry  of  light.  It  was  Goethe  who  said  of  him  in  the 
next  generation  that  "  whoever  holds  him  or  his  doings  cheaply  is 
a  Philistine."  His  large  humanity  reaches  from  the  planes  of 
expert  thought  to  that  of  popular  feehng ;  and  while  by  his  Letter 
071  the  Blind  he  could  advance  speculative  psychology  and  pure 
philosophy,  he  could  by  his  tale  The  Nun  {La  Beligeuse,^  written 
about  1760,  published  1796)  enlist  the  sympathies  of  the  people 
against  the  rule  of  the  Church.  It  belonged  to  his  character  to  be 
generously  appreciative  of  all  excellence ;  he  delighted  in  other 
men's  capacity  as  in  pictures  and  poetry  ;  and  he  loved  to  praise. 
At  a  time  when  Bacon  and  Hobbes  were  little  regarded  in  England 
he  made  them  newly  famous  throughout  Europe  by  his  praises. 
In  him  was  realized  Bacon's  saying,  Admiratio  semen  scientiae,  in 
every  sense,  for  his  curiosity  was  as  keen  as  his  sensibility. 

25.  With  Diderot  were  specially  associated,  in  different  ways, 
D'Alembert,  the  mathematician,  for  some  years  his  special  colleague 
on  the  Encyclopedie,  and  Baron  D'HOLBACH.  The  former,  one  of 
the  staunchest  friends  of  Voltaire,  though  a  less  invincible  fighter 
than  Diderot,  counted  for  practical  freethought  by  his  miscellaneous 
articles,  his  little  book  on  the  Jesuits  (1765),  his  Pensdes  philoso- 
phigues,  his  physics,  and  the  general  rationaUsm  of  his  Preliminary 

*  Madame  Diderot,  savs  her  daughter,  was  very  upright  as  well  as  very  religious,  but 
her  temper,  "6ternellement  grondeur,  faisait  de  notre  int^rieur  un  enfer,  dont  mon  pere 
6tait  I'ange  consolateur '"  (Letter  to  Meister,  in  Notice  pref.  to  Lettres  Inedites  de  Mine,  de 
StaMl  d  Henri  Meister,  1903,  p.  62). 

■^  "H^lasl  disait  mon  excellent  grand-p^re.  j'ai  deux  file  :  I'un  sera  silrement  un  saint, 
et  je  crains  bien  que  I'autre  ne  soit  damn6  ;  mais  je  ne  puis  vivre  avec  le  saint,  et  J©  suis 
tr^s  heureux  du  temps  que  je  passe  avec  le  damn6  "  (Letter  of  Mme.  de  Vandeul,  last  cited). 
Freethinker  as  he  was.  his  fellow-townsmen  officially  requested  in  1780  to  be  allowed  to 
pay  for  a  portrait  of  him  for  public  exhibition,  and  the  bronze  bust  he  sent  them  was 
placed  in  the  hotel  de  ville  (MS.  of  M.  de  Vandeul-Diderot,  as  cited).  ,  -r^-, 

^  Madame  de  Vandeul  states  that  this  story  was  motived  by  the  case  of  Diderot  s 
sister,  who  died  mad  at  the  age  of  27  or  28  (Letter  above  cited  ;  Rosenkranz,  i,  9). 


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Discourse  to  the  Encij doped ie.     It  is  noteworthy  that  in  his  intimate 
correspondence  with  Voltaire  ho  never  avows  theism,  and  that  his 
and   Diderot's   friend,  the   atheist   Damihxville,  died  in  his  arms. 
On  Dumarsais,  too,  ho  penned  an     of  which  doge  Voltaire  wrote  : 
"  Dumarsais  only  begins  to  live  since  his  death  ;  you  have  given 
him  existence  and  immortality."'     And  perpetual  secretary  as  he 
was  of  the  Academy,  the  fanatical  daughter  of  Madame  Geoffrin 
could  write  to  him  in   1776 :  "  For  many  years  you  have  set  all 
respectable  people  against   you  by   your  indecent   and   imprudent 
manner    of    speaking    against    religion."^      Baron     d'Holbach,    a 
naturalized  German  of  large  fortune,  was  on  the  other  hand  one 
of   the   most   strenuous   propagandists   of   freethought  in  his  age. 
Personally  no  less  beloved  than  Helvetius,'  he  gave  his  life  and  his 
fortune  to  the  work  of  enlightening  men  on  all  the  Hues  on  which 
he  felt  they  needed  light.     Much  of  the  progress  of  the  physical 
sciences  in  pre-revolutionary  France  was  due  to  the  long  series— at 
least  eleven  in  all— of  his  translations  oi  solid  treatises  from  the 
German ;  and  his  still  longer  series  of  original  works  and  transla- 
tions from  the   English   in   all   branches  of   freethought— a  really 
astonishing  movement  of  intellectual  energy  despite    the   emotion 
attaching  to  the  subject-matter— was  for  the  most  part  prepared 
in  the  same  essentially  scientific  temper.     Of  all  the  freethinkers 
of  the  period  he  had  perhaps  the  largest  range  of  practical  erudition  ;" 
and   he   drew  upon    it   with    unhasting    and    unresting    industry. 
Imitating  the  tactic  of  Voltaire,  he  produced,  with  some  assistance 
from  Diderot.  Naigeon,  and  others,  a  small  library  of  anti-Christian 
treatises  under  a  variety  of  pseudonyms  ;^  and  his  principal  work, 
the  famous  Syste7n  of  Nature  (1770),  was  put  out  under  the  name  of 
Mirabaud,  an  actual  person,  then  dead.     Summing  up  as  it  does  with 
stringent  force  the  whole  anti-theological  propaganda  of  tlie  age,  it  has 
been  described  as  a  "  thundering  engine  of  revolt  and  destruction." 

1  Lettre  de  Voltaire  k  D'Alembert,  27  aoati,  1774. 

2  Lettre  de  2  decembre.  1757. 

4  D'Holbach  was  the  original  of  the  character  of  Wolmar  in  Rousseau  s  ■«'"'\^'<f^ 
micrise,  of  whom  Julie  says  that  he  "does  good  without  recompense.  J.P.^^^V  Wm,,, 
man  more  simply  simple"  was  the  verdict  of  Madame  Geoffrm.  Corr.HU.de  (xnmm 
(notice  probably  by  Meister).  ed.  1829-31.  xiv,  291.  .        .^  .         .      .       „   kua  -i';nt«rp<;- 

5  Marmontel  says  of  him  that  he    avoit  tout  lu  et  n'avoit  jamais  rien  oubli6  d  interes 

sant."    Memoires,  1804,  ii,  312.  ,•  i.  -•   „«  ;«  tvip 

6  See  a  full  list  of  his  works  (compiled  by  Julian  Hibbert  after  the  list  fiijen  \n  tne 
1821  ed.  of  Diderot's  Works,  xii,  115,  and  rep.  in  the  1829-31  ed.  of  Grimm  and  Djderot  s 
Correspondance,  xiv,  293),  prefixed  to  Watson's  ed.  (1834  and  later)  of  the  Lnglibh  tiant.ia 
tion  of  the  System  of  Nature.  ,  ^     *  i.i.    t^^^i.     /t«  t  an0p, 

7  Morley.  Diderot,  p.  341.  The  chapter  gives  a  good  account  of  the  book.  Cp.  I^J-oe^; 
i,  364  s«.  (Eng.  trans,  ii,  26  sq.)  as  to  its  materialism.  The  best  pages  were  said  to  oe  uy 
Diderot  (Corr.  de  Grimm,  as  cited,  p.  289;  the  statement  of  Meister,  ^ho  makes  it  also  in 
his  tloge).  Naigeon  denied  that  Diderot  had  any  part  in  the  Systeme,  but  in  1820  theie  was 
published  an  edition  with  "notes  and  corrections  "  by  Diderot. 


It  was  the  first  pubhshed  atheistic^  treatise  of  a  systematic 
kind,  if  we  except  that  of  Kobinet,  issued  some  years  before ; 
and  it  significantly  marks  the  era  of  modern  freethought,  as  does 
the  powerful  Essai  sur  les  pr&jiLg&s,  published  in  the  same  year,^ 
by  its  stern  impeachment  of  the  sins  of  monarchy — here  carrying 
on  the  note  struck  by  Jean  MesHer  in  his  manuscript  of  half-a- 
century  earlier.  Eather  a  practical  argument  than  a  dispassionate 
philosophic  research,  its  polemic  against  human  folly  laid  it  open  to 
the  regulation  retort  that  on  its  own  necessarian  principles  no  such 
polemic  was  admissible.  That  retort  is,  of  course,  ultimately  invalid 
when  the  denunciation  is  resolved  into  demonstration.  If,  however, 
it  be  termed  '*  shallow  "  on  the  score  of  its  censorious  treatment  of 
the  past,^  the  term  will  have  to  be  appHed  to  the  Hebrew  books,  to 
the  Gospel  Jesus,  to  the  Christian  Fathers,  to  Pascal,  Milton, 
Carlyle,  Euskin,  and  a  good  many  other  prophets,  ancient  and 
modern.  The  synthesis  of  the  book  is  really  emotional  rather  than 
philosophic,  and  hortatory  rather  than  scientific  ;  and  it  was  all  the 
more  influential  on  that  account.  To  the  sensation  it  produced  is 
to  be  ascribed  the  edict  of  1770  condemning  a  whole  shelf  of 
previous  works  to  be  burnt  along  with  it  by  the  common  hangman. 

26.  The  death  of  d'Holbach  (1789)  brings  us  to  the  French 
Eevolution.  By  that  time  all  the  great  freethinking  propagandists 
and  non-combatant  deists  of  the  Voltairean  group  were  gone,  save 
CONDORCET.  Voltaire  and  Eousseau  had  died  in  1778,  Helv^tius 
in  1771,  Turgot  in  1781,  D'Alembert  in  1783,  Diderot  in  1784. 
After  all  their  labours,  only  the  educated  minority,  broadly  speaking, 
had  been  made  freethinkers  ;  and  of  these,  despite  the  vogue  of  the 
System  of  Nature,  only  a  minority  were  atheists.  Deism  prevailed, 
as  we  have  seen,  among  the  foremost  revolutionists  ;  but  atheism 
was  relatively  rare.  Voltaire,  indeed,  impressed  by  the  number  of 
cultured  men  of  his  acquaintance  who  avowed  it,  latterly  speaks^  of 
them  as  very  numerous  ;  and  Grimm  must  have  had  a  good  many 
among  the   subscribers   to   his   correspondence,   to  permit   of  his 

1  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  English  translation  (3  vols.  3rd  ed.  1817;  4th  ed.  1820) 
oeiiberately  tampers  with  the  language  of  the  original  to  the  extent  of  making  it  deistic. 
•^^^s  P?>'version  has  been  by  oversight  preserved  in  all  the  reprints. 

,..,  Mirabeau  spoke  of  the  Essai  as  "le  livre  le  moins  connu,  et  celui  qui  m^rite  le  plus 
t    h^'    ,  ^^6  reprint  of  1793  had  become  "  extremely  rare "  in  1822.    The  book  seems 

J^ve  been  specially  disquieting  to  orthodoxy,  and  was  hunted  down  accordingly. 

.  °9  M^orley,  p.  347,    It  does  not  occur  to  Lord  Morley,  and  to  the  Comtists  who  take 

tv,^^™v!i       ^*^°®'  ^^^^  ^^  ^^^s  disparaging  past  thinkers  they  are  really  doing  the  thing 
•ney  blame. 

At*  i^^*?^^*  ^  Memmiiis  d  CicSron  (1771);  Histoire  de  Jenni  (1775).  In  the  earlier  article. 
ATHEF,.  in  the  Dictionnaire  Philosophique,  he  speaks  of  having  met  in  France  very  good 
pnysicists  who  were  atheists.  In  his  letter  of  September  26. 1770.  to  Madame  Necker,  he 
wrises  concerning  the  Systhme  de  la  Nature:  "II  est  un  peu  honteux  A,  notre  nation  que 
lant  de  gens  aient  embrasse  si  vite  une  opinion  si  ridicule."  And  yet  Prof.  W.M.  Sloane, 
oi  Columbia  University,  still  writes  of  Voltaire,  in  the  manner  of  English  bishops,  as 
ameistical  "  (The  French  Eevolutiofi  and  Meligious  Beform,  1901,  p.  26). 

VOL.  II  I 


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275 


penning  or  passing  the  atheistic  criticism  there  given  of  Voltaire's 
first  reply  to  d'Holbach.     Nevertheless,  there  was   no  continuous 
atheistic  movement ;    and  after  1789  the  new  freethinking  works 
run  to  critical  and  ethical  attack  on  the  Christian  system  rather 
than  on  theism.     Volney  combined   both  lines  of  attack  in  his 
famous  Buins  of  Empires  (1791)  ;  and  the  learned  DUPUIS,  in  his 
voluminous  Origin  of  all  Cults  (1795).  took  an  important  step,  not 
yet  fully  reckoned  with  by  later  mythologists,  towards  the  mytho- 
logical  analysis   of    the   gospel    narrative.       After   these   vigorous 
performances,  the  popular  progress  of  French  freethought  was  for 
long  practically  suspended^  by  the  tumult  of  the  Revolution  and  the 
reaction  which  followed  it,  though  LAPLACE  went  on  his  way  with 
his  epoch-making  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  solar  system,  for  which, 
as  he  told  Napoleon,  he  had  "  no  need  of  the  hypothesis  "  of  a  God. 
The  admirable  CoNDORCET  had  died,  perhaps  by  his  own  hand,  m 
1794.  when  in  hiding  from  the  Terrorists,  leaving  behind  him  his 
Esquisse  d'un  tableau  Jiistorique  des  progr^s  de  Vesprit  humane  in 
which  the  most  sanguine  convictions  of  the  rationalistic  school  are 
reformulated  without  a  trace  of  bitterness  or  of  despair. 

27.  No  part  of  the  history  of  freethought  has  been  more  distorted 
than  that  at  which  it  is  embroiled  in  the  French  Revolution.     The 
conventional  view  in  England  still  is  that  the  Revolution  was  the 
work  of  deists  and  atheists,  but  chiefly  of  the  latter ;    that  they 
suppressed   Christianity  and   set   up  ft  worship   of   a   Goddess  of 
Reason,  represented  by  a  woman  of  the  town  ;  and  that  the  blood- 
shed of  the  Terror  represented  the  application  of  their  principles  to 
government,  or  at  least  the  political  result  of  the  withdrawal  of 
religious  checks."     Those  who  remember  in  the  briefest  summary 
the  records  of  massacre  connected  with  the  affirmation  of  religious 
beliefs— the  internecine  wars  ol  Christian  sects  under  the  Roman 
Empire;    the  vast    slaughters   of    Manichaeans   in   the   East;    the 
bloodshed  of  the  period  of  propagation  in  Northern  Europe,  from 
Charlemagne  onwards  ;  the  story  of  the  Crusades,  in  which  nine 
millions  of  human  beings  are  estimated  to  have  been  destroyed; 
the  generation  of  wholesale  murder  of  the  heretics  of  Languedoc 
by  the  papacy  ;  the  protracted  savageries  of  the  Hussite  War  ;    the 
early  holocaust  of  Protestant  heretics  in  France ;  the  massacres  of 

I  Though  in  1797  we  have  Mar^chal's  Code  d'une  SocUU  dlwmmes  sans  Dieu,  and  in 

"^  Th.f/Sf  Calr"/(?}:rb«^^^  Eiahteenth  Century,  p.  165)  gravely  argues  that  the 

Frenlh^RevoiuttrVroveTthe  ineffic^^ 

He  has  omitted  to  compare  the  theiatic  bloodshed  f . ^1^^^^^ n«irthe  Lllite^^^^^^^^ 
bloodshed  of  the  Crusades,  the  papal  suppression  of  the  Albigenses.  the  Hussite  wars,  auu 

other  orthodox  undertakings. 


German  peasants  and  Anabaptists  ;  the  reciprocal  persecutions  in 
England ;  the  civil  strifes  of  sectaries  in  Switzerland  ;  the  ferocious 
wars  of  the  French  Huguenots  and  the  League  ;  the  long-drawn 
agony  of  the  war  of  thirty  years  in  Germany ;  the  annihilation  of 
myriads  of  Mexicans  and  Peruvians  by  the  conquering  Spaniards  in 
the  name  of  the  Cross — those  who  recall  these  things  need  spend  no 
time  over  the  proposition  that  rationalism  stands  for  a  removal  of 
restraints  on  bloodshed.  But  it  is  necessary  to  put  concisely  the 
facts  as  against  the  legend  in  the  case  of  the  French  Revolution. 

(a)  That  many  of  the  leading  men  among  the  revolutionists  were 
deists  is  true  ;  and  the  fact  goes  to  prove  that  it  was  chiefly  the 
men  of  ability  in  France  who  rejected  Christianity.  Of  a  number 
of  these  the  normal  attitude  was  represented  in  the  work  of  Necker, 
Sur  V importance  des  idees  religieuses  (1787),  which  repudiated  the 
destructive  attitude  of  the  few,  and  may  be  described  as  an  utterance 
of  pious  theism  or  Unitarianism.^  Orthodox  he  cannot  well  have 
been,  since,  like  his  wife,  he  was  the  friend  of  Voltaire.^  But  the 
majority  of  the  Constituent  Assembly  was  never  even  deistic  ;  it 
professed  itself  cordially  Catholic  ;  ^  and  the  atheists  there  might  be 
counted  on  the  fingers  of  one  hand.  * 

The  Abb6  Bergier,  in  answering  d'Holbach  {Examen  du 
Materialisme,  ii,  ch.  i,  §  l),  denies  that  there  has  been  any  wide 
spread  of  atheistic  opinion.  This  is  much  more  probable  than 
the  statement  of  the  Archbishop  of  Toulouse,  on  a  deputation 
to  the  king  in  1775,  that  "  le  monstrueux  ath^isme  est  devenu 
I'opinion  dominante  "  (Soulavie,  Begne  de  Louis  XVI,  iii,  16; 
cited  by  Buckle,  1-vol.  ed.  p.  488,  note).  Joseph  Droz,  a 
monarchist  and  a  Christian,  writing  under  Louis  Philippe, 
sums  up  that  **  the  atheists  formed  only  a  small  number  of 
adepts  "  (Histoire  die  B^gne  de  Louis  XVI,  6d.  1839,  p.  42). 
And  Rivarol,  who  at  the  time  of  writing  his  Lettres  a  M, 
Necker  was  substantially  an  atheist,  says  in  so  many  words 

1  The  book  was  accorded  the  Monthyon  prize  by  the  French  Academy.  In  translation 
(1788)  it  found  a  welcome  in  England  among  Churchmen  by  reason  of  its  pro-Christian 
tone  and  its  general  vindication  of  religious  institutions.  The  translation  was  the  work 
of  Mary  Wollstonecraft.  See  Kegan  Paul's  William  Godwin,  1876,  i,  193.  Mrs.  Dunlop, 
the  friend  of  Burns,  recommending  its  perusal  to  the  poet,  paid  it  a  curious  compliment : 
"  He  does  not  write  like  a  sectary,  hardly  like  a  Christian,  but  yet  while  I  read  him,  I  like 
better  my  God,  my  neighbour.  Monsieur  Necker,  and  myself."  Robert  Bums  and  Mrs. 
Dunlop,  ed.  by  W.  Wallace,  1898,  p.  258. 

2  See  Voltaire's  letters  to  Madame  Necker.  Corr.  de  Grimm,  ed.  1829,  vii.  23, 118.  Of 
the  lady,  Grimm  writes  (p.  118) :  "  Hypathie  Necker  passe  sa  vie  avec  des  systematiques, 
mais  elle  est  devote  k  sa  mani^re.  Elle  voudrait  etre  sincdrement  hugenote,  ou  socinienne, 
ou  d6istique,  ou  plutot,  pour  etre  quelque  chose,  elle  prend  le  parti  de  ne  se  rendre  compte 
8ur  rien."    "  Hypathie  "  was  Voltaire's  complimentary  name  for  her. 

^  Cp.  Aulard,  Le  Culte  de  la  Raison  et  le  Culte  de  I'Etre  Supreme,  1892,  pp.  17-19. 
M.  Gazier  C^tudes  sur  I'histoire  religieuse  de  la  revolution  frangaise,  1877,  pp.  48, 173, 189  sq.) 
speaks  somewhat  loosely  of  a  prevailing  anti-Christian  feeling  when  actually  citing  only 
isolated  instances,  and  giving  proofs  of  a  general  orthodoxy.  Yet  he  points  out  the 
complete  misconception  of  Thiers  on  the  subject  (p.  202). 

*  Cp.  Prof.  W.  M.  Sloane,  The  French  Revolution  aiid  Religious  Reform,  p.  43. 


276 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


that,  while  Eousseau's  "  Confession  of  a  Savoyard  Vi°ar  "  was 
naturally  very  attractive  to  >--°y- «'l<=^,^bo°k  as  the  Sy.i^m. 
^p  la  Nature  "  were  it  as  attractive  as  it  is  tedious,  would  win 
tt&r   &uvZ,  6d.  1853.  p.  134).     StiU.  it  ran  into  seven 
editions  between  1770  and  1780. 
Nor  were  there  lacking  vigorous  representatives  of  orthodoxy; 
the  powerful  Abb6  Gr6goire,  in  particular,  was  a  convinced  Jansenist 
Christian,   and  at  the  same   time   an    ardent   democrat  and  anti- 
royalist.'     He  saw  the  immense   importance  to  the  Church  of  a 
good   understanding   with    the    Kevolution.    and   he   accepted   the 
constitution   of   1790.     With   him   went   a  very  large  number  of 
priests      M.  Ltonce  de  Lavergne,  who  was  pious  enough  to  write 
that  "  the  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century  had  had  the  audaci  y 
to  lay  hands  on  God  ;  and  this  impious  attempt  has  had  for  punish- 
ment the  revolutionary  expiation,"  also  admits  that      of  the  clergy 
it  was  not  the  minority  but  the  majority  which  went  along  with  the 
Tiers  Etat."'    Many  of  the  clergy,  however,  being  refractory,  the 
Assembly  pressed  its  point,  and  the  breach  widened.     It  was  solely 
through  this  poUtical  hostility  on  the  part  of  the  Church  to  the  new 
constitution  that  any  civic  interference  with  public  worship  ever 
took  place.     Gregoire  was   extremely  popular  with  the   advanced 
types.'  though  his  piety  was  conspicuous;'  and  there  were  not  a 
few  priests  of  his  way  of  thinking,'  among  them  being  some  of  the 
ablest  bishops.'    On  the  flight  of  the  king,  he  and  they  went  with 
the  democracy ;  and  it  was  the  obstinate  refusal  of  the  others    o 
accept  the  constitution  that  provoked  the  new  Legislative  Assembly 
to  coerce  them.     Though  the  new  body  was  more  anti-clencal  than 
the  old,  however,  it  was  simply  doing  what  successive  Protestant 
monarchs   had   done   in   England   and   Ireland ;   and   probably  no 
Government  in  the  world  would  then  have  acted  otherwise  in  a 
similar  case.'    Patience  might  perhaps  have  won  'he  day  ;  but  the 
Eevolution  was  fighting  for  its  life ;  and  the  fff '^^''^^.^.'j"''":.  "J 
all  men  knew,  was  eager  to  strangle  it.     Had  the  clergy  left  politics 
alone,  or  simply  accepted  the  constitutional  action  o^t^e  State 
there  would  have  been  no  religious  question.     To  speak  of  such  a 
body  of  priests,  who  had  at  all  times  been  eager  to  put  men  to 
death  for  heresy,  as  vindicating  "  liberty  of  conscience     ^^^^^^^^ 
refused  fealty  to  the  constitution.'  is  somewhat  to  strain  the  terms. 

1  Gazier.  as  cited,  pp.  3,  4. 12. 19-21,  71.  etc-  .         viii-ix. 

2  Lea  Assemblees  Provinctale^  '^^/''""s^rlV  69  6  iSonce  de  Lavergne.  as  cited. 

3  Gazier.  L.  ii.  ch.  i.         *  Id.  P.  bj.       ..^^P-y-f^^  the  demand  that  the  State  clergy 
7  The  authority  of  Turgot  himself  could  be  c^'-^VulVrd  ieTu°t        la  Baiaon,  p.  H ; 

should  accept  the  constitution  of  the  State.    Cp.  Aulard.  ^'^^^^^      ^ 
TisBOt,  Etude  aur  Turgot,  1878.  P.  160.  "*" 


FKENCH  FKEETHOUGHT 


277 


The  expulsion  of  the  Jesuits  under  the  Old  K6gime  had  been  a  more 
coercive  measure  than  the  demand  of  the  Assembly  on  the  allegiance 
of  the  State  clergy.  And  all  the  while  the  reactionary  section  of  the 
priesthood  was  known  to  be  conspiring  with  the  royalists  abroad. 
It  was  only  when,  in  1793,  the  conservative  clergy  w^ere  seen  to  be 
the  great  obstacle  to  the  levy  of  an  army  of  defence,  that  the  more 
radical  spirits  began  to  think  of  interfering  with  their  functions.^ 

(b)  An  a  priori  method  has  served  alike  in  freethinkers'  and  in 
pietists'  hands  to  obscure  the  facts.  When  Michelet  insists  on  the 
"  irreconcilable  opposition  of  Christianity  to  the  Kevolution  " — a 
thesis  in  which  he  was  heartily  supported  by  Proudhon^ — he  means 
that  the  central  Christian  dogmas  of  salvation  by  sacrifice  and  faith 
exclude  any  political  ethic  of  justice^ — any  doctrine  of  equality  and 
equity.  But  this  is  only  to  say  that  Christianity  as  an  organization 
is  in  perpetual  contradiction  with  some  main  part  of  its  professed 
creed  ;  and  that  has  been  a  commonplace  since  Constantine.  It 
does  not  mean  that  either  Christians  in  multitudes  or  their  churches 
as  organizations  have  not  constantly  proceeded  on  ordinary  political 
motives,  whether  populist  or  anti-populist.  In  Germany  we  have 
seen  Lutheranism  first  fomenting  and  afterwards  repudiating  the 
movement  of  the  peasants  for  betterment ;  and  in  England  in  the 
next  century  both  parties  in  the  civil  war  invoke  religious  doctrines, 
meeting  texts  with  texts.  Jansenism  was  in  constant  friction  with 
the  monarchy  from  its  outset ;  and  Louis  XIV  and  Louis  XV  alike 
regarded  the  Jansenists  as  the  enemies  of  the  throne.  "  Christianity  " 
could  be  as  easily  ''reconciled"  with  a  democratic  movement  in  the 
last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  as  with  the  Massacre  of  Saint 
Bartholomew's  Day  in  the  sixteenth.  If  those  Christians  who  still 
charge  "the  bloodshed  of  the  French  Kevolution"  on  the  spirit  of 
incredulity  desire  to  corroborate  Michelet  to  the  extent  of  making 
Christianity  the  bulwark  of  absolute  monarchy,  the  friend  of  a  cruel 
feudalism,  and  the  guardian  genius  of  the  Bastille,  they  may  be  left 
to  the  criticism  of  their  fellows-believers  who  have  embraced  the 
newer  principle  that  the  truth  of  the  Christian  religion  is  to  be 
proved  by  connecting  it  in  practice  with  the  spirit  of  social  reform. 
To  point  out  to  either  party,  as  did  Michelet,  that  evangelical 
Christianity  is  a  religion  of  submission  and  preparation  for  the  end 
of  all  things,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  rational  political  reform, 


J  Aulard.  Culte.  pp.  19-20. 

''  Michelet.  Hist,  de  la  revolution  francaise,  ed.  Bvo  1868  and  later,  i,  16.  Cp.  Proudhon's 
De  la  justice,  1858. 

^  "Tout  jugement  religieux  ou  politique  est  une  contradiction  flagrante  dans  une 
religion  uniquement  fond6e  sur  un  dogme  6tranger  k  la  justice."     Ed.  cited,  introd.  p.  60. 


278  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 

is  to  bestow  logic  where  logic  is  indomiciliable.  While  rationalism 
undoubtedly  fosters  the  critical  spirit,  professed  Christians  have 
during  many  ages  shown  themselves  as  prone  to  rebellion  as  to 
war,  whether  on  religious  or  on  political  pretexts.  r^,      ,    , 

(c)  For  the  rest,  the  legend  falsifies  what  took  place.     The  facts 
are  now  established  by  exact  documentary  research.     The  Govern- 
ment never  substituted  any  species  of  religion   for  the  Catholic. 
The  Festival  of    Reason  at  Notre  Dame  was  an    act   not   of   the 
Convention  but  of  the  Commune  of  Paris  and  the  Department ;  the 
Convention  had  no  part  in  promoting  it ;  half  the  members   stayed 
away  when  invited  to  attend  ;  and  there  was  no  Goddess  of  Reason 
in  the  ceremony,  but  only  a  Goddess  of  Liberty,  represented  by  an 
actress  who  cannot  even  be  identified.^    Throughout,  the  devoutly 
theistic  Rousseau  was  the  chief  literary  hero   of  the   movement. 
The  two  executive  Committees  in  no  way  countenanced  the  dechris- 
tianization  of  the  Churches,  but  on  the  contrary  imprisoned  persons 
who  removed  church  properties ;  and  these  in  turn  protested  that 
they  had  no  thought  of  abolishing  religion.     The  acts  of  irresponsible 
violence  did  not  amount  to  a   hundredth  part  of  the      sacrilege 
wrought  in  Protestant  countries  at  the  Reformation,  and  do  not 
compare  with  the  acts  charged  on  Cromwell's  troopers.     The  policy 
of   inviting  priests    and   bishops   to   abdicate   their   functions    was 
strictly  poUtical ;  and  the  Archbishop  Gobel  did  n^t  abjure  Catho- 
licism, but  only  surrendered  his  office.     That  a  number  of  priests 
did  gratuitously  abjure  their  religion  is  only  a  proof  of  what  was 
well  known-that  a  good  many  priests  were  simple   deists.     We 
have  seen  how  many  abb6s  fought  in  the  freethought  ranks,  or  near 
them.     Diderot  in  a  letter  of   1769  tells  of  a  day  which  he  and 
a  friend  had  passed  with  two  monks  who  were  atheists.       One  ot 
them  read  the  first  draft  of  a  very  fresh  and  very  vigorous  treatise 
on  atheism,  fall  ot  new  and  bold  ideas ;  I  learned  with  edification 
that  this  doctrine  was  the  current  doctrine  of  their  cloisters,     lor 
the  rest,  these  two  monks  were  ihe  '  big  bonnets  '  of  their  monastery  ; 
they  had  intellect,  gaiety,  good  feeling,  knowledge."       And  a  priest 
of  the  cathedral  of  Auxerre,  whose  recollections  went  back  to  the 
revolutionary  period,  has  confessed  that  at  that  time     philosophic 

.  The  erave  misstatement  of  Michelet  ""  **■,!«  »'»ajfi«fSfu''tL*mo\foPPro^^ 
^  Yet  it  is  customary  ^■""'jeChns.ans  to  speak  ott^  had^een  the  Kevolu- 

terms.    The  royalist  but  ipalcontent)  Maiquis  de  vmoneuv^^  ^^^  Goddess 

tion  in  his  youth,  claimed  m  his  old  aue  '° '>^"« ''""""'l?(„ijere  he  became  governor) : 
Reason  of  Paris  and  with  the  Goddess  Ky'^°°°'B°"ff„o'S  whatever  against  their 
but.  though  he  twice  alludes  to  '1\°'*«  """f" °','Y  ^Kof  W  M  Sloane.  with  all  his  reli- 

oharacters(De  J'^O"""?  1^  i«,f^'?«''' l*^;j;^;,f^!;n  as  Goddesses  of  Beason  outside  of 
gions  prejudice,  is  satisfied  that  'he  women  chosen  as  Oodaos^s 
Paris  were  "  noted  for  their  spotless  character.      Work  Litea.  p.  lao. 
8  M^inoires,  ed.  1841,  ii.  166. 


[• 


FEENCH  FKEETHOUGHT 


279 


opinions  prevailed  in  most  of  the  monasteries.     His  words   even 
imply  that  in  his  opinion  the  unbelieving  monks  were  the  majority.^ 
In    the  provinces,  where    the    movement  went    on    with    various 
degrees  of  activity,  it  had  the  same  general  character.     "  Eeason  " 
itself  was  often  identified  with  deity,  or  declared  to  be  an  emanation 
thereof.     Hubert,  commonly  described  as  an  atheist  for  his  share 
in  the  movement,  expressly  denied  the  charge,  and  claimed  to  have 
exhorted  the  people  to  read  the  gospels  and  obey  Christ.^     Danton, 
though  at  his  death  he  disavowed  beHef  in  immortality,  had  declared 
in  the  Convention  in   1793  that  **  we  have  not  striven  to  abolish 
superstition  in  order  to  establish  the  reign  of   atheism."^     Even 
Chaumette  was   not    an   atheist ;  ^  and   the   Prussian   Clootz,  who 
probably  was,  had  certainly  little  or  no  doctrinary  influence ;  while 
the  two  or  three  other  professed  atheists  of  the  Assembly  had  no 
part  in  the  public  action. 

id)  Finally,  Robespierre  was  all  along  thoroughly  hostile  to  the 
movement ;  in  his  character  of  Eousseauist  and  deist  he  argued 
that  atheism  was  **  aristocratic  ";  he  put  to  death  the  leaders  of  the 
Cult  of  Eeason  ;  and  he  set  up  the  Worship  of  the  Supreme  Being 
as  a  counter-move.  Broadly  speaking,  he  afiQliated  to  Necker,  and 
stood  very  much  at  the  standpoint  of  the  EngHsh  Unitarianism  of 
the  present  day.  Thus  the  bloodshed  of  the  Eeign  of  Terror,  if  it 
is  to  be  charged  on  any  species  of  philosophic  doctrine  rather  than 
on  the  unscrupulous  poHcy  of  the  enemies  of  the  Eevolution  in 
and  out  of  France,  stands  to  the  credit  of  the  belief  in  a  God,  the 
creed  of  Frederick,  Turgot,  Necker,  Franklin,  Pitt,  and  Washington. 
The  one  convinced  and  reasoning  atheist  among  the  publicists  of 
the  Eevolution,  the  journalist  Salaville,'  opposed  the  Cult  of 
Eeason  with  sound  and  serious  and  persuasive  argument,  and 
strongly  blamed  all  forcible  interference  with  worship,  while  at  the 
same  time  calmly  maintaining  atheism  as  against  theism.  The  age 
of  atheism  had  not  come,  any  more  than  the  triumph  of  Eeason. 

Mallet  du  Pan  specifies,  as  among  those  who  "  since  1788 
have  pushed  the  blood-stained  car  of  anarchy  and  atheism," 
Chamfort,  Gronvelle,  Garat,  and  Cerutti.  Chamfort  was  a^ 
high-minded  a  man  as  Mallet  himself,  and  is  to-day  so  recog- 
nized by  every  unprejudiced  reader.     The  others  are  forgotten. 


'encens  a  I'Etre  Supreme,  au 


1  P^re  P.-J.-F.  Fortin.  S07cvenirs,  Auxerre,  1867,  ii,  41. 

2  See  the  speech  in  Aulard,  Culte,  p.  240 ;  and  cp.  pp.  79-85. 

3  "Le  peuple  aura  des  fetes  dans  lesquelles  il  offrira  de  1  et   . 
maitre  de  la  nature,  car  nous  n'avons  pas  voulu  an6antir  la  superstition  pour  etablir 
le  rdgne  de  I'atheisme."    Speech  of  Nov.  26, 1793,  in  the  Moniteur.    (Discours  de  Danton, 

ed.  Andr6  Fribourg.  1910,  p.  599.)  ^  _  .         ^  *    i     ^   rr  7*^  ««  or_qr 

*  Aulard,  Culte,  pp.  81-82.  ^  Concerning  whom  see  Aulard,  Culte,  pp.  86-96. 


280 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


Gronvelle,  who  as  secretary  of  the  executive  council  read  to 
Louis  XVI  his  death-sentence,  wrote  De  Vatitorite  de  Monies- 
qtiieu  dans  la  rdvolution  pr6sente  (1789).  Garat  was  Minister 
of  Justice  in  1792  and  of  the  Interior  in  1793,  and  was  ennobled 
by  Napoleon.  He  had  published  Considerations  sur  la  Revo- 
lution (1792)  and  a  M&moire  sur  la  Revolution  (1795).  Cerutti, 
originally  a  Jesuit,  became  a  member  of  the  Legislative 
Assembly,  and  was  the  friend  of  Mirabeau,  whose  funeral 
oration  he  delivered. 

28.  The  anti-atheistic  and  anti-philosophic  legend  was  born  of 
the  exasperation  and  bad  faith  of  the  dethroned  aristocracy,  them- 
selves often  unbelievers  in  the  day  of  their  ascendancy,  and,  whether 
unbelievers  or  not,  responsible  with  the  Church  and  the  court  for 
that  long  insensate  resistance  to  reform  which  made  the  revolution 
inevitable.  Mere  random  denunciation  of  new  ideas  as  tending  to 
generate  rebelHon  was  of  course  an  ancient  commonplace.  Medieval 
heretics  had  been  so  denounced  ;  WicUf  was  in  his  day ;  and  when 
the  Count  de  Cataneo  attacked  Montesquieu's  Spirit  of  Laivs,  he 
spoke  of  all  such  reasonings  as  "  attempts  which  shake  the  sacred 
basis  of  thrones."^  But  he  and  his  contemporaries  knew  that 
freethinkers  were  not  specially  given  to  mutiny  ;  and  when,  later, 
French  Churchmen  had  begun  systematically  to  accuse  the  philo- 
sophers of  undermining  alike  the  Church  and  the  throne,^  the 
unbelieving  nobles,  conscious  of  entire  political  conservatism,  had 
simply  laughed.  Better  tlian  anyone  else  they  knew  that  political 
revolt  had  other  roots  and  motives  than  incredulity  ;  and  they  could 
not  but  remember  how  many  French  kings  had  been  rebelled  against 
by  the  Church,  and  how  many  slain  by  priestly  hands.  Their 
acceptance  of  the  priestly  formula  came  later.  In  the  life  of  the 
brilliant  Eivarol,  who  associated  with  the  noblesse  while  disdained 
by  many  of  them  because  of  his  obscure  birth,  we  may  read  the 
intellectual  history  of  the  case.  Brilliant  without  patience,  keen 
without  scientific  coherence,'  Eivarol  in  1787  met  the  pious  deism 
of  Necker  with  a  dialectic  in  which  cynicism  as  often  disorders  as 
illuminates  the  argument.    With  prompt  veracity  he  first  rejects  the 

1  The  Source,  the  Strength,  and  the  True  Spirit  of  Laws,  Eng.tr.  1753.  p.  6. 

^  Ea  in  the  ArrSt  du  Parlement  of  9  juin,  176-2.  denouncing  liousse&xi  s  Emtle  as 
tending  to  make  the  royal  authority  odious  and  to  destroy  the  principle  of  obedience : 
and  in  the  Examen  du  Belisaire  de  M.  MarmonteL  by  Coger  (Nouv.  6d.  aufim.  1767.  p.  45  sg. 
Cn  Marmontel's  MAmoires,  1804.  iii.  46,  as  to  his  being  called  enneini  du  trone  etde  I  mitelh 
This  kind  of  invective  was  kept  up  against  the  philosophes  to  the  moment  of  the  Revolution. 
See  for  instance  Le  vrai  religieux,  Discours  d6di6  4  Madame  Louise  de  France,  par  le 
R  P  C  A  1787.  p.  4  :  "Une  philosophic  orgueilleuse  a  renvers6  les  limites  sacrees  que  la 
main  du  Tr^s-Haut  avoit  elle-mSme  61ev6e3.  La  raison  de  Ihomme  a  os6  sender  les 
d6crets  de  Dieu Dans  les  accds  de  son  ivresse.  n'a-t-elle  pas  sap6  les  fondemens  du  trone 

8  Cp.  the  admissions  of  Curnier  {Bivarol,  sa  vie  et  ftes  oeuvres,1858,  p.  149)  in  deprecation 
of  Burke's  wild  likening  of  Rivaxors  journalism  to  the  Annals  of  Tacitus. 


FEENCH  FEEETHOUGHT 


281 


ideal  of  a  beneficent  reign  of  delusion,  and  insists  that  religion  is  seen 
in  all  history  powerless  alike  to  overrule  men's  passions  and  preju- 
dices, and  to  console  the  oppressed  by  its  promise  of  a  reversal  of 
earthly  conditions  in  another  world.  But  in  the  same  breath,  by 
way  of  proving  that  the  atheist  is  less  disturbing  to  convention  than 
the  deist,  he  insists  that  the  unbeliever  soon  learns  to  see  that 
"irreverences  are  crimes  against  society";  and  then,  in  order  to 
justify  such  conformity,  asserts  what  he  had  before  denied.  And 
the  self-contradiction  recurs.^  The  underlying  motive  of  the  whole 
polemic  is  simply  the  grudge  of  the  upper  class  diner-out  against  the 
serious  and  conscientious  bourgeois  who  strives  to  reform  the  existing 
system.  Conscious  of  being  more  enlightened,  the  wit  is  eager  at 
once  to  disparage  Necker  for  his  religiosity  and  to  discredit  him 
politically  as  the  enemy  of  the  socially  useful  ecclesiastical  order. 
Yet  in  his  second  letter  Siir  la  morale  (1788)  he  is  so  plainly  an 
unbeliever  that  the  treatise  had  to  be  printed  at  BerHn.  The  due 
sequence  is  that  when  the  Eevolution  breaks  out  Eivarol  sides  with 
the  court  and  the  noblesse,  while  perfectly  aware  of  the  ineptitude 
and  malfeasance  of  both  ;^  and,  living  in  exile,  proceeds  to  denounce 
the  philosophers  as  having  caused  the  overturn  by  their  universal 
criticism.  In  1787  he  had  declared  that  he  would  not  even  have 
written  his  Letters  to  Necker  if  he  were  not  certain  that  "the 
people  does  not  read."  Then  the  people  had  read  neither  the  philo- 
sophers nor  him.  But  in  exile  he  must  needs  frame  for  the  emigres 
a  formula,  true  or  false.  It  is  the  falsity  of  men  divided  against 
themselves,  who  pay  themselves  with  recriminations  rather  than 
realize  their  own  deserts.^    And  in  the  end  Eivarol  is  but  a  deist. 

29.  If  any  careful  attempt  be  made  to  analyse  the  situation,  the 
stirring  example  of  the  precedent  revolution  in  the  British  American 
colonies  will  probably  be  recognized  as  counting  for  very  much  more 
than  any  merely  literary  influence  in  promoting  that  of  France.  A 
certain  "  republican  "  spirit  had  indeed  existed  among  educated  men 
in  France  throughout  the  reign  of  Louis  XV :  D'Argenson  noted  it  in 
1750  and  later.*  But  this  spirit,  which  D'Argenson  in  large  measure 
shared,  while  holding  firmly  by  monarchy,^  was  simply  the  spirit  of 
constitutionalism,  the  love  of  law  and  good  government,  and  it  derived 

J  (Euvres,  ed.  cited,  pp.  136-40. 147-55. 

-*  Cp.  the  critique  of  Sainte-Beuve.  prefixed  to  ed.  cited,  pp.  14-17,  and  that  of  Ars^ne 
Houssaye,  id.  pp.  31-33.    Mr.  Saintsbury,  though  biassed  to  the  side  of  the  royalist,  admits 

3  r-f  ^\^^^^  hardly  knows  what  sincerity  is"  {Miscellaneous  Essays,  1892,  p.  67). 
f>i  fVu  ?f  Comte  is  thus  partly  inaccurate  in  saying  {Traite  de  Legislation,  1835,  i,  72) 
mat  the  charge  against  the  philosophers  began  "on  the  day  on  which  there  was  set  up  a 
government  in  France  that  sought  to  re-establish  the  abuses  of  which  they  had  sought  the 
aestruction,"  What  is  true  is  that  the  charge,  framed  at  once  by  the  backers  of  the  Old 
itegime.  has  always  since  done  duty  for  reaction. 

Memotres,  ed.  Jannet.  iii.  313 ;  iv,  70;  v,  346,  348.  «  Id.  iii,  346-47. 


282 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


FKENCH  FKEETHOUGHT 


283 


from  English  example  and  the  teachings  of  such  Engbshmen  as 
Locke/  insofar   as  it  was  not  spontaneous.     If  acceptance  of  the 
doctrine  of  constitutional  government  can  lead  to  anarchy,  let  it  be 
avowed ;  but  let  not  the  cause  be  pretended  to  be  deism  or  atheism 
The  political  teaching  for  which   the  Paris  Parlement  denounced 
Eousseau's  Ernile  in  1762.  and  for  which  the  theologians  of  the 
Sorbonne   censured   Marmontel's   Bdisaire   in   1767,  was   the   old 
doctrine  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  people.     But  this  had  been  main- 
tained by  a  whole  school  of  English  Protestant  Christians  b^ore 
Bossuet  denounced  the  Protestant  Jurieu  for  maintaining  it.     Nay, 
it  had  been  repeatedly  maintained  by  Catholic  theologians,  from 
Thomas  Aquinas  to  Suarez,^  especially  when  there  was  any  question 
of  putting  down  a  Protestant  monarch.     Protestants  on  their  part 
protested    indignantly,    and    reciprocated.     The    recrimmations   of 
Protestants  and  Catholics  on  this  head  form  one  of  the  standing 
farces  of  human  history.     Coger,  attacking  Marmontel,  unctuously 
cites  Bayle's  censure  of   his   fellow   Protestants   in   his  Avis  aux 
Befugiez'  for  their  tone   towards  kings  and  monarchy,  but   says 
nothing  of   Bayle's  quarrel  with  Jurieu.  which  motived  such  an 
utterance,  or  of  his  Cntzque  Gbi&raU  of  Maimbourg's  Histoire  du 
Calvtmsme.  in  which  he  shows  how  the  Catholic  historian  s  prin- 
ciples  would    justify   the   rebellion    alike    of    Catholics    in    every 
Protestant  country  and  of  Protestants  in  every  Cathohc  country 
though  all  the  while  it  is  assumed  that  true  Christians  never  resort 
to  violence.     And,  unless  there  has  been  an  error  as  to  his  author- 
ship, Bayle  himself,  be  it  remembered,  had  in  his  letter  Ce  que  c  est 
que  la  France  toute  catJioUque  sous  le  rdgne  de  Louts  le  Grand  passed 
as  scathing  a  criticism  on  Louis  XIV  as  any  Protestant  refugee 
could    well    have    compassed.     Sectarian    hypocrisies    apart     the 
doctrine  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  people-for  opposing  which  the 
freethinker  Hobbes  has  been  execrated  by  generations  of  Christians 
—is  the  professed  political  creed  of  the  very  classes  who,  in  Eng  ana 
and  the  United  States,  have  so  long  denounced  French  freethinkers 
for  an  alleged  "subversive"  social  teaching  which  fell  far  short  of 
what  English  and   American  Protestants   had   actually   practised. 
The  revolt  of    the  American  colonies,  in  fact,  precipitated  demo- 

1  D' Argenson.  noting  in  his  olf  age  how ;-on  n'a  jf^el  LomTlFv:^^^^^^^ 
qu'aujourd'hui."  how  no  such  talk  ^a-^  b^^J^  hea-rd  ^^^^^^^^^^^  He  goes  on 

had  developed  on  the  subject,  adds-    ^ela  v  ent  du  P^^^^^^^^^  originally  made  by 

to  speak  of  a  reissue  of  the  translation  of  I^^^^-^^^m  Lif^  o/  Eur^^^^  ed.  187'2.  iii.  160-63. 
the  Jansenists  (Memoires.  iv,  189-90  .  ^l"*]^*"?'  foi   1737  ii  564  sq. 

3  (Euvref*  diverses  de  Pierre  Bayle,  La  Haye.  4  vols.  fol.  ™' "^.^^.^  jor  the  Avis  aux 

4  This  Critiqice  appears  in  the  very  volume  to  which  Coger  ^e^^J^  ^^^  ^^« 
B^fugiez.    See  Lett.  viii.  xiii,  xvii,  etc..  vol.  and  ed.  cited,  pp.  db.  54,  a.  etc. 


cratic  feeling  in  France  in  a  way  that  no  writing  had  ever  done. 
Lafayette,  no  freethinker,  declared  himself  republican  at  once  on 
reading  the  American  declaration  of  the  Eights  of  Man.^  In  all 
this  the  freethinking  propaganda  counted  for  nothing  directly  and 
for  little  indirectly,  inasmuch  as  there  was  no  clerical  quarrel  in  the 
colonies.  And  if  we  seek  for  even  an  indirect  or  general  influence, 
apart  from  the  affirmation  of  the  duty  of  kings  to  their  people, 
the  thesis  as  to  the  activity  of  the  philosophes  must  at  once  be 
restricted  to  the  cases  of  Eousseau,  Helv^tius,  Kaynal,  and  d'Holbach, 
for  Marmontel  never  passed  beyond  "  sound  "  generalities. 

As  for  the  pretence  that  it  was  freethinking  doctrines  that 
brought  Louis  XVI  to  the  scaffold,  it  is  either  the  most  impudent 
or  the  most  ignorant  of  historical  imputations.  The  "right"  of 
tyrannicide  had  been  maintained  by  Catholic  schoolmen  before  the 
Eeformation,  and  by  both  Protestants  and  CathoHcs  afterwards, 
times  without  number,  even  as  they  maintained  the  right  of  the 
people  to  depose  and  change  kings.  The  doctrine  was  in  fact  not 
even  a  modern  innovation,  the  theory  being  so  well  primed  by  the 
practice — under  every  sort  of  government,  Jewish  and  pagan  in 
antiquity,  Moslem  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  Christian  from  the  day 
of  Pepin  to  the  day  of  John  Knox — that  a  certain  novelty  lay  on 
the  side  of  the  "  divine  right  of  kings  "  when  that  was  popularly 
formulated.  And  on  the  whole  question  of  revolution,  or  the  right 
of  peoples  to  recast  their  laws,  the  general  doctrine  of  the  most 
advanced  of  the  French  freethinkers  is  paralleled  or  outgone  by 
popes  and  Church  Councils  in  the  Middle  Ages,  by  Occam  and 
MarsigHo  of  Padua  and  Wiclif  and  more  than  one  German  legist  in 
the  fourteenth  century,  by  John  Major  and  George  Buchanan  in 
Scotland,  by  Goodman  in  England,  and  by  many  Huguenots  in 
France,  in  the  sixteenth  ;  by  Hotman  in  his  Francogallia  in  1574  ; 
by  the  author  of  the  Soupirs  de  la  France  Esclave^  in  1689 ;  and 
by  the  whole  propagandist  hterature  of  the  EngHsh  and  American 
Eevolutions  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth.  So  far  from  being 
a  specialty  of  freethinkers.  "  sedition  "  was  in  all  these  and  other 
cases  habitually  grounded  on  Bibhcal  texts  and  religious  protesta- 
tions ;  so  that  Bacon,  httle  given  as  he  was  to  defending  rationalists, 
could  confidently  avow  that  '*  Atheism  leaves  a  man  to  sense,  to 
philosophy,  to  natural  piety,  to  laws,  to  reputation but  super- 
stition dismounts  all  these,  and  erecteth  an  absolute  monarchy  in 
the  minds  of  men.     Therefore  atheism  did  never  perturb  states 

^  Cp.  the  survey  of  Aulard,  Hist,  polit.  de  la  rev.frangaise,  2e  6dit.  1903.  pp.  2-23. 
2  Probably  the  work  of  a  Jansenist. 


284  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 

But  superstition  hath  been  the  confusion  of  many  states."  For 
"  superstition  "  read  "  sectarianism,"  "  fanaticism,"  and  ecclesias- 
ticism"  Bacon's  generalization  is  of  course  merely  empirical, 
atheism  being  capable  of  alliance  with  revolutionary  passion  m  its 
turn  ;  but  the  historical  summary  holds  good.  Only  by  men  who 
had  not  read  or  had  forgotten  universal  history  could  the  ascription 
of  the  French  Kevolution  to  rationalistic  thought  have  been  made. 

30.  A  survey  of  the  work  and  attitude  of   the  leading  French 
freethinkers  of  the  century  may  serve  to  settle  the  point  once  for 
all.     Voltaire  is  admittedly  out  of  the  question.     Mallet  du  Pan, 
whose  resistance   to   the   Kevolution   developed   into  a  fanaticism 
hardly  less  perturbing  to  judgment''  than  that  of  Burke,  expressly 
disparaged  him  as  having  so  repelled  men  by  his  cynicism  that  he 
had  nttle  influence  on  their  feelings,  and  so  could  not  be  reckoned 
a  prime  force  in  preparing  the  Revolution.^     "  Mably,"  the  critic 
adds,    "whose   republican    declamations    have    intoxicated    many 
modern  democrats,  was  religious  to  austerity :  at  the  first  stroke 
of  the  tocsin  against  the  Church  of  Rome,  he  would  have  thrown 
his  books  in  the  fire,  excepting  his  scathing  apostrophes  to  Voltaire 
and  the  atheists.     Marmontel,  Saint-Lambert,  Morellet,  Encyclo- 
pedists, were  adversaries  of  the  revolution."*     On  the  other  hand, 
Barante  avows  that    Mably,  detesting  as  he  did  the  freethinking 
philosophers  of  his  day,  followed  no  less  than  others  "  a  destructive 
course,  and  contributed,  without  knowing  it,  to  weaken  the  already 
frayed  ties  which  still  united  the  parts  of  an  ancient  society." 
As  Barante  had  previously  ascribed  the  whole  dissolution  to  the 
autocratic  process  under  Louis  XIV.'  even  this  indictment  of  the 
orthodox  Mably  is  invalid.     Voltaire,  on  the  other  hand,  Barante 
charges  with    an   undue   leaning   to  the   methods   of   Louis   XIV. 
Voltaire,  in  fact,  was  in  things  political  a  conservative,  save  insofar 
as  he  fought  for  toleration,  for  lenity,  and  for  the  most  necessary 

1  On  the  whole  question  of  the  growt^i  of  abstract  revolutionary  doctrine^m 
on  W  S   McKechnie  on  the  De  Jure  liegni  apud  Scotos  m  the    Georfie  Buchanan    vol.  oi 
Olaslow  Qua^erceSJLar^StudieB.  1906.  pp.  256-76;  Gierke.  Political  Theortes  of  the  Middle 

^Twl^Tpt  ac?ulnv  renroachll^tiie  pMlof^ophes  in  the  mass-while  admitting  the  hostility 
of  m^ny  of  thenfto  thHrv^^  accelerated  French  def^eneration  and 

deSa?at?on        brrendenng  the  conscience  argumentative  (ratwnneuse)  by  ^/]^^l^]f^^^f^f^ 
forTutfes^incuicaUd  by  senUment.  tradition  and  habit,  the  unc.r/^tnr 

reason  and  sophisms  adapted  to  passions.'  e.tc.  etc  (B.  ,^i^"^{' ^f^^'.J.^^crof  t^^^  ordinary 
his  natural  vigour  of  mind.  Mallet  du  Pan  thus  came  ^o  talk  the  angua^^^^ 
irrationalist  of  the  Reaction.  Certamly.  if  the  stimulation  »  the  halnt  of  reason mguo 
ft  destructive  course,  the  philosophes  stand  condemned.  But  as  CluKsiians  naa  ueeu 
?eas?n[nraJ  best  they  could,  in  an  eternal  series  of  vain  disputes,  for  a  millennium  ai  d 
X?f  bifore  the  Revo?ut ion.  with  habitual  appeal  to  the  passions,  the  argument  only 
proves  how  vacuous  a  Christian  champion's  reasoning  can  be.  „„i,  .   •      xr^n^t  itu 

«  Art    in  Mercure  BritannxQiie,  No.  13.  Feb.  21. 1799 ;  cited  by  B.  Mallet  inAfa^et  du 
Tan  and  the  French  Bevolutimi,  1902.  App.  p.  f  7.  4.f  P-  ^^^ 

6  Tableau  littiraire  dti  dix-huititme  si^cle,  8e  edit.  pp.  Hi,  lid-  -t"-  v-  '^• 


FKENCH  FREETHOUGHT 


285 


reforms.  And  if  Voltaire's  attack  on  what  he  held  to  be  a  demoral- 
izing and  knew  to  be  a  persecuting  religion  be  saddled  with  the 
causation  of  the  political  crash,  the  blame  will  have  to  be  carried 
back  equally  to  the  English  deists  and  the  tyranny  of  Louis  XIV. 
To  such  indictments,  as  Barante  protests,  there  is  no  limit :  every 
age  pivots  on  its  predecessor  ;  and  to  blame  for  the  French  Revolu- 
tion everybody  but  a  corrupt  aristocracy,  a  tyrannous  and  ruinously 
spendthrift  monarchy,  and  a  cruel  church,  is  to  miss  the  last 
semblance  of  judicial  method.  It  may  be  conceded  that  the  works 
of  Mesher  and  d'Holbach,  neither  of  whom  is  noticed  by  Barante, 
are  directly  though  only  generally  revolutionary  in  their  bearing, 
i  But  the  main  works  of  d'Holbach  appeared  too  close  upon  the 
'-  Revolution  to  be  credited  with  generating  it ;  and  Meslier,  as  we 
know,  had  been  generally  read  only  in  abridgments  and  adaptations, 
in  which  his  political  doctrine  disappears. 

Mallet  du  Pan,  striking  in  all  directions,  indicts  alternately 
Rousseau,  whose  vogue  lay  largely  among  rehgious  people,  and  the 
downright  freethinkers.  The  great  fomenter  of  the  Revolution,  the 
critic   avows,    was   Rousseau.     "He   had   a   hundred  times   more 

readers  than  Voltaire  in  the  middle  and  lower  classes No  one 

has  more  openly  attacked  the  right  of  property  in  declaring  it  a 

usurpation It  is  he  alone  who  has  inoculated  the  French  with 

the  doctrine  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  people,  and  with  its  ^  most 
extreme  consequences." '  After  this  "  he  alone,"  the  critic  obliviously 
proceeds  to  exclaim  :  "  Diderot  and  Condorcet :  there  are  the^  true 
chiefs  of  the  revolutionary  school,"  adding  that  Diderot  had  "  pro- 
claimed equality  before  Marat ;  the  Rights  of  Man  before  Si^y^s ; 
sacred  insurrection  before  Mirabeau  and  Lafayette  ;  the  massacre 
of  priests  before  the  Septembrists." '  But  this  is  mere  furious 
declamation.  Only  by  heedless  misreading  or  malice  can  support 
be  given  to  the  pretence  that  Diderot  wrought  for  the  violent  over- 
throw of  the  existing  political  system.  Passages  denouncing  kingly 
tyranny  had  been  inserted  in  their  plays  by  both  Corneille  and 
Voltaire,  and  applauded  by  audiences  who  never  dreamt  of  abolishing 
monarchy.  A  phrase  about  strangling  kings  in  the  bowels  of  priests 
is  expressly  put  by  Diderot  in  the  mouth  of  an  Eleutheromane  or 
Liberty-maniac  ;'  which  shows  that  the  type  had  arisen  in  his 
lifetime  in  opposition  to  his  own  bias.     This  very  poem  he  read  to 

*  Work  cited  p  358  ^  ^^'  P*  ^^^* 

8  Cp.  Morley.' Diderof.  p.  407.    Lord  Morley  points  to  the  phrase  in  another  form  in  a 

letter  of  Voltaire's  in  1761.    It  really  derives  from  Jean  Meslier.  who  quotes  it  from  an 

unlettered  man  (Testament,  i,  19). 


286  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 

the  Prince  von  Galitzin,  the  ambassador  of  the  Empress  Catherine 
and  his  own  esteemed  friend/  The  tyranny  of  the  French  Govern- 
ment, swayed  by  the  king's  mistresses  and  favourites  and  by  the 
Jesuits,  he  did  indeed  detest,  as  he  had  cause  to  do,  and  as  every 
man  of  good  feehng  did  with  him ;  but  no  writing  of  his  wrought 
measurably  for  its  violent  overthrow.'  D'Argenson  in  1751  was 
expressing  his  fears  of  a  revolution,  and  noting  the  "  d^sobeissance 
constante  "  of  the  Parlement  of  Paris  and  the  disaffection  of  the 
people,  before  he  had  heard  of  "  un  M.  Diderot,  qui  a  beaucoup 
d'esprit,  mais  qui  affecte  trop  I'irreligion."  And  when  he  notes  that 
the  Jesuits  have  secured  the  suppression  of  the  Encyclopedie  as 
being  hostile  "  to  God  and  the  royal  authority,"  he  does  not  attach 
the  slightest  weight  to  the  charge.  He  knew  that  Louis  called  the 
pious  Jansenists  "  enemies  of  God  and  of  the  king." 

Mallet  du  Pan  grounds  his  charge  against  Diderot  almost  solely 
on  "those  incendiary  diatribes  intercalated  in  the  Histoire  pMloso- 
phiqm   des   deux   Indes    which   dishonour   that   work,    and   which 
Kaynal,  in  his  latter  days,  excised  with  horror  from  a  new  edition 
which  he  was  preparing."     But  supposing  the  passages  in  question 
to  be  all  Diderot's*— which  is  far  from  certain— they  are  to  be 
saddled  with  responsibility  for  the  Reign  of   Terror   only  on   the 
principle  that  it  was  more  provocative  in  the  days  of  tyranny  to 
denounce  than  to  exercise  it.     To  this  complexion  Mallet  du  Pan 
came,  with  the  anti-Revolutionists  in  general ;  but  to-day  we  can 
recognize  in  the  whole  process  of  reasoning  a  reductio  ad  ahsurdim. 
The  school  in  question  came  in  all  seriousness  to  ascribe  the  evils 
of  the  Revolution  to  everything  and  everybody  save  the  men  and 
classes  whose  misgovernment  made  the  Revolution  inevitable. 

Some  of  the  philosophers,  it  is  true,  themselves  gave  colour  to 
the  view  that  they  were  the  makers  of  the  Revolution,  as  when 
D'Alembert  said  to  Romilly  that  "  philosophy  "  had  produced  in  his 
time  that  change  in  the  popular  mind  which  exhibited  itself  in  the 
indifference  with  which  they  rvoceived  the  news  of  the  birth  of  tlie 
dauphin.'  The  error  is  none  the  less  plain.  The  philosophes  had 
done  nothing  to  promote  anti-monarchism  among  the  common 
people,  who  did  not  read.'     It  was  the  whole  political  and  social 

1  Rosenkranz,  Diderot's  Leben  und  WerJce,  1866.  ii.  380-81.  „„^„„^f  „*  „  nimsace 

2  As  Lord  Morley  points  out.  Henri  Martin  absolutely  reverses  the  purport  of  a  passage 
in  order  to  convict  Diderot  of  justifying  regicide. 

»  M^moires,  ed.  Jannet,  iv.  44,  51, 68.  69,  74,  91.  93.  101,  lOd.  •     ^  m  mn  7,VrP<i 

4  Manet  d'u'C  Bays  be  saw  the  MS.,  and.  knew  Dfff'^°S,\^.\^j!?  [,^f/7!^  J;^^/^^^^^^ 
tournois  for  his  additions.    This  statement  is  mcredible.    J^ut  Meister  is  exphc^^^^^ 
Uoge,  as  to  Diderot  having  written  for  the  book  much  that  he  thought  nobody  wouia  si^u. 
whereas  Raynal  was  ready  to  sign  anythmg.  , 

s  Memoirs  of  Sir  Samuel  Eomilly.  3rd  ed.  1841,  i.  46.  .  i,oorQ  "only 

e  When  D'Argenson  writes  in  1752  (Mhnoires,  6d.  Jannet.  iv.  103)  that  he  hears    oniy 


FRENCH  FREETHOUGHT 


287 


evolution  of  two  generations  that  had  wrought  the  change  ;  and  the 
people  were  still  for  the  most  part  believing  Catholics.  Frederick 
the  Great  was  probably  within  the  mark  when  in  1769  he  privately 
reminded  the  more  optimistic  philosophers  that  their  entire  French 
public  did  not  number  above  200,000  persons.  The  people  of  Paris, 
who  played  the  chief  part  in  precipitating  the  Revolution,  were  spon- 
taneously mutinous  and  disorderly,  but  were  certainly  not  in  any 
considerable  number  unbelievers.  "  While  Voltaire  dechristianized 
a  portion  of  polite  society  the  people  remained  very  pious,  even  at 
Paris.  In  1766  Louis  XV,  so  unpopular,  was  acclaimed  because  he 
knelt,  on  the  Pont  Neuf,  before  the  Holy  Sacrament."* 

And  this  is  the  final  answer  to  any  pretence  that  the  Revolution 
was  the  work  of  the  school  of  d'Holbach.  Bergier  the  priest,  and 
Rivarol  the  conservative  unbeliever,  alike  denied  that  d'Holbach's 
systematic  writings  had  any  wide  public.  Doubtless  the  same  men 
were  ready  to  eat  their  words  for  the  satisfaction  of  vilifying  an 
opponent.  It  has  always  been  the  way  of  orthodoxy  to  tell  atheists 
alternately  that  they  are  an  impotent  handful  and  that  they  are 
the  ruin  of  society.  But  by  this  time  it  ought  to  be  a  matter  of 
elementary  knowledge  that  a  great  political  revolution  can  be 
wrought  only  by  far-reaching  political  forces,  whether  or  not  these 
may  concur  with  a  propaganda  of  rationalism  in  rehgion.*  If  any 
"philosopher"  so-called  is  to  be  credited  with  specially  promoting 
the  Revolution,  it  is  either  Rousseau,  who  is  so  often  hailed  latterly 
as  the  engineer  of  a  religious  reaction,  and  whose  works,  as  has 
been  repeatedly  remarked,  *'  contain  much  that  is  utterly  and  irre- 
concilably opposed  "  to  the  Revolution,*  or  Raynal,  who  was  only 
anti-clerical,  not  anti-Christian,  and  who  actually  censured  the 
revolutionary  procedure.  When  he  published  his  first  edition  he 
must  be  held  to  have  acquiesced  in  its  doctrine,  whether  it  were 
from  Diderot's  pen  or  his  own.  Rousseau  and  Raynal  were  the 
two  most  popular  writers  of  their  day  who  dealt  with  social  as 
apart  from  religious  or  philosophical  issues,  and  to  both  is  thus 
imputed  a  general  subversiveness.  But  here  too  the  charge  rests 
upon  a  sociological  fallacy.  The  Parlement  of  Paris,  composed  of 
rich  bourgeois  and  aristocrats,  many  of  them  Jansenists,  very  few 

2J/uZoso2)?j<'s  say.  as  if  convinced,  that  even  anarchy  would  be  better"  than  the  existing 
misgovernment,  he  makes  no  suggestion  that  they  teach  this.    And  he  declares  for  his 

own  part  that  everything  is  drifting  to  ruin:  "nulle  reformation nulle  amelioration. 

Tout  tombe,  par  lambeaux." 

*  Aulard,  Hist,  polit.  de  la  revol.  p.  24. 

*  This  is  the  sufficient  comment  on  a  perplexing  page  of  Lord  Morley's  second  mono- 
graph on  Burke  (pp.  110-11),  which  I  have  never  been  able  to  reconcile  with  the  rest  of 
his  writing. 

'  Lecky,  Hist,  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  small  ed.  vi,  263. 


288 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


FEENCH  FREETHOUGHT 


289 


of  them  freethinkers,  most  of  them  ready  to  burn  freethinking  books, 
played  a  "subversive"  part  throughout  the  century, inasmuch  as  it 
so  frequently  resisted  the  king's  will/  The  stars  in  their  courses 
fought  against  the  old  despotism.  Rousseau  was  ultimately  influen- 
tial towards  change  because  change  was  inevitable  and  essential, 
not  because  he  was  restless.  The  whole  drift  of  things  furthered 
his  ideas,  which  at  the  outset  won  no  great  vogue.  He  was  followed 
because  he  set  forth  what  so  many  felt ;  and  similarly  Raynal  was 
read  because  he  chimed  with  a  strengthening  feeling.  In  direct 
contradiction  to  Mallet  du  Pan,  Chamfort.  a  keener  observer,  wrote 
while  the  Revolution  was  still  in  action  that  "  the  priesthood  was 
the  first  bulwark  of  absolute  power,  and  Voltaire  overthrew  it. 
Without  this  decisive  and  indispensable  first  step  nothing  would 
have  been  done." '  The  same  observer  goes  on  to  say  that  Rousseau's 
political  works,  and  particularly  the  Contrat  Social,  '*  were  fitted  for 

few  readers,  and  caused  no  alarm    at  court That   theory  was 

regarded  as  a  hollow  speculation  which  could  have  no  further 
consequences  than  the  enthusiasm  for  liberty  and  the  contempt  of 
royalty  carried  so  far  in  the  pieces  of  Corneille,  and  applauded  at 
court  by  the  most  absolute  of  kings,  Louis  XIV.  All  that  seemed 
to  belong  to  another  world,  and  to  have  no  connection  with  ours ; 

in  a  word,  Voltaire  above  all  has  made  the  Revolution,  because 

he  has  written  for  all ;  Rousseau  above  all  has  made  the  Constitu- 
tion because  he  has  written  for  the  thinkers." '  And  so  the  changes 
may  be  rung  for  ever.  The  final  philosophy  of  history  cannot  be 
reached  by  any  such  artificial  selection  of  factors ; '  and  the  ethical 
problem  equally  evades  such  solutions.  If  we  are  to  pass  any 
ethico-pohtical  judgment  whatever,  it  must  be  that  the  evils  of  the 
Revolution  lie  at  the  door  not  of  the  reformers,  but  of  the  men,  the 
classes,  and  the  institutions  which  first  provoked  and  then  resisted 
it.'  To  describe  the  former  as  the  authors  of  the  process  is  as 
intelligent  as  it  was  to  charge  upon  Sokrates  the  decay  of  orthodox 
tradition  in  Athens,  and  to  charge  upon  that  the  later  downfall  of 
the  Athenian  empire.  The  wisest  men  of  the  age,  notably  the  great 
Turgot,  sought  a  gradual  transformation,  a  peaceful  and  harmless 
transition    from    unconstitutional    to    constitutional    government. 

1  D'Argenson  notes  this  repeatedly,  though  in  one  passage  he  praises  the  Parlement 
as  having  alone  made  head  against  absolutfem  (d6c.  1752;  ed.  cited,  iv,  lib;. 

2  Maximes  et  Pens^es,  ed.  1856,  p.  72.  °    ■    RF\^ul  j.n^^r».,  riirl  much 
*  Chamfort  in  another  passage  maintains  against  Spulavie  that  the  Academy  did  mucu 

to  develop  the  spirit  of  freedom  in  thought  and  politics.    M.  p.  107.    And  this  too  is 

arguable,  as  we  have  seen.  ,      ,         .       j-i  a  „j.  „„„  f.,^fv./.».  Tancttv>  sfis 

^  On  this  complicated  issue,  which  cannot  be  here  handled  at  any  further  length  see 

Prof.  P.  A.  Wadia'B  essay  The  Philosophers  and  Die  French  ^^^^J^l'^l^,^^'^''}^^^^^ 
Series.  1904).  which,  however,  needs  revision:  and  compare  the  argument  of  Nourrisson. 
J.-J.  Bonaseau  et  le  Bouaaeauisrne,  1903.  ch.  xx. 


Their  policy  was  furiously  resisted  by  an  unteachable  aristocracy. 
When  at  last  fortuitous  violence  made  a  breach  in  the  feudal  walls, 
a  people  unprepared  for  self-rule,  and  fought  by  an  aristocracy  eager 
for  blood,  surged  into  anarchy,  and  convulsion  followed  on  convul- 
sion.    That  is  in  brief  the  history  of  the  Revolution. 

31.  While  the  true  causation  of  the  Revolution  is  thus  kept 
clear,  it  must  not  be  forgotten,  further,  that  to  the  very  last,  save 
where  controlled  by  disguised  rationalists  like  Malesherbes,  the 
tendency  of  the  old  regime  was  to  persecute  brutally  and  senselessly 
wherever  it  could  lay  hands  on  a  freethinker.  In  1788,  only  a  year 
before  the  first  explosion  of  the  Revolution,  there  appeared  the 
Almanack  des  Honnetes  Gens  of  Sylvain  Marechal,  a  w^ork  of 
which  the  offence  consisted  not  in  any  attack  upon  religion,  but  in 
simply  constructing  a  calendar  in  which  the  names  of  renowned 
laymen  were  substituted  for  saints.  Instantly  it  was  denounced 
by  the  Paris  Parlement,  the  printer  prosecuted,  and  the  author 
imprisoned ;  and  De  Sauvigny,  the  censor  who  had  passed  the  book, 
was  exiled  thirty  leagues  from  Paris. ^ 

Some  idea  of  the  intensity  of  the  tyranny  over  all  literature 
in  France  under  the  Old  Regime  may  be  gathered  from  Buckle's 
compendious  account  of  the  books  officially  condemned,  and 
of  authors  punished,  during  the  two  generations  before  the 
Revolution.     Apart  from  the  record  of  the  treatment  of  Buffon, 

Marmontel,  Morellet,  Voltaire,  and  Diderot,  it  runs:  "The 

tendency  was  shown  in  matters  so  trifling  that  nothing  but 
the  gravity  of  their  ultimate  results  prevents  them  from  being 
ridiculous.  In  1770,  Imbert  translated  Clarke's  Letters  on 
Spain,  one  of  the  best  works  then  existing  on  that  country. 
This  book,  however,  was  suppressed  as  soon  as  it  appeared  ; 
and  the  only  reason  assigned  for  such  a  stretch  of  power  is  that 
it  contained  some  remarks  respecting  the  passion  of  Charles  III 
for  hunting,  which  were  considered  disrespectful  to  the  French 
crown,  because  Louis  XV  himself  was  a  great  hunter.  Several 
years  before  this  La  Bletterie,  who  was  favourably  known  in 
France  by  his  works,  was  elected  a  member  of  the  French 
Academy.  But  he,  it  seems,  was  a  Jansenist,  and  had  more- 
over ventured  to  assert  that  the  Emperor  JuHan,  notwithstanding 
his  apostasy,  was  not  entirely  devoid  of  good  qualities.  Such 
offences  could  not  be  overlooked  in  so  pure  an  age ;  and  the 
king  obliged  the  Academy  to  exclude  La  Bletterie  from  their 
society.  That  the  punishment  extended  no  further  was  an 
instance  of  remarkable  leniency ;  for  Fr^ret,  an  eminent  critic 
and  scholar,  was  confined   in  the   Bastille  because  he  stated, 

*  Correspondance  de  Grimm,  ed.  cited,  xiv,  5-6.    Lettre  de  janv.  1788. 
VOL.  II  u 


290 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

in  one  ot  his  memoirs,  that  the  earliest  Prankish  chiefs  had 

rhecUheirMs  from  the  ^'^^^^1^:':^^^ 
inflirted  four  different  t  mes  upon  Lenglet  du  iresnoy.  ^n  i,ne 
cas  of  tiramiable  and  accomplished  man,  tl--  -orns  o  ha^ 
been  hardly  the  shadow  of  a  pretext  for  the  craelty  ^v^th  ^^h^h 

he  was  treated  ;  though  on  one  <^<^<'fl°'\^%^^^'^f^l°^^Z 
that  he  had  published  a  supplement  to  the  History  of  De  il  ou 
"Indeed  we  have  only  to  open  the  biographies  and  cone 
snondence  of  that  time  to  find  instances  crowding  upon  us  from 
Kuttr  Eousseau  was  threatened  with  i^npnsonment,  ^ 
driven  from  France,  and  his  ^orks  were  publicly  ^u  "e^.  1  he 
celebrated  treatise  of  Helv6tius  on  the  ^md  J-^^  «»  P^~  ^f 
an  order  of  the  Royal  Council ;  it  was  b^^^^^^^ytlie  common 

hangman,  and  the,  author  was  --P«  '^^^^^^^^^  Sn 

vfifrnofinrt  h  s  oDinions.     Some  of  the  geoio^icdi  \i^\yo  ^j     ^  ^^     i 
hS  oSended'the  clergy,  that  illustrious  natur.^-^  -s  Jh^d 
tr.  nnbli=h   a  formal  recantation  of   doctrines  which   aie  now 
known  to  be  perfectly  accurate.     The  learned  Observations  on 
'rffist'y^lVby  Mably  were  suppre^^^^ 
fhAv  nnneared  '  for  whafc  reason  it  would  be  hard  to  say,  smL« 
S'St  cttaLly  no  friend  either  to  anarchy  or  to  irr^^^^^^^^^ 
has  thought  it  worth  while  to  republish  them,  and  thus  stamp 
them  with  the  authority  of  his  own  great  name^    TO''  fj^'   ; 
of  ths  Indus,  by  Raynal.  was  condemned^  o  the  James,  -d^^^ 
€.nfV.nr  nrdprpd  to  be  arrested.     Lianjumais,  in  uis  »^^ 
work  on  J^^^^^^^  ^^ofc  ^^^y  '^^'''''  toleration  bu 

Ten  re  abS;  ^f  slavery;  his  book  therefore  ^^^^^^^ 
to  be  'seditious';  it  was  ^^onounc^^^^^^^^^ 
dination;  and  was  sentenced  to  ^^.  ^7^,  ^^^^^ 
Bayle,  by  Marsy. was  suppressed,  and  ^^^^^^  ^^t^t^^^^^ 
The  History  of  the  Jesuits,  by  Linguet.  was  ^^1^^^^^^  .^"l, ;''' 
fllLs     eifiht  years  later  his  journal  was  suppressed;^  ^^p"^';  v  '/ 
?e"    ;ft      that  as  he  still  persisted  in  writing,  his  Po/.^^ca 
IZals  were  suppressed,  and  he  himself  --^    hrown  mto  the 
Bastille.     Delisle  de  Sales  was  sentenced  to  Pf  P  J^f  ^^^^^^^ 
confiscation  of  all  his  property  on  -?^^°^f  ^^^^J^VZch  Law 
Philosophy  of  Nattcre,     The  treatise  by  ^^,^y'  °^V^^^ 
was  suppressed  ;  that  by  Boncerf,  ^^.^^^^f  hum^^^^^ 
The  Memoirs  of  Beaumarchais  were  hkewise  burned  ,  }^^f'^l 
onFHelon    by  La  Harpe,  was  merely  suppressed.     I^nveine  . 
on  i^eneiun,  uy  xja.  i  Qnrhminp    which    was    still 

having   written   a   History  of  the    ^^~'a  J  while 

unpublished,  was  seized  and  thrown  into  the  ^^f  ^^^;^^;  ^^^ 
the  manuscript  was  yet  in  "his  own  possess^^^^^^  J.^/suppr  s  ^ 
work  of  De  Lolme  on  the  fnghsh  constit^^^^^^^^  ^^ 

by  edict  directly  it  appeared.     The  fate  ot  being  supp 
prohibited  also  awaited  the  Letters  of  ^ervaise  in  1724     tn 
Dissertations  of  Courayer  in  1727     the  ^e^^ff^^^.  J^^^^^^^ 
1732  •  the  History  of  Tamerlane,  by  Margat,  also  m  17d.  . 


FKENCH  FKEETHOUGHT 


291 


Essay  on  Taste,  by  Cartaud,  in  1736  ;  The  Life  of  Domat,  by 
Provost  de  la  Jann^s,  in  1742  ;  the  History  of  Lotcis  XI,  by 
Duclos,  in  1745  ;  the  Letters  of  Bargeton  in  1750 ;  the  Memoirs 
on  Troyes,  by  Grosley,  in  the  same  year ;  the  History  of 
Clement  XI,  by  Keboulet,  in  1752  ;  The  School  of  Man,  by 
Genard,  also  in  1752;  the  Therapeutics  of  Garlon  in  1756; 
the  celebrated  thesis  of  Louis,  on  Generation,  in  1754  ;  the 
treatise  on  Presidial  Jurisdiction,  by  Jousse,  in  1755  ;  the 
Ericie  of  Fontenelle  in  1768;  the  Thoughts  ofJamin  in  1769; 
the  History  of  Siam,  by  Turpin,  and  the  Eloge  of  Marcus 
Aurclius,  by  Thomas,  both  in  1770  ;  the  works  on  Finance  by 
Darigrand,  in  1764,  and  by  Le  Trosne  in  1779  ;  the  Essay  on 
Military  Tactics,  by  Guibert,  in  1772 ;  the  Letters  of  Boucquet 
in  the  same  year ;  and  the  Memoirs  of  Terrai,  by  Coquereau,  in 
1776.  Such  wanton  destruction  of  property  was,  however, 
mercy  itself  compared  to  the  treatment  experienced  by  other 
literary  men  in  France.  Desforges,  for  example,  having  written 
against  the  arrest  of  the  Pretender  to  the  English  throne,  was, 
solely  on  that  account,  buried  in  a  dungeon  eight  feet  square 
and  confined  there  for  three  years.  This  happened  in  1749  ; 
and  in  1770,  Audra,  professor  at  the  College  of  Toulouse,  and 
a  man  of  some  reputation,  published  the  first  volume  of  his 
Abridgement  of  General  History.  Beyond  this  the  work  never 
proceeded ;  it  was  at  once  condemned  by  the  archbishop  of  the 
diocese,  and  the  author  was  deprived  of  his  office.  Audra,  held 
up  to  public  opprobrium,  the  whole  of  his  labours  rendered  use- 
less, and  the  prospects  of  his  life  suddenly  blighted,  was  unable 
to  survive  the  shock.  He  was  struck  with  apoplexy,  and  within 
twenty-four  hours  was  lying  a  corpse  in  his  own  house." 

32.  Among  many  other  illustrations  of  the  passion  for  persecution 
in  the  period  may  be  noted  the  fact  that  after  the  death  of  the  atheist 
Damilaville  his  enemies  contrived  to  deprive  his  brother  of  a  post 
from  which  he  had  his  sole  livelihood.^  It  is  but  one  of  an  infinity 
of  proofs  that  the  spirit  of  sheer  sectarian  malevolence,  which  is  far 
from  being  eliminated  in  modern  life,  was  in  the  French  Church 
of  the  eighteenth  century  the  ruling  passion.  Lovers  of  moderate 
courses  there  were,  even  in  the  Church  ;  but  even  among  professors 
of  lenity  we  find  an  ingrained  belief  in  the  virtue  of  vituperation 
and  coercion.  And  it  is  not  until  the  persecuted  minority  has 
developed  its  power  of  written  retaliation,  and  the  deadly  arrows 
of  Voltaire  have  aroused  in  the  minds  of  persecutors  a  new  terror, 
that  there  seems  to  arise  on  that  side  a  suspicion  that  there  can  be 
any  better  way  of  handling  unbelief  than  by  invective  and  imprison- 
ment.    After  they  had  taught  the  heretics  to  defend  themselves,  and 

1  Lettre  de  Voltaire  k  D'Alembert.  27  aoiit,  1774. 


292  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 

found  them  possessed  of  weapons  such  as  orthodoxy  could  not  hope 
to  handle,  we  find  Churchmen  talking  newly  of  the  duty  of  gentle- 
ness towards  error ;  and  even  then  clinging  to  the  last  to  the  weapons 
of  public  ostracism  and  aspersion.  So  the  fight  was  of  necessity 
fought  on  the  side  of  freethought  in  the  temper  of  men  warnng  on 
incorrigible  oppression  and  cruelty  as  well  as  on  error.  The  wonder 
is  that  the  freethinkers  preserved  so  much  amenity. 

33.  This  section  would  not  be  complete  even  in  outlme  without 
some  notice  of  the  attitude  held  towards  religion  by  Napoleon,  who 
at   once   crowned   and  in  large  measure  undid   the  work   of  the 
Revolution.     He  has  his  place  in  its  religious  legend  m  the  current 
datum  that  he  wrought  for  the  faith  by  restoring  a  suppressed  public 
worship  and  enabling  the  people  of  France  once  more  to  hear  church- 
bells      In  point  of  fact,  as  was  pointed  out  by  Bishop  Gr6goire  in 
1826,  "  it  is  materially  proved  that  in  1796,  before  he  was  Consul, 
and  four  years  before  the  Concordat,  according  to  a  statement  drawn 
up  at  the  office  of  the  Domaines  Nationaux,  there  were  in  France 
32  214  parishes  where  the  culte  was  carried  on."  '     Other  common- 
places concerning  Napoleon  are  not  much  better  founded.     On  the 
strength  of  a  number  of  oral  utterances,  many  of  them  imperfectly 
vouched  for,  and  none  of  them  marked  by  much  deliberation,  he  has 
been  claimed  by  Carlyle^  as  a  theist  who  philosophically  disdained 
the  "clatter  of  materialism,"  and  believed  in  a  Personal  Creator  o 
an  infinite  universe ;  while  by  others  he  is  put  forward  as  a  kind  of 
expert  in  character  study  who  vouched  for  the  divinity  of  Jesus.     In 
effect  his  verdict  that  "  this  was  not  a  man  "  would  tell,  if  anythmg, 
in  favour  of  the  view  that  Jesus  is  a  mythical  construction.    He  was, 
indeed,  by  temperament  quasi-religious,  liking  the  sound  of  church 
bells  and  the  atmosphere  of  devotion ;  and  in  his  boyhood  he  had 
been  a  rather  fervent  Catholic.     As  he  grew  up  he  read,  hke  his 
contemporaries,  the  French  deists  of  his  time,  and  became  a  deist 
like  his  fellows,  recognizing  that  religions  were  human  productions. 
Declaring  that  he  was  "  loin  d'e,tre  ath^e,"  he  propounded  to  O'Meara 
all  the  conventional  views— that  religion  should  be  made  a  support 
to  morals  and  law  ;  that  men  need  to  believe  in  marvels  ;  that  religion 
is  a  great  consolation  to  those  who  believe  in  it ;  and  that     no  one 

.  HUloire  du  mariage  de,  pretresen  France,  par.  M^  ^?f5r'"V*.rifrzie\' befo^re^iSJ; 

1826.  p  V.    Compare  the  details  in  *.«.^I'J«"'''<;« '°''>«  f^ '^i  °„,eA^^^^^ 

That  writer's  account  is  the  more  decisive  seeing  that  ^is  bias  is  clerical,  ana  tuat  ^^^ 

before  M.  Anlard.  he  had  to  a  considerable  extent  "'»'°^%°^'°a  "„  the  readiust- 

■nfeliTelTc'i^  ea'rl?;;r'e\'hr.e?h°e7o"a';^^"ivl"o'ier^rw'e^.\1'iU^t''nvi„    to  undo  the 

s:j.!^H^il.'Slrj:^o'n.^d^M^f^oi:,t^^^^^^^  "^"e  set  forth  are 

irreconcilable  with  Napoleon's  general  tone. 


FRENCH  FREETHOUGHT 


293 


can  tell  what  he  will  do  in  his  last  moments."^  The  opinion  to 
which  he  seems  to  have  adhered  most  steadily  was  that  every  man 
should  die  in  the  rehgion  in  which  he  had  been  brought  up.  And  he 
himself  officially  did  so,  though  he  put  off  almost  to  the  last  the 
formaUty  of  a  deathbed  profession.  His  language  on  the  subject  is 
irreconcilable  with  any  real  belief  in  the  Christian  religion  :  he  was 
**  a  deist  a  la  Voltaire  who  recalled  with  tenderness  his  Catholic 
childhood,  and  who  at  death  reverted  to  his  first  beliefs."  For  the 
rest,  he  certainly  believed  in  religion  as  a  part  of  the  machinery  of 
the  State,  and  repeated  the  usual  platitudes  about  its  value  as  a 
moral  restraint.  He  was  candid  enough,  however,  not  to  pretend 
that  it  had  ever  restrained  him  ;  and  no  freethinker  condemned  more 
sweepingly  than  he  the  paralysing  effect  of  the  Catholic  system  on 
Spain.^  To  the  Church  his  attitude  was  purely  political ;  and  his 
personal  liking  for  the  Pope  never  moved  him  to  yield,  where  he 
could  avoid  it,  to  the  temporal  pretensions  of  the  papacy.  The 
Concordat  of  1802,  that  "  brilHant  triumph  over  the  genius  of  the 
Revolution,"  *  was  purely  and  simply  a  political  measure.  If  he  had 
had  his  way,  he  would  have  set  up  a  system  of  religious  councils  in 
France,  to  be  utilized  against  all  disturbing  tendencies  in  politics. 
Had  he  succeeded,  he  was  capable  of  suppressing  all  manifesta- 
tions of  freethought  in  the  interests  of  "  order."  ^  He  had,  in 
fact,  no  disinterested  love  of  truth;  and  we  have  his  express 
declaration,  at  St.  Helena,  on  the  subject  of  MoH^re's  Tartufe : 
"  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  if  the  piece  had  been  written  in 
my  time,  I  would  not  have  permitted  its  representation."  Free- 
thought  can  make  no  warm  claim  to  the  allegiance  of  such  a  ruler ; 
and  if  the  Church  of  Rome  is  concerned  to  claim  him  as  a  son  on  the 
score  of  his  deathbed  adherence,  after  a  reign  which  led  the  Catholic 
clergy  of  Spain  to  hold  him  up  to  the  faithful  as  an  incarnation  of 
the  devil,^  she  will  hardly  gain  by  the  association.  Napoleon's  ideas 
on  reHgious  questions  were  in  fact  no  more  noteworthy  than  his 
views  on  economics,  which  were  thoroughly  conventional. 


*  O'Meara,  NapoUon  en  :Blxil,  ed.  Lacroix,  1897,  ii.  39. 

"^  Ph.  Gonnard,  Les  origines  de  la  Ugende  Napoleonienve,  1906.  p.  258.  ^  Id.  p.  260. 

*  Pasquier.  cited  by  Rose,  Life  of  Napoleon,  ed.  1913,  i.  282.  The  Concordat  was  bitterly 
resented  by  the  freethinkers  in  the  army.     Id.  p.  281. 

5  See  Jules  Barni's  NapoUon  ler,  ed.  1870,  p.  83.  as  to  the  amazing  Catechism  imposed 
by  Napoleon  on  France  in  1811.  For  the  history  of  its  preparation  and  imposition  see 
De  Labone,  Paris  sous  NapoUon  :  La  Beligion,  1907,  p.  100  sq. 

^  As  to  the  Napoleonic  censorship  of  literature,  cp.  Madame  de  Stael.  Considi rations 
sur  la  revolution  frangaise,  ptie.  iv,  ch.  16 :  Dix  Annies  d'Exil,  pr6f. ;  Welschinger, 
La_Censure  sous  le  premier  Empire,  1882. 

7  Las  Cases.  Memorial  de  Sainte-HeUne.,  19  aoilt,  1816. 

*•  Mignet,  Hist,  de  la  revolution  franqaise,  4e  6dit.  ii,  340. 


Chapter  XVIII 

GERMAN  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH 
AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

1.  When  two  generations  of  Protestant  strife  had  turned  to  naught 
the  intellectual  promise  of  the  Reformation,  and  much  of  the  ground 
first  won  by  it  had  lapsed  to  Catholicism,  the  general  forward  move- 
ment of  European  thought  availed  to  set  up  in  Germany  as  elsewhere 
a  measure  of  critical  unbelief.     There  is  abundant  evidence  that  the 
Lutheran  clergy  not  only  failed  to  hold  the  best  intelhgence  of  the 
country  with  them,  but  in  large  part  fell  into  personal  disrepute. 
••  The  scenes  of  clerical  immorality,"  says  an  eminently  orthodox 
historian,  "  are  enough  to  chill  one's  blood  even  at  the  distance  of 
two    centuries."'^     A    Church    Ordinance    of    1600    acknowledges 
information  to  the  effect  that  a  number  of  clergymen  and  school- 
masters are  guilty  of  "whoredom  and  fornication."  and  commands 
that   "if   they   are   notoriously   guilty   they   shall    be   suspended." 
Details  are  preserved  of  cases  of  clerical  drunkenness  and  ruffianism; 
and  the  women  of  the  priests'  families  do  not  escape  the  pillory. 
Nearly  a  century  later,  Arnold  resigned  his  professorship  at  Giessen 
"  from  despair  of  producing  any  amendment  in  the  dissolute  habits 
of  the  students." '     It  is  noted  that  "  the  great  moral  decHne  of  the 
clergy  was  confined  chiefly  to  the  Lutheran  Church.    The  Reformed 
[Calvinistic]  was  earnest,  pious,  and  aggressive  "  '—the  usual  result 

of  official  hostility.  ^ 

In  such  circumstances,  the  active  freethought  existing  in  France 
at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  could  not  fail  to  affect 
Germany ;  and  even  before  the  date  of  the  polemic  of  Garasse  and 
Mersenne  there  appeared  (1615)  a  counterblast  to  the  new  thought 
in  the  TJieologia  Naturalis  of  J.  H.  Alsted,  of  Frankfort,  directed 
adversus  atheos,  Epicureos,  et  sophistas  hujus  temporis.  The  preface 
to  this  soUd  quarto  (a  remarkable  sample  of  good  printing  for  the 
period)  declares  that  "  there  are  men  in  this  diseased  [exidcerato] 

1  Cp.  Pusey.  HistoT.  Enquiry  into  the  Probable  Causes  of  the  Bationalist  Character 

of  the  Theology  of  Germany,  1828.  p.  79.  ^  ^^^„       rr 

2  Bishop  Hurst.  Ifistorvo/i^aftmiahsrre.ed.  1867,  p.  5b.  rT«,-„*^«,f//^P«   i  145-48  and 
8  Id.  pp  57-58  (last  ed.  pp.  74-76).  citing  Tholuck.  Detitscl^  ^ritversttdtenx.  14^«.  an 

Bowding.  Life  of  Calixtus,  pp.  132-33.  ^  Fusey,  p.  113-  Hurst,  p.  o'd. 

294 


GERMAN  FREETHOUGHT  17th  AND  18th  CENTURIES    295 

age  who  dare  to  oppose  science  to  revelation,  reason  to  faith,  nature 
to  grace,  the  creator  to  the  redeemer,  and  truth  to  truth";  and  the 
writer  undertakes  to  rise  argumentatively  from  nature  to  the 
Christian  God,  without,  however,  transcending  the  logical  plane 
of  De  Mornay.  The  trouble  of  the  time,  unhappily  for  the  faith, 
was  not  rationaHsm,  but  the  inextinguishable  hatreds  of  Protestant 
and  CathoHc,  and  the  strife  of  economic  interests  dating  from  the 
appropriations  of  the  first  reformers.  At  length,  after  a  generation 
of  gloomy  suspense,  came  the  explosion  of  the  hostile  ecclesiastical 
interests,  and  the  long-drawn  horror  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War, 
which  left  Germany  mangled,  devastated,  drained  of  blood  and 
treasure,  decivihzed,  and  well-nigh  destitute  of  the  machinery  of 
culture.  No  such  printing  as  that  of  Alsted's  book  was  to  be  done 
in  the  German  world  for  many  generations.  But  as  in  France,  so  in 
Germany,  the  exhausting  experience  of  the  moral  and  physical  evil 
of  religious  war  wrought  something  of  an  antidote,  in  the  shape  of  a 
new  spirit  of  rationalism. 

Not  only  was  the  Peace  of  Westphaha  an  essentially  secular 
arrangement,  subordinating  all  religious  claims  to  a  political  settle- 
ment,' but  the  drift  of  opinion  was  markedly  freethinking.  Already 
in  1630  one  writer  describes  "three  classes  of  skeptics  among  the 
nobiUty  of  Hamburg  :  first,  those  who  beheve  that  religion  is  nothing 
but  a  mere  fiction,  invented  to  keep  the  masses  in  restraint ;  second, 
those  who  give  preference  to  no  faith,  but  think  that  all  religions 
have  a  germ  of  truth ;  and  third,  those  who,  confessing  that  there 
must  be  one  true  rehgion,  are  unable  to  decide  whether  it  is  papal, 
Calvinist,  or  Lutheran,  and  consequently  believe  nothing  at  all." 
No  less  expHcit  is  the  written  testimony  of  Walther,  the  court 
chaplain  of  Ulrich  II  of  East  Friesland,  1637:  "  These  infernal 
courtiers,  among  whom  I  am  compelled  to  live  against  my  will,  doubt 
those  truths  which  even  the  heathen  have  learned  to  beheve." '  In 
Germany  as  in  France  the  freethinking  which  thus  grew  up  during 
the  religious  war  expanded  after  the  peace.  As  usual,  this  is  to  be 
gathered  from  the  orthodox  propaganda  against  it,  setting  out  in 
1662  with  a  Preservative  against  the  Pest  of  Present-day  Atheists,^  by 
one  Theophilus  Gegenbauer.  So  far  was  this  from  attaining  its  end 
that  there  ensued  ere  long  a  more  positive  and  aggressive  development 
of  freethinking  than  any  other  country  had  yet  seen.     A  wandering 

1  Cp.  Buckle,  l-vol.  ed.  pp.  308-309.    "  The  result  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  was  inmffer- 
ence.  Sot  only  to  the  Confession,  but  to  religion  in  general     Ever  sin^^^^^^ 

secular  interests  decidedly  occupythe  foreground"  (Kahms.  Internal  History  of  {^erman 
Frotestantism,  Eng.  tr.  1856,  p.  21). 

2  Quoted  by  Bishop  Hurst,  ed.  cited,  p.  60  (78). 

3  Freservatio  wider  die  Fest  der  heutigen  Atheisten. 


296 


GEEMAN  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


scholar,  Matthias  Knutzen  of  Holstein  (b.  1645),  who  had  studied 
philosophy  at  Konigsberg,  went  about  in  1674  teaching  a  hardy 
EeHgion  of  Humanity,  rejecting  ah'ke  immortaUty.  God  and  Devil, 
churches  and  priests,  and  insisting  that  conscience  could  perfectly 
well  take  the  place  of  the  Bible  as  a  guide  to  conduct.  His  doctrines 
are  to  be  gathered  chiefly  from  a  curious  Latin  letter,'  written  by 
him  for  circulation,  headed  Amicus  Amicis  Arnica ;  and  in  this  the 
profession  of  atheism  is  explicit :  "  Insuper  Deimi  riegamus:'  In  two 
dialogues  in  German  he  set  forth  the  same  ideas.  His  followers,  as 
holding  by  conscience,  were  called  Gewissener ;  and  he  or  another  of 
his  group  asserted  that  in  Jena  alone  there  were  seven  hundred  of 
them.'  The  figures  were  fantastic,  and  the  whole  movement  passed 
rapidly  out  of  sight— hardly  by  reason  of  the  orthodox  refutations, 
however.  Germany  was  in  no  state  to  sustain  such  a  party ;  and 
what  happened  was  a  necessarily  slow  gestation  of  the  seed  of  new 
thought  thus  cast  abroad. 

Knutzen's  Latin  letter  is  given  in  full  by  a  Welsh  scholar 
settled  in  Germany,  Jenkinus  Thomasius  (Jenkin  Thomas),  m 
his  Historia  Atheismi  (Altdorf,  1692), ed.  Basel,  1709,  pp.  97-101; 
also  by  La  Croze  in  his  (anon.)  Entretiens  sur  divers  mjets,  1711, 
p.  402  sq.  Thomasius  thus  codifies  its  doctrine  : — **  1.  There  is 
neither  God  nor  Devil.  2.  The  magistrate  is  nothing  to  be 
esteemed ;  temples  are  to  be  condemned,  priests  to  be  rejected. 
3.  In  place  of  the  magistrate  and  the  priest  are  to  be  put  know- 
ledge and  reason,  joined  with  conscience,  which  teaches  to  live 
honestly,  to  injure  none,  and  to  give  each  his  own.  4.  Marriage 
and  free  union  do  not  differ.  5.  This  is  the  only  life :  after  it, 
there  is  neither  reward  nor  punishment.  6.  The  Scripture 
contradicts  itself."  Knutzen  admittedly  wrote  like  a  scholar 
(Thomasius,  p.  97) ;  but  his  treatment  of  Scripture  contradic- 
tions belongs  to  the  infancy  of  criticism  ;  though  La  Croze, 
replying  thirty  years  later,  could  only  meet  it  with  charges  of 
impiety  and  stupidity.  As  to  the  numbers  of  the  movement  see 
Trinius,  Freijdeiiker  Lexicon,  1759,  s.  v.  KNUTZEN.  Kurtz  {Hist, 
of  the  Christian  Church,  JEng.  tr.  1864,  i,  213)  states  that  a 
careful  academic  investigation  proved  the  claim  to  a  member- 
ship of  700  to  be  an  empty  boast  (citing  H.  Eossel,  Studien  und 
Kritiken,  1844,  iv).  This  doubtless  refers  to  the  treatise  of 
Musaeus,  Jena,  1675,  cited  by  La  Croze,  p.  401.  Some  converts 
Knutzen  certainly  made ;  and  as  only  the  hardiest  would  dare 
to  avow  themselves,  his  influence  may  have  been  considerable. 
"  Examples  of  total  unbelief  come  only  singly  to  knowledge," 
says  Tholuck ;  "but  total  unbelief  had  still  to  the  end  of  the 

»  Dated  from  Rome;  but  this  was  a  mystification. 
2  Kahnis,  p.  125 ;  La  Croze,  Entretiens,  1711.  p.  401. 


1 


1 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEIES    297 

century  to  bear  penal  treatment."  He  gives  the  instances  (l) 
of  the  Swedish  Baron  Skytte,  reported  in  1669  by  Spener  to  the 
Frankfort  authorities  for  having  said  at  table,  before  the  court 
preacher,  that  the  Scriptures  were  not  holy,  and  not  from  God 
but  from  men ;  and  (2)  "  a  certain  minister  "  who  at  the  end  of 
the  century  was  prosecuted  for  blasphemy.  {Das  kirchliche 
Lehen  des  1 7ten  Jahrhimderts,  2  Abth.  pp.  56-57.)  Even  Ana- 
baptists were  still  Hable  to  banishment  in  the  middle  of  the 
century.  Id.  1  Abth.  1861,  p.  36.  As  to  clerical  intolerance 
see  pp.  40-44.  On  the  merits  of  the  Knutzen  movement  cp. 
Piinjer,  Hist,  of  the  Christian  Philos.  of  Beligion,  Eng.  tr.  i,  437-8. 

2.  While,  however,  clerical  action  could  drive  such  a  movement 
under  the  surface,  it  could  not  prevent  the  spread  of  rationalism  in 
all  directions  ;  and  there  was  now  germinating  a  philosophic  unbeHef  ^ 
under  the  influence  of  Spinoza.     Nowhere  were  there  more  prompt 
and  numerous  answers  to  Spinoza  than  in  Germany,'^  whence  it  may 
be  inferred  that  within  the  educated  class  he  soon  had  a  good  many 
adherents.     In  point   of   fact  the  Elector   Palatine  offered  him  a 
professorship  of  philosophy  at  Heidelberg  in  1673,  promising  him 
the  most  ample  freedom  in  philosophical  teaching,"  and  merely 
stipulating  that  he  should  not  use  it  "  to  disturb  the  religion  pubHcly 
estabhshed."'     On  the  other  hand.  Professor  Kappolt,  of  Leipzig, 
attacked  him  as  an  atheist,  in  an  Oratio  contra  naturalistas  in  1670 ; 
Professor  Musaeus,  of  Jena,  assailed  him  in  1674;'  and  the  Chan- 
cellor Kortholt,  of  Kiel,  grouped  him,  Herbert,  and  Hobbes  as  The 
Three  Great  Impostors  in  1680.'     After  the  appearance  of  the  Ethica 
the  repHes  multiphed.      On  the   other  hand,  Cuffelaer  vindicated 
Spinoza  in  1684 ;  and  in  1691  F.  W.  Stosch,  a  court  official,  and 
son  of  the  court  preacher,  published  a  stringent  attack  on  revela- 
tionism,  entitled  Concordia  ratio?iis  et  fidei,  partly  on  Spinozistic 
lines,  which  created  much  commotion,  and  was  forcibly  suppressed 
and  condemned  to  be  burnt  by  the  hangman  at  BerHn,^  as  it  denied 
not  only  the  immateriality  but  the  immortality  of  the  soul  and  the 
historical  truth  of  the  Scriptural  narratives.     This  seems  to  have 
been  the  first  work  of  modern  freethought  published  by  a  German,^ 
apart  from  Knutzen's  letter ;  but  a  partial  list  of  the  apologetic  works 

P).l7^^®°r^J?^*'^^°  seems  to  have  been  influenced  by  Spinoza.  Piinjer.  Hif^t.  of  tlie  Christ, 
^"^^os.  Of  liehgioii,  Eng.  tr.  i.  437.  Punjer,  however,  seems  to  have  exaggerated  the 
connection. 

8  ^P- Lange.  Gesc7i.  des  Materialismus,  3te  Aufl.  1,  318  (Eng.  tr.  ii.  35). 

±^pistol(s  ad  Spinozam  et  Besponsiones,  in  Gfrorer,  liii. 
6  ^olerus,  Viede  Spinoza,  in  Gfrorer's  ed.  of  the  Opera,  1830.  pp.  Iv,  Ivi. 
dfi  i  „  "°^,^^'^s  cited.  1.  434-36  ;  Lange,  last  cit.    Lange  notes  that  Genthe's  Compendium 
mnlf  k",  '^^1  ™Oionum,  which  has  been  erroneously  assigned  to  the  sixteenth  century. 
^"gS' belong  to  the  period  of  Kortholfs  work. 

PUnjer.  p.  439 ;  Lange.  last  cit.;  Tholuck,  Kirch.  Lehen,  2  Abth.  pp.  57-58. 
It  was  nominally  issued  at  Amsterdam,  really  at  Berlin. 


298  GEEMAN  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 

of  the  period,  from  Gegenbauer  onwards,  may  suffice  to  suggest  the 

real  vogue  of  heterodox  opinions  :— 

1668.     J.MUS.US.  ^-'»-«'-;"-~:;u  t   "--^'^^^^^^  "" 

Anton  Reiser.     De    origme,   progre^su,   ei 

"  Atheisjni}     Augsburg.  _     . 

1670     Rappolt.     Oratio  contra  Natiiralistas.    Leipzig. 


1672 

1673. 

1674. 
1677. 

ji 
J) 


J   Miiller.     AtJmsmuB  devictus  (in  German).     Hamburg. 
J.  Lassen.     Arcana-Politica-AtJieistica  (m  German). 

Besiegte  Atheisterey. 

Chr.  Pfaff.     Disputatio  contra  Atlieistas. 

J.  Musaeus.     Spinozisvius      Un^.  Atheismo,   contra 

Val.  Greissing.      Corona  Transylvam ;    Exdc.  2,  de    Ai 
Cartesium  ct  Math.  Knutzen,    Wittemberg 

Tobias  Wagner.     Examen atkeisnn  speculativu     Tubmgen. 

K.  Rudrauti,  Giessen.     Dissertatio  de  Atheisnw 

1689.     Th.  Undereyck.      Der  Narrische  AtheiU  m  seiner 

Bremen.  .      Ai.,i„^f 

Jenkinus  Thomasius.     Bistoria  AtUismi.    Altdorf. 
J.  Lassen.     Arcana-Polifu^a-Atheistica      ^^P"^^;^  mrruvtionem  morum, 
A.  H.  Grosse.     An  Atheismus  necessario  ducat  ad  conuptionem 

Rostock. 
Em   Weber.     Beurtheilung  der  Atheisterei. 

1700.    Tribbechov.     Bistoria  Naturalismi.    "^^"^'^  .^^^  .-  .^,.,,„,,i  ij^anaficonmi 
1708.     Loescher.     ^r.notionesTkeoo^^^^^^^ 

ovme  genus,  Atheos,  Deistas,  Indiffejentistas,  etc. 

Schwartz.     Demonstratiwies  Dei.     Leipzig-  ^.,.,,.,^^s  Atheos,  etc. 

Rechenberg.  Fundamenta  vera  rel^g^on^sPrudentum^^^^^^^^ 

J   C  Wolfius.     Dissertatio  de  Atheismi  falso  suspectis.    Wittemberg. 

[,.„,  lr."t  wo*=  ..  B,«a...  (.7.0)  -.«  H.i«™n.  ..d  F.b««, 

noted  above,  vol.  i,  ch.  i,  §  2.] 

3    For  a  community  in  which  the  reading  class  was  mamly 
clerical  and  scholastic,  the  seeds  of  nationalism  were  thus  m  pa  t 
=n™n    in   the   seventeenth   century;   but  the  ground  was  nou    > 
pritious      LEIBNITZ  (1646-1716).  the  chief  tinker  produced  by 

^Gerrny  before  Kant,  lived  in  a  state  <^^^^i;;^t:t. 
tion  -^  and  showed  his  sense  of  it  by  writing  his  P^^^osopnic  ^ 
Itflv  !n  French      One  of  tha  most  widely  learned  men  of  his  age 
chiefly  m  i^rencn.     ^"«  "  ctr^nnlft    critically  with    every 

he  was  wont  from   his   boyhood  to  ^'^^^^^^^^^^ 
system  of  thought  that  came  m  his  way  ;  and.  while  claimmg 

1  This  writer  gives  ^-r^tiTili^^^ ^<^  ^£^Tco^rZ!^^^^^' 
indirectus,  formalis,  virtiialts,  *''*'^^^f^\f  "!^;,^[b 

craBsus,  privativus  ^''l^^^^'^^m^i^Vi^ier,  i.  515. 
a  cp.  Buckle  and  ins  Critics,  pp.  i/i  <^.  i-uujc  . 


1692. 
1696. 
1697. 


»» 

If 

1710. 

1713. 
ft 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUBIES     299 

always  eager  to  learn/  he  was  as  a  rule  strongly  concerned  to  af&rm 
his  own  powerful  bias.     Early  in  life  he  w^rites  that  it  horrifies  him 
to  think  how  many  men  he  has  met  who  were  at  once  intelligent 
and  atheistic;'^    and    his  propaganda  is  always    dominated  by  the 
desire  rather  to  confute  unbelief   than  to  find  out  the  truth.     As 
early  as  1668  (aet.  22)  he  wrote  an  essay  to  that  end,  which  was 
published  as  a  Confessio  naturcB  contra  Atheistas.     Against  Spinoza 
he  reacted  instantly  and  violently,  pronouncing  the  Tractatus  on  its 
first    (anonymous)    appearance    an   "  unbearably   bold  {licentiosum) 
book,"  and  resenting  the  Hobbesian  criticism  which  it  "  dared  to 
apply  to  sacred   Scripture."^     Yet  in  the  next   year  we  find   him 
writing  to  Arnauld  in  earnest  protest  against  the  hidebound  ortho- 
doxy of  the  Church.     "  A  philosophic  age,"  he  declares,  "  is  about  to 
begin,  in  which  the  concern  for  truth,  flourishing  outside  the  schools, 
will   spread   even   among   politicians.     Nothing   is   more   likely  to 
strengthen   atheism  and  to  upset  faith,  already  so  shaken  by  the 
attacks  of  great  but  bad  men  [a  pleasing  allusion  to  Spinoza] ,  than 
to  see  on  the  one  side  the  mysteries  of  the  faith  preached  upon  as 
the  creed  of  all,  and  on  the  other  hand  become  matter  of  derision  to 
all,  convicted  of  absurdity  by  the  most  certain  rules  of  common 
reason.     The  worst  enemies  of  the  Church  are  in  the  Church.     Let 
us  take  care  lest  the  latest  heresy — I  will  not  say  atheism,  but — 
naturalism,  be  publicly  professed." "*     For  a  time  he  seemed    thus 
disposed  to  liberalize.     He  wrote  to   Spinoza  on  points  of   optics 
before  he  discovered  the  authorship ;  and  he  is  represented  later  as 
speaking  of  the  Tractatus  with  respect.     He  even  visited  Spinoza  in 
1676,  and  obtained  a  perusal  of  the  manuscript  of  the  Ethica ;  but 
he  remained  hostile  to  him  in  theology  and  philosophy.     To  the  last 
he  called   Spinoza  a  mere  developer  of  Descartes,^  whom  he  also 
habitually  resisted. 

This  was  not  hopeful ;  and  Leibnitz,  with  all  his  power  and 
originality,  really  wrought  little  for  the  direct  rationalization  of 
religious  thought.^  His  philosophy,  with  all  its  ingenuity,  has  the 
common  stamp  of  the  determination  of  the  theist  to  find  reasons 
for  the  God  in  whom  he  believed  beforehand  ;  and  his  principle  that 
all  is  for  the  best  is  the  fatal  rounding  of  his  argumentative  circle. 
Thus  his  doctrine  that  that  is  true  which  is  clear  was  turned  to  the 

1  Letter  cited  by  Dr.  Latta.  Leilmiz,  1898,  p.  2,  note. 

2  Philofi.  Schriften.  ed.  Gerhardt,  i,  26;  Martineau,  Study  of  Spinoza,  p.  77. 
8  Letter  to  Thomas.  December  23.  1670. 

*  Quoted  by  Tholuck.  as  last  cited,  p.  61.    Spener  took  the  same  tone. 

«  Philos.  Schriften,  ed.  Gerhardt.  i.  34;  ii,  563;  Latta.  p.  24;  Martineau,  p.  75.  Cp. 
Befutation  of  Spinoza  by  Leibnitz,  ed.  by  Foucher  de  Careil,  Eng.  tr.  1855. 

6  His  notable  surmise  as  to  gradation  of  species  (see  Latta,  pp.  38-39)  was  taken  up 
among  the  French  materialists,  but  did  not  then  modify  current  science. 


300 


GEEMAN  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


account   of   an   empiricism  of  which   the  "  clearness "  was  really 
predetermined  by  the  conviction  of  truth.     His  TheodicSe,  written 
in  reply  to  Bayle,  is  by  the  admission  even  of  admirers^  a  process 
of    begging   the   question.      Deity,   a   mere   "  infinition "    of    finite 
qualities,  is  proved  a  priori,  though  it  is  expressly  argued  that  a 
finite  mind  cannot  grasp  infinity ;    and  the  necessary  goodness  of 
necessary  deity  is  posited  in  the  same  fashion.     It  is  very  significant 
that  such  a  philosopher,  himself  much  given  to  denying  the  rehgious- 
ness  of  other  men's  theories,  was  nevertheless  accused  among  both 
the  educated  and  the  populace  of  being  essentially  non-religious. 
Nominally  he  adhered  to  the    entire    Christian    system,  including 
miracles,  though  he  declared  that  his  belief  in  dogma  rested  on  the 
agreement  of  reason  with  faith,  and  claimed  to  keep  his  thought  free  on 
unassailed  truths;'  and  he  always  discussed  the  Bible  as  a  believer; 
yet  he  rarely  went  to  church;'    and  the  Low  German  nickname 
Lovenix  (=  Glaubet  mchts,  "  believes  nothing")  expressed  his  local 
reputation.     No  clergyman  attended  his  funeral ;  but  indeed  no  one 
else  went,  save  his  secretary.'     It  is  on  the  whole  difiicult  to  doubt 
that  his  indirect  influence  not  only  in  Germany  but  elsewhere  had 
been  and  has  been  for  deism  and  atheism.^     He  and  Newton  were 
the  most  distinguished  mathematicians  and  theists  of  the  age ;  and 
Leibnitz,  as  we  saw,  busied  himself  to  show  that  the  philosophy  of 
Newton'  tended  to  atheism,  and  that  that  of  their  theistic  predecessor 
Descartes  would  not  stand  criticism.'     Spinoza  being,  according  to 
him,  in   still   worse   case,   and  Locke   hardly   any  sounder,    there 
remained  for  theists  only  his  cosmology  of  monads  and  his  ethic  of 
optimism— all  for  the  best  in  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds— which 
seems  at  least  as  well  fitted  as  any  other  theism  to  make  thoughtful 

men  give  up  the  principle. 

4.  Other  culture-conditions  concurred  to  set  up  a  spirit  of 
rationalism  in  Germany.  After  the  Thirty  Years'  War  there 
arose  a  religious  movementj,  called  Pietism  by  its  theological 
opponents,  which  aimed  at  an    emotional   inwardness  of  religious 

1  The  only  lengthy  treatise  published  by  him  in  his  lifetime. 

2M   A  J&caues,  intr.  to  (Eiivresde  Leibniz,  lSi6,i,5i-57.  ««;„n,Minf' 

3  Cp  Tholuck  i)a.  kirchliche  Lehen,  as  cited.  2.Abth.  pp.  .--rZ-SS.    I^f^°^«A;;,?'"J>''^i  ^ 

with  Erdmann.   pronounces  that,  although  Leibnitz   "  acknovvle<h?es   ^.^e   God    of    the 

rhri^tian  faith    yet  his  system  assigned  to  Him  a  very  uncertam  position  only    (I/tt. 

H J  ' 0/  ?Jr  Profl'Lnf i^rTp  26).  ?  Cp.  PUnjer  i.  509,  as  to  his  a"itude  on  ritual. 

6  Latta.  as  cited,  p.  16;  Vie  de  Leibnitz,  par  De  Jaucourt.  m  ed.  1747  of  the  Essais  ae 

^^^  Aslo  his'T^'tual  deism  see  Pttnjer.  i.  513-15.^  But  he  proposed  to  send  Christian 
missionaries  to  the  heathen.    Tholuck.  as  last  cited,  p.  55. 

7  Lettrea  entre  Leibnitz  et  Clarke.  .  -i:t„„„v„  o^.^in  hn«//5  de 

8  iHHCours  de  la  conformity  de  la  foi  avec  la  ratson,  §§  68-70;  Essais  surla  honU  ae 
Pieu,  etc..  §§  50, 61. 164.  180.  aaa-ga.  .  ,  .  -  .,   „  T«„i,„    „«r.^a».a,i  rinst 

9  The  Nouveaux  Enmis  sur  rEntendement  humain,  refuting  Locke,  appeared  post 
humously  in  1765.    Locke  had  treated  his  theistic  critic  with  contempt.    ILatta,  p.  i.6.) 


* 

f 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEIES     301 

life  as  against  what  its  adherents  held  to  be  an  irreligious  orthodoxy 
around  them.^  Contending  against  rigid  articles  of  credence,  they 
inevitably  prepared  the  way  for  less  credent  forms  of  thought.^ 
Though  the  first  leaders  of  Pietism  grew  embittered  with  their 
unsuccess  and  the  attacks  of  their  religious  enemies,^  their  impulse 
went  far,  and  greatly  influenced  the  clergy  through  the  university  of 
Halle,  which  in  the  first  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  turned  out 
6,000  clergymen  in  one  generation.^  Against  the  Pietists  were 
furiously  arrayed  the  Lutherans  of  the  old  order,  who  even  con- 
trived in  many  places  to  suppress  their  schools.^  Virtues  generated 
under  persecution,  however,  underwent  the  law  of  degeneration 
which  dogs  all  intellectual  subjection ;  and  the  inner  life  of  Pietism, 
lacking  mental  freedom  and  intellectual  play,  grew  as  cramped  in  its 
emotionalism  as  that  of  orthodoxy  in  its  dogmatism.  Keligion  was 
thus  represented  by  a  species  of  extremely  unattractive  and  frequently 
absurd  formalists  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  by  a  school 
which  at  its  best  unsettled  religious  usage,  and  otherwise  tended 
alternately  to  fanaticism  and  cant.^  Thus  **  the  rationalist  tendencies 
of  the  age  were  promoted  by  this  treble  exhibition  of  the  aberrations 
of  belief."^  "How  sorely,"  says  Tholuck,  "the  hold  not  only  of 
ecclesiastical  but  of  Biblical  belief  on  men  of  all  grades  had  been 
shaken  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  seen  in  many 
instances."®  Orthodoxy  selects  that  of  a  Holstein  student  who 
hanged  himself  at  Wittemberg  in  1688,  leaving  written  in  his  New 
Testament,  in  Latin,  the  declaration  that  "  Our  soul  is  mortal ; 
religion  is  a  popular  delusion,  invented  to  gull  the  ignorant,  and  so 
govern  the  world  the  better."^  But  again  there  is  the  testimony  of 
the  mint-master  at  Hanover  that  at  court  there  all  lived  as  "  free 
atheists."  And  though  the  name  "freethinker"  was  not  yet  much 
used  in  discussion,  it  had  become  current  in  the  form  of  Freigeist — 
the  German  equivalent  still  used.  This,  as  we  have  noted, ^°  was 
probably  a  survival  from  the  name  of  the  old  sect  of  the  Free 
Spirit,"  rather  than  an  adaptation  from  the  French  esprit  fort  or 
the  English  "  freethinker." 

*  Amand  Saintes.  Hifit.  crit.  du  Bationalisme  en  Allemagne,  1841,  eh.  vi ;  Heinrich 
Schruid.  Die  Oeschichte  des  Fietismus,  1863.  ch.  ii. 

■^  Saintes.  p.  51 ;  cp.  Pusey,  p.  105.  as  to  "the  want  of  resistance  from  the  school  of 
Pietists  to  the  subsequent  invasion  ot  unbelief." 

^  Hagenbach,  German  Rationalism,  Eng.  tr.  1865.  p.  9. 

*  Id.  p.  39;   Pusey.  Histor.  Enquiry  into  the  Causes  of    German  BationaUsm,  1828, 

pp.  88.  97;  Tholuck,  Abriss  einer  Geschichte  des  Umwalzung seit  1750  auf  dem  Gebiete 

der  Theologie  in  Deutschland,  in  Vermischte  Schriften,  1839,  ii.  5. 

l  Pusey,  pp.  86. 87. 98.  _         ^     ^ 

^  Cp.  Pusey.  pp.  37-38,  45,  48,  49.  53-54,  79,  101-109;  Saintes.  pp.28,  79-80;  Hagenbach, 
pp.  41,  72. 105.  7  Pusey,  p.  110.    Cp.  Saintes,  ch.  vi. 

«  Das  kirchliche  Lehen,  as  cited,  2  Abth.  p.  58.  ^  Id.  pp.  56-57. 

^°  Vol.  i,  p.  6. 


302  GERMAN  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE 

5.  After  the   collapse  of  the  popular  movement   of  Matthias 
Knutzen.the  thin  end  of  the  new  wedge  maybe  seen  in  the  manifold 
work  of  CHRISTIAN  THOMASIUS  (1655-1728),  who  in  1687  pub- 
lished a  treatise  on  "  Divine  Jurisprudence,"  in  which  the  prmciples 
of  Pufendorf  on  natural  law,  already  offensive  to  the  theologians 
were   carried    so   far  as  to  give  new  offence.      Beading  Pufendorf 
in  his  nonage  as  a  student  of  jurisprudence,  he  was  so  conscious 
of  the  conflict  between  the  utilitarian  and  the  Scriptural  view  of 
moral  law  that,  taught  by  a  master  who  had  denounced  Pufendorf, 
he  recoiled  in  a  state  of  theological  fear.'     Some  years  later,  gaining 
self-possession,  he  recognized  the  rationality  of  Pufendorf  s  system, 
and  both  expounded  and  defended  him,  thus  earning  his  share  m 
the  hostility  which  the  great  jurist  encountered  at  clerical  hands 
Between  that  hostility  and  the  naturalist  bias  which  he  had  acquired 
from  Pufendorf,  there  grew  up  in  him  an  aversion  to  the  methods 
and   pretensions   of   theologians   which   made    him    their    lifelong 
anta-'onist.'    Pufendorf  had  but  guardedly  introduced  some  of  the 
fundamental  principles   of    Hobbes,  relating  morals   to   the   social 
state,  and  thus  preparing  the  way  for  utilitarianism.      This  sufliced 
to  make  the  theologians   his   enemies ;  and  it  is  significant  that 
Thomasius,  heterodox  at  the  outset  only  thus  far  forth,  becomes 
from  that  point  onwards  an  important  pioneer  of  freethought,  tolera- 
tion, and  humane  reform.     Innovating  in  all  things,  he  began,  while 
still  a.  Privatdocent  at  Leipzig  University,  a  campaign  on  behalf  of 
the  German  language ;  and.  not  content  with  arousing  much  pedantic 
enmity  by  delivering  lectures  for  the  first  time  in  his  mother  tongue, 
and  deriding  at  the  same  time  the  bad  scholastic  Latin  of  his  com- 
patriots, he  set   on   foot  the  first  vernacular  German  periodical, 
which  ran  for  two  years  (1688-90),  and  caused  so  much  anger  that 
he  was  twice  prosecuted  before  the  ecclesiastical  court  of  Dresden, 
the  second  time  on  a  charge  of  contempt  of  rehgion.     The  periodical 
was  in  effect  a  crusade  against  aU  the  pedantries,  the  theologians 
coming  in  for  the  hardest  .blows.'    Other  satirical  writings,  and  a 

'^1- Pufendorf 'B  bulky  treatise  Delude  muur^el  ^-^„"^^  :rc,^Jt^'^f^^Ti%ST. 
he  was  prof  easor.  in  1672.    The  shorter  J^e  ojnctonoOTin^^^^  convinceii 

gr^^rfa^nd?hufSm^ha;/.y^re';"o'rnires\l'arit  w^aVth^-c-Slllenge  o,  Hobhes  tha. 

'°'i%Tn,mhT:iuMoe  und  ernsthafte.  iedochvernu^t-  ""J  ^/f '^i?*ei7bad'b^en'an 
cdermZtgesprache  uber  allerhand.  ^"Z'^^^^JftlZ^'"'  ?nd  1  French  EThemtriL 

irr..^7a.s;;t'?s"'oThe^r^";rn''rd«^rto'if'?eifidT^^^ 

Thomasius.    Luden.  p.  162.  4.  v.  ^#  »««»»  «*  fVio  nnnf fitits 

5  Schmid.  pp.  488-92,  gives  a  sketcb  of  some  of  the  contents. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKIES     303 

defence  of  intermarriage  between  Calvinists  and  Lutherans/  at 
length  put  him  in  such  danger  that,  to  escape  imprisonment,  he 
sought  the  protection  of  the  Elector  of  Brandenburg  at  Halle,  where 
he  ultimately  became  professor  of  jurisprudence  in  the  new  university, 
founded  by  his  advice.  There  for  a  time  he  leant  towards  the 
Pietists,  finding  in  that  body  a  concern  for  natural  Hberty  of  feeHng 
and  thinking  which  was  absent  from  the  mental  life  of  orthodoxy  ; 
but  he  was  "  of  another  spirit "  than  they,  and  took  his  own  way. 

In  philosophy  an  unsystematic  pantheist,  he  taught,  after 
Plutarch,  Bayle,  and  Bacon,  that  "superstition  is  worse  than 
atheism";  but  his  great  practical  service  to  German  civilization, 
over  and  above  his  furthering  of  the  native  speech,  was  his  vigorous 
polemic  against  prosecutions  for  heresy,  trials  for  witchcraft,  and 
the  use  of  torture,  all  of  which  he  did  more  than  any  other  German 
to  discredit,  though  judicial  torture  subsisted  for  another  half- 
century.^  It  was  by  his  propaganda  that  the  princes  of  Germany 
were  moved  to  abolish  all  trials  for  sorcery.'  In  such  a  battle  he 
of  course  had  the  clergy  against  him  all  along  the  line  ;  and  it  is  as 
an  anti-clerical  that  he  figures  in  clerical  history.  The  clerical 
hostility  to  his  ethics  he  repaid  with  interest,  setting  himself  to 
develop  to  the  utmost,  in  the  interest  of  lay  freedom,  the  Lutheran 
admission  of  the  divine  right  of  princes.'  This  he  turned  not  against 
freedom  of  opinion  but  against  ecclesiastical  claims,  very  much  in 
the  spirit  of  Hobbes,  who  may  have  influenced  him. 

The  perturbed  Mosheim,  while  candidly  confessing  that  Thoma- 
sius is  the  founder  of  academic  freedom  in  Germany,  pronounces 
that  the  "  famous  jurists"  who  were  led  by  Thomasius  "set  up  a 
new  fundamental  principle  of  church  poHty— namely,  the  supreme 
authority  and  power  of  the  civil  magistrate,"  so  tending  to  create 
the  opinion  "that  the  ministers  of  religion  are  not  to  be  accounted 
ambassadors  of  God,  but  vicegerents  of  the  chief  magistrates.  They 
also  weakened  not  a  little  the  few  remaining  prerogatives  and 
advantages  which  were  left  of  the  vast  number  formerly  possessed 

1  PnsAv    n    Rfi    'untfi     It  IS  surprising  that  Pusey  does  not  make  more  account  of 
ThomS's^natValttic  treaU  ^°  *^^  °°* 

"^^TomiarTweVer^  lur'cleutscnen  Lit.  §  81  (ed,  1880    pp.  rS'L^.TlIio'lfelt 

p.  114,  note:  Enfield's  Hist,  of  Philos.  (abst.  of  Brucker's  H^st.crit.  _^X*  with  Karl  HillL 
613;  UeberWeg.ii.  115;  and  Schlegel's  note  in  Rt^d'sRIosbeimp.  790    with  K^^^^^ 
brand,  Six  Led.  on  the  Hist,  of  German  Thought.  1880,  pp.  64-6o.    ?,,^^^^^ '/.^^icSe  der 
monograph  by  A.  Nicoladoni,  Christian  Thomasius ;  em  Beitrag  zur  Geschicnte  aer 

^"^'^^rdl'lielfeld.  Froarks  des  Allemands,  3e  ^d.  1767    '''^^''^'^l'^^^^^ 
writes  Bielfeld,  "an  old  woman  could  not  have  red  eyes  without  running  the  rislc  oi  oeing 
accused  of  witchcraft  and  burned  at  the  stake."  ^.x^^^^  -.ovo  •  Vnm  Recht 

^  Schmid,  pp.  493-97.    Thomasius's  principal  writings  on  this  theme  ^ere     ^ow  Mecni 
evangelischenFursten  in  Mitteldingen  (1692);  Vom  Becht  «^,^^^9^'^-^j/'^"  fJi^/fgi)"'  ^''^°'° 
Qischm  Streitigkeiten  (1696) ;  Vom  Becht  evangelischen  Filrsten  gegen  Ketzer  (1697;. 


304  GEKMAN  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 

by  the  clergy ;  and  maintained  that  many  of  the  maxims  and 
regulations  of  our  churches  which  had  come  down  from  our  fathers 
were  relics  of  popish  superstition.  This  afforded  matter  for  long 
and  pernicious  feuds  and  contests  between  our  theologians  and  our 

jurists It  will  be  sufficient  for  us  to  observe,  what  is  abundantly 

attested,  that  they  diminished  much  in  various  places  the  respect 
for  the  clergy,  the  reverence  for  rehgion,  and  the  security  and 
prosperity  of  the  Lutheran  Church."'  Pusey,  in  turn,  grudgingly 
allows  that  "  the  study  of  history  was  revived  and  transformed 
through  the  views  of  Thomasius." 

6    A  personality  of  a  very  different  kind  emerges  in  the  same 
period   in   Johann   Conrad   Dippel  (1673-1734),  who   developed   a 
system  of  rationalistic  mysticism,  and  as  to  whom,  says  an  orthodox 
historian,  "  one  is  doubtful  whether  to  place  him  in  the  class  of 
pietists  or  of  rationahsts,  of  enthusiasts  or  of  scoffers,  of  mystics 
or  of  freethinkers."'     The  son  of  a  preacher,  he  yet  "exhibited  m 
his  ninth  year  strong  doubts  as  to  the  catechism."     After  a  tolerably 
free  life  as  a  student  he  turned  Pietist  at  Strasburg,  lectured  on 
astrology  and  palmistry,  preached,  and  got  into  trouble  with  the 
police.     In  1698  he  published  under  the  pen-name  of  "  Christianus 
Democritus"    his   book,   Gestauptes   Papstthum  der   Protestirenden 
("The  Popery  of  the  Protestantizers  Whipped"),  in  which  he  so 
attacked  the  current  Christian  ethic  of  salvation  as  to  exasperate 
both   Churches.'     The   stress   of   his   criticism   fell  firstly  on   the 
unthinking  Scripturalism  of  the  average  Protestant,  who,  he  said, 
while  reproaching  the  Catholic  with  setting  up  in  the  crucifix  a 
God  of  wood,  was  apt  to  make  for  himself  a  God  of  paper.'     In  his 
repudiation   of   the    "bargain"  or  "redemption"    doctrine   of   the 
historic  Church  betook  up  positions  which  were  as  old  as  Abailard. 
and  which  were  one  day  to  become  respectable  ;  but  in  his  own  life 
he  was  much  of  an  Ishmaelite,  with  wild  notions  of  alchemy  and 
gold-making ;  and  after  predicting  that  he  should  live  till  1808,  he 
died  suddenly  in  1734,  leaving  a  doctrine  which  appealed  only  to 
those  constitutionally  inchned,  on  the  lines  of^  the  earher  Enghsh 
Quakers,  to  set  the  inner  light  above  Scripture.^ 

1  T^  TT--„f  1.T  n«t,f  cr.Af  ii  nt  ii  rh  i  ^§  11. 14.  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  Pietists  at 
Ha  le^dld^nots^Seto'a  i  "t^^^^^^  with  Thomasius.  he  being  opposed  to 

Jhe  orthodox  party.    Kahnis.  Internal  Hist,  of  Ger.  Frotestantism,  p.  114. 

I  SnbaVh,l^V?^ J;?..«f^^  18.  und  19.  lahrh.  Site  Aufl.  i,  164.    (This  matter  is 

'"'"'^^^t^Xrf^n.'lccS^i"^^^      by  Mosheim.  17  C.  sec.  ii.  pt.  ii.  cb.  i.  §  33. 

6  NS^D'^i>?^.J^Hfc«r'fn•<i^^  Eelioion,  Th.  iii.  Kap.  1 :  Bruno  Bauer.  Einjlussr^ 
tngli.ch!nQMerih^^^^  die  deutsche  Cultur  and  auf  das  enghsch-russtsche  Pmekt 
eitier  Weltkirche,  1878.  pp.  41-44. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEIES     305 

7.  Among  the  pupils  of  Thomasius  at  Halle  was  Theodore 
Louis  Lau,  who,  born  of  an  aristocratic  family,  became  Minister  of 
Finances  to  the  Duke  of  Courland,  and  after  leaving  that  post  held 
a  high  place  in  the  service  of  the  Elector  Palatine,  While  holding 
that  oflQce  Lau  published  a  small  Latin  volume  of  peiisees  entitled 
Meditationes  TheologiccB-PhysiccB,  notably  deistic  in  tone.  This 
gave  rise  to  such  an  outcry  among  the  clergy  that  he  had  to  leave 
Frankfort,  only,  however,  to  be  summoned  before  the  consistory  of 
Konigsberg,  his  native  town,  and  charged  with  atheism  (1719).  He 
thereupon  retired  to  Altona,  where  he  had  freedom  enough  to  publish 
a  reply  to  his  clerical  persecutors.^ 

8.  While  Thomasius  was  still  at  work,  a  new  force  arose  of  a 
more  distinctly  academic  cast.  This  was  the  adaptation  of 
Leibnitz's  system  by  CHRISTIAN  WOLFF,  who,  after  building  up  a 
large  influence  among  students  by  his  method  of  teaching,^  came  into 
public  prominence  by  a  rectorial  address'^  at  Halle  (1721)  in  which  he 
warmly  praised  the  ethics  of  Confucius.  Such  praise  was  naturally 
held  to  imply  disparagement  of  Christianity  ;  and  as  a  result  of  the 
pietist  outcry  Wolff  was  condemned  by  the  king  to  exile  from  Prussia, 
under  penalty  of  the  gallowti,*  ali  "  atheistical "  writings  being  at  the 
same  time  forbidden.  Wolff's  system,  however,  prevailed  so  com- 
pletely, in  virtue  of  its  lucidity  and  the  rationahzing  tendency  of  the 
age,  that  in  the  year  1738  there  were  said  to  be  already  107  authors 
of  his  cast  of  thinking.  Nevertheless,  he  refused  to  return  to  Halle 
on  any  invitation  till  the  accession  (1740)  of  Frederick  the  Great, 
one  of  his  warmest  admirers,  whereafter  he  figured  as  the  German 
thinker  of  his  age.  His  teaching,  which  for  the  first  time  popularized 
philosophy  in  the  German  language,  in  turn  helped  greatly,  by  its 
ratiocinative  cast,  to  promote  the  rationalistic  temper,  though  orthodox 
enough  from  the  modern  point  of  view.  Under  the  new  reign,  how- 
ever, pietism  and  Wolffism  ahke  lost  prestige,'  and  the  age  of  anti- 
Christian  and  Christian  rationaHsm  began.  Thus  the  period  of  free- 
thinking  in  Germany  follows  close  upon  one  of  religious  revival. 
The  6,000  theologians  trained  at  Halle  in  the  first  generation  of  the 
century  had  "  worked  like  a  leaven  through  all  Germany."  ^  "  Not 
since  the  time  of  the  Keformation  had  Germany  such  a  large  number 
of  truly  pious  preachers  and  laymen  as  towards  the  end  of  the  first 


»  Pref.  to  French  tr.  of  the  Meditatioties,  1770.  pp.  xu-xvii.    Lau  died  in  1740. 

a  Tholuck.  Abriss,  as  cited,  p.  10.  ^  Trans,  in  English.  1750. 

*  Hagenbacb,  tr.  pp.  35-36  ;  Saintes,  p.  61 ;  Kahnis,  as  cited,  p.  114.  -re^iffiaTi 

6  Haienbach  pp.  37-39.  It  is  to  be  observed  (Tholuck  Abriss,  p.  f  ^/i^^VvJl  ^Yn^l^nn 
philosophy  was  reinstated  in  Prussia  by  royal  mandate  in  1739.  a  year  before  the  accession 
of  Frederick  the  Great.    But  we  know  that  Frederick  championed  him. 

6  Tholuck,  Abrisa,  as  cited,  p.  5. 

VOL.  II  ^ 


306  GEBMAN  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE 

halt  of   the   eighteenth   century."'     There,   as   elsewhere,   religion 

intellectually  collapsed. 

As  to  Wolffs  rationalistic  influence  see  Cairns  Crn6eii./m<;u, 
Einhtce,ith  Century.  1881.  p.  173 ;  Pusey  pp.  115-19 -Punjer, 
p  529 ;  Lechler.  pp.  448-49.        It  cannot  be  Q'lf  t'o^^d  that, 
fn  his 'philosophy,  the   main  stress  -sts  upon  th        u^^^^^^ 
(Kahnis.  as  cited,  p.  28).       Francke  and  ^ange    pietistsj 
aw  atheism  and   corruption   o     manners   «Pnngmg   "P  from 
Wolffs  school"  (before  his  exile)      7rf.  p.  113.     Wolffs  chief 
offence  lay  in  stressing  natural  religion   and  in  '"f  •"^'^"g'  ^^ 
Tholuck  observes,  that  that  could  be  ^eT^^trated.  wheieas 
revealed  religion  could  only  be  believed  (Abnss,  p.   18  •     He 
grIaS  pleased  Voltaire  by  the  dictum  that  men  ought    o  be  just 
even  though  they  had  the  misfortune  to  be  ^'heists      It  is  no  ted 
by  Tholuck.  however  (Abriss,  as  cted    p.  II-  '«'.*^)'  *^f''„fj'^^ 
decree  for  Wolff's  expulsion  was  inspired  not  by  his  theological 
colleagues  but  by  two  military  advisers  of  the  k^^^S-     tholuck  s 
own  criticism  resolves  itself  into  a  protest  against  Wolff  s  pre 
dilection  for  logical    connection  in  his  exposition.       ihe  fatal 
E  was  that  Wolff  accustomed  German  Christians  to  reason. 

9    Even  before  the  generation  of  active  pressure  from  English 
and  French  deism  there  were  clear  signs  that  rationalism  had  taken 
root  in  German  life.     On  the  impulse  set  up  by  the  establishment  of 
the  Grand  Lodge  at  London  in  1717.  Freemasonic  lodges  began  to 
spring  up  in  Germany,  the  first  being  founded  at  Hamburg  in  17<Sd. 
The  deism  which  in  the  English  lodges  was  later  toned  down  by 
orthodox  reaction  was  from  the  first  pronounced  in  the  German 
societies,  which  ultimately  passed  on  the  tradition  to  the  other  parts 
of  the  Continent.     But  the  now  spirit  was  not  confined  to  secret 
societies.     Wollfianism  worked  widely.     In  the  so-called  Werthcim 
Bible  (1735)  Johann  Lorenz  Schmid,  in  the  spirit  of  the  Leibnitz- 
Wolffian  theology.  "  undertook  to  translate  the  Bible,  and  to  explain 
it  according  to  the  principle  that  in  revelation   only  that  can  be 
accepted  as  true  which  does  hot  contradict  the  reason.        ihis  ot 
course  involved  no  thorough-going  criticism ;  but  the  spirit  of  innova- 
tion was  strong  enough  in  Schmid  to  make  him  undermine  tradition 
at  many  points,  and  later  carried  him  so  far  as  to  translate  Tindal  s 
Christiamty  as  old  as  Creation,     So  far  was  he  m  advance  of  his 
time  that  when  his   Wertheim    Bible   was    officially  condemned 
throughout  Germany  he  found  no  defenders.'     The  Wolffians  were 

,    .  -i.  J  «  e  *  Kahnis,  p.  55. 

1  Tholuck.  Abriss.  as  cited,  p.  6.      ,  tn^na 

:  ?fo!rc.^.'  ^.^i,?.%:'^£'"s^h4r4ar«ime  supposea  to  be  the  author  o,  the 

Wolfenbuttel  Fragments  of  Reimarus  (below,  p.  iSi}, 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES    307 


in  comparison  generally  orthodox ;  and  another  writer  of  the  same 
school,  Martin  Knutzen,  professor  at  Konigsberg  (1715-1751),  under- 
took in  a  youthful  thesis  De  cetemitate  mundi  impossihili  (1735)  to 
rebut  the  old  Averroist  doctrine,  revived  by  modern  science,  of  the 
indestructibility  of  the  universe.  A  few  years  later  (1739)  he  pub- 
lished a  treatise  entitled  The  Truth  of  Christianity  Denwfistrated  by 
Mathematics,  which  succeeded  as  might  have  been  expected. 

10.  To  the  same  period  belong  the  first  activities  of   JOHANN 
Christian   Edelmann   (1698-1767),  one  of  the  most  energetic 
freethinkers  of  his  age.     Trained  philosophically  at  Jena  under  the 
theologian  Budde,  a  bitter  opponent  of  Wolflf,  and  theologically  in  the 
school  of  the  Pietists,  he  was  strongly  influenced   against  official 
orthodoxy  through  reading   the  Impartial   History   of  the    Church 
mid  of  Heretics,   by  Gottfried    Arnold,    an  eminently   anti-clerical 
work,  which  nearly  always  takes  the  side  of  the  heretics.^     In  the 
same  heterodox  direction  he  was  swayed  by  the  works  of  Dippel.    At 
this  stage  Edelmann  produced  his  Unschuldige  Wahrheiten  ("Innocent 
Truths  ")»  iu  which  he  takes  up  a  pronouncedly  rationalist  and  lati- 
tudinarian  position,  but  without  rejecting  "  revelation  ";  and  in  1736 
he  went  to  Berleburg,  where  he  worked  on  the  Berleburg  translation 
of  the  Bible,  a  Pietist  undertaking,  somewhat  on  the  lines  of  Dippel's 
mystical  doctrine,  in  which  a  variety  of  incredible  Scriptural  narra- 
tives, from  the  six  days'  creation  onwards,  are  turned  to  mystical 
purpose.^     In  this  occupation  Edelmann  seems  to  have  passed  some 
years.     Gradually,  however,  he  came   more  and   more   under  the 
influence  of  the  English  deists ;  and  he  at  length  withdrew  from  the 
Pietist  camp,  attacking  his  former  associates  for  the  fanaticism  into 
which  their  thought  was  degenerating.     It  was  under  the  influence 
of  Spinoza,  however,  that  he  took  his  most  important  steps.     A  few 
months  after  meeting  with  the  Tractatus  he  began  (1740)  the  first 
part  of  his  treatise  Moses  mit  aitfgedecktern  Angesichte  (*'  Moses  with 
unveiled  face")i  an  attack  at  once  on  the  doctrine  of  inspiration  and 
on  that  of  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch.     The  book  was 
intended  to  consist  of  twelve  parts  ;  but  after  the  appearance  of  three 
it  was  prohibited  by  the  imperial  fisc,  and  the  published  parts  burned 
by  the  hangman  at  Hamburg  and  elsewhere.     Nonetheless,  Edelmann 
continued  his  propaganda,  publishing  in  1741  or  1742  The  Divinity 

^  Unpartheyische  Kirchen-  uiul  Ketzerhisforie,  1609-1700.  2  torn,  fol.— fuller  ed.  3  torn, 
lol,  1740.  Compare  Mosheim's  angry  account  of  it  with  Murdock's  note  in  defence :  Reid's 
ed.  p.  804.  Bruno  Bauer  describes  it  as  epoch-making  {Einfiuss  des  eiiglischen  QvUiTcer- 
thximn,  p.  42).  This  history  had  a  great  influence  on  Goethe  in  his  teens,  leading  him.  he 
says,  to  the  conviction  that  he,  like  so  many  other  men,  should  have  a  religion  of  his  own, 
which  he  goes  on  to  describe.  It  was  a  re-hash  of  Gnosticism.  {Wahrheit  wnd  Dichtung. 
B.  vm;  Werke,  ed.  1866.  xi.  314  sq.) 

*  Cp.  Hagenbach.  Kirchengeschichte,  i,  171 ;  Ptinjer,  i.  279. 


308  GERMAN  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 

of  Reason,'  and  in  1741  Christ  and  Belial.  In  1749  or  1750  his 
works  were  again  publicly  burned  at  Frankfurt  by  order  of  the 
imperial  authorities;  and  he  had  much  ado  to  find  anywhere  m 
Germany  safe  harbourage,  till  he  found  protection  under  Frederick 

at  Berlin,  where  he  died  in  1767.  ,,    ■  ^■   ■> 

Edelmann's  teaching  was  essentially  Spinozist  and  pantheistic, 
with  a  leaning  to  the  doctrine, of  metempsychosis.     As  a  pantheist  he 
of  course  entirely  rejected  the  divinity  of  Jesus,  pronouncmg  inspira- 
tion the  appanage  of  all ;  and  the  gospels  were  by  him  dismissed  as 
late  fabrications,  from  which  the  true  teachings  of  the  founder  could 
not  be  learned  ;  though,  like  nearly  all  the  freethinkers  of  that  age, 
ho  estimated  Jesus   highly.'      A   German    theologian    complains 
nevertheless,  that  he  was  "  more  just  toward  heathenism  than  toward 
Judaism ;  and  more  just  toward  Judaism  than  toward  Christianity   ; 
adding-  "What  he  taught  had  been  thoroughly  and  ingeniously  said 
in  France  and  England ;  but  from  a  German  theologian,  and  that 
with  such  eloquent  coarseness,  with  such  a  mastery  in  expatiating 
in    blasphemy,   such   things   were    unheard    of."       The   force    o 
Edelmann's  attack  may  be  gathered  from  the  same  writer  s  account 
of  him  as  a  "  bird  of  prey  "  who  rose  to  a     wicked  height  of  opposi- 
tion, not  only  against  the  Lutheran  Church,  but  against  Christianity 

in  general."  .       , 

11  Even  from  decorous  and  official  exponents  of  religion,  how- 
ever, there  came  "naturalistic"  md  semi-rationalistic  teaching  as 
in  the  Reflections  on  the  most  important  truths  of  religion  {11  bb- 
1769)  of  J.  F.  W.  Jerusalem,  Abbot  of  Marienthal  in  Brunswick,  and 
later  of  Kiddagshausen  (1709-1789).  Jerusalem  had  travelled  in 
Europe,  and  had  spent  two  years  in  Holland  and  one  in  England 
where  he  studied  the  deists  and  their  opponents.  In  England 
alone."  he  declared,  "  is  mankind  original." «  Though  really  written 
by  way  of  defending  Christianity  against  the  freethinkers,  in  par- 

1  Die  GdttlichTceit  der  Vernunft     ,  Punier   v   442.    It  is  interesting  to  find 

a  Noack.  Th.  iii.  Kap.2:  Saintes,  pp.  ^.^^fJP'J^^'^lJ;-  gicalled  "New  Theology"  in 

Edelmann  supplying  a  formula  la^^^^^^^^^  Ixfsts  is  God."  and  that  there 

England-the  thesis  that  ^^^e  reality  oie\erj  in uik^^^^  universe  recognizes  God. 

can  therefore  be  no  atheists,  since  hf  ^'j^/^^.^^i^/^f^f  ^^^^  the  exceptions; 

8  Naigeon.byalteringthewordsof  Diderot  caused  hir^^^^^ 

but  he  was  not.    See  Rosenkranz.  D'^^^fl,^^ '^^^^'{Zf  ^^^  NachricTitm 

*  Kahnis.  pp.  128-29.    Edelmann  s  Life  was  written  b^  ^      Apropos 

van  Edelma^m'^Leben,  1155.  .  l^gives  a  list  of  replies  to  bis^w^^^^^^  Edelmann  was 

of  the  first  issue  of  Strauss  8Lei>eH-Jes«  a  vo  ume  of  £^^^^  ^^^^^^ 

^^!^^^  Z^'^Z  "e;?auJ^a|'£of  so  in--^n-      -,.^A 

Autobiography,  written  in  1752.  """^s  P«p"shed  in  i«4y.  ri^uaioii.    Another  apologetic 

«  Betrachtungen  ilber  die  vornehmf^ten  ^^'^Jj/'."^^"  ^r^raS^^  Vertheidigten 

work  of  the  period  marked  by  rational  moderation  ^^^  ^°^^l'^^*;tT^^ ''''^ 
Qlaube^i  der  Christen  of  the  Berlin  co^^j-Pf  ^«i^«J>■  ^'jfil  ^^""^  "^^*'- 
«  Art.  by  Wagenmann  in  Allgemetne  deutsche  Bvographut, 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUBIES    309 

ticular  against  Bolingbroke  and  Voltaire,^  the  very  title  of  his  book 
is  suggestive  of  a  process  of  disintegration ;  and  in  it  certain  unedi- 
fying  Scriptural  miracles  are  actually  rejected.'^  It  was  probably 
this  measure  of  adaptation  to  new  needs  that  gave  it  its  great 
popularity  in  Germany  and  secured  its  translation  into  several  other 
languages.  Goethe  called  him  a  "  freely  and  gently  thinking  theo- 
logian"; and  a  modern  orthodox  historian  of  the  Church  groups 
him  with  those  who  "  contributed  to  the  spread  of  Eationalism  by 
sermons  and  by  popular  doctrinal  and  devotional  works."  ^  Jeru- 
salem was,  however,  at  most  a  semi-rationalist,  taking  a  view  of  the 
fundamental  Christian  dogmas  which  approached  closely  to  that  of 
Locke.*  It  was,  as  Goethe  said  later,  the  epoch  of  common  sense ; 
and  the  very  theologians  tended  to  a  "religion  of  nature."^ 

12.  Alongside  of  home-made  heresy  there  had  come  into  play  a 
new  initiative  force  in  the  Hterature  of  English  deism,  which  began 
to  be  translated  after  1740,^  and  was  widely  circulated  till,  in  the 
last  third  of  the  century,  it  was  superseded  by  the  French.  The 
English  answers  to  the  deists  were  frequently  translated  likewise, 
and  notoriously  helped  to  promote  deism  ^ — another  proof  that  it  was 
not  their  influence  that  had  changed  the  balance  of  activity  in 
England.  Under  a  freethinking  king,  even  clergymen  began  guardedly 
to  accept  the  deistic  methods;  and  the  optimism  of  Shaftesbury 
began  to  overlay  the  optimism  of  Leibnitz  ;®  while  a  French  scientific 
influence  began  with  La  Mettrie,^  Maupertuis,  and  Kobinet.  Even 
the  Leibnitzian  school,  proceeding  on  the  principle  of  immortal 
monads,  developed  a  doctrine  of  the  immortality  of  the  souls  of 
animals '° — a  position  not  helpful  to  orthodoxy.  There  was  thus  a 
general  stirring  of  doubt  among  educated  people,"  and  w^e  find  mention 
in  Goethe's  Autobiography  of  an  old  gentleman  of  Frankfort  who 

J  Hagenbach,  KircTiengescMchte,  i.  355.  2  punjer,  i.  542. 

°  Kurz.  Hist,  of  the  Christian  Church  from  the  Beformation,  Eng.  tr.  ii.  274.  A  Jesuit, 
A.  Merz,  wrote  four  replies  to  Jerusalem.    One  was  entitled  Frag  ob  durch  die  biblische 

iitmplicitat  allein  ein  Freydenker  oder  Deist  bekehret werden  kdnne  ("  Can  a  Freethinker 

or  Deist  be  converted  by  Biblical  Simplicity  alone?").  1775. 

•  •^^'  Hagenbach,  i.  353  ;  tr.  p.  120.  Jerusalem  was  the  father  of  the  gifted  youth  whose 
suicide  (1775)  moved  Goethe  to  write  The  Sorrows  of  Werther,  a  false  presentment  of  the 
^^*'  personality,  which  stirred  Lessing  (his  afifectionate  friend)  to  publish  a  volume  of  the 
dead  youth's  essays,  in  vindication  of  his  character.  The  father  had  considerable 
influence  in  purifying  German  style.  Cp.  Goethe.  Wahrheit  und  Dichtung.  Th.  ii,  B.  vii  ; 
Werke.  ed.  1866,  xi.  272  ;  and  Hagenbach,  i,  354. 

*  Goethe,  as  last  cited,  pp.  268-69. 

t  rr^J^^^^^'  Oesch.  des  englische^i  Deismus,  pp.  447-52.    The  translations  began  with  that 
01  Tindal  (1741).  which  made  a  great  sensation. 

/  Pusey,  pp.  125, 127,  citing  Twesten  ;  Gostwick,  German  Cult^ire  and  Christianity,  p.  36, 
citing  Ernesti.  Thorschmid's  Freidenker  Bibliothek,  issued  in  1765-67.  collected  both 
translations  and  refutations.    Lechler,  p.  451. 

°  Lange.  Gesch.  d^s  Materialismus,  i,  405  (Eng.  tr.  ii.  146-47). 

jj*  Lange.  i,  347,  399  (Eng.  tr.  ii,  76. 137).  lO  Lange,  i,  396-97  (ii.  134-35). 

Goethe  tells  of  having  seen  in  his  boyhood,  at  Frankfort,  an  irreligious  Fi-ench 
romance  publicly  burned,  and  of  having  his  interest  in  the  book  thereby  awakened.  But 
vuis  seems  to  have  been  during  the  French  occupation.  (Wahrheit  und  Dichtung,  B.  iv; 
fVerke,  xi,  146.) 


310       GERMAN  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 

avowed,  as  against  the  optimists, "  Even  in  God  I  find  defects  {FeUer)r' 
On  the  other  hand,  there  were  instances  in  Germany  of  the 
phenomenon,  already  seen  in  England  in  Newton  and  Boyle,  of  men 
of  science  devoting  themselves  to  the  defence  of  the  faith.     The 
most  notable  cases  were  those  of  the  mathematician  Euler  and  the 
biologist  von  Haller.     The  latter  wrote  Letters  (to  his  Daughter)  On 
the  most  important  Truths  of  Bevelation  (1772)^  and  other  apologetic 
works.     Euler  in  1747  published  at  Berlin,  where  he  was  professor, 
his  Defence  of  Bevelation  against  the  Beproaches  of  Freethinkers;' 
and  in  1769  his  Letters  to  a  German  Princess,  of  which  the  argument 
notably  coincides  with  part  of  that  of  Berkeley  against  the  free- 
thinking   mathematicians.     Haller's   position   comes   to   the   same 
thing.     All  three  men,  in  fact,  grasped  at  the  argument  of  despair— 
the  inadequacy  of  the  human  faculties   to  sound  the  mystery  of 
things ;  and  all  alike  were  entirely  unable  to  see  that  it  logically 
cancelled  their  own  judgments.     Even  a  theologian,  contemplating 
Haller's  theorem  of  an  incomprehensible  omnipotence  countered  m 
its  merciful  plan  of  salvation  by  the  set  of  worms  it  sought  to  save, 
comments  on  the  childishness  of  the  philosophy  which  confidently 
described  the  plans  of  deity  in  terms  of  what  it  declared  to  be  the 
blank  ignorance   of   the   worms    in   question.^     Euler   and   Haller, 
like  some  later  men  of  science,  kept  their  scientific  method  for  the 
mechanical  or  physical  problems  of  their  scientific  work,  and  brought 
to  the  deepest  problems  of  all  the  self-will,  the  emotionalism,  and  the 
irresponsibility  of  the  ignorant  average  man.     Each  did  but  express 
in  his  own  way  the  resentment  of  the  undiscipHned  mind  at  attacks 
upon  its  prejudices  ;  and  Haller's  resort  to  poetry  as  a  vehicle  for  his 
religion  gives  the  measure  of  his  powers  on  that  side.     Thus  in 
Germany  as  in  England  the  "answer"  to  the  freethinkers  was  a 
failure.     Men  of  science  playing  at  theology  and  theologians  playing 
at  science  alike  failed  to  turn  the  tide  of   opinion,  now  socially 
favoured  by  the  known  deism  of  the  king.     German  orthodoxy,  says 
a  recent  Christian  apologist,  fell  "  with  a  rapidity  reminding  one  of 
the  capture  of  Jericho." '     Goethe,  writing  of  the  general  attitude  to 
Christianity   about    1768,  sums   up   that   "the   Christian   religion 
wavered  between  its  own  historic-positive  base  and  a  pure  deism, 
which,  grounded  on  morality,  was  in  turn  to  re-establish  ethics."® 

a  TranslS'ed^fnto  English  1780;  2nd  ed.  1793.  The  translator  claims  for  Haller  great 
learning  (2nd  ed.  p.  xix)  He  seems  in  reality  to  have  had  very  little  as  he  represents 
that  tSus  in  his  day  "was  the  only  teacher  who  recommended  chastity  to  men  "  (p.  82). 

simiUr  titl?.  1775-76.  *  Banr.  Oesch.  derchr^sL  J^rche,  1^599 

^  Gostwick.  p.  15.  ®  Wahrhett  una  Dtchtuna,  »•  via,   werKe,  xi,  a-j. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEIES     311 

Frederick's  attitude,  said  an  early  Kantian,  had  had  "  an 
almost  magical  influence "  on  popular  opinion  (Willich, 
Ele7nenis  of  the  Critical  Philosophy,  1798,  p.  2).  With  this 
his  French  teachers  must  have  had  much  to  do.  Lord  Morley 
pronounces  (Voltaire,  4th  ed.  p.  123)  that  French  deism  "  never 
made  any  impression  on  Germany,"  and  that  "  the  teaching  of 
Leibnitz  and  Wolff  stood  like  a  fortified  wall  against  the  French 
invasion."  This  is  contradicted  by  much  German  testimony ; 
in  particular  by  Lange's  {Gesch.  des  Mater,  i,  318),  though  he 
notes  that  French  materialism  could  not  get  the  upper  hand. 
Laukhard,  who  expressed  the  highest  admiration  for  Tindal,  as 
having  wholly  delivered  him  from  dogmatism,  avowed  that 
Voltaire,  whom  everybody  read,  had  perhaps  done  more  harm 
to  priest  religion  than  all  the  books  of  the  English  and  German 
deists  together  {Lebe7i,  1792-1802,  Th.  i,  p.  268). 

Tholuck  gravely  affirms  {Abriss,  p.  33)  that  the  acquaintance 
with  the  French  "  deistery  and  frivolity  "  in  Germany  belongs 
to  a  "  somewhat  later  period  than  that  of  the  English." 
Naturally  it  did.  The  bulk  of  the  English  deistic  literature 
was  printed  before  the  printing  of  the  French  had  begun  ! 
French  MSS.  would  reach  German  princes,  but  not  German 
pastors.  But  Tholuck  sadly  avows  that  the  French  deism  (of 
the  serious  and  pre-Voltairean  portions  of  which  he  seems  to 
have  known  nothing)  had  a  "frightful"  influence  on  the  upper 
classes,  though  not  on  the  clergy  (p.  34).  Following  him, 
Kahnis  whites  (Internal  History,  p.  41)  that  *'  English  and 
French  Deism  met  with  a  very  favourable  reception  in  Germany 
— the  latter  chiefly  in  the  higher  circles,  the  former  rather 
among  the  educated  middle  classes."  (He  should  have  added, 
"the  younger  theologians.")  Baur,  even  in  speaking  disparag- 
ingly of  the  French  as  compared  with  the  English  influence, 
admits  (Lehrhuch  der  Dogmengeschichte,  2te  Aufl.  p.  347)  that 
the  former  told  upon  Germany.  Cp.  Tennemann,  Bohn.  tr. 
pp.  385,  388.  Hagenbach  shows  great  ignorance  of  English 
deism,  but  he  must  have  known  something  of  German ;  and  he 
writes  (tr.  p.  57)  that  "  the  imported  deism,"  both  English  and 
French,  "  soon  swept  through  the  rifts  of  the  Church,  and  gained 
supreme  control  of  literature."  Cp.  pp.  67-68.  See  Croom 
Kobertson's  Hohhes,  pp.  225-26,  as  to  the  persistence  of  a 
succession  of  Hobbes  and  Locke  in  Germany  in  the  teeth  of  the 
Wolffian  school,  w^hich  soon  lost  ground  after  1740.  It  is 
further  noteworthy  that  Brucker's  copious  Historia  Critica 
Philosophies  (1742-44),  which  as  a  mere  learned  record  has 
great  merit,  and  was  long  the  standard  authority  in  Germany, 
gives  great  praise  to  Locke  and  little  space  to  Wolff'.  (See 
Enfield's  abstract,  pp.  614,  619  sq.)  The  Wolffian  philosophy, 
too,  had  been  rejected  and  disparaged  by  both  Herder  and 
Kant — who  were  alike  deeply  influenced  by  Kousseau — in  the 


312  GERMAN  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 

third  quarter  of  the  century ;   and  was  ^^"^^fj^.'^l'^lf^f,', 
save  in  the  schools,  when  Kant  produced  the  Critique  of  Fure 
Beason.     See  below,  pp.  337,  345. 
13.  Frederick,   though    reputed    a  Voltairean    freethinker   par 
excellence,  may  be   claimed   for   Germany  as   partly  a   Product  of 
the  rationalizing  philosophy  of  Wolff.     In  his  first  letter  to  Voltaire, 
written  in  1736.  four  years  before  his  accession,^ he  promises  to 
send  him  a  translation  he  has 'had  made  of  the      accusation  and 
the  justification  "  of  Wolff.  "  the  most  celebrated  philosopher  of  our 
days.  who.    for   having   carried    light    into    the   darkest   places   of 
metaphysics,  and  for  having  treated  the  most  difficult  matters  m 
a  manner  no  less  elevated  than  precise  and  clear,  is  cruelly  accused 
of  irreligion  and  atheism";   and   he   speaks  of   getting   translated 
Wolff's  Treatise  of  God.  the  Soul,  and  ths  World,     When  he  became 
a  thoroughgoing  freethinker  is  not  clear,  for  Voltaire  at  this  time 
had  produced  no  explicit  anti-Christian  propaganda.     At  first  the 
new  king  showed  himself  disposed  to  act  on  the  old  maxim  that 
freethought  is  bad  for  the  common  people.     In  1743-44  he  caused 
to  be  suppressed  two  German  treatises  by  one  Gebhardi.  a  contributor 
to  Gottsched's  magazines,  attacking  the  Biblical  miracles ;  and  in 
1748  he  sent  a  young   man   named   Kiidiger  to  Spandau   for  six 
months'  confinement   for  printing  an  anti -Christian  work   by  one 
Dr    Pott'     But  as  he  grew  more  confident  in   his  own  methods 
he  extended  to  men  of  his  own  way  of  thinking  the  toleration  he 
allowed  to  all  religionists,  save  insofar  as  he  vetoed  the  mutual 
vituperation  of  the  sects,  and  such  proselytizing  as  tended  to  create 
strife.     With  an  even  hand  he  protected  Catholics.  Greek  Christians, 
and  Unitarians,  letting  them  have  churches  where  they  would ;    and 
when,  after  the  battle  of  Striegau,  a  body  of  Protestant  peasantry 
asked  his  permission  to  slay  all  the  Catholics  they  could  find,  he 
answered  with  the  gospel  precept.  "  Love  your  enemies." 

Beyond  the  toleration  of  all  forms  of  religion,  however,  he  never 
went  •  though  he  himself  addted  to  the  literature  of  deism.  Apart 
from  his  verses  we  have  from  him  the  posthumous  treatise  Pe^is^es 
sur  la  Beligion,  probably  written  early  in  his  life,  where  the  rational 
case  against  the  concepts  of  revelation  and  of  miracles  is  put  with 
a  calm  and  sustained  force.  Like  the  rest,  he  is  uncritical  in  his 
deism  ;  but,  that  granted,  his  reasoning  is  unanswerable.  In  talk 
he  was  wont  to  treat  the  clergy  with  small  respect  ;*  and  he  wrote 

1  SchloBser.  Hut.  of  Eighteenth  Cent.,  tm  ^'k]lfnJ,la!^<;Mchf!^^^^    *'*  ''*  ^' 

2  Hagenbacli.  tr.  p.  63.  ^^  ^  Id..  Kirchengetichtchte,  i.  MZ. 
*  Kalinia.  p.  43 ;  Tlioluck,  Abrtss,  p.  34. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEIES     313 


more  denunciatory  things  concerning  them  than  almost  any  freethinker 
of  the  century.'  Bayle.  Voltaire,  and  Lucretius  were  his  favourite 
studies  ;  and  as  the  then  crude  German  literature  had  no  attraction 
for  him,  he  drew  to  his  court  many  distinguished  Frenchmen, 
including  La  Mettrie,  Maupertuis,  D'Alembert,  D'Argens,  and  above 
all  Voltaire,  between  whom  and  him  there  was  an  incurable  incom- 
patibility of  temper  and  character,  and  a  persistent  attraction  of 
force  of  mind,  which  left  them  admiring  without  respecting  each 
other,  and  unable  to  abstain  from  mutual  vituperation.  Under 
Frederick's  vigorous  rule  all  speech  was  free  save  such  as  he 
considered  personally  offensive,  as  Voltaire's  attack  on  Maupertuis ; 
and  after  a  stormy  reign  he  could  say,  when  asked  by  Prince  William 
of  Brunswick  whether  he  did  not  think  religion  one  of  the  best 
supports  of  a  king's  authority,  "  I  find  order  and  the  laws  sufficient. 

Depend  upon  it,  countries  have  been  admirably  governed  when 

your  reUgion  had  no  existence."  ^  Eeligion  certainly  had  no  part  in 
his  personality  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  term.  Voltaire  was 
wont  to  impute  to  him  atheism  ;  when  La  Mettrie  died,  the  mocker, 
then  at  Frederick's  court,  remarked  that  the  post  of  his  majesty's 
atheist  was  vacant,  but  happily  the  Abb6  de  Prades  was  there  to 
fill  it.  In  effect,  Frederick  i)rofessed  Voltaire's  own  deism  ;  but  of 
all  the  deists  of  the  time  he  had  least  of  the  religious  temperament 
and  most  of  sheer  cynicism. 

The  attempt  of  Carlyle  to  exhibit  Frederick  as  a  practical 
believer  is  a  flagrant  instance  of  that  writer's  subjective  method. 
He  tells  (Hist,  of  Friedrich,  bk.  xviii,  ch.  x)  that  at  the  beginning 
of  the  battle  of  Leuthen  a  column  of  troops  near  the  king  sang 
a  hymn  of  duty  (which  Carlyle  calls  *'  the  sound  of  Psalms  ") ; 
that  an  officer  asked  whether  the  singing  should  be  stopped, 
and  that  the  king  said  "  By  no  means."  His  "  hard  heart 
seems  to  have  been  touched  by  it.  Indeed,  there  is  in  him,  in 
those  grim  days,  a  tone  (!)  as  of  trust  in  the  Eternal,  as  of  real 
religious  piety  and  faith,  scarcely  noticeable  elsewhere  in  his 
history.  His  religion — and  he  had  in  withered  forms  a  good 
deal  of  it,  if  we  will  look  well — being  almost  always  in  a  strictly 
voiceless  state,  nay,  ultra  voiceless,  or  voiced  the  wrong  way,  as 
is  too  well  known."  Then  comes  the  assertion  that  "  a  moment 
after"  the  king  said  "  to  someone,  Ziethen  probably,  '  With  men 

*  See  the  extracts  of  BUchner.  Zivei  geTcrdnte  FreidenTcer,  1890.  pp.  45-47. 
.  ^  Thi^bault.  Mes  Souvenirs  de  Vingt  Ans  de  S^jour  d  Berlin,  2e  edit.  1805,  i.  126-28.    See 
*■  355-56.  ii,  78-82,  as  to  the  baselessness  of  the  stories  (e.g.,  Pusey,  Histor.  Inq.  into  Ger. 
Bationalism,  p.  123)  that  Frederick  changed  his  views  in  old  age.    Thi6bault.  a  strict 
tatholic,  is  emphatic  in  his  negation:  "The  persons  who  assert  that  [his  principles] 

became   more   religious have   either   lied   or  been   themselves  mistaken."     Carlyle 

naturally  detests  Thi6bault.  The  rumour  may  have  arisen  out  of  the  fact  that  in  his 
J'^xamen  critiqtie  du  Systdniedela  Nature  Frederick  counter-argues  d'Holbach's  impeach- 
ment of  Christianity.    The  attack  on  kings  gave  him  a  fellow-feeling  with  the  Church. 


314 


GERMAN  FREETHOTJGHT  IN  THE 


like  these,  don't  you  think  I  shall  have  ^'"tofy  t^'^^f  ^ ' 
Here  with  the  very  spirit  of  unveracity  at  work  before  his  eyes 
CarTvir  plumps  for  the  fable.     Yet  the  story,  even  if  true,  would 
cive  no  proof  whatever  of  religious  belief.  .  .       „      . 

In  point  of  fact.  Frederick  was  a  much  less     religious     deist 
than  Voltaire.     He  erected  no  temple  to  las  unloved  God.    And 
Iperusal  of  his  dialogue  of  Pompadour  and  the  ^^^f-^f''-^^^^''^^ 
d!s  morts)  may  serve  to  dispose  of  the  thesis  that  the  German 
mind  dealt  reverently  and-  decently  with   matters  which  the 
French  mind  handled  frivolously.     That  performance  outgoes 
in  ribaldry  anything  of  the  age  in  French. 
As  the  first  modern  freethinking  king,  Frederick  is  something  of 
a  test  case.     Son  of  a  man  of  narrow  mind  and  odious  character,  he 
was  himself  no  admirable  type,  being  neither  benevolent  nor  con- 
siderate, neither  truthful  nor  generous  ;  and  in  international  politics, 
after  writing  in  his  youth  a  treatise  in  censure  of  Machiavelh.  he 
played  the  old  game  of  unscrupulous  aggression.     Yet  he  was  not 
only  the  most  competent,  but,  as  regards  home  administration,  the 
most  conscientious  king  of  his  time.     To  find  him  a  ^^^^^  ^'^  ^'' 
go  back  to  the  pagan  Antonines  and  Julian,  or  at  least  to  St.  Louis 
of  France,  who.  however,  was  rather  worsened  than  bettered  by 
his  creed.'     Henri  IV  of  France,  who  rivalled  him  in  sagacity  and 
greatly  exceUed  him  in  human  kindness,  was  far  his  inferior  in  devo- 

The  effect  of  Frederick's  training  is  seen  in  his  final  attitude  to 
the  advanced  criticism  of  the  school  of  d'Holbach.  which  assailed 
governments  and  creeds  with  the  same  unsparing  severity  of  logic 
and    moral  reprobation.     Stung    by   the    uncompromising    attack, 
Frederick  retorts  by  censuring  the  rashness  which  would  plunge 
nations  into  civil  strife  because  kings  miscarry  where  no  human 
wisdom  could  avoid  miscarriage.     He  who  had  wantonly  plunged 
all  Germany  into   a   hell  of  war   for   his   sole   ambition,  bringmg 
myriads  to  misery,  thousands  to  violent  death,  and  hundreds  of 
his  own  soldiers  to  suicide,  could  be  virtuously  indignant  at  the 
irresponsible  audacity  of  writers  who  indicted  the  whole  existing 
system  for  its  imbecility  and  injustice.     But  he  did  reason  on  the 
criticism ;  he  did  ponder  it ;  he  did  feel  bound  to  meet  argument 
with  argument ;    and   he   left   his   arguments  to   the  world.     Ihe 
advance   on    previous  regal    practice    is    noteworthy:    the  whole 
problem  of    politics  is  at  once  brought   to   the  test  of  judgmen 
and  persuasion.     Beside  the  Christian  Georges  and  the  Louis  s  of 
his   century,  and  beside   his   Christian   father,    his   superiority  in 

I  Cp.  tbe  argument  of  Faure.  Mist,  de  Saint  Louis.  1866.  i.  242-43;  ii.  597. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEIES    315 

judgment  and  even  in  some  essential  points  of  character  is  signal. 
Such  was  the  great  deist  king  of  the  deist  age  ;  a  deist  of  the  least 
religious  temper  and  of  no  very  fine  moral  material  to  begin  with. 

The  one  contemporary  monarch  who  in  any  way  compares  with 
him  in  enlightenment,  Joseph  II  of  Austria,  belonged  to  the  same 
school.  The  main  charge  against  Frederick  as  a  ruler  is  that  he 
did  not  act  up  to  the  ideals  of  the  school  of  Voltaire.  In  reply  to 
the  demand  of  the  French  deists  for  an  abolition  of  all  superstitious 
teaching,  he  observed  that  among  the  16,000,000  inhabitants  of 
France  at  most  200,000  were  capable  of  philosophic  views,  and  that 
the  remaining  15,800,000  were  held  to  their  opinions  by  "  insur- 
mountable obstacles."  ^  This,  however,  had  been  said  by  the  deists 
themselves  (e.g.,  d'Holbach,  pr^f.  to  Christianisriie  ddvoiU) ;  and 
such  an  answer  meant  that  he  had  no  idea  of  so  spreading  instruc- 
tion that  all  men  should  have  a  chance  of  reaching  rational  beliefs. 
This  attitude  was  his  inheritance  from  the  past.  Yet  it  was  under  him 
that  Prussia  began  to  figure  as  a  first-rate  culture  force  in  Europe. 

14.  The  social  vogue  of  deistic  thought  could  now  be  traced  in 
much  of  the  German  belles-lettres  of  the  time.  The  young  JAKOB 
VON  Mauvillon  (1743-1794),  secretary  of  the  King  of  Poland  and 
author  of  several  histories,  in  his  youth  translated  from  the  Latin 
into  French  Holberg's  Voyage  of  Nicolas  Klimius  (1766),  which 
made  the  tour  of  Europe,  and  had  a  special  vogue  in  Germany. 
Later  in  life,  besides  translating  and  writing  abundantly  and  intel- 
ligently on  matters  of  economic  and  military  science — in  the  latter  of 
which  he  had  something  like  expert  status — Mauvillon  became  a  pro- 
nounced heretic,  though  careful  to  keep  his  propaganda  anonymous. 

The  most  systematic  dissemination  of  the  new  ideas  was  that 
carried  on  in  the  periodical  published  by  Christoph  Friedrich 
NiCOLAl  (1733-1811)  under  the  title  of  The  General  German  Library 
(founded  1765),  which  began  with  fifty  contributors,  and  at  the 
height  of  its  power  had  a  hundred  and  thirty,  among  them  being 
Lessing,  Eberhard,  and  Moses  Mendelssohn.  In  the  period  from 
its  start  to  the  year  1792  it  ran  to  106  volumes  ;  and  it  has  always 
been  more  or  less  bitterly  spoken  of  by  later  orthodoxy  as  the  great 
library  of  that  movement.  Nicolai,  himself  an  industrious  and 
scholarly  writer,  produced  among  many  other  things  a  satirical 
romance  famous  in  its  day,  the  Life  and  Opinions  of  Magister 
Sebaldus  Nothanker,  ridiculing  the  bigots  and  persecutors  the  type 
of  Klotz,   the  antagonist  of   Lessing,  and  some   of    Nicolai's   less 


*  Examen  de  I'Essai  sur  les  pr^jug^s,  1769.    See  the  passage  in  L6vy-Bruhl,  L'Allemagtie 
depuis  Leibniz,  p.  89. 


316 


GERMAN  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


unamiable  antagonists/  as  well  as  various  aspects  of  the  general 
social  and  literary  life  of  the  time.     To  Nicolai  is  fully  due  the 
genial  tribute  paid  to  him  by  Heine,'*  were  it  only  for  the  national 
service  of  his  "  Library."     Its  many  translations  from  the  English 
and  French  freethinkers,  older  and  newer,  concurred  with  native 
work  to  spread  a  deistic  rationalism,  labelled  Aiifklarimg,  or  en- 
lightenment, through  the  whole  middle  class  of  Germany.^     Native 
writers  in  independent  works  added  to  the  propaganda.     ANDREAS 
RiEM  (1749-1807),  a   Berlin  preacher,   appointed   by  Frederick  a 
hospital   chaplain,*  wrote   anonymously  against   priestcraft   as   no 
other  priest  had  yet  done.     "  No   class  of   men,"  he  declared,  in 
language  perhaps  echoed  from  his  king, "  has  ever  been  so  pernicious 
to  the  world  as  the  priesthood.     There  were  laws  at  all  times  against 
murderers  and  bandits,  but  not  against  the  assassin  in  the  priestly 
garb.     War  was  repelled  by  war,  and  it  came  to  an  end.     The  war 
of  the  priesthood  against  reason  has  lasted  for  thousands  of  years, 
and  it  still   goes   on  without   ceasing."'     Georg  Schade  (1712- 
1795),  who  appears  to  have  been  one  of  the  believers  in  the  immor- 
tality of  animals,  and  who  in  1770  was  imprisoned  for  his  opinions 
in  the  Danish  island  of  ChristianscE,  was  no  less  emphatic,  declaring, 
in  a  work  on  Natural  Religion  on  the  lines  of  Tindal  (1760),  that 
"all  who  assert  a  supernatural  religion  are  godless   impostors."® 
Constructive  work  of  great  importance,  again,  was  done  by  J.  B. 
Basedow   (1723-1790),   who   early   became   an   active   deist,    but 
distinguished  himself   chiefly  as   an   educational   reformer,  on  the 
inspiration  of  Rousseau's  E^nileJ  setting  up  a  system  which  "  tore 
education  away  from  the  Christian  basis,"  ^  and  becoming  in  virtue 
of  that  one  of  the  most  popular  writers  of  Ms  day.     It  is  latterly 
admitted  even  by  orthodoxy  that  school  education  in  Germany  had 
in  the  seventeenth  century  become  a  matter  of  learning  by  rote,  and 
that  such  reforms  as  had  been  set  up  in  some  of  the  schools  of  the 
Pietists  had  in  Basedow's  day  come  to  nothing.®     As  Basedow  was 
the  first  to  set  up  vigorous  reforms,  it  is  not  too  much  to  call  him 
an  instaurator  of  rational  education,  whose  chief  fault  was  to  be  too 
far  ahead  of  his  age.     This,  with  the  personal  flaw  of  an  unami- 
able habit  of  wrangling  in  all  companies,  caused  the  failure  of  his 
"Philanthropic  Institute,"  established  in  1771.  on  the  invitation  of 

1  G.  Weber.  Gesch.  der  d^utschen  Literatur,  lite  Aufl.  p.  99.  ,  . 

2  Zur  Gesch.  der  Relig.  tend  Philos.  in  Deutschland—Werke.  ed.  1876.  in.  63-64.    Goethe  s 
blame  (W.  und  D.,  B.  vii)  is  passed  on  purely  literary  grounds. 

»  Hagenbach.  tr.  pp.  103-104;  Cairns,  p.  177.  ,  ^  •   ^■ 

*  This  post  he  left  to  become  secretary  of  the  Academy  of  Pamting. 

«  Cited  by  punier,  i,  545-46.  «    ^    „„   ,  ro^    xt   "  ^i^  ^S:   •  •  t.- 

7  Hagenbach.  tr.  pp.  100-103  :  Saintes.  pp.  91-92;  Fttnlw,  p.  636 :  Noack.  Th.  in.  Kap.  7. 

8  Hagenbach,  Kirchengeschichte.  i,  298.  351.  "  Id.  i,  294  sq. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES    317 

the  Prince  of  Dessau,  to  carry  out  his  educational  ideals.  Quite  a 
number  of  other  institutions,  similarly  planned,  after  his  lead,  by 
men  of  the  same  way  of  thinking,  as  Canope  and  Salzmann,  in 
the  same  period,  had  no  better  success. 

Goethe,  who  was  clearly  much  impressed  by  Basedow,  and 
travelled  with  him,  draws  a  somewhat  antagonistic  picture  of 
him  on  retrospect  (Wahrheit  und  Dichtiing,  B.  xiv).  He 
accuses  him  in  particular  of  always  obtruding  his  anti-orthodox 
opinions ;  not  choosing  to  admit  that  religious  opinions  were 
being  constantly  obtruded  on  Basedow.  Praising  Lavater  for 
his  more  amiable  nature,  Goethe  reveals  that  Lavater  was 
constantly  propounding  his  orthodoxy.  Goethe,  in  fine,  was 
always  lenient  to  pietism,  in  which  he  had  been  brought  up, 
and  to  which  he  was  wont  to  make  sentimental  concessions. 
He  could  never  forget  his  courtly  duties  towards  the  established 
convention,  and  so  far  played  the  game  of  bigotry.  Hagenbach 
notes  (i,  298,  note),  without  any  deprecation,  that  after  Basedow 
had  published  in  1763-1764  his  Philalethie,  a  perfectly  serious 
treatise  on  natural  as  against  revealed  religion,  one  of  the  many 
orthodox  answers,  that  by  Pastor  Goeze.  so  inflamed  against 
him  the  people  of  his  native  town  of  Hamburg  that  he  could 
not  show  himself  there  without  danger.  And  this  is  the  man 
accused  of  "  obtruding  his  views."  Baur  is  driven,  by  way  of 
disparagement  of  Basedow  and  his  school,  to  censure  their  self- 
confidence — precisely  the  quality  which,  in  religious  teachers 
with  whom  he  agreed,  he  as  a  theologian  would  treat  as  a  mark 
of  superiority.  Baur's  attack  on  the  moral  utilitarianism  of  the 
school  is  still  less  worthy  of  him.  {Gesch.  der  christl.  Kirche, 
iv,  595-96).     It  reads  like  an  echo  of  Kahnis  (as  cited,  p.  46  sq.). 

Yet  another  influential  deist  was  Johann  August  Eberhard 
(1739-1809).  for  a  time  a  preacher  at  Charlottenburg,  but  driven  out 
of  the  Church  for  the  heresy  of  his  Neiv  Apology  of  Sokrates ;  or  the 
Final  Salvation  of  the  Heathen  (1772).^  The  work  in  effect  placed 
Sokrates  on  a  level  with  Jesus.'*  which  was  blasphemy.^  But  the 
outcry  attracted  the  attention  of  Frederick,  who  made  Eberhard  a 
Professor  of  Philosophy  at  Halle,  where  later  he  opposed  the 
idealism  of  both  Kant  and  Fichte.  Substantially  of  the  same  school 
was  the  less  pronouncedly  deistic  cleric  Steinbart,*  author  of  a 
utilitarian  System  of  Pure  Philosophy,  or  Christian  doctrine  of 
Happiness,  now  forgotten,  who  had  been  variously  influenced  by 
Locke  and  Voltaire.^    Among  the  less  heterodox  but  still  rationalizing 

*  The  book  is  remembered  in  France  by  reason  of  Eberhard's  amusing  mistake  of 
treating  as  a  serious  production  of  the  Sorbonne  the  skit  in  which  Turgot  derided  the 

3  S?°^'^  findings  against  Marmontel's  BHimire.  2  Hagenbach,  tr.  p.  109. 

.      Eberhard,  however,  is  respectfully  treated  by  Lessing  in  his  discussion  on  Leibnitz's 
view  as  to  eternal  punishment.  <  Noack.  Th.  iii.  Kap.  8.  «  Saintes.  pp.  92-93. 


318  GERMAN  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 

clergy  of  the  period  were  J.  J.  Spalding,  author  of  a  work  on  Kc 
Utility  of  the  Preacher's  Office,  a  man  of  the  type  labelled  Moderate 
in  the  Scotland  of  the  same  period,  and  as  such  antipathetic  to 
emotional  pietists;'  and  ZoUikofer.  of  the  same  school-both 
inferribly  influenced  by  the  deism  of  their  day.  Considerably  more 
of  a  rationalist  than  these  was  the  clergyman  W.  A.  Teller  (llii- 
1804)  author  of  a  New  Testament  Lexicon,  who  reached  a  position 
virtually  deistic,  and  intimated  to  the  Jews  of  Berlin  that  he  would 
receive  them  into  his  church  on  their  making  a  deistic  profession 

of  faith.  ■,  f     :,         t  r^u  • 

15    If  it  be  true  that  even  the  rationalizing  defenders  ot  l^&ris- 

tianity  led  men  on  the  whole  towards  deism,'  much  more  must  this 
hold  true  of  the  new  school  who  applied  rationalistic  methods  to 
religious  questions  in  their  capacity  as  theologians.     Of  this  school 
the  founder  was  JoH.VNN  Salomo  Semler  (1725-1791).  who,  trained 
as  a  Pietist  at  Halle,  early  thought   himself  into  a  more  critical 
attitude,'  albeit  remaining  a  theological  teacher.     Son  of  a  much- 
travelled  army  chaplain,  who  in  his  many  campaigns  had  learned 
much  of  the  world,  and  in  particular  seen  something  of  religious 
frauds  in  the  Catholic  countries,  Semler  started  with  a  critical  bias 
which  was  cultivated  by  wide  miscellaneous  reading  from  his  boy- 
hood   onwards.     As   early   as   1750,   in   his   doctoral  dissertation 
defending  certain  texts  against  the  criticism  of  Whiston.  he  set  forth 
the  view,  developed  a  century  later  by  Baur.that  the  early  Christian 
Church  contained  a  Pauline  and  a  Petrine  party,  mutually  hostile. 
The  merit  of  his  research  won  him  a  professorship  at  HaUe ;  and 
this   position   he   held  till  his  death,  despite  such  heresy  as  his 
rejection   from   the   canon   of  the  books   of   Ruth,   Esther    Ezra 
Nehemiah,  the  Song  of  Solomon,  the  two  books  of  Chronicles  and 
the  Apocalypse,  in  his  Freie  Untersuchung  des  Canons  U771--1774; 
—a  work  apparently  inspired  by  the  earlier  performance  of  Richard 
Simon'     His  intellectual  life  was  for  long  a  continuous  advance, 
always  in  the  direction  of  a  more  rationalistic  comprehension  o 
religious  history  ;  and  he  reached,  for  his  day,  a  remarkably  critical 

>  Cp.  Hagenbach.  Kirchengeschichte.  l.m.mx  (tso-51,  note)  speaks  of 

^^^^S^::  '°  77'  H'f  4H  eSKS^  'l^«.e.s 
4  P.  Gastrow,  Joh.  Salomo  Semler,  lOOa,  p.  4>.    bee  ""s^®3^  i*^"/-""'*''  t^d     (Citing 

account^of   the'  rigid  and  ""«-°f  °|  "Ver"^"^';,^ recUs  that  b\ 
Semler'8  Lebenschreibiing,  u,  121-61.)    °®j^'®'^-p°J!^tTSa\^iri^ads  d^^  theism  and  make 

the  theological  professors  at  Halle,  would  i°  «^P^°siy«  ^°f «  ^ S  p^  12. 18.    Pusey 
light  of  theology  (Lebenschretbung,  i,  lOS).    Cp.  ^'^«^"fii' ^^^"f^^^^^  ••  (p.  132. 

notes  that  **  many  of  the  principal  innovators  had  been  pupils  ol  liaumgarieu    vy. 

*'''l°Cp^  D??  G.^Karo.  Johann  Salorm  Semler.  1905,  p.  25 ;  Saintes.  pp.  120-31. 


I 


I 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEIES     319 

view  of  the  mythical  element  in  the  Old  Testament.^  Not  only  did 
he  recognize  that  Genesis  must  have  pre-Mosaic  origins,  and  that 
such  books  as  the  Proverbs  and  the  Psalms  were  of  later  date  and 
other  origin  than  those  traditionally  assigned:'*  his  historical  sense 
worked  on  the  whole  narrative.  Thus  he  recognized  the  mythical 
character  of  the  story  of  Samson,  and  was  at  least  on  the  way 
towards  a  scientific  handling  of  the  New  Testament.^  But  in  his 
period  and  environment  a  systematic  rationalism  was  impossible  ; 
he  was  always  a  "revelation-believing  Christian";  his  critical 
intelligence  was  always  divided  against  itself;*  and  his  powers  were 
expended  in  an  immense  number  of  works,*  which  failed  to  yield  any 
orderly  system,  while  setting  up  a  general  stimulus,  in  despite  of 
their  admitted  unreadableness.^ 

In  his  latter  days  he  strongly  opposed  and  condemned  the  more 
radical  rationalism  of  his  pupil  Bahrdt,  and  of  the  posthumous  work 
of  Reimarus,  here  exemplifying  the  common  danger  of  the  intellectual 
Hfe,  for  critical  as  well  as  uncritical  minds.  After  provoking  many 
orthodox  men  by  his  own  challenges,  he  is  roused  to  fury  alike  by 
the  genial  rationalism  of  Bahrdt  and  by  the  cold  analysis  of 
Reimarus  ;  and  his  attack  on  the  Wolfenbiittel  Fragments  published 
by  Lessing  is  loaded  with  a  vocabulary  of  abuse  such  as  he  had 
never  before  employed^ — a  sure  sign  that  he  had  no  scientific  hold 
of  his  own  historical  conception.  Like  the  similarly  infuriated  semi- 
rational  defenders  of  the  historicity  of  Jesus  in  our  own  day,  he 
merely  "  followed  the  tactic  of  exposing  the  lack  of  scientific  know- 
ledge and  theological  learning  "  of  the  innovating  writer.  Always 
temperamentally  religious,  he  died  in  the  evangelical  faith.  But  his 
own  influence  in  promoting  rationalism  is  now  obvious  and  unques- 
tioned,^ and  he  is  rightly  to  be  reckoned  a  main  founder  of  **  German 
rationalism  " — that  is,  academic  rationalism  on  theologico-historical 
lines" — although  he  always  professed  to  be  merely  rectifying  orthodox 
conceptions.  In  the  opinion  of  Pusey  "the  revival  of  historical 
interpretation  by  Semler  became  the  most  extensive  instrument  of 
the  degradation  of  Christianity." 

Among  the  other  theologians  of  the  time  who  exercised  a  similar 
influence  to  the  Wolffian,  TOLLNER  attracts  notice  by  the  comparative 
courage  with  which,  in  the  words  of  an  orthodox  critic,  he  "  raised,  as 


1  Cp.  Gostwick,  p.  51 ;  Punjer,  i,  561.  2  Karo.  p.  44. 

8  Cp.  Saintes,  p.  132  sq.  *  Cp.  Karo.  pp.  3.  8. 16,  28. 

*  Over  a  hundred  and  seventy  in  all.    Piinjer,  i,  560 ;  Gastrow,  p.  637. 


6  Karo.  pp.  5-6. 


7  Gastrow.  p.  223. 


8  Pusey.  p.  142;  A.  S.  Farrar.  Crit.  Hist,  of  Freethought,  p.  313. 
»  Cp.  Karo,  p.  5  «a. ;  Staudlin,  cited  by  Tholuck,  Abrias,  p.  39. 


320  GERMAN  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE 

much  as  possible,  natural  religion  to  revelation."  and  ■' on  the  other 
hand,  lowered  Scripture  to  the  level  of  natural  light         *'r8t  he 
published  (1764)  True  Reasons  why  God  has  not  furnished  Bevclation 
with  evident  proofs^  arguing  for  the  modern  attenuation  of  the  idea 
of  revelation ;  then  a  work  on  Divine  Inspiration  (1771)  in  which  he 
explicitly  avowed  that  "  God  has  in  no  way,  either  inwardly  or  out- 
wardly,  dictated  the   sacred  books.     The   writers   were   the   real 
authors'"— a   declaration   not   ta   be   counterbalanced   by     urther 
generalities  about  actual  divine  influence.    Later  still  he  published 
a  Proof  that  God  leads  men  to  salvation  even  by  his  revelation  m 
Nature'  (1766)-a  form  of  Christianity  little  removed  from  deism 
Other   theologians,   such   as   Ernesti,   went   far  with   the   tide  of 
illuminism  ;  and  when  the  orthodox  Chr.  A.  Crusius  died  at  Leipzig 
in  1781,  Jean  Paul  Richter,  then  a  student,  wrote  that  people  had 
become  "  too  much  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  illuminism  "  to  be  of  his 
school.     "Most,  almost  all  the  students,"  adds  Richter.  incline  to 
heterodoxy  ;  and  of  the  professor  Morus  he  tells  that     wherever  ne 
can  explain  away  a  miracle,  the  devil,  etc.,  he  does  ^o^    Of  this 
order  of   accommodators,  a  prominent   example   was   MiCHAELiS 
(1717-1791),  whose  reduction  of  the  Mosaic  legislation  to  motives  of 
every-day  utility  is  still  entertaining.  ,  •  .     f  , ;, 

16.  Much  more  notorious  than  any  other  German  deist  of  his 
time  was  Cabl  Friedeich  Bahrdt  (1741-1792),  a  kind  of  raw 
Teutonic  Voltaire,  and  the  most  popularly  influential  German  free- 
thinker of  his  age.     In  all  he  is  said  to  have  published  a  hundred 
and  twenty-six  books  and  tracts.' thus  approximating  to  Voltaiie  in 
quantity  if  not  in  quality.     Theological  hatred  has  so  pursued  h.m 
that  it  is  hard  to  form  a  fair  opinion  as  to  his  character ;  but  the 
record  runs  that  he  led  a  somewhat  Bohemian  and  disorderly  life, 
though  a  very  industrious  one.     While  a  preacher  in  Leipzig  in  1708 
he   first   got'  into   trouble-"  persecution "   by   his  own   account ; 
"  disgrace  for  licentious  conduct,"  by  that  of  his  «°«°J'«%  J"  ""^ 
case,  he  was  at  this  period  quite  orthodox  in  his  beliefs.      That  the  e 
was  no  serious  disgrace  is  suggested  by  the  fact  that  he  was  appointed 
Professor  of  Biblical  Antiquities  at  Erfurt;  and  soon  afterwards  on 
the  recommendation  of   Semler   and   Ernesti,  at   Giessen   (17  a;. 
While  holding  that  post  he  published  his  "  modernized    t^^^^l  j'°" 
of  the  New  Testament,  done  from  the  point  of  view  of  belief  m 

1  Kahnis,  p.  116.  offenbarung  nicht  mil  augenscheinlichen  Bewcisen 

a  Wahre  Grande  warurn  Gott  dte  Ofnmrmw.^^^  Eivoebnng,  1771 
versehmhat.  ,.     ,,        ,^,.  i,^„„-7l  ,juri'h  seine  Offenbarung  tn  der  ISatur  »«*' 

*  Beweis  d^s  Gott  die  Menschen  ^^^^J^^tostwick  p  53  i^^  i.  5^6,  note. 

^'^6^Cp.  Kahnis,  pp.  132-36.  as  to  Bahrdf  s  early  morals. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEIES    321 

revelation,  following  it  up  by  his  New  Bevelatio?is  of  God  in  Letters 
and  Tales  (1773),  which  aroused  Protestant  hostiUty.     After  teaching 
for  a  time  in  a  new  Swiss  "  Philanthropin  "—an  educational  institu- 
tion on  Basedow's  lines— he  obtained  a  post  as  a  district  ecclesias- 
tical superintendent  in  the  principality  of  Tiirkheim  on  the  Hardt  ; 
whereafter  he  was  enabled  to  set  up  a  "  Philanthropin  "  of  his  own 
in  the  castle  of  Heidesheim,  near  Worms.     The  second  edition  of 
his  translation  of  the  New  Testament,  however,  aroused  Catholic 
hostility  in  the  district ;  the  edition  was  confiscated,  and  he  found  it 
prudent  to  make  a  tour  in  Holland  and  England,  only  to  receive,  on 
his  return,  a  missive  from   the   imperial  consistory  declaring  him 
disabled  for  any  spiritual  office  in  the  Holy  German  Empire.     Seek- 
ing refuge  in  Halle,  he  found  Semler  grown  hostile ;  but  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Eberhard,  with  the  result  of  abandoning  the  remains 
of  his  orthodox  faith.     Henceforth  he  regarded  Jesus,  albeit  with 
admiration,    as   simply   a   great   teacher,   "like   Moses,  Confucius, 
Sokrates,  Semler,  Luther,  and  myself";'  and  to  this  view  he  gave 
effect  in  the  third  edition  of  his  New  Testament  translation,  which 
was  followed  in  1782  by  his  Letters  on  the  Bible  in  Popular  Style 
(Volkston),  and  in  1784  by  his  Completion  {Ausfilhrimg)  of  the  Plan 
and  Aim  of  Jesus  in  Letters  (1784),  and  his  Systein  of  Moral  Beligion 
(1787).     More  and  more  fiercely  antagonized,  he  duly  retaliated  on 
the  clergy  in  his  Church  and  Heretic  Almanack  (1781) ;  and  after  for 
a  time  keeping  a  tavern,  he  got  into  fresh  trouble  by  printing  anony- 
mous satires  on  the  religious  edict  of  1788,  directed  against  all  kinds  of 
heresy,'^  and  was  sentenced  to  two  years'  imprisonment  in  a  fortress 
—a  term  reduced  by  the  king  to  one  year.     Thereafter  he  ended  not 
very  happily  his  troublous  life  in  Halle  in  1792. 

The  weakest  part  of  Bahrdt's  performance  is  now  seen  to  be  his 
application  of  the  empirical  method  of  the  early  theological  ration- 
alists, who  were  wont  to  take  every  Bibhcal  prodigy  as  a  merely 
perverted  account  of  an  incident  which  certainly  happened.  That 
method— which  became  identified  with  the  so-called  "  rationalism  " 
of  Germany  in  that  age,  and  is  not  yet  discarded  by  rationalizing 
theologians— is  reduced  to  open  absurdity  in  his  hands,  as  when  he 
makes  Moses  employ  fireworks  on  Mount  Sinai,  and  Jesus  feed  the 
five  thousand  by  stratagem,  without  miracle.  But  it  was  not  by  such 
extravagances  that  he  won  and  kept  a  hearing  throughout  his  life. 
It  is  easy  to  see  on  retrospect  that  the  source  of  his  influence  as  a 
writer  lay  above  all  things  in  his  healthy  critical  ethic,  his  own  mode 
of  progression  being  by  way  of  simple  common  sense  and  natural 


*  Geschichte  seines  Lebens,  etc.  1700-91.  iv.  119. 
VOL.  II 


2  See  below,  p.  331. 
Y 


322 


GERMAN  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


feeling,  not  of  critical  research.  His  first  step  m  rationalism  was  to 
ask  himself  "  how  Three  Persons  could  be  One  God  "—this  while 
believing  devoutly  in  revelation,  miracles,  the  divinity  of  Jesus,  and 
the  Atonament,  Under  the  influence  of  a  naturalist  travelling  in  his 
district,  he  gave  up  the  orthodox  doctrine  of  the  Atonement,  feeling 
himself  "  as  if  new-born"  in  being  freed  of  what  he  had  learned  to 
see  as  a  "  pernicious  and  damnable  error."'  It  was  for  such  writing 
that  he  was  hated  and  persecuted,  despite  his  habitual  eulogy  of 
Christ  as  "  the  greatest  and  most  venerable  of  mortals."  His  offence 
was  not  against  morals,  but  against  theology ;  and  he  heightened 
the  offence  by  his  vanity. 

Bahrdt's  real  power  may  be  inferred  from  the  fury  of  some 
of   his   opponents.     "The  wretched    Bahrdt  "  is  Dr.  Pusey's 
Christian  account  of  him.     Even  F.  C.  Baur  is  abusive.     The 
American  translators  of  Hagenbach,  Messrs.  Gage  and  Stucken- 
berg,  have  thought  tit  to  insert  in  their  chapter-heading  the 
phrase    "Bahrdt,    the    Theodore    Parker    of    Germany."     As 
Hagenbach  has  spoken  of  Bahrdt  with  special  contempt,  the 
intention  can  be  appreciated ;  but  the  intended  insult  may  now 
serve   as   a   certificate   of    merit    to    Bahrdt.      Bishop    Hurst 
solemnly  affirms  that  "What  Jeffreys  is  to  the  judicial  history 
of  England,  Bahrdt  is  to  the  religious  history  of  German  Pro- 
testantism.    Whatever  he  touched  was  disgraced  by  the  vileness 
of  his  heart  and  the  Satanic  daring  of  his  mind"  {History  of 
Bationalisvh  ed.  1867.  p.  119  ;  cd.  1901.  p.  139).     This  concern- 
ing  doctrines  of   a   nearly  invariable  moral  soundness,  which 
to-day  would   be  almost   universally    received  with    approba- 
tion.    Piinjer,  who  cannot  at  any  point  indict  the  doctrines,  falls 
back  on  the  professional  device  of  classing  them  with  the  "  plati- 
tudes "   of  the  Aufkldning ;    and,   finding   this  insufficient   to 
convey  a  disparaging  impression  to  the  general  reader,  intimates 
that  Bahrdt,  connecting  ethic  with  rational  sanitation,  "  does 
not  shrink  from  the  coarseness  of  laying  down  "  a  rule  for  bodily 
health,  which  Piinjer  does  not  shrink  from  quoting  (pp.  549-50). 
Finally  Bahrdt  is  dismissed  as  "  the  theological  public-house- 
keeper of  Halle."     So  hard  is  it  for  men  clerically  trained  to 
attain  to  a  manly  rectitude  in  their  criticism  of  anti-clericals. 
Bahrdt  was  a  great  admirer  of  the  Gospel  Jesus;  so  Cairns 
(p.  178)   takes  a  lenient  view  of  his  life.      On  that  and  his 
doctrine    cp.   Hagenbach,    pp.    107-10;     Piinjer,    i,   546-50; 
Noack,  Th.  iii.  Kap.  5.     Goethe  satirized  him  in  a  youthful 
Prolog,  but  speaks  of  him  not  unkindly  in  the  Wahrheit  und 
Dichtung.     As  a  writer  he  is  much  above  the  German  average. 

17.  Alongside  of  these  propagators  of  popular  rationalism  stood 

1  Qeschiclde  seines  Lehens,  Kap.  22;  ii.  223  «a. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES    323 

a  group  of  companion  deists  usually  considered  together— GoTTHOLD 
Ephraim  Lessing  (1729-1781),  Hermann  Samuel  Eeimarus 
(1694-1768),  and  MosES  Mendelssohn  (1729-1786).  The  last- 
named,  a  Jew.  "  lived  entirely  in  the  sphere  of  deism  and  of  natural 
religion."  and  sought,  like  the  deists  in  general,  to  give  rehgion  an 
ethical  structure ;  but  he  was  popular  chiefly  as  a  constructive  theist 
and  a  defender  of  the  doctrine  of  immortahty  on  non-Christian  lines 
His  PhcBdon  (1767).  setting  forth  that  view,  had  a  great  vogue.''  One 
of  his  more  notable  teachings  was  an  earnest  declaration  against  any 
connection  between  Church  and  State ;  but  like  Locke  and  Eousseau 
he  so  far  sank  below  his  own  ideals  as  to  agree  in  arguing  for  a  State 
enforcement  of  a  profession  of  belief  in  a  God«— a  negation  of  his 
own  plea.  With  much  contemporary  popularity,  he  had  no  per- 
manent influence ;  and  he  seems  to  have  been  completely  broken- 
hearted over  Jacobi's  disclosure  of  the  final  pantheism  of  Lessing 
for  whom  he  had  a  great  afl'ection. 

See  the  monograph  of  Eabbi  Schreiber,  of  Bonn.  Moses 
Mendelssohn  s  Verdienste  urn  die  deiUsche  Nation  (Zurich  1880) 
S^Vi^.^o^u'  -7^^  strongest  claim  made  for  Mendelssohn  by 
Kabbi  bchreiber  is  that  he.  a  Jew,  was  much  more  of  a  German 
patriot  than  Goethe.  Schiller,  or  Lessing.  Heine,  however,  pro- 
nounces that  As  Luther  against  the  Papacy,  so  Mendelssohn 
rebelled  against  the  Talmud  "  {Zur  Gesch.  der  Belig.  und  Fhilos. 
in  Deutschland :  Werke,  ed.  1876,  iii,  65). 

Lessing,  on  the  other  hand,  is  one  of  the  outstanding  figures  in 
the  history  of  Bibhcal  criticism,  as  well  as  of  German  literature  in 
general.  The  son  of  a  Lutheran  pastor,  Lessing  became  in  a  con- 
siderable measure  a  rationalist,  while  constantly  resenting,  as  did 
Goethe,  the  treatment  of  religion  in  the  fashion  in  which  he  himself 
treated  non-religious  opinions  with  which  he  did  not  agree.*  It  is 
clear  that  already  in  his  student  days  he  had  become  substantially 
an  unbeliever,  and  that  it  was  on  this  as  well  as  other  grounds  that 
be  refused  to  become  a  clergyman.'    Nor  was  he  unready  to  jeer  at 

'^ull^de^sioL^t'^nS^^^^^  ^    T     '  Translated  into  English  in  1789. 

lionsTe^u    Co^iirnt  %r^^n^^^  I-.F-^rfce.  1838.   p.  239  (Eng.  tr.  1838,  pp.  50-51); 

cS  BaJtholmlJrWS^Wf  ^^o'^  ""}'  ^'V'  "^^^  end ;  Locke,  as  cited  above,  p.  117 
asiastcit^.         '  ^^  '^''''*-  ''*^*^'  ^  ^  »'"^^«-  ^derne,  1855.  i.  145;  Baur; 

49ter^B?ie*f!'  ^^''^''  ^^'  ^^'  ^'  317-^««  dem  BrWe,  die  neiieste  Literatur  betreffend, 

of  Bihr^?^•?^r.nnUl®H^^''®  Sketched  in  the  spirit  in  which  orthodoxy  has  handled  that 
"enioved  himi^y  ?n  .^^"^^"^^  unedifymg  enough.  Even  Goethe  remarks  that  Lessing 
tw  H^  „  himself  in  a  disorderly  tavern  life"  (Wahrheit  wid  Dichtung  B  vii)-  and  all 

8\'rue  of  Wm  ^  On^\hraL^/iVr''  ^^l^''  ^^^f^r  ^^  *^^  way *oV  iSular'Vy  ofstdy 
sonnri  h^o^tL/i^^A  ^'^J."'^\''^o€t}y,  iHcJO.  1,  332-37.  All  the  while.  Lessing  is  an  essentially 
^Secho  the  tone  of  ?h«Tfchn^^f  f '"''^'^^Vt"'^  ^^  ^^"^^  probably  have  been  the  last  man 
fSrtherin  unbelief  than  he?  '^^  ''''"''^^  *^^  ^""'''"^^  ^'^^  *^^  ^^^  freethinkers  who  went 


324  GERMAN  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE 

the  bigots  when  they  chanced  to  hate  where  he  was  sympathetic/ 
On  the  side  of  religious  problems,  he  was  primarily  and  permanently 
influenced  by  two  such  singularly  different  minds  as  Bay le    and 
Rousseau,  the  first  appealing  to  and  eliciting  his  keen  critical  faculty 
the  second  his  warm  emotional  nature ;  and  he  never  quite  unitied 
the  result.     From  first  to  last  he  was  a  freethinker  m  the  sense 
that  he  never  admitted  any  principle  of  authority,  and  was  stedfastly 
loyal  to  the  principle  of  freedom  'of  utterance.     He  steadily  refused 
to  break  with  his  freethinking  friend  Mylius,  and  he  never  sought  to 
raise  odium  against  any  more  advanced  freethinker  on  the  score  of 
his  audacity."     In  his  Hamburgische  Dranmturgie,  indeed,  dealing 
with  a  German  play  in  which  Mohammedanism  in  general,  and  one 
Ismenor  in  particular,  in  the  time  of  the  Crusades  are  charged  with 
the  sin  of  persecution,  he  remarks  that  "  these  very  Crusades,  which 
in  their  origin  were  a  political  stratagem  of  the  popes,  developed 
into  the  most  inhuman  persecutions  of  which  Christian  superstition 
has  ever  made  itself  guilty :  the  true  religion  had  then  the  most  and 
the  bloodiest  Ismenors."*     In  his  early  Rettunge7i  (Vindications), 
again  he  defends  the  dubious  Cardan  and  impersonally  argues  the 
vros  'and  cons  of  Christianity  and   Mohammedanism  m  a  fashion 
possible  only  to  a  skeptical  mind.*     And  in  his  youth,  as  m  his  last 
years,  he  maintained  that  "  there  have  long  been  men  who  dis- 
regarded all  revealed  religions  and  have  yet  been  good  men.      In  his 
vouth  however,  he  was  more  of  a  Rousseauist  than  of  an  intellectual 
philosopher,  setting  up  a  principle  of  '' the   heart ''  against  every 
species  of  analytic  thought,  including  even  that  of  Leibnitz  which 
he  early  championed  against  the  Wolfian  adaptation  of  it      The 
sound  principle  that  conduct  is  more  important  than  opinion  he  was 
always  apt.  on  the  religious  side,  to  strain  into  the  really  contrary 
principle  that  opinions  which  often  went  with  good  conduct  were 
necessarily  to  be  esteemed.     So  when  the  rationalism  of  the  day 
seriously  or  otherwise  (in  Voltairean  Berlin  it  was  too  apt  to  be 
otherwise)  assailed  the  creed  of  his  parents,  whom  he  loved  and 
honoured,  sympathy  in  his  case  as  in  Goethe's  always  predetermined 
his  attitude;'  and  it  is  not  untruly  said  of  him  that  he  did  prefer 

1  ^  0  his  fable  The  Bxdl  and  tU  Calf  (Fabeln,  ii.  5).  Apropos  of  the  clergy  and  Bayle. 

7  irZoSr^.^«t%^L  HerrnrJer.^iZ  ^1750.  See  Adolf  Stabr's  Lessino.  sem 
Lebennnd  seine  Werke.  lie  \nfi.  II,  m  ..  ^  learned  in  his  father's 

8  Julian  Schmidt  puts  the  ,<^a8e  sympathetically .  ^«  ^  ^j  ^^^  ^pie.  He  was 
house  what  value  the  P^f^ora  function  may  riave  lof  J^;|^^  ^^  i^it.  full  of  genuine 
bibelfest.  instructed  in  ^|ie  history  of  his  <;»^"^J"'  *^;^ 

reverence  for  Luther,  full  of  ^'f^.^^^^fUZc^urc^^^^^  Litteratur 

the  Fathers  he  could  say  hard  th.^ngs  o'^^«  Churcn.      i*escn.  a* 
wm  Leilmiz  bis  auf  unaere  Ze%t,  u  (1886),  3^. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES  325 

the  orthodox  to  the  heterodox  party,  like  Gibbon,  *'  inasmuch  as  the 
balance  of  learning  which  attracted  his  esteem  was  [then]  on  that 
side."  ^  We  thus  find  him,  about  the  time  when  he  announces  to 
his  father  that  he  had  doubted  concerning  the  Christian  dogmas,'* 
rather  nervously  proving  his  essential  religiousness  by  dramatically 
defending  the  clergy  against  the  prejudices  of  popular  freethought  as 
represented  by  his  friend  Mylius,  who  for  a  time  ran  in  Leipzig  a 
journal  called  the  Freigeist — not  a  very  advanced  organ.'* 

Lessing  was  in  fact,  with  his  versatile  genius  and  his  vast  reading, 
a  man  of  moods  rather  than  a  systematic  thinker,  despite  his  power- 
ful critical  faculty ;  and  alike  his  emotional  and  his  critical  side 
determined  his  aversion  to  the  attempts  of  the  "  rationalizing " 
clergy  to  put  religion  on  a  common-sense  footing.  His  personal 
animosity  to  Voltaire  and  to  Frederick  would  also  influence  him ; 
but  he  repugned  even  the  decorous  "rationalism  "  of  the  theologians 
of  his  own  country.  When  his  brother  wrote  him  to  the  effect  that 
the  basis  of  the  current  religion  was  false,  and  the  structure  the 
work  of  shallow  bunglers,  he  replied  that  he  admitted  the  falsity  of 
the  basis,  but  not  the  incompetence  of  those  who  built  up  the  system, 
in  which  he  saw  much  skill  and  address.  Shallow  bunglers,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  termed  the  schemers  of  the  new  system  of  com- 
promise and  accommodation.^  In  short,  as  he  avowed  in  his 
fragment  on  Bibliolatry,  he  was  always  "  pulled  this  way  and  that  " 
in  his  thought  on  the  problem  of  religion .'^  For  himself,  he  framed 
(or  perhaps  adopted)  ^  a  pseudo-theory  of  the  Education  of  the  Human 
Bace  (1780),  whicli  has  served  the  semi-rationalistic  clergy  of  our 
own  day  in  good  stead ;  and  adapted  Rousseau's  catching  doctrine 
that  the  true  test  of  religion  hes  in  feeling  and  not  in  argument.'' 
Neither  doctrine,  in  short,  has  a  whit  more  philosophical  value  than 
the  other  '*  popular  philosophy  "  of  the  time,  and  neither  was  fitted 
to  have  much  immediate  influence ;  but  both  pointed  a  way  to  the 
more  philosophic  apologists  of  religion,  while  baulking  the  orthodox.^ 
If  all  this  were  more  than  a  piece  of  defensive  strategy,  it  was  no 
more  scientific  than  the  semi-rationalist  theology  which  he  con- 
temned.    The   "education"   theorem,   on   its  merits,  is   indeed   a 


1  Taylor,  as  cited,  p.  361.  2  sime,  i,  73. 

*  See  Lessings  rather  crude  comedy,  Der  Freigeist.  and  Simo's  Life,  i,  41-42,  72,  77. 

*  Cp.  his  letters  to  his  brother  of  which  extracts  are  given  by  Sime,  ii,  191-92. 
fi  Sime,  ii.  188. 

6  As  to  the  authorship  see  Saintes,  pp.  101-102;  and  Sime's  Life  of  Lessing,  i,  261-62, 
where  the  counter-claim  is  rejected. 

7  Zur  Geschichte  U7ui  Literatur,  aus  dem  4ten  Beitr.— TFerfce.  vi,  142  sq.  See  also  in 
his  Tluiologificlie  Streitschriften  the  Axiomata  written  against  Pastor  Goeze.  Cp.  Schwarz, 
LesHng  als  Theologe,  18)1.  pp.  146,  151 ;  and  Pusey,  as  cited,  p.  51,  note. 

^  Compare  tlie  rogroLs  of  Pusey  (pp.  51. 155).  Cairns  (p.  195),  Hagenbach  (pp.  89-97).  and 
Saintes  (p.  100). 


326 


GEKMAN  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


discreditable  paralogism  ;  and  only  our  knowledge  of  his  affectional 
bias  can  withhold  us  from  counting  it  a  mystification.  On  analysis 
it  is  found  to  have  no  logical  content  whatever.  **  Christianity " 
Lessing  made  out  to  be  a  '*  universal  principle,"  independent  of  its 
pseudo-historical  setting  ;  thus  giving  to  the  totality  of  the  admittedly 
false  tradition  the  credit  of  an  ethic  which  in  the  terms  of  the  case 
is  simply  human,  and  in  all  essentials  demonstrably  pre-Christian. 
His  propaganda  of  this  kind  squares  ill  with  his  paper  on  The 
Origin  of  Bevealed  Beligion,  written  about  1860.  There  he  professes 
to  hold  by  a  naturalist  view  of  religion.  All  "  positive  "  or  dogmatic 
creeds  he  ascribes  to  the  arrangements  that  men  from  time  to  time 
found  it  necessary  to  make  as  to  the  moans  of  applying  "  natural " 
religion.  "  Hence  all  positive  and  revealed  religions  are  alike  true 
and  alike  false  ;  alike  true,  inasmuch  as  it  has  everywhere  been 
necessary  to  come  to  terms  over  different  things  in  order  to  secure 
agreement  and  unity  in  the  public  religion ;  alike  false,  inasmuch 
as  that  over  which  men  came  to  terms  does  not  so  much  stand  close 

to  the  essential  (nicht  soiaohl nehendeni  Wesent lichen  besteht),  hut 

rather  w^eakens  and  oppresses  it.  The  best  revealed  or  positive  religion 
is  that  which  contains  the  fewest  conventional  additions  to  natural 
religion;  that  which  least  limits  the  effects  of  natural  religion."^ 
This  is  the  position  of  Tindal  and  the  English  deists  in  general ;  and 
it  seems  to  have  been  in  this  mood  that  Lessing  wrote  to  Mendels- 
sohn about  being  able  to  **  help  the  downfall  of  the  most  frightful 
structure  of  nonsense  only  under  the  pretext  of  giving  it  a  new 
foundation."'^  On  the  historical  side,  too,  he  had  early  convinced 
himself  that  Christianity  was  established  and  propagated  "  by 
entirely  natural  means  "  * — this  before  Gibbon.  But,  fighter  as  he 
was,  he  was  not  prepared  to  lay  his  cards  on  the  table  in  the  society 
in  which  he  found  himself.  In  his  strongest  polemic  there  was 
always  an  element  of  mystification;*  and  his  final  pantheism  w^as 
only  privately  avow^ed. 

It  was  through  a  series  of  outside  influences  that  he  went  so 
far,  in  the  open,  as  he  did.  Becoming  the  librarian  of  the  great 
Bibliothek  of  Wolfenbiittel,  the  possession  of  the  hereditary  Prince 
(afterwards  Duke)  of  Brunswick,  he  w^as  led  to  publish  the  "  Anony- 
mous Fragments  "  known  as  the  Wolfenhilttcl  Frag^nents  (1774-1778), 


1  Sdmmtliche  Schriften,  ed.  Lachmann.  ia57,  xi  (2).  218.  Sirae  (ii.  190)  mistranslates 
this  passage  ;  and  Schmidt  (ii.  32G)  mutilates  it  by  omissions.  Fontanes  (Le  Christianisnie 
moderns:  J^tude  sur  Leasing,  1S67.  p.  171)  paraphrases  it  very  loosely.         '^  Sime,  ii.  190. 

3  Stahr.  ii,  239  :  Sime.  ii,  189. 

*  See  Sime,  ii,  222,  2»  ;  Stahr. ii,  25 1.  Hettner.  an  admirer,  calls  the  early  Christianity 
of  Reason  a  piece  of  sopiiistical  dialastio.  liitteraturgeschiche  des  ISten  Jahrhwiderts, 
ed.  1872,  iii.  588-89. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND   EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEIES    327 


wherein  the  methods  of  the  English  and  French  deists  are  applied 
with  a  new  severity  to  both  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament  narra- 
tives. It  is  now  put  beyond  doubt  that  they  were  the  work  of 
Keimarus,^  who  had  in  1755  produced  a  defence  of  **  Natural 
KeHgion " — that  is,  of  the  theory  of  a  Providence — against  La 
Mettrie,  Maupertuis,  and  older  materialists,  which  had  a  great 
success  in  its  day.'^  At  his  death,  accordingly,  Keimarus  ranked  as 
an  admired  defender  of  theism  and  of  the  belief  in  immortality.^ 
He  was  the  son-in-law  of  the  esteemed  scholar  Fabricius,  and  was 
for  many  years  Professor  of  Oriental  Languages  in  the  Hamburg 
Academy.  The  famous  research  which  preserves  his  memory  was 
begun  by  him  at  the  age  of  fifty,  for  his  own  satisfaction,  and  was 
elaborated  by  him  during  twenty  years,  while  he  silently  endured 
the  regimen  of  the  intolerant  Lutheranism  of  his  day.*  As  he  left 
the  book  it  was  a  complete  treatise  entitled  An  Apologij  for  the 
Bational  Worshipper  of  God ;  but  his  son  feared  to  have  it  published, 
though  Lessing  offered  to  take  the  whole  risk ;  and  it  was  only  by 
the  help  of  the  daughter,  Elise  Eeimarus,'^  Lessing's  friend,  that  the 
fragments  came  to  light.  As  the  Berlin  censor  would  not  give 
official  permission,*'  Lessing  took  the  course  of  issuing  them  piece- 
meal in  a  periodical  series  of  selections  from  the  treasures  of  the 
Wolfenbiittel  Library,  which  had  privilege  of  publication.  The 
first,  Oyi  the  Toleration  of  Deists,  which  attracted  little  notice, 
appeared  in  1774 ;  four  more,  which  made  a  stir,  in  1777  ;  and  only 
in  1778  was  "the  most  audacious  of  all,"  On  the  Aim  of  Jesus  and 
his  Disciples,^  published  as  a  separate  book.  Collectively  they  con- 
stituted the  most  serious  attack  yet  made  in  Germany  on  the  current 
creed,  though  their  theory  of  the  true  manner  of  the  gospel  history 
of  course  smacks  of  the  pre-scientific  period.  A  generation  later, 
however,  they  were  still  "  the  radical  book  of  the  anti-super- 
naturalists  "  in  Germany.^ 

As  against  miracles  in  general,  the  Kesurrection  in  particular, 
and  Biblical  ethics  in  general,  the  attack  of  Keimarus  was 
irresistible,  but  his  historical  construction  is  pre-scientific.    The 

1  stahr,  ii,  243.  Lessing  said  the  report  to  this  effect  was  a  lie;  but  this  and  other 
mystifications  appear  to  have  been  by  way  of  fulfilling  his  promise  of  secrecy  to  the 
Reimarus  family.    Cairns,  pp.  203.  209.    Cp.  Farrar,  Crit.  Hist,  of  Freethoiight,  note  29. 

'-'  See  it  analysed  by  Bartholmdss.  Hist.  crit.  des  doctr.  relig.  de  la  vhilos.  moderne, 
i.  147-67  ;  and  by  Schweitzer,  The  Quest  of  the  Historic  Jesus  (trans,  of  Von  Beimarus  zu 
Wrede),  1910. 

8  Gostwick,  p.  47;  Bartholm^ss,  i,  166.  His  book  was  translated  into  English  {The 
Principal  Truths  of  Natural  Beligion  Defended  and  IlUistrated)  m  1766;  into  Dutch  in 
1758  ;  iu  part  into  French  in  1768 ;  and  seven  editions  of  the  original  had  appeared  by  1798. 

*  stahr,  ii,  241-44.  «  Id.  ii.  245. 

6  The  statement  that,  in  Lessing's  age,  "  in  north  Germany  men  were  able  to  think  and 
write  freely"  (Conybeare.  Hist,  of  N.  T.  Crit.,  p.  80)  is  thus  seen  to  be  highly  misleading, 

7  Van  deni  Zwecke  Jesus  nnd  seiner  JiLuger,  Braunschweig,  1778. 

8  Taylor,  Histor.  Survey  of  German  Poetry,  i,  365. 


328 


GEBMAN  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


method  is,  to  accept  as  real  occurrences  all  the  non-miraculous 
episodes,  and  to  explain  them  by  a  general  theory.  Thus  the 
appointment  of  the  seventy  apostles — a  palpable  myth — is  taken 
as  a  fact,  and  explained  as  part  of  a  scheme  by  Jesus  to  obtain 
temporal  power ;  and  the  scourging  of  the  money-changers  from 
the  Temple,  improbable  enough  as  it  stands,  is  made  still  more 
so  by  supposing  it  to  be  part  of  a  scheme  of  insurrection.  The 
method  further  involved  charges  of  calculated  fraud  against  the 
disciples  or  evangelists — a  historical  misconception  which 
Lessing  repudiated,  albeit  not  on  the  right  grounds.  See  the 
sketch  in  Cairns,  p.  197  sg.,  which  indicates  the  portions  of  the 
treatise  produced  later  by  Strauss.  Cp.  Piinjer,  i,  550-57; 
Noack,  Th.  iii,  Kap.  4.  Schweitzer  {Von  Beimarus  zu  Wrede), 
in  his  satisfaction  at  the  agreement  of  Reimarus  with  his  pwn 
conception  of  an  "  eschatological  "  Jesus,  occupied  with  "  the 
last  things,"  gives  Reimarus  extravagant  praise.  Strauss  rightly 
notes  the  weakness  of  the  indictment  of  Moses  as  a  worker  of 
fraud  {Voltaire,  2te  Ausg.  p.  407). 

It  is  but  fair  to  say  that  Reimarus's  fallacy  of  method,  which 
was  the  prevailing  one  in  his  day,  has  not  yet  disappeared  from 
criticism.  As  we  have  seen,  it  was  employed  by  Pomponazzi 
in  the  Renaissance  (vol.  i,  p.  377),  and  reintroduced  in  the 
modern  period  by  Connor  and  Toland.  It  is  still  employed  by 
some  professed  rationalists,  as  Dr.  Conybeare.  It  has,  however, 
in  all  likelihood  suggested  itself  spontaneously  to  many  inquirers. 
In  the  Phmdrus  Plato  presents  it  as  applied  by  empirical 
rationalizers  to  myths  at  that  time. 

Though  Lessing  at  many  points  oppugned  the  positions  of  the 
Fragments,  he  was  led  into  a  fiery  controversy  over  them,  in  which 
he  was  unworthily  attacked  by,  among  others,  Semler.  from  whom 
he  had  looked  for  support;  and  the  series  was  finally  stopped  by 
authority.  There  can  now  be  no  doubt  that  Lessing  at  heart  agreed 
with  Reimarus  on  most  points  of  negative  criticism,*  but  reached  a 
different  emotional  estimate  and  attitude.  All  the  greater  is  the 
merit  of  his  battle  for  freedom  of  thought.  Thereafter,  as  a  final 
check  to  his  opponents,  he  produced  his  famous  drama  Nathan  the 
Wise,  which  embodies  Boccaccio's  story  of  The  Three  Rings,  and  has 
ever  since  served  as  a  popular  lesson  of  tolerance  in  Germany.^  In 
the  end,  he  seems  to  have  become,  to  at  least  some  extent,  a  pan- 
theist;'' but  he  never  expounded  any  coherent  and  comprehensive 

1  SteLhr  ii  253—54. 

2  Cp.  Introd.  to  Willis's  trans,  of  Nathan.  The  play  is  sometimes  attacked  as  being 
grossly  unfair  to  Christianity.  (E.g.  Crousl^.  Lessing.  1863,  p.  206.)  The  answer  to  this 
complaint  is  given  by  Siirie,  ii,  25-3  sa.  «    ^     „.  ..    „^ 

3  See  Cairns.  Appendix,  Note  I;  Willis.  Spinoza,  pp.  149-62;  Sime.  n,  299-303;  and 
Stahr.  ii,  219-30.  giving  the  testimony  of  Jacobi.  Cp.  PUnjer,  i.  564-85.  But  Heine 
laughingly  adjures  Moses  Mendelssohn,  who  grieved  so  intensely  over  Lessing's  Spinozism, 
to  rest  quiet  in  his  grave :  "  Thy  Lessing  was  indeed  on  the  way  to  that  terrible  error 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES    329 

set  of  opinions,*  preferring,  as  he  put  it  in  an  oft-quoted  sentence, 
the  state  of  search  for  truth  to  any  consciousness  of  possessing  it.^ 

He  left  behind  him,  however,  an  important  fragment,  which  con- 
stituted one  of  his  most  important  services  to  national  culture — his 
'' Neio  Hypothesis  concerning  the  evangelists  as  merely  human 
writers."  He  himself  thought  that  he  had  done  nothing  ''more 
important  or  ingenious"^  of  the  kind;  and  though  his  results  were 
in  part  unsound  and  impermanent,  he  is  justly  to  be  credited  with 
the  first  scientific  attempt  to  deduce  the  process  of  composition  of 
the  gospels*  from  primary  writings  by  the  first  Christians.  Holding 
as  he  did  to  the  authenticity  and  historicity  of  the  fourth  gospel,  he 
cannot  be  said  to  have  gone  very  deep  ;  but  two  generations  were  to 
pass  before  the  specialists  got  any  further.  Lessing  had  shown 
more  science  and  more  courage  than  any  other  pro-Christian  scholar 
of  the  time,  and,  as  the  orthodox  historian  of  rationalism  has  it, 
"  Though  he  did  not  array  himself  as  a  champion  of  rationalism,  he 
proved  himself  one  of  the  strongest  promoters  of  its  reign."* 

18.  Deism  was  now  as  prevalent  in  educated  Germany  as  in 
France  or  England  ;  and,  according  to  a  contemporary  preacher, 
"  Berliner  "  was  about  1777  a  synonym  for  "  rationahst."  ^  Wieland, 
one  of  the  foremost  German  men  of  letters  of  his  time,  is  known  to 
have  become  a  deist  of  the  school  of  Shaftesbury  ;'  and  in  the  leading 
journal  of  the  day  he  wrote  on  the  free  use  of  reason  in  matters  of 
faith.^  Some  acts  of  persecution  by  the  Church  show  how  far  the 
movement  had  gone.  In  1774  we  find  a  Catholic  professor  at 
Mayence,  Lorenzo  Isenbiehl,  deposed  and  sent  back  to  the  seminary 
for  two  years  on  the  score  of  '*  deficient  theological  knowledge," 
because  he  argued  (after  Collins)  that  the  text  Isaiah  vii,  14  applied 
not  to  the  mother  of  Jesus  but  to  a  contemporary  of  the  prophet ; 
and  when,  four  years  later,  he  published  a  book  on  the  same  thesis, 


but  the  Highest,  the  Father  in  Heaven,  saved  him  in  time  by  death.  He  died  a  good  deist, 
like  thee  and  Nieolai  and  Teller  and  the  Universal  German  Library"  (Zur  Gesch.  der  Bel. 
und  Philos.  in  Deiitschlnnd,  B.  ii,  near  end.— Werke,  ed.  1876,  iii,  69). 

^  See  in  Stahr,  ii,  184-85,  the  various  characterizations  of  his  indefinite  philosophy. 
Stahr's  own  account  of  him  as  anticipating  the  moral  philosophy  of  Kant  is  as  over- 
strained as  the  others,  Gastrow,  an  admirer,  expresses  wonder  (Johann  Salomo  Semler, 
p.  188)  at  the  indifference  of  Lessing  to  the  critical  philosophy  in  general. 

•^  Sime.  ii,  ch.  xxix.  gives  a  good  survey.  ^  Letter  to  his  brother,  Feb.,  1778. 

<  Strauss,  Das  Leben  Jesu  (the  second)  Einleitung,  §  14. 

*  Hurst,  History  of  Rationalism,  3rd  ed.  p.  130.  "It  was  a  popular  belief,  as  an  organ 
of  pious  opinion  announced  to  its  readers,  that  at  his  death  the  devil  came  and  carried 
him  away  like  a  second  Faust."    Sime,  ii,  330. 

6  Cited  by  Hurst,  Hist,  of  Rationalism,  3rd  ed.  p.  125.  Outside  Berlin,  however, 
matters  went  otherwise  till  late  in  the  century.  Kurz  tells  (Gesch.  der  deutschen 
Literatur,  ii,  461  b)  that  "the  indifference  of  the  learned  towards  native  literature  was 
so  great  that  even  in  the  year  1761  Abbt  could  write  that  in  Binteln  there  was  nobody  who 
knew  the  names  of  Moses  Mendelssohn  and  Lessing." 

7  Karl  Hillebrand,  Lectures  on  the  Hist,  of  German  Thought,  1880,  p.  109. 
^Deutsche  Merkur,  Jan.  and  March,  1788  (Werke,  ed.  1797.  xxix,  1-144:    cited    by 

Staudliu,  Gesch.  der  Rationalismus  und  Supernaturaliamus,  1826,  p.  233). 


330 


GEKMAN  EREETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


in  Latin,  he  was  imprisoned.  Three  years  later  still,  a  young  Jesuit 
of  Salzburg,  named  Steinbuhler,  was  actually  condemned  to  death 
for  writing  some  satires  on  Roman  Catholic  ceremonies,  and,  though 
afterwards  pardoned,  died  of  the  ill-usage  he  had  undergone  in 
prison/  It  may  have  been  the  sense  of  danger  aroused  by  such 
persecution  that  led  to  th^  founding,  in  1780.  of  a  curious  society 
which  combined  an  element  of  freethinking  Jesuitism  with  free- 
masonry, and  which  included  a  number  of  statesmen,  noblemen,  and 
professors— Goethe,  Herder,  and  the  Duke  of  Weimar  being  among 
its  adherents.    But  it  is  diflicult  to  take  seriously  the  accounts  given 

of  the  order.  ^ 

The  spirit  of  rationalism,  in  any  case,  was  now  so  prevalent  that 
it  began  to  dominate  the  work  of  the  more  intelligent  theologians, 
to  whose  consequent  illogical  attempts  to  strain  out  by  the  most 
dubious  means  the  supernatural  elements  from  the  Bible  narratives 
the  name  of  *'  rationalism  "  came  to  be  specially  applied.'  that  being 
the  kind  of  criticism   naturally  most  discussed  among  the  clergy. 
Taking  rise  broadly  in  the  work  of  Semler.  reinforced  by  that  of  the 
English  and  French  deists  and  that  of  Reimarus.  the  method  led 
stage  by  stage  to  the  scientific  performance  of   Strauss  and  Baur, 
and  the  recent  "higher  criticism"  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments. 
Noteworthy   at   its   outset   as   exhibiting   the   tendency   of   official 
believers  to  make  men,  in  the  words  of  Lessing,  irrational  philo- 
sophers by  way  of  making  them  rational  Christians,'^  this  order  of 
*' rationalism "  in   its   intermediate   stages    belongs   rather   to    the 
history  of  Biblical  scholarship  than  to  that  of  freethought,  since 
more  radical  work  was  being  done  by  unprofessional  writers  outside, 
and  deeper  problems  were  raised  by  the  new  systems  of  philosophy. 
Within  the  Lutheran  pale,  however,  there  were  some  hardy  thinkers. 
A  striking  figure  of  the  time,  in  respect  of  his  courage  and  thorough- 
ness,  is   the    Lutheran    pastor  J.    H.    SCHULZ,'   who  so    strongly 
combated  the  compromises  of  the  Semler  school  in  regard  to  the 
Pentateuch,  and  argued  so  plainly  for  a  severance  of  morals  from 
religion   as   to   bring   about  Ma  own  dismissal  (1792).'     Schulz's 


1  Kurtz,  BM.  of  tite  Chr.  Church.  BnR.tT.imiAi.^i-   ,    _       ^^,  ...  ^  t.    x.-  i     :. 

2  T.  C.  Perthes.  Das  Deutsche  Staatsleben  vor  der  Bevolutton,  26-2  sq.,  cited  by  Kahms 

pp.  58-59. 

4  llSif  distinguishes  explicitly  between  "rationalists."  as  thinkers  who  would  not  deny 
the  possibility  of  a  revelation,  and  "naturalists."  who  did.  See  the  Behgton  tmirrhalb 
det  grenzender  blossen  Vernuvft,  Stiick  iv.  Th.  i.  This  wnfl  in  fact  the  standing  signiU- 
cance  of  the  term  in  Germany  for  a  generation. 

5  Letter  to  his  brother,  February  2.  1774.  ,     ,    ,  .      .,  ^„^ 

6  Known  as  Zopf-Schulz  from  his  wearing  a  pigtail  in  the  fashion  then  common  among 
the  laity.    "  An  old  insolent  rationalist,"  Kurtz  calls  him  (a.  270). 

7  llagenbach.  Kirchengeschichte,  i.372;  Gostwick.  pp.  52, M. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKIES     331 

Philosophical  Meditation  on  Theology  and  Religion^  (1784)  is  indeed 
one  of  the  most  pronounced  attacks  on  orthodox  religion  produced 
in  that  age.  But  it  is  in  itself  a  purely  speculative  construction. 
Following  the  current  historical  method,  he  makes  Moses  the  child 
of  the  Egyptian  princess,  and  represents  him  as  imposing  on  the 
ignorant  Israelites  a  religion  invented  by  himself,  and  expressive 
only  of  his  own  passions.  Jesus  in  turn  is  extolled  in  the  terms 
common  to  the  freethinkers  of  the  age  ;  but  his  conception  of  God 
is  dismissed  as  chimerical ;  and  Schulz  finally  rests  in  the  position 
of  Edelmann,  that  the  only  rational  conception  of  deity  is  that  of 
the  "  sufficient  ground  of  the  world,"  and  that  on  this  view  no  man 
is  an  atheist.^ 

Schulz's  dismissal  appears  to  have  been  one  of  the  fruits  of  the 
orthodox  edict  (1788)  of  the  new  king,  Frederick  William  II,  the 
brother  of  Frederick,  who  succeeded  in  1786.  It  announced  him — 
in  reality  a  "  strange  compound  of  lawless  debauchery  and  priest- 
ridden  superstition  "  ^— as  the  champion  of  religion  and  the  enemy 
of  freethinking ;  forbade  all  proselytizing,  and  menaced  with  penalties 
all  forms  of  heresy,*  while  professing  to  maintain  freedom  of  con- 
science. The  edict  seems  to  have  been  specially  provoked  by  fresh 
literature  of  a  pronouncedly  freethinking  stamp,  though  it  lays  stress 
on  the  fact  that  *'  so  many  clergymen  have  the  boldness  to  disse- 
minate the  doctrines  of  the  Socinians,  Deists,  and  Naturalists  under 
the  name  of  Aufkldrung.'*  The  work  of  Schulz  would  be  one  of  the 
provocatives,  and  there  were  others.  In  1785  had  appeared  the 
anonymous  Moroccan  Letters,^  wherein,  after  the  model  of  the 
Persian  Letters  and  others,  the  life  and  creeds  of  Germany  are 
handled  in  a  quite  Voltairean  fashion.  The  writer  is  evidently 
familiar  with  French  and  English  deistic  literature,  and  draws 
freely  on  both,  making  no  pretence  of  systematic  treatment.  Such 
writing,  quietly  turning  a  disenchanting  light  of  common  sense  on 
Scriptural  incredibilities  and  Christian  historical  scandals,  without 
a  trace  of  polemical  zeal,  illustrated  at  once  the  futihty  of  Kant's 
claim,  in  the  second  edition  of  his  Critique  of  Pure  Beason,  to 
counteract  "freethinking  unbelief"  by  transcendental  philosophy. 
And  though  the  writer  is  careful  to  point  to  the  frequent  association 
of  Christian  fanaticism  with  regicide,  his  very  explicit  appeal  for  a 


1  Philosophifiche  Betrachtinig  ilber  Theologie  und  Beligion  iiberhaxipt,  und  iiber  die 
Jiidische  insonderh^it,  1784.  2  punjer,  i,  544-45. 

^  Coleridge.  Biographia  Literaria,  ch.  ix,  Bohn  ed.  p.  71. 

*  See  the  details  in  Hagenbach,  Kircheugeschichte,  i,  368-7-2 ;  Kahnis,  p.  60. 

5  Marokkanische  Briefe.  Aus  dern  Arabischen.  Frankfurt  and  Leipzig,  1785.  The 
Letters  purport  to  be  written  by  one  of  the  Moroccan  embassy  at  Vienna  in  1783. 


332 


GEKMAN  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


unification  of  Germany/  his  account  of  the  German  Protestant 
peasant  and  labourer  as  the  most  dismal  figure  in  Germany,  Holland, 
and  Switzerland,'  and  his  charge  against  Germans  of  degrading  their 
women,'  would  not  enlist  the  favour  of  the  authorities  for  his  work. 
Within  two  years  (1787)  appeared,  unsigned,  an  even  more  strongly 
anti-Christian  and  anti-clerical  work,  The  In  Part  Only  True  System 
of  the  Christian  Beligion*  ascribed  to  Jakob  von  Mauvillon,'  whom 
we  have  seen  twenty-one  years  before  translating  the  freethinking 
romance  of  Holberg.  Beginning  his  career  as  a  serious  publicist 
by  translating  Kaynal's  explosive  history  of  the  Indies  (7  vols. 
1774-78),  he  had  done  solid  work  as  a  historian  and  as  an  economist, 
and  also  as  an  officer  in  the  service  of  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  and 
a  writer  on  military  science.  The  True  System  is  hostile  alike  to 
priesthoods  and  to  the  accommodating  theologians,  whose  attempt 
to  rationalize  Christianity  on  historical  hues  it  flouts  in  Lessing's 
vein  as  futile.  Mauvillon  finds  unthinkable  the  idea  of  a  revelation 
which  could  not  be  universal ;  rejects  miracles  and  prophecies  as 
vain  bases  for  a  creed ;  sums  up  the  New  Testament  as  planless ; 
and  pronounces  the  ethic  of  Christianity,  commonly  regarded  as  its 
strongest  side,  the  weakest  side  of  all.  He  sums  up,  in  fact,  in 
a  logical  whole,  the  work  of  the  English  and  French  deists.®  To 
such  propaganda  the  edict  of  repression  was  the  official  answer.  It 
naturally  roused  a  strong  opposition;^  but  though  it  ultimately 
failed,  through  the  general  breakdown  of  European  despotisms,  it 
was  not  without  injurious  effect.  The  first  edict  was  followed  in 
a  few  months  by  one  which  placed  the  press  and  all  literature, 
native  and  foreign,  under  censorship.  This  policy,  which  was 
chiefly  inspired  by  the  new  king's  Minister  of  Kehgion,  Woellner, 
was  followed  up  in  1791  by  the  appointment  of  a  committee  of 
three  reactionaries— Hermes,  Hilmer,  and  Woltersdorf— who  not 
only  saw  to  the  execution  of  the  edicts,  but  supervised  the  schools 
and  churches.  Such  a  regimen,  aided  by  the  reaction  against  the 
Kevolution,  for  a  time  prevented  any  open  propaganda  on  the  part 
of  men  officially  placed  ;  and  we  shall  see  it  hampering  and  humiliat- 
ing Kant ;  but  it  left  the  leaven  of  anti-supernaturalism  to  work  all  the 
more  effectively  among  the  increasing  crowd  of  university  students. 

1  Brief e  xxi  ^  P-  49.  "  P.  233. 

*  Da8zum  Theil  einzige  wahre  System  der  chriatlichen  Beligion.  It  had  been  composed 
in  its  author's  youth  under  the  title  False  Reasonings  of  the  Christian  Beligioii;  and  the 
MS.  was  lost  through  the  bankruptcy  of  a  Dutch  publisher. 

6  Mauvillon  "further^coll'aborated  with  Mirabeau,  and  became  a  great  admirer  of  the 
French  Revolution.  He  left  freethinking  writings  among  his  remama.  They  are  not 
described  by  Noack.  and  I  have  been  unable  to  meet  with  them.  ,  ^.       ,         «      ,^^ 

7  It  was  a  test  of  the  depth  of  the  freethinking  spint  m  the  men  of  the  day.  Semler 
justified  the  edict ;  Bahrdt  vehemently  denounced  it.    Hagenbach,  i,  372. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKIES    333 


Many  minds  of  the  period,  doubtless,  are  typified  by  Herdeb, 
who,  though  a  practising  clergyman,  was  clearly  a  Spinozistic  theist, 
accommodating  himself  to  popular  Christianity  in  a  genially  lati- 
tudinarian  spirit.*  When  in  his  youth  he  published  an  essay 
discussing  Genesis  as  a  piece  of  oriental  poetry,  not  to  be  treated 
as  science  or  theology,  he  evoked  an  amount  of  hostility  which 
startled  him.^  Learning  his  lesson,  he  was  for  the  future  guarded 
enough  to  escape  persecution.  He  was  led  by  his  own  tempera- 
mental bias,  however,  to  a  transcendental  position  in  philosophy. 
Originally  in  agreement  with  Kant,'*  as  against  the  current  meta- 
physic,  in  the  period  before  the  issue  of  the  latter's  Critique  of  Pure 
Reason,  he  nourished  his  religious  instincts  by  a  discursive  reading 
of  history,  which  he  handled  in  a  comparatively  scientific  yet  above 
all  poetic  or  theosophic  spirit,  while  Kant,  who  had  little  or  no 
interest  in  history,  developed  his  thought  on  the  side  of  physical 
science.*  The  philosophic  methods  of  the  two  men  thus  became 
opposed  ;  and  when  Herder  found  Kant's  philosophy  producing  a 
strongly  rationalistic  cast  of  thought  among  the  divinity  students 
who  came  before  him  for  examination,  he  directly  and  sharply 
antagonized  it*  in  a  theistic  sense.  Yet  his  own  influence  on  his 
age  was  on  the  whole  latitudinarian  and  anti-theological ;  he  opposed 
to  the  apriorism  of  Kant  the  view  that  the  concepts  of  space  and 
time  are  the  results  of  experience  and  an  abstraction  of  its  contents ; 
his  historic  studies  had  developed  in  him  a  conception  of  the  process 
of  evolution  alike  in  life,  opinion,  and  faculty ;  and  orthodoxy  and 
philosophy  alike  incline  to  rank  him  as  a  pantheist. 

19.  Meanwhile,  the  drift  of  the  age  of  Aufhlarung  was  apparent 
in  the  practically  freethinking  attitude  of  the  two  foremost  men 
of  letters  in  the  new  Germany— Goethe  and  Schiller.  Of  the 
former,  despite  the  bluster  of  Carlyle,  and  despite  the  aesthetic 
favour  shown  to  Christianity  in  Wilhelm  Meister,  no  religious 
ingenuity  can   make   more   than   a  pantheist,'  who,  insofar  as  he 

1  Cp.  Crabb  Robinson's  IHary,  iii.  48;  Martineau,  Study  of  Spinoza,  p.  328:  Willis, 
Spinoza,  pp.  162-68.  Bishop  Hurst  laments  (Hist,  of  Rationalism,  3rd  ed.  p.  145)  that 
Herder's  early  views  as  to  the  mission  of  Christ  "  were,  in  common  with  many  other 
evangelical  views,  doomed  to  an  unhappy  obscuration  upon  the  advance  of  his  later 
years  by  frequent  intercourse  with  more  skeptical  minds."  -r  .t     ^  ^     ir. 

2  On  the  clerical  opposition  to  him  at  Weimar  on  this  score  see  DUntzer.  L%fe  of  Goethe, 

Eng.  tr.  1883.  i.  317.  ,  „   ,     .  ,   ,  iooo 

8  Cp.  Kronenberg,  Herder's  Fhilosophie  nach  ihrem  Entwtckehmgsgang,  1889. 

*  Kronenberg,  p.  90.  ^  ,  tt    ^     .     t^i   j^ 

«  Stuckenberg.  Life  of  Immanuel  Kant,  1882,  pp.  381-87;  Kronenberg,  Herder  s  Phtlo- 

SOpTjie,  pp.  91,  103.  „     ,    .,  XI     •  *tr^-^«- 

fi  Kahnis,  p.  78,  and  Erdmann,  as  there  cited.  Erdmann  finds  the  pantheism  of  Herder 
to  be.  not  Spinozistic  as  he  supposed,  but  akin  to  that  of  Bruno  and  his  Italian  successors. 
7  The  chief  sample  passages  in  his  works  are  the  poem  Das  Qotthche  and  the  speech 
of  Faust  in  reply  to  Gretchen  in  the  garden  scene.  It  was  the  surmised  pantheism  of 
Goethe's  poem  Prometheus  that,  according  to  Jacobi.  drew  from  Lessing  Ms  avowal  of 
a  pantheistic  leaning.    The  poem  has  even  an  atheistic  ring ;  but  we  have  Goethe  s  own 


334 


GERMAN  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


touched  on  Biblical  questions,  copied  the  half-grown  rationalism 
of  the  school  of  Semler/  "  The  great  Pagan "  was  the  common 
label  among  his  orthodox  or  conformist  contemporaries.^  As  a  boy, 
learning  a  little  Hebrew,  he  was  already  at  the  critical  point  of  view 
in  regard  to  Biblical  marvels,'  though  he  never  became  a  scientific 
critic.  He  has  told  how,  in  his  youth,  when  Lavater  insisted  that 
he  must  choose  between  orthodox  Christianity  and  atheism,  he 
answered  that,  if  he  were  not  free  to  be  a  Christian  in  his  own 
way  (tvie  ich  es  bisher  gehegt  hdtte),  he  would  as  soon  turn  atheist 
as  Christian,  the  more  so  as  he  saw  that  nobody  knew  very  well 
what  either  signified/  As  he  puts  it,  he  had  made  a  Christ  and 
a  Christianity  of  his  own.*  His  admired  friend  Fraulein  von 
Klettenberg,  the  "  Beautiful  Soul  "  of  one  of  his  pieces,  told  him 
that  he  never  satisfied  her  when  he  used  the  Christian  terminology, 
which  he  never  seemed  to  get  right ;  and  he  tells  how  ho  gradually 
turned  away  from  her  religion,  which  he  had  for  a  time  approached, 
in  its  Moravian  aspect,  with  a  too  passionate  zeal.**  In  his  letters 
to  Lavater,  he  wrote  quite  explicitly  that  a  voice  from  heaven  would 
not  make  him  believe  in  a  virgin  birth  and  a  resurrection,  such  tales 
being  for  him  rather  blasphemies  against  the  great  God  and  his 
revelation  in  Nature.  Thousands  of  pages  of  earlier  and  later 
writings,  he  declared,  were  for  him  as  beautiful  as  the  gospel.^ 
Nor  did  he  ever  yield  to  the  Christian  Church  more  than  a  Platonic 
amity ;  so  that  much  of  the  peculiar  hostility  that  was  long  felt  for 
his  poetry  and  was  long  shown  to  his  memory  in  Germany  is  to  be 
explained  as  an  expression  of  the  normal  malice  of  pietism  against 
unbelievers.^  Such  utterances  as  the  avowal  that  he  revered  Jesus 
as  he  revered  the  Sun,^  and  the  other  to  the  effect  that  Christianity 
has  nothing  to  do  with  philosophy,  where  Hegel  sought  to  bring  it — 
that  it  is  simply  a  beneficent  influence,  and  is  not  to  be  looked  to  for 
proof  of  immortality  ^'^ — are  clearly  not  those  of  a  believer.  To-day 
belief  is  glad  to  claim  Goethe  as  a  friend  in  respect  of  his  many 
concessions   to   it,   as   well   as   of    his  occasional  flings    at    more 


account  of  the  influence  of  Spinoza  on  him  from  his  youth  onwards  iWahrheit  jmd 
DichtuTig,  Th.  Ill,  B.  xiv ;  Th.  IV,  B.  xvi).  See  also  his  remarks  on  the  "natural" 
religion  of  "conviction"  or  rational  inference,  and  that  of  "faith"  iOlaube)  or  revela- 
tionism,  in  B.  iv  iWerke,  ed.  1866.  xi.  134);  also  Kestner's  account  of  his  opinions  at 
twenty-three,  in  DUntzer's  Life,  Entj.  tr.  i.  185 ;  and  again  his  letter  to  Jacobi,  January  6, 
1813.  quoted  by  Diintzer,  ii.  290. 

*  See  the  Alt-Testamentliches  Appendix  to  the  West-Oestlicher  Divan. 

2  Heine.  Zur  Oesch.  der  Bel.  u.  Fhil.  in  Deutschland  (Werke,  ed.  1876,  iii,  92). 

*  Wahrheit  und  Dichtung,  Th.  I.  B.  iv  {Werke,  ed.  1886.  xi,  123). 

<  Id.  Th.  III.  B.  xiv.  par.  '20  (Werke.  xii,  159).  »  Id.  pp.  165. 186. 

*  Id.  p.  184.  7  Cited  by  Baur,  Gesch.  der  chriMl.  Kirche,  v,  50. 

8  Compare,  as  to  the  hostility  he  aroused.  DUntzer.  i,  152,  317.  329-30,  451 ;  ii,  291  note, 
455.  461 ;  Eckermann.  Gespriiche  mit  Goethe.  Marz  6. 1830 :  and  Heine,  last  cit.  p.  93. 
8  Eckermann.  Mftrz  11. 1833.  lo  Id.  Feb.  4, 1829. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKIES    335 

consistent  freethinkers.  But  a  "great  pagan  "  he  remains  for  the 
student.  In  the  opinion  of  later  orthodoxy  his  **  influence  on 
religion  was  very  pernicious."^  He  indeed  showed  small  concern 
for  religious  susceptibiUties  when  he  humorously  wrote  that  from 
his  youth  up  he  believed  himself  to  stand  so  well  with  his  God  as 
to  fancy  that  he  might  even  "  have  something  to  forgive  Him."  ^ 

One  passage  in  Goethe's  essay  on  the  Pentateuch,  appended 
to  the  West-Oestlicher  Divayi,  is  worth  noting  here  as  illus- 
trating the  ability  of  genius  to  cherish  and  propagate  historical 
fallacies. ^    It  runs:  "The  peculiar,  unique,  and  deepest  theme 
of  the  history  of  the  world  and  man,  to  which  all  others  are 
subordinate,  is  always  the  conflict  of  belief  and  unbeKef.     All 
epochs  in  which   belief  rules,  under  whatever  form,  are  illus- 
trious, inspiriting,  and  fruitful  for  that  time  and  the  future.     All 
epochs,  on  the  other  hand,  in  which  unbelief,  in  whatever  form, 
secures  a  miserable  victory,  even  though  for  a  moment  they 
may  flaunt  it  proudly,  disappear  for  posterity,  because  no  man 
wilHngly  troubles   himself  with  knowledge  of  the  unfruitful" 
(first  ed.  pp.  424-25).     Goethe  goes  on  to  speak  of  the  four 
latter  books  of  Moses  as  occupied  with  the  theme  of  unbelief, 
and  of  the  first  as  occupied  with  belief.     Thus  his  formula  was 
based,  to  begin  with,  on  purely  fabulous  history,  into  the  nature 
of  which  his  poetic  faculty  gave  him  no  true  insight.     (See 
his  idyllic  recast  of  the  patriarchal  history  in  Th.  I,  B.  iv  of 
the   Wahrheit   U7id   Dichtung.)     Applied   to   real   history,    his 
formula   has  no  validity   save  on   a  definition  which    implies 
either  an  equivoque  or  an  argument  in  a  circle.      If  it  refer, 
in  the  natural  sense,  to  epochs  in  which  any  given  religion  is 
widely  rejected  and  assailed,  it  is  palpably  false.     The  Eenais- 
sance  and  Goethe's  own  century  were  ages  of  such  unbelief ; 
and  they  remain  much  more  deeply  interesting  than  the  Ages 
of   Faith.     St.   Peter's   at   Eome   is  the  work  of  a  reputedly 
unbelieving  pope.     If  on  the  other  hand  his  formula  be  meant 
to  apply  to  belief  in  the  sense  of  energy  and  enthusiasm,  it  is 
still   fallacious.     The  crusades  were  manifestations  of  energy 
and  enthusiasm ;  but  they  were  profoundly  "  unfruitful,"  and 
they   are   not   deeply   interesting.     The   only  sense   in   which 
Goethe's   formula   could   stand  would   be  one  in  which  it  is 
recognized  that  all  vigorous  intellectual  life  stands  for  "  belief " 
— that   is   to    say,    that    Lucretius    and   Voltaire,    Paine   and 
d'Holbach,    stand    for    "  belief "    when    confidently    attacking 
beliefs.     The    formula    is   thus    true   only  in    a    strained   and 
non-natural   sense  ;   whereas   it  is   sure  to  be  read  and  to  be 
believed,   by   thoughtless   admirers,   in    its   natural   and   false 


1  Hurst.  Hist,  of  BationaZism,  3rd  ed.  p.  150. 

a  Wahrheit  tmd  Dichtung,  Th.  III.  B.  viii;  Werke,  xi.  334. 


336  GEKMAN  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 

sense,  though  the  whole  history  of  Byzantium  and  modern 
Islam  is  a  history  of  stagnant  and  unfruitful  belief,  and  that 
of  modern  Europe  a  history  of  fruitful  doubt,  disbelief,  and 
denial,  involving  new  affirmations.  Goethe's  own  mind  on  the 
subject  was  in  a  state  of  verbalizing  confusion,  the  result  or 
expression  of  his  temperamental  aversion  to  clear  analytical 
thought  ("Above  all,"  he  boasts,  *'l  never  thought  about 
thinking")  and  his  habit  of  poetic  allegory  and  apriorism. 
'*  Logic  was  invincibly  repugnant  to  him "  (Lewes,  Life  of 
Goethe,  3rd  ed.  p.  38).  The  mosaic  of  his  thinking  is  suffi- 
ciently indicated  in  Lewes's  sympathetically  confused  account 
{id.  pp.  523-27).  Where  he  himself  doubted  and  denied 
current  creeds,  as  in  his  work  in  natural  science,  he  was 
most  fruitful^  (though  he  was  not  always  right — e.g.,  his 
polemic  against  Newton's  theory  of  colour)  ;  and  the  per- 
manently interesting  teaching  of  his  Faust  is  precisely  that 
which  artistically  utters  the  doubt  through  which  he  passed 
to  a  pantheistic  Naturalism. 

20.  No  less  certain  is  the  unbelief  of  Schiller  (1759-1805),  whom 
Hagenbach  even  takes  as  "  the  representative  of  the  rationalism  of 
his  age."  In  his  juvenile  Bobbers,  indeed,  he  makes  his  worst  villains 
freethinkers ;  and  in  the  preface  he  stoutly  champions  religion  against 
all  assailants ;  but  hardly  ever  after  that  piece  does  he  give  a  favour- 
able portrait  of  a  priest.^  He  himself  soon  joined  the  Aufkldrung ; 
and  all  his  aesthetic  appreciation  of  Christianity  never  carried  him 
beyond  the  position  that  it  virtually  had  the  tendency  [Afilage)  to 
the  highest  and  noblest,  though  that  was  in  general  tastelessly 
and  repulsively  represented  by  Christians.  He  added  that  in  a 
certain  sense  it  is  the  only  aesthetic  religion,  whence  it  is  that  it 
gives  such  pleasure  to  the  feminine  nature,  and  that  only  among 
women  is  it  to  be  met  with  in  a  tolerable  form.**  Like  Goethe,  he 
sought  to  reduce  the  Biblical  supernatural  to  the  plane  of  possibility, 
in  the  manner  of  the  liberal  theologians  of  the  period  ;  and  like  him 
he  often  writes  as  a  deist,*  though  professedly  for  a  time  a  Kantist. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  does  not  hesitate  to  say  that  a  healthy  nature 
(which  Goethe  had  said  needed  no  morality,  no  Natur-recht,^  and  no 
political  metaphysic)  required  neither  deity  nor  immortality  to 
sustain  it.' 


1  Cp,,  however,  the  estimate  of  Krause,  above,  p.  207.  Virchow.  Odthe  ala  Naturforscher, 
1861,  goes  into  detail  on  the  biological  points,  without  reaching  any  general  estimate. 

^  Remarked  by  Hagenbach.  tr.  p.  238. 

3  Letter  to  Goethe.  August  17.  1795  {Brief wechsel.  No.  87).  The  passage  is  given  in 
Carlyle'8  essay  on  Schiller.       <  In  Die  Sendung  Moses.       ^  See  the  Philosophische  Briefe. 

^  Carlyle  translates.  "No  Rights  of  Man."  which  was  probably  the  idea. 

7  Letter  to  Goethe.  July  9.  1796  {Brief wechsel.  No.  188).  "  It  is  evident  that  he  was 
estranged  not  only  from  the  church  but  from  the  fundamental  truths  of  Christianity" 
(Rev.  W.  Baur.  Beligioua  Life  of  Qermany,  Eng.  tr.  1872,  p.  22).    F.  C.  Baur  has  a  curious 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKIES    337 

21.  The  critical  philosophy  of  IMMANUEL  Kant  (1724-1804) 
may  be  said  to  represent  most  comprehensively  the  outcome  in 
German  intelligence  of  the  higher  freethought  of  the  age,  insofar  as 
its  results  could  be  at  all  widely  assimilated.  In  its  most  truly 
critical  part,  the  analytic  treatment  of  previous  theistic  systems  in 
the  Critique  of  Pure  Beason  (1781),  he  is  fundamentally  anti-theo- 
logical ;  the  effect  of  the  argument  being  to  negate  all  previously 
current  proofs  of  the  existence  and  cognizableness  of  a  "  supreme 
power"  or  deity.  Already  the  metaphysics  of  the  Leibnitz- Wolff 
school  were  discredited;^  and  so  far  Kant  could  count  on  a  fair 
hearing  for  a  system  which  rejected  that  of  the  schools.  Certainly 
he  meant  his  book  to  be  an  antidote  to  the  prevailing  religious 
credulity.  Henceforth  there  were  to  be  no  more  dreams  of  ghost- 
seers,  metaphysicians,  and  enthusiasts."^  On  his  own  part,  however, 
no  doubt  in  sympathy  with  the  attitude  of  many  of  his  readers,  there 
followed  a  species  of  intuitional  reaction.  In  his  short  essay  What 
is  Freethinking  f  (1784)  he  defines  Aufklarung  or  freethinking  as 

the   advance   of    men   from    their    self-imputed    minority";  and 

minority  "  as  the  inability  to  use  one's  own  understanding  without 
another's  guidance.  "  Sapere  aude ;  dare  to  use  thine  own  under- 
standing," he  declares  to  be  the  motto  of  freethought :  and  he  dwells 
on  the  laziness  of  spirit  which  keeps  men  in  the  state  of  minority, 
letting  others  do  their  thinking  for  them  as  the  doctor  prescribes 
their  medicine.  In  this  spirit  he  justifies  the  movement  of  rational 
criticism  while  insisting,  justly  enough,  that  men  have  still  far  to  go 
ere  they  can  reason  soundly  in  all  things.  If,  he  observes,  "  we  ask 
whether  we  live  in  an  enlightened  (aufgekldrt)  age  the  answer  is, 
No,  but  in  an  age  of  enlightening  (aufkldrung)."  There  is  still  great 
lack  of  capacity  among  men  in  general  to  think  for  themselves,  free 
of  leading-strings.  "  Only  slowly  can  a  community  (Publikum) 
attain  to  freethinking."  But  he  repeats  that  "  the  age  is  the  age  of 
aufkldrung,  the  age  of  Frederick  the  Great":  and  he  pays  a  high 
tribute  to  the  king  who  repudiated  even  the  arrogant  pretence  of 

toleration,"  and    alone   among   monarchs   said   to   his   subjects, 

Eeason  as  you  will ;  only  obey  ! " 
But  the  element  of  apprehension  gained  ground  in  the  aging 


(I 


i( 


i( 


It 


page  in  which  he  seeks  to  show  that,  though  Schiller  and  Goethe  cannot  be  called  Chris- 
tian in  a  natural  sense,  the  age  was  not  made  un-Christian  by  them  to  such  an  extent  as  is 
commonly  supposed  {Gesch.  der  christl.  Kirche,  v,  46). 

*  Cp.  Tief trunk,  as  cited  by  Stuckehberg,  Life  of  Immaniiel  Kant,  p.  225. 

2  Id.  p.  376.  In  his  early  essay  Trdume  eitiea  Qeistersehers,  erldutert  durch  Trdume 
der  Metaphysik  (1766)  this  attitude  is  clear.  It  ends  with  an  admiring  quotation  from 
Voltaire's  Candide. 

3  Beantwortung  der  Frage :  Was  ist  Aufkldrung?  in  the  Berliner  Monatschrift,  Dec, 
1784,  rep.  in  Kant's  Vorziigliche  kleine  Schriften,  1833.  Bd.  i. 

VOL.  II  Z 


338  GEEMAN  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 

freethinker.     In  1787  appeared  the  second  edition  of  the  Critique, 
with  a  preface  avowing  sympathy  with   religious  as  against  free- 
thinking  tendencies  ;  and  in  the  Critique  of  Practical  Beason  (1788) 
he  makes  an  almost  avowedly  unscientific  attempt  to  restore  the 
reign  of  theism  on  a  basis  of  a  mere  emotional  and  ethical  necessity 
assumed  to  exist  in  human   nature— a  necessity  which  he  never 
even   attempts   to   demonstrate.      With   the   magic   wand    of    the 
Practical  Eeason,  as  Heine  has  it,  be  reanimated   the   corpse  of 
theism,  which  the  Theoretic  Eeason  had  slain.'     In  this  adjustment 
he  was   perhaps   consciously  copying   Eousseau,  who  had  greatly 
influenced  him,'  and  whose  theism  is  an  avowedly  subjectivist  pre- 
dication.    But  the  same  attitude  to  the  problem  had  been  substan- 
tially adopted  by  Lessing;'  and  indeed  the   process  is  at  bottom 
identical  with  that  of  the  quasi-skeptics,  Pascal,  Huet,  Berkeley,  and 
the  rest,  who  at  once  impugn  and  employ  the  rational   process, 
reasoning  that  reason  is  not  reasonable.     Kant  did  but  set  up  the 
"practical"  against  the  "pure"  reason.^as  other  theists  before  him 
had  set  up  faith'  against  science,  or  the  "  heart "  against  the  "  head," 
and  as  theists  to-day  exalt  the  "  will "  against  "  knowledge,"  the 
emotional  nature   against   the   logical.     It  is  tolerably  clear   that 
Kant's    motive   at   this    stage   was    an    unphilosophic    fear    that 
Naturalism  would  work  moral  harm  *— a  fear  shared  by  him  with 
the  mass  of  the  average  minds  of  his  age. 

The  same  motive  and  purpose  are  clearly  at  work  in  his  treatise 
on  Religion  within  the  bounds  of  Pure  [i.e.  Mere]  Eeason  (1792- 
1794),  where,  while  insisting  on  the  purely  ethical  and  rational 
character  of  true  religion,  he  painfully  elaborates  reasons  for  con- 
tinuing to  use  the  Bible  (concerning  which  he  contends  that,  in  view 
of  its  practically  "  godly  "  contents,  no  one  can  deny  the  possihility  of 
its  being  held  as  a  revelation)  as  "  the  basis  of  ecclesiastical  instruc- 
tion "  no  less  than  a  means  of  swaying  the  populace.'  Miracles,  he 
in  effect  avows,  are  not  true ;  still,  there  must  be  no  carping  criticism 
of  the  miracle  stories,  which  serve  a  good  end.  There  is  to  be  no 
persecution ;  but  there  is  to  be  no  such  open  disputation  as  would 
provoke  it.'     Again  and  again,  with  a  visible  uneasiness,  the  writer 

1  For  an  able  argument  vindicating  the  unity  of. Kant's  system,  however  see  Pro^^^ 
Adamson  r^e  Fhilosophy  of  Kant,  1879.  p.  21  sq.,  as  against  Lange  With  the  verdict  in  tne 
text^ompare  that  of  Heine,  Zur  Gesch.  der  Religu  -P/^*/««•;"  ^^'*,*;'^''^f  ^^^^ 

as  cited  iii  81-82);  that  of  Prof.  G.  Santayana.  The  Life  of  B^asoii,  vol.  \i}-^'^,^X^^:{ 
and  that  of  Prof  A.  Seth  Pringle-PattiBon   The  PhiU^sopky  of  feUoionxuKantan^^^ 
rep.  in  vol.  entitled  The  Philosophical  Radicals  and  Other  Essays,  1907.  pp.  ^d*.  -^oo. 

2  Stuckenberg.  pp.  2*25.  332.  „„4^jj*  iqitit  ;  qq  ds-Kmnenberc  Herder's 
8  Cp. Haym. Herdernach seinemLeben dargestellt,  1877, i, 33,48. Kronenoerg, xieru-c 

Phtlosophie,  p.  10. 

<  Cp.  Hagenbach.  Eng.  tr.  p.  223.  ct«nV  iii    AMh   i  5  5-  Abth.  U 

8  Beliaion  innerhalb  der  Grenzen  der  blossen  ^erjiunft,  St^c]i  in,  Abin.i^  o .  ao""- 

(ed.  impp  145-46. 188-89).  6  Work  cited,  StUck  ii,  Abschn.  u.  Allg.  Anm.  P.  108  SQ. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUBIES    339 

returns  to  the  thesis  that  even  "  revealed  "  religion  cannot  do  without 
sacred  books  which  are  partly  untrue.^  The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
he  laboriously  metamorphosed,  as  so  many  had  done  before  him,  and 
as  Coleridge  and  Hegel  did  after  him,  into  a  formula  of  three  modes 
or  aspects  of  the  moral  deity  ^  which  his  ethical  purpose  required. 
And  all  this  divagation  from  the  plain  path  of  Truth  is  justified  in 
the  interest  of  Goodness. 

All  the  while  the  book  is  from  beginning  to  end  profoundly 
divided  against  itself.  It  indicates  disbelief  in  every  one  of  the 
standing  Christian  dogmas— Creation,  Fall,  Salvation,  Miracles, 
and  the  supernatural  basis  of  morals.  The  first  paragraph  of  the 
preface  insists  that  morality  is  founded  on  the  free  reason,  and  that 
it  needs  no  religion  to  aid  it.  Again  and  again  this  note  is  sounded. 
"  The  pure  religious  faith  is  that  alone  which  can  serve  as  basis  for  a 
universal  Church ;  because  it  is  a  pure  reason-faith,  in  which  every- 
one can  participate."^  But  without  the  slightest  attempt  at  justifi- 
cation there  is  thrown  in  the  formula  that  "  no  religion  is  thinkable 
without  belief  in  a  future  life."*  Thus  heaven  and  hell'  and  Bible 
and  church  are  arbitrarily  imposed  on  the  "  pure  religion  "  for  the 
comfort  of  unbelieving  clergymen  and  the  moralizing  of  life.  Error 
is  to  cast  out  error,  and  evil,  evil. 

The  process  of  Kant's  adjustment  of  his  philosophy  to  social 
needs  as  he  regarded  them  is  to  be  understood  by  following  the 
chronology  and  the  vogue  of  his  writings.  The  first  edition  of 
the  Critique  of  Pure  Beason  "  excited  little  attention  "  (Stucken- 
berg, Life  of  Kant,  p.  368) ;  but  in  1787  appeared  the  second 
and  modified  edition,  with  a  new  preface,  clearly  written  with  a 
propitiatory  eye  to  the  orthodox  reaction.  "All  at  once  the 
work  now  became  popular,  and  the  praise  was  as  loud  and  as 
fulsome  as  at  first  the  silence  had  been  profound.  The  literature 
of  the  day  began  to  teem  with  Kantian  ideas,  with  discussions 

of  the  new  philosophy,  and  with  the  praises  of  its  author 

High  officials  in  Berlin  would  lay  aside  the  weighty  affairs  of 
State  to  consider  the  Kritik,  and  among  them  were  found  warm 
admirers  of  the  work  and  its  author."  Id.  p.  369.  Cp.  Heine, 
Bel.  und  Phil,  in  Deutschland,  B.  iii — Werke,  iii,  75,  82. 

J  E.g.  Sttick  iv,  Th.  i.  preamble  (p.  221,  ed.  cited). 

2  Id.  Stuck  iii.  Abth.  ii,  Allg.  Anm. :  "This  belief,"  he  avows  frankly  enough,  "involves 
no  mystery"  (p.  199).  In  a  note  to  the  second  edition  he  suggests  that  there  must  be  a 
Dasis  in  reason  for  the  idea  of  a  Trinity,  found  as  it  is  among  so  many  ancient  and 
primitive  peoples.  The  speculation  is  in  itself  evasive,  for  he  does  not  give  the  slightest 
reason  for  thinking  the  Goths  capable  of  such  metaphysic. 

8  Stuck  iii.  Abth.  i,  §  5  ;  pp.  137, 139.  *  Stuck  iii,  Abth.  ii,  p.  178. 

°  Kant  explicitly  concurs  in  Warburton's  thesis  that  the  Jewish  lawgiver  purposely 
omitted  all  mention  of  a  future  state  from  the  Pentateuch ;  since  such  belief  must  be 
supposed  to  have  been  current  in  Jewry.  But  he  goes  further,  and  pronounces  that 
simple  Judaism  contains  "absolutely  no  religious  belief."  To  this  complexion  can 
Philosophic  compromise  come. 


S40  GEEMAN  B'EEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 

This  popularity  becomes  mtelligible  in  the  light  of  the  new 
edition  and  its  preface.     To  say  nothing  of  the  alterations  in 
the  text,  pronounced  by  Schopenhauer  to  be  cowardly  accom- 
modations (as  to  which  question  see  Adamson    as  cited,  and 
Stuckenberg.  p.  461,  7iote  94),  Kant  writes  in  the  preface  that 
he  had  been  "^obliged  to  destroy  knowledge  m  order  to  make 
room  for  faith";  and,  again,  that     only  through  criticism  can 
the  roots  be  cut  of  materialism,  fatalism,  atheism,  freethmkmg 
unbelief    (freigeisterischen    Unglauben),  fanaticism    and   super- 
stition,  which    may   become    universally    injurious;    also    ot 
ideahsm  and   skepticism,  which   are  ^^^g^^^^^^^.^^^^f^^^^ 
Schools,  and  can  hardly  reach  the  general  public.    ,.vMeikle]ohn 
mistranslates  :  "  which  are  universally  injurious    -Bohn  ed 
p.  xxxvii.)     This  passage  virtually  puts  the  popular  religion  and 
all  philosophies  save  Kant's  own  on  one  level  of  moral  dubiety^ 
It  is,  however,  distinctly  uncandid  as  regards  the     freethmkmg 
unbelief,"   for   Kant   himself   was   certainly   an   unbeliever   in 
Christian  miracles  and  dogmas.  «.^c  nrtnin 

His  readiness  to  make  an  appeal  to  P^^^udice  appears  again 
in  the  second  edition  of  the  Critique  when  he  asks :      Whence 
does  the  freethinker  derive  his  knowledge  that  ^bere  is    for 
instance,  no  Supreme  Being?"   i^ii^k  f V^^'^^^^^^^'^Ygf^' 
Transc.  MethodenUhre,  1  H.  2  Absch    ed    Kirchmann    1879 
p.  587 ;  Bohn  tr.  p.  458.      He  had  just  before  professed  to  be 
dealing  with  denial  of  the  Existence  ^  ,God''-a  prog>s^^^^^^ 
of  no  significance  whatever  unless     God     be  defined.     He  now 
without  warning  substitutes  the  still  more  undefined  expression 
^Supreme   Being"    for  "God,"  thus   imputmg   a  proposition 
probably  never   sustained  with   clear  verbal  purpose   by  any 
human  being.     Either,  then,  Kant's  own  proposition  was  the 
entirely  vacuous  one  that  nobody  can  demonstrate  the  impo^^^^^^^ 
bility  of   an  alleged  undefined  existence,  or  he  was  virtually 
averting  that  no  one  can  disprove  any  «,  -P^S 
existence-spirit,  demon,  Moloch.  Krishna.  Bel,  Siva,  Aphrodit^^^ 
or  Isis  and  Osiris.     In  the  latter  case  he  would  be  abso  utely 
stultifying  his  own  claim  to  cut  the  roots  of     superstition     and 
^'ClicL^'  as  well  as  of  ^--thinking  and  materi^^^^^^^ 
the  freethinker  cannot  disprove  Jehovah,  neither  can  the  K^^^^^^^ 
disprove  Allah  and  Satan  ;  and  Kant  had  no  basis  for  denying^ 
as  he  did  with  Spinoza,  the  existence  of  ghosts  or  spirits.    From 
this  dilemma  Kant's  argument  cannot  ^^  ^^^^'"'^^^'^f^^ 
finally  introduces  deity  as  a  Psychologically  and  morally  ne^^^^^^^ 
sary  regulative  idea,  howbeit  indemons  rab  e.  he  leaves  every 
species   of   superstition  exactly  where  it  stood  befor^^^^^^ 
superstition   being   practically  held,  as   against      freethmkmg 

unbelief,"  on  just  such  a  tenure.  ^,  .  ,  .   ,  .    .^^^  -.700  he 

If  he  could  thus  react  against  freethmking  before  1789,  he 

must  needs  carry  the  reaction  further  after  the  outbreak  of  the 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEIES    341 

French  Eevolution  ;  and  his  Religion  innerhalb  der  Grenzen  der 
blossm  Vernunft  (1792-1794)  is  a  systematic  effort  to  draw  the 
teeth  of  the  Aufkldrung,  modified  only  by  his  resentment  of  the 
tyranny  of  tbe  political  authority  towards  himself.  Concerning 
the  age-long  opposition  between  rationalism  {Verstandesauf- 
kldrung)  and  intuitionism  or  emotionalism  (Gefuhlsphilosophie)^ 
it  is  claimed  by  modern  transcendentalists  that  Kant,  or  Herder, 
or  another,  has  effected  a  solution  on  a  plane  higher  than  either. 
{E.g.  Kronenberg,  Herder's  Philosophie,  1889,  p.  6.)  The  true 
solution  certainly  must  account  for  both  points  of  view — no 
very  difficult  matter;  but  no  solution  is  really  attained  by 
either  of  these  writers.  Kant  alternately  stood  at  the  two 
positions ;  and  his  unhistorical  mind  did  not  seek  to  unify 
them  in  a  study  of  human  evolution.  For  popular  purposes 
he  let  pass  the  assumption  that  a  cosmic  emotion  is  a  clue  to 
the  nature  of  the  cosmos,  as  the  water-finder's  hazel-twig  is 
said  to  point  to  the  whereabouts  of  water.  Herder,  recognisant 
of  evolution,  would  not  follow  out  any  rational  analysis. 

All  the  while,  however,  Kant's  theism  was  radically  irreconcilable 
with  the  prevailing  religion.     As  appears  from  his  cordial  hostility 
to  the  belief  in  ghosts,  he  really  lacked  the  religious  temperament. 
*  He  himself,"  says  a  recent  biographer,  "was  too  suspicious  of  the 
emotions  to  desire  to  inspire  any  enthusiasm  with  reference  to  his 
own  heart."*     This  misstates  the  fact  that  his  "Practical  Eeason" 
was  but  an  abstraction  of  his  own  emotional  predilection  ;  but  it 
remains   true    that    that   predilection   was    nearly   free   from   the 
commoner  forms  of  pious  psychosis  ;   and  typical  Christians  have 
never  found  him  satisfactory.     "  From  my  heart,"  writes  one  of  his 
first  biographers,  "  I  wish  that  Kant  had  not  regarded  the  Christian 
religion  merely  as  a  necessity  for  the  State,  or  as  an  institution  to 
be  tolerated  for  the  sake  of  the  weak  (which  now  so  many,  following 
his  example,  do  even  in  the  pulpit),  but  had  known  that  which  is 
positive,  improving,  and  blessed  in  Christianity."'^     He  had  in  fact 
never  kept  up  any  theological  study  ;^  and  his  plan  of  compromise 
had  thus,  like  those  of  Spencer  and  Mill  in  a  later  day,  a  fatal 
unreality  for  all  men  who  have  discarded  theology  with  a  full  know- 
ledge of  its  structure,  though  it  appeals  very  conveniently  to  those 
disposed   to  retain  it  as  a  means  of   popular  influence.     All   his 
adaptations,  therefore,  failed  to  conciHate  the  mass  of  the  orthodox ; 
and  even  after  the  issue  of  the  second  Critique  {Kritik  der  praktischen 
Vernunft)  he  had  been  the  subject  of  discussion  among  the  reac- 


^  stuckenberg.  Life  of  Immanuel  Kant,  p.  329. 

2  Borowski,  Darstellung  des  Lebens  und  CharaJcters  Immanuel  KanVs,  1804,  cited  by 
Stuckenberg.  p.  357.  3  stuckenberg.  pp.  359-60. 


342 


GERMAN  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


tionists/     But  that  Critiqice,  and  the  preface  to  the  second  edition 
of  the  first,  were  at  bottom  only  pleas  for  a  revised  ethic,  Kant's 
concern  with  current  religion  being  solely  ethical;^  and  the  force  of 
that  concern  led  him  at  length,  in  what  was  schemed  as  a  series  of 
magazine  articles,'*  to  expound  his  notion  of  religion  in  relation  to 
morals.     When    he'  did   so  he  aroused  a  resentment  much   more 
energetic  than  that  felt  by  the  older  academics  against  his  philo- 
sophy.    The   title   of    his   complete   treatise.   Religion  within   the 
Boundaries  of  Mere  Reason,  is  obviously  framed  to  parry  criticism ; 
yet  so  drastic  is  its  treatment  of  its  problems  that  the  College  of 
Censors  at  Berlin  under  the  new  theological  regime   vetoed   the 
second  part.     By  the  terms  of  the  law  as  to  the  censorship,  the 
publisher  was  entitled  to  know  the  reason  for  the  decision  ;  but  on 
his  asking  for  it  he  was  informed  that  "  another  instruction  was  on 
hand,  which  the  censor  followed  as  his  law,  but  whose  contents  he 
refused  to  make  known."'     Greatly  incensed,  Kant  submitted  the 
rejected  article  with  the  rest  of  his  book  to  the  theological  faculty  of 
his  own  university  of  Konigsberg,  asking  them  to  decide  in  which 
faculty   the   censorship   was   properly  vested.     They   referred   the 
decision  to  the  philosophical  faculty,  which  duly  proceeded  to  license 
the  book  (1793).     As  completed,  it  contained  passages  markedly 
hostile  to  the  Church.     His  opponents  in  turn  were  now  so  enraged 
that  they  procured  a  royal  cabinet  order  (October,  1794)  charging 
him  with  "  distorting  and  degrading  many  of  the  chief  and  funda- 
mental doctrines  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  and  of  Christianity,"  and 
ordering  all  the  instructors  at  the  university  not  to  lecture  on  the 
book.**     Such  was  the  reward  for  a  capitulation  of  philosophy  to  the 
philosophic  ideals  of  the  poHce. 

Kant,  called  upon  to  render  an  account  of  his  conduct  to  the 
Government,  formally  defended  it,  but  in  conclusion  decorously  said  : 
"  I  think  it  safest,  in  order  to  obviate  the  least  suspicion  in  this 
respect,  as  your  Royal  Majesty's  most  faithful  subject,  to  declare 
solemnly  that  henceforth  I  will  refrain  altogether  from  all  public 
discussion  of  religion,  whether  natural  or  revealed,  both  in  lectures 
and  in  writings."  After  the  death  of  Frederick  William  II  (1797) 
and  the  accession  of  Frederick  William  III,  who  suspended  the  edict 
of  1788,  Kant  held  himself  free  to  speak  out  again,  and  published 
(1798)  an  essay  on  "The  Strife  of  the  [University]  Faculties," 
wherein  he  argued  that  philosophers  should  be  free  to  discuss  all 

1  Stuckenberff  p.  361.  ^  Cp.  F.  C.  Baur.  Gescfi.  der  ohHstl.  Kirc}ie,y.  63-66. 

8  The  firs^o^^ilSic^^  Evils."  appeared  in  a  Berlin  monthly  in  AprU,  1792.  and  was 


then  reprinted  separately. 
*  Sbuckenberg,  p.  361. 


s  Ueberweg,  ii,  lit;  Stuctoenberg.  p.  363. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES     343 


questions  of  religion  so  long  as  they  did  not  handle  Biblical  theology 
as  such.  The  belated  protest,  however,  led  to  nothing.  By  this 
time  the  philosopher  was  incapable  of  further  efficient  work;  and 
when  he  died  in  1804  the  chief  manuscript  he  left,  planned  as  a 
synthesis  of  his  philosophic  teaching,  was  found  to  be  hopelessly 
confused.^ 

The  attitude,  then,  in  which  Kant  stood  to  the  reigning  religion 
in  his  latter  years  remained  fundamentally  hostile,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  believing  Christians  as  distinguished  from  that  of  ecclesi- 
astical   opportunists.      What  were  for   temporizers    arguments   in 
defence  of  didactic  deceit,  were  for  sincerer  spirits  fresh  grounds  for 
recoiling  from  the  whole  ecclesiastical  field.     Kant  must  have  made 
more   rebels  than  compliers   by  his  very  doctrine  of   compliance. 
Religion  was  for  him  essentially  ethic ;  and  there  is  no  reconciling 
the  process  of  propitiation  of  deity,  in  the  Christian  or  any  other 
cult,  with  his  express  declaration  that  all  attempts  to  win  God's 
favour  save  by  simple  right-living  are  sheer  fetichism.^     He  thus 
ends  practically  at  the  point  of  view  of  the  deists,  whose  influence 
on  him  in  early  life  is  seen  in  his  work  on  cosmogony.^     He  had, 
moreover,  long  ceased  to  go  to  church  or  follow  any  religious  usage, 
even  refusing  to  attend  the  services   on  the  installation  of  a  new 
university  rector,  save  when  he  himself  held  the  office.     At  the  close 
of  his  treatise  on  religion,  after  all  his  anxious  accommodations,  he 
becomes  almost  violent  in  his  repudiations  of  sacerdotalism  and 
sectarian  self-esteem.     "  He  did  not  like  the  singing  in  the  churches, 
and  pronounced  it  mere  bawling.     In   prayer,   whether  public  or 
private,  he  had  not  the  least  faith  ;  and  in  his  conversation  as  well 
as  his  writings  he  treated  it  as  a  superstition,  holding  that  to  address 
anything  unseen  would  open  the  way  for  fanaticism.     Not  only  did 
he  argue  against  prayer ;  he  also  ridiculed  it,  and  declared  that  a 
man  would  be  ashamed  to  be  caught  by  another  in  the  attitude  of 
prayer."     One  of  his  maxims  was  that  "To  kneel  or  prostrate  him- 
self on  the  earth,  even  for  the  purpose  of  symboHzing   to  himself 
reverence  for  a  heavenly  object,  is  unworthy  of  man.""*     So  too  he 
held  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  had  no  practical  value,  and  he 
had  a  "  low  opinion  "  of  the  Old  Testament. 

Yet  his  effort  at  compromise  had  carried  him  to  positions  which 
are  the  negation  of  some  of  his  own  most  emphatic  ethical  teachings. 
Like  Plato,  he  is  finally  occupied  in  discussing  the  "  right  fictions  " 

1  Stuckenberg,  pp.  304-309. 

2  Religion  inrierhalh  der  Qrenzen  der  blossen  Vermmft.  StUck  iv,  Th.  2. 
8  Cp.  Stuckenberg,  p.  332  ;  Seth  Pringle-Pattison,  as  cited. 

4  Stuckenberg,  pp.  340,  346,  354.  468. 


344 


GEEMAN  FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


for  didactic  purposes.  Swerving  from  thoroughgoing  freethought  for 
fear  of  moral  harm,  he  ends  by  sacrificing  intellectual  morality  to 
what  seems  to  him  social  security.  His  doctrine,  borrowed  from 
Lessing,  of  a  "  conceivable  "  revelation  which  told  man  only  what  he 
could  find  out  for  himself,  is  a  mere  flout  to  reason.  While  he 
carries  his  "categorical  imperative,"  or  k  priori  conception  of  duty, 
so  extravagantly  far  as  to  argue  that  it  is  wrong  even  to  tell  a  false- 
hood to  a  would-be  murderer  in  order  to  mislead  him,  he  approves 
of  the  systematic  employment  of  the  pulpit  function  by  men  who  do 
not  beUeve  in  the  creed  they  there  expound.  The  priest,  with  Kant's 
encouragement,  is  to  "  draw  all  the  practical  lessons  for  his  congrega- 
tion from  dogmas  which  he  himself  cannot  subscribe  with  a  full  con- 
viction of  their  truth,  but  which  he  can  teach,  since  it  is  not  altogether 
impossible  that  truth  may  be  concealed  therein,"  while  he  remains 
free  as  a  scholar  to  write  in  a  contrary  sense  in  his  own  name.  And 
this  doctrine,  set  forth  in  the  censured  work  of  1793,  is  repeated  in 
the  moralist's  last  treatise  (1798),  wherein  he  explains  that  the 
preacher,  when  speaking  doctrinally,  "  can  put  into  the  passage  under 
consideration  his  own  rational  views,  whether  found  there  or  not." 
Kant  thus  ended  by  reviving  for  the  convenience  of  churchmen,  in  a 
worse  form,  the  medieval  principle  of  a  "twofold  truth."  So  little 
efficacy  is  there  in  a  transcendental  ethic  for  any  of  the  actual 
emergencies  of  life. 

On  this  question  compare  Kant's  Religion  innerhalb  der 
Grenzen  der  blossen  Vernunft,  Stiick  iii,  Abth.  i,  §  6  ;  Stiick  iv, 
Th.  ii,  preamble  and  §§  i,  3,  and  4  ;  with  the  ess8.y  Ueber  ein 
vermeintes  Becht  aus  Menschenliebe  zu  lilgen  (1797),  in  reply  to 
Constant — rep.  in  Kant's  Vorzugliche  Jcleine  Schriften,  1833, 
Bd.  ii,  and  in  App.  to  Eosenkranz's  ed.  of  Werke,  vii,  295 
— given  by  T.  K.  Abbott  in  his  tr.  of  the  Critique  of  Judgment. 
See  also  Stuckenberg,  pp.  341-45,  and  the  general  comment  of 
Baur,  Kirchengeschichte  des  19ten  JahrMmderts,  1862,  p.  65. 
"  Kant's  recognition  of  Scripture  is  purely  a  matter  of  expedi- 
ence. The  State  needs  the  Bible  to  control  the  people;  the 
masses  need  it  in  order  that  they,  having  weak  consciences,  may 
recognize  their  duty  ;  and  the  philosopher  finds  it  a  convenient 
vehicle  for  conveying  to  the  people  the  faith  of  reason.  Were 
it  rejected  it  might  be  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  put  in  its 
place  another  book  which  would  inspire  as  much  confidence." 
All  the  while  "  Kant's  principles  of  course  led  him  to  deny 
that  the  Bible  is  authoritative  in  matters  of  rehgion,  or  that 

it  is  of  itself  a  safe  guide  in  morals Its  value  consists  in  the 

fact  that,  owing  to  the  confidence  of  the  people  in  it,  reason  can 
use  it  to  interpret  into  Scripture  its  own  doctrines,  and  can  thus 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEIES     345 

make  it  the  means  of  popularizing  rational  faith.  If  anyone 
imagines  that  the  aim  of  the  interpretation  is  to  obtain  the  real 
meaning  of  Scripture,  he  is  no  Kantian  on  this  point "  (Stucken- 
berg, p.  341). 

22.  The   total   performance   of   Kant   thus  left  Germany  with 
a  powerful  lead  on  the  one  hand  towards  that  unbelief  in  rehgion 
which  in  the  last  reign  had  been  fashionable,  and  on  the  other  hand 
a  series  of  prescriptions  for  compromise ;  the  monarchy  all  the  while 
throwing  its  weight  against  all  innovation  in  doctrine  and  practice. 
In  1799  Fichte  is  found  expressing  the  utmost  alarm  at  the  combina- 
tion of  the  European  despotisms  to  "rout  out  freethought";^  and 
so  strong  did  the  official  reaction  become  that  in  the  opinion  of 
Heine  all  the  German  philosophers  and  their  ideas  would  have  been 
suppressed  by  wheel  and  gallows  but  for  Napoleon,^  who  intervened 
in  the  year  1805.     The  Prussian  despotism  being  thus  weakened, 
what  actually  happened  was  an  adaptation  of  Kant's  teaching  to  the 
needs  alike  of  rehgion  and  of  rationahsm.     The  religious  world  was 
assured  by  it  that,  though  all  previous  arguments  for  theism  were 
philosophically  worthless,  theism  was  now  safe  on  the  fluid  basis  of 
feeling.     On  the  other   hand,  rationalism   alike  in   ethics   and   in 
historical  criticism  was  visibly  reinforced  on  all  sides.     Herder,  as 
before  noted,  found   divinity  students  grounding  their  unbelief  on 
Kant's  teaching.      Staiidlin  begins  the  preface  to  his  History  and 
Spirit  of  Skepticism  (1794)  with  the  remark  that  "  Skepticism  begins 
to  be  a  disease  of  the  age ";  and  Kant  is  the  last  in  his  hst  of 
skeptics.     At  the  close  of   the   century  "the  number  of   Kantian 
theologians  was  legion,"  and  it  was  through  the  Kantian  influence 
that  "  the  various  anti-orthodox  tendencies  which  flourished  during 
the  period  of  Illumination  were  concentrated  in  Eationalism  "  ^ — in 
the  tendency,  that  is,  to  bring  rational  criticism  to  bear  alike  on 
history,  dogma,  and  philosophy.     Borowski  in  1804  complains  that 
"  beardless  youths  and  idle  babblers  "  devoid  of  knowledge  "  appeal 
to  Kant's  views  respecting  Christianity."^     These  views,  as  we  have 
seen,  were  partly  accommodating,  partly  subversive  in  the  extreme. 
Kant  regards  Jesus  as  an  edifying  ideal  of  perfect  manhood,  "  belief  " 
in  whom  as  such  makes  a  man  acceptable  to  God,  because  of  follow- 
ing a  good  model.     "  While  he  thus  treats  the  historical  account  of 
Jesus  as  of  no  significance,  except  as  a  shell  into  which  the  practical 
reason  puts  the  kernel,  his  whole  argument  tends  to  destroy  faith 

1  Letter  of  May  22, 1799,  reproduced  by  Heine. 

2  Zur  Gesch.  der  Bel.  u.  Fhilos.  in  Deutschland.    Werke,  as  cited,  iii,  96,  98. 

3  Stuckenberg,  p.  311.  <  j^.  p,  357^ 


m^ifciMiftimtiiniir^ifiiiii^ 


346 


GEEMAN  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


in  the  historic  person  of  Jesus  as  given  in  the  gospel,  treating  the 
account  itself  as  something  whose  truthfulness  it  is  not  worth  whi  e 
to  investigate." '  In  point  of  fact  we  find  his  devoted  disciple 
Erhard  declaring:  "I  regard  Christian  morality  as  somethmg 
which  has  been  falsely  imputed  to  Christianity ;  and  the  existence 
of  Christ  does  not^at  all  seem  to  me  to  be  a  probable  historical  fact " 
—this  while  declaring  that  Kant  had  given  him  "  the  indescribable 
comfort  of  being  able  to  call  himself  openly,  and  with  a  good  con- 

science,  a  Christian." 

While  therefore  a  multitude  of  preachers  availed  themselves  of 
Kant's  philosophic  licence  to  rationalize  in  the  pulpit  and  out  of  it 
as  occasion  offered,  and  yet  others  opposed  them  only  on  the  score 
that  all  divergence  from  orthodoxy  should  be  avowed,  the  dissolution 
of   orthodoxy  in  Germany  was  rapid  and   general ;  and  the  anti- 
supernaturalist  handling  of  Scripture,  prepared  for  as  we  have  seen, 
went  on  continuously.     Even  the  positive  disparagement  of  Chris- 
tianity was  carried  on  by  Kantian  students ;  and  Hamann,  dubbed 
"  the  Magician  of  the  North  "  for  his  alluring  exposition  of  emotional 
theism,  caused  one  of  them,  a  tutor,  to  be  brought  before  a  clerical 
consistory  for   having   taught   his   pupil   to   throw  all   specifically 
Christian  doctrines  aside.     The  tutor  admitted  the  charge,  and  with 
four  others  signed  a  declaration  "  that  neither  morality  nor  sound 
reason  nor  public  welfare  could  exist  in  connection  with  Christianity." 
Hamann's  own  influence  was  too  much  a  matter  of  literary  talent 
and  caprice  to  be  durable  ;  and  recent  attempts  to  re-estabhsh  his 
reputation  have  evoked  the  deliberate  judgment   that   he   has   no 
permanent  importance. 

Against  the  intellectual  influence  thus  set  up  by  Kant  there  was 
none  in  contemporary  Germany  capable  of  resistance.  Philosophy 
for  the  most  part  went  in  Kant's  direction,  having  indeed  been  so 
tending  before  his  day.  Eationalism  of  a  kind  had  already  had  a 
representative  in  Chr.  A.  Crusius  (1712-1775),  who  in  treatises  on 
logic  and  metaphysics  opposed  aUke  Leibnitz  and  Wolff,  and  taught 
for  his  own  part  a  kind  of  Epicureanism,  nominally  Christianized. 
To  his  school  belonged  Platner  (much  admired  by  Jean  Paul  Eichter, 
his  pupil)  and  Tetens,  "  the  German  Locke."  who  attempted  a 
common-sense  answer  to  Hume.  His  ideal  was  a  philosophy  at 
once  intelligible  and  religious,  agreeable  to  God  and  accessible  to  the 

1  Stuckenberg  p.  351.    "It  is  only  necessary,"  adds  Stuckenberg  (p.  468,  note  142).  "to 
HJ«forKaS?rbint8  in  order  to  get  tbe  views  of  Strauss  in  bis  Leben  Jesu. 
develop  Kant  8  ^^°J«;j  ^^^^^  ^^^^  Pestalozzi  shared  his  views  on  Christian  ethics. 

I  cT^The^.%fsch^der  deutschm  Literatur,  lUe  Aufl.  p.  119;  R.  Unger.  Harnann  unci 
die  Av/kldrung,  1911. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEIES    347 

people."^  Platner  on  the  other  hand,  leaning  strongly  towards  a 
psychological  and  anthropological  view  of  human  problems,'^  opposed 
first  to  atheism'  and  later  to  Kantian  theism^  a  moderate  Pyrrhonic 
skepticism  ;  here  following  a  remarkable  lead  from  the  younger 
Beausobre,  who  in  1755  had  published  in  French,  at  Berlin,  a 
treatise  entitled  Le  PyrrJionisme  Baisonnable,  taking  up  the  position, 
among  others,  that  while  it  is  hard  to  prove  the  existence  of  God 
by  reason  it  is  impossible  to  disprove  it.  This  was  virtually  the 
position  of  Kant  a  generation  later ;  and  it  is  clear  that  thus  early 
the  dogmatic  position  was  discredited. 

23.  Some  philosophic  opposition  there  was  to  Kant,  alike  on 
intuitionist  grounds,  as  in  the  cases  of  Hamann  and  Herder,  and  on 
grounds  of  academic  prejudice,  as  in  the  case  of  Kraus ;  but  the 
more  important  thinkers  who  followed  him  were  all  as  heterodox  as 
he.  In  particular,  JOHANN  GOTTLIEB  FiCHTE  (1762-1814),  who 
began  in  authorship  by  being  a  Kantian  zealot,  gave  even  greater 
scandal  than  the  Master  had  done.  Fichte's  whole  career  is  a  kind 
of  "  abstract  and  brief  chronicle  "  of  the  movements  of  thought  in 
Germany  during  his  life.  In  his  boyhood,  at  the  public  school  of 
Pforta,  we  find  him  and  his  comrades  already  influenced  by  the  new 
currents.  "  Books  imbued  with  all  the  spirit  of  free  inquiry  were 
secretly  obtained,  and,  in  spite  of  the  strictest  prohibitions,  great 
part  of  the  night  was  spent  in  their  perusal.  The  works  of  Wieland, 
Lessing,  and  Goethe  were  positively  forbidden  ;  yet  they  found  their 
way  within  the  walls,  and  were  eagerly  studied."^  In  particular, 
Fichte  followed  closely  the  controversy  of  Lessing  with  Goeze ;  and 
Lessing's  lead  gave  him  at  once  the  spirit  of  freethought,  as  distinct 
from  any  specific  opinion.  Never  a  consistent  thinker,  Fichte  in 
his  student  and  tutorial  days  is  found  professing  at  once  determinism 
and  a  belief  in  "  Providence,"  accepting  Spinoza  and  contemplating 
a  village  pastorate.®  But  while  ready  to  frame  a  plea  for  Christianity 
on  the  score  of  its  psychic  adaptation  to  "  the  sinner,"  he  swerved 
from  the  pastorate  when  it  came  within  sight,  declaring  that  "  no 
purely  Christian  community  now  exists." '  About  the  age  of 
twenty-eight  he  became  an  enthusiastic  convert  to  the  Kantian 
philosophy,  especially  to  the  Critique  of  Practical  Beason,  and 
threw  over  determinism  on  what  appear  to  be  grounds  of  empirical 
utilitarianism,  failing   to   face   the   philosophical  issue.     Within  a 


^  Bartholm^ss,  Hist.  crit.  des  doctr.  relig.  de  la  philos.  moderne,  1855,  i,  136-40. 

2  In  demanding  a  "  history  of  tbe  human  conscience  "  (Neue  Anthropologic,  lldO)  Platner 
seems  to  have  anticipated  tbe  modern  scientific  approach  to  religion. 

3  Oesprciche  Uber  den  Atheismus,  1781.  *  Lehrbuch  der  Logik  und  Metaphysik,  1795. 
6  W.  Smith,  Memoir  of  Fichte,  2nd  ed.  p.  10. 

6  Id,  pp.  12. 13.  20.  23.  25.  etc.  ^  Id,  pp.  34-35. 


348 


GEEMAN  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


year  of  his  visit  to  Kant,  however,  he  was  writing  to  a  friend  that 
"  Kant  has  only  indicated  the  truth,  but  neither  unfolded  nor  proved 
it."  and  that  he  himself  has  "  discovered  a  new  principle,  from  which 

all  philosophy  can  easily  be  deduced In  a  couple  of  years  we 

shall  have  a  philosophy  with  all  the  clearness  of  geometrical  demon- 
stration." '  He  had  in  fact  passed,  perhaps  under  Spinoza's  influence, 
to  pantheism,  from  which  standpoint  he  rejected  Kant's  anti-rational 
ground  for  affirming  a  God  not  immanent  in  things,  and  claimed,  as 
did  his  contemporaries  Schelling  and  Hegel,  to  establish  theism  on 
rational  grounds.  Eejecting,  further,  Kant's  reiterated  doctrine  that 
religion  is  ethic,  Fichte  ultimately  insisted  that,  on  the  contrary, 
religion  is  knowledge,  and  that  "  it  is  only  a  currupt  society  that 
has  to  use  rehgion  as  an  impulse  to  moral  action." 

But  alike  in  his  Kantian  youth  and  later  he  was  definitely 
anti-revelationist,  however  much  he  conformed  to  clerical  prejudice 
by  attacks  upon  the  movement  of  freethought.  In  his  "  wander- 
years  "  he  writes  with  vehemence  of  the  "  worse  than  Spanish 
inquisition"  under  which  the  German  clergy  are  compelled  to 
"cringe  and  dissemble,"  partly  because  of  lack  of  ability,  partly 
through  economic  need.^  In  his  Versuch  einer  Kritik  aller  Offen- 
banmg  ("Essay  towards  a  Critique  of  all  Eevelation  "),  published 
with  some  difficulty,  Kant  helping  (1792),  he  in  effect  negates  the 
orthodox  assumption,  and,  in  the  spirit  of  Kant  and  Lessing,  but 
with  more  directness  than  they  had  shown,  concludes  that  belief  in 
revelation  "is  an  element,  and  an  important  element,  in  the  moral 
education  of  humanity,  but  it  is  not  a  final  stage  for  human  thought."  ^ 
In  Kant's  bi-frontal  fashion,  he  had  professed*  to  "silence  the 
opponents  of  positive  religion  not  less  than  its  dogmatical  defenders  " ; 
but  that  result  did  not  follow  on  either  side,  and  ere  long,  as  a 
professor  at  Jena,  he  was  being  represented  as  one  of  the  most 
aggressive  of  the  opponents.  Soon  after  producing  his  Critique  of 
all  Revelation  he  had  pubhshed  anonymously  two  pamphlets  vindi- 
cating the  spirit  as  distinguished  from  the  conduct  of  the  French 
Eevolution  ;  and  upon  a  young  writer  known  to  harbour  such  ideas 
enmity  was  bound  to  fall.  Soon  ifc  took  the  form  of  charges  of 
atheism.  It  does  not  appear  to  be  true  that  he  ever  told  his 
students  at  Jena  :  "  In  five  years  there  will  be  no  more  Christian 
rehgion:  reason  is  our  rehgion";^  and  it  would  seem  that  the  first 


1  Smith,  p.  94.  ^  Id.  p.  34. 

»  Adamson.  Fichte,  1881.  p.  32 ;  Smith,  as  cited,  pp.  64-65. 

^  Letter  to  Kant,  cited  by  Smith,  p.  63. 

5  Asserted  by  Stuckenberg,  Life  of  Kant,  p.  386. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEIES    349 

charges  of  atheism  brought  against  him  were  purely  mahcious.^ 
But  his  career  henceforth  was  one  of  strife  and  friction,  first  with 
the  student-blackguardism  which  had  been  rife  in  the  German 
universities  ever  since  the  Thirty  Years*  War,  and  which  he  partly 
subdued;  then  with  the  academic  authorities  and  the  traditionalists, 
who,  when  he  began  lecturing  on  Sunday  mornings,  accused  him  of 
attempting  to  throw  over  Christianity  and  set  up  the  worship  of 
reason.  He  was  arraigned  before  the  High  Consistory  of  Weimar 
and  acquitted  ;  but  his  wife  was  insulted  in  the  streets  of  Jena  ;  his 
house  was  riotously  attacked  in  the  night ;  and  he  ceased  to  reside 
there.  Then,  in  his  Wissenschaftslehre  ("  Doctrine  of  Knowledge," 
1794-95)  he  came  into  conflict  with  the  Kantians,  with  whom  his 
rupture  steadily  deepened  on  ethical  grounds.  Again  he  was  accused 
of  atheism  in  print ;  and  after  a  defence  in  which  he  retorted  the 
charge  on  the  utilitarian  theists  he  resigned. 

In  Berlin,  where  the  new  king  held  the  old  view  that  the  wrongs 
of  the  Gods  were  the  Gods'  affair,  he  found  harbourage ;  and  sought 
to  put  himself  right  with  the  religious  world  by  his  book  Die 
Bestimmung  des  Menschen  ("  The  Vocation  of  Man,"  1800),  wherein 
he  speaks  of  the  Eternal  Infinite  Will  as  regulating  human  reason 
so  far  as  human  reason  is  right— the  old  counter-sense  and  the  old 
evasion.  By  this  book  he  repelled  his  rationahstic  friends  Schelling 
and  the  Schlegels ;  while  his  reUgious  ally  Schleiermachor,  who 
chose  another  tactic,  wrote  on  it  a  bitter  and  contemptuous  review, 
and  "could  hardly  find  words  strong  enough  to  express  his 
detestation  of  it."^  A  few  years  later  Fichte  was  writing  no  less 
contemptuously  of  Schelling ;  and  in  his  remaining  years,  though 
the  Napoleonic  wars  partly  brought  him  into  sympathy  with  his 
countrymen,  from  whom  he  had  turned  away  in  angry  ahenation, 
he  remained  a  philosophic  Ishmael,  warring  and  warred  upon  all 
round.  He  was  thus  left  to  figure  for  posterity  as  a  religionist 
"  for  his  own  hand,"  who  rejected  all  current  religion  while  angrily 
dismissing  current  unbeUef  as  "  freethinking  chatter."  ^  If  his  philo- 
sophy be  estimated  by  its  logical  content  as  distinguished  from  its 
conflicting  verbaHsms,  it  is  fundamentally  as  atheistic  as  that  of 
Spinoza.*     That  he  was  conscious  of  a  vital  sunderance  between  his 


1  Cp  Robins.  A  Defence  of  the  Faith,  1862.  pt.  i.  pp.  132-33 ;  Adamson,  Fichte,  pp.  50-67; 
W.  Smith.  Memoir  of  Fichte,  pp.  106-107. 

8  G^r^izSgeZs'geJenwctrtigen  Zeitalters,  16te  Vorles.  ed,  IfOe-PP- 50^510. 

4  Compare  the  complaints  of  Hurst,  Hist,  of  ^",t^onahsm,3vd  f'^^A^^^^^^^ 
Coleridge,  Biographia  Literaria,  Bohn  ed.  p.  72.,  /ichte  s  theory    ^^ays  Coleridge  la^^^^^ 
praising  him  as  the  destroyer  of  Spmozism).    ,  fjepnerated  into  a  crude  egozsm^^^^ 
boastful  and  hyperstoic  hostility  to  Nature,  as  lifeless,  godless,  and  altogether  unholy. 


350 


GEEMAN  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE 


•5 
f 


thought  and  that  of  the  past  is  made  clear  by  his  answer,  in  1805, 
to  the  complaint  that  the  people  had  lost  their  "  religious  feeling  " 
{Eeligiositdt),  His  retort  is  that  a  new  religious  feeling  has  taken 
the  place  of  the  old;*  and  that  was  the  position  taken  up  by  the 
generation  which  swore  by  him,  in  the  German  manner,  as  the  last 
had  sworn  by  Kant. 

But  the  successive  philosophies  of  Kant,  Fichte,  Schelling,  and 
Hegel,  all  rising  out  of  the  "  lUumination "  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  have  been  ahke  impermanent.  Nothing  is  more  remark- 
able in  the  history  of  thought  than  the  internecine  strife  of  the 
systems  which  insisted  on  "putting  something  in  the  place"  of 
the  untenable  systems  of  the  past.  They  have  been  but  so  many 
"toppHng  spires  of  cloud."  Fichte,  like  Herder,  broke  away  from 
the  doctrine  of  Kant ;  and  later  became  bitterly  opposed  to  that  of 
his  former  friend  Schelling,  as  did  Hegel  in  his  turn.  Schleier- 
macher,  hostile  to  Kant,  was  still  more  hostile  to  Fichte;  and 
Hegel,  detesting  Schleiermacher^  and  developing  Fichte,  give  rise 
to  schools  arrayed  against  each  other,  of  which  the  anti-Christian 
was  by  far  the  stronger.  All  that  is  permanent  in  the  product  of 
the  age  of  German  Kationalism  is  the  fundamental  principle  upon 
which  it  proceeded,  the  confutation  of  the  dogmas  and  legends  of 
the  past,  and  the  concrete  results  of  the  historical,  critical,  and 
physical  research  to  which  the  principle  and  the  confutation  led. 

24.  It  is  true  that  the  progressive  work  was  not  all  done  by  the 
Rationahsts  so-called.  As  always,  incoherences  in  the  pioneers  led 
to  retorts  which  made  for  rectification.  One  of  the  errors  of  bias  of 
the  early  naturalists,  as  we  have  noted,  was  their  tendency  to  take 
every  religious  document  as  genuine  and  at  bottom  trustworthy, 
provided  only  that  its  allegations  of  miracles  were  explained  away 
as  misinterpretations  of  natural  phenomena.  So  satisfied  were 
many  of  them  with  this  inexpensive  method  that  they  positively 
resisted  the  attempts  of  supernaturalists,  seeking  a  way  out  of  their 
special  dilemma,  to  rectify  the  false  ascriptions  of  the  documents. 
Bent  solely  on  one  solution,  they  were  oddly  blind  to  evidential 
considerations  which  pointed  to  interpolation,  forgery,  variety  of 
source,  and  error  of  literary  tradition  ;  while  scholars  bent  on  saving 
"  inspiration  "  were  often  ready  in  some  measure  for  such  recogni- 
tions. These  arrests  of  insight  took  place  alternately  on  both  sides, 
in  the  normal  way  of  intellectual  progress  by  alternate  movements. 

while  his  religion  consisted  in  the  assumption  of  a  mere  ordo  ordinans,  which  we  were 
permitted  exotericS  to  call  God."  Heine  (a,s  last  cited,  p.  75)  insists  that  Fichte  s  Idealism 
la  "  more  Godless  than  the  crassest  Materialism."  ..-,«««       , 

1  QrundzUge,  as  cited,  p.  502,  ^  Cp.  Seth  Pringle-Pattison.  as  cited,  p.  280.  note. 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUBIES    351 

All  the  while,  it  is  the  same  primary  force  of  reason  that  sets  up 
the  alternate  pressures,  and  the  secondary  pressures  are  generated 
by,  and  are  impossible  without,  the  first. 

25.  The  emancipation,  too,  was  limited  in  area  in  the  German- 
speaking  world.  In  Austria,  despite  a  certain  amount  of  French 
culture,  the  rule  of  the  Jesuits  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  too 
effective  to  permit  of  any  intellectual  developments.  Maria  Theresa, 
who  knew  too  well  that  the  boundless  sexual  licence  against  which 
she  fought  had  nothing  to  do  with  innovating  ideas,  had  to  issue 
a  special  order  to  permit  the  importation  of  Montesquieu's  Esprit 
des  Lois ;  and  works  of  more  subversive  doctrine  could  not  openly 
pass  the  frontiers  at  all.  An  attempt  to  bring  Lessing  to  Vienna  in 
1774,  with  a  view  to  founding  a  new  literary  Academy,  collapsed 
before  the  opposition  ;  and  when  Prof.  Jahn,  of  the  Vienna 
University — described  as  '*  freethinking,  latitudinarian,  anti-super- 
naturalistic  " — developed  somewhat  anti-clerical  tendencies  in  his 
teaching  and  writing,  he  was  forced  to  resign,  and  died  a  simple 
Canon.^  The  Emperor  Joseph  II  in  his  day  passed  for  an 
unbeliever;'^  but  there  was  no  general  movement.  "Austria,  in 
a  time  of  universal  effervescence,  produced  only  musicians,  and 
showed  zest  only  for  pleasure."^  Yet  among  the  music-makers 
was  the  German-born  BEETHOVEN,  the  greatest  master  of  his  age. 
Kindred  in  spirit  to  Goethe,  and  much  more  of  a  revolutionist  than 
he  in  all  things,  Beethoven  spent  the  creative  part  of  his  life  at 
Vienna  without  ceasing  to  be  a  freethinker.^  "  Formal  religion  ho 
apparently  had  none."  He  copied  out  a  kind  of  theistic  creed 
consisting  of  three  ancient  formulas  :  "  I  am  that  which  is  ":  I  am 
all  that  is,  that  was,  that  shall  be  ":  "  He  is  alone  by  Himself ;  and 
to  Him  alone  do  all  things  owe  their  being."  Beyond  this  his 
behefs  did  not  go.  When  his  friend  Moscheles  at  the  end  of  his 
arrangement  of  Fidelio  wrote  :  "  Fine,  with  God's  help,"  Beethoven 
added,  "O  man,  help  thyself."''  His  reception  of  the  Catholic 
sacraments  in  extremis  was  not  his  act.  He  had  left  to  mankind 
a  purer  and  a  more  lasting  gift  than  either  the  creeds  or  the 
philosophies  of  his  age. 

1  Kurtz,  Hist,  of  the  Chr.  Chvrch,  Eng.  tr.  1864.  ii,  225.  Jahn  was  well  in  advance  of 
his  age  in  his  explanation  of  Joshua's  cosmic  miracle  as  the  mistaken  literalizing  of  a 
flight  of  poetic  phrase.  See  the  passage  in  his  Introduction  to  the  Book  of  Joshua,  cited 
by  Rowland  Williams,  The  Hebrew  Prophets,  ii  (1871),  31.  note  33. 

'^  R.  N.  Bain,  Gustavus  Vasa  and  his  Contemporaries,  1894,  i,  265-68. 

^  A.  Sorel,  L'Europe  et  la  revolution  fran^aise,  i  (1885),  p.  458. 

*  See  articles  on  Beethoven  by  Macfarren  in  Dictionary  of  Universal  Biography,  and 
by  Grove  in  the  Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians. 

6  Grove,  art.  cited,  ed.  1904,  i,  234. 


Chapter  XIX 

FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  REMAINING  EUROPEAN 

STATES 

§  1.  Holland 

Holland  so  notable  for  relative  hospitality  to  freethinking  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  continued  to  exhibit  it  in  the  eighteenth, 
though  without  putting  forth  much  native  response.  After  her 
desperate  wars  with  Louis  XIV,  the  Dutch  State,  now  monarchically 
ruled  turned  on  the  intellectual  side  rather  to  imitative  belles  lettres 
than '  to  the  problems  which  had  begun  to  exercise  so  much  of 
English  thought.  It  was  an  age  of  '*  retrogression  and  weakness. 
Elizabeth  Wolff,  nee  Bekker,  one  of  the  most  famous  of  the 
numerous  Dutch  women-writers  of  the  century  (1738-1804)  is 
notable  for  her  religious  as  well  as  for  her  political  hberalism  ;  but 
her  main  activity  was  in  novel-writing ;  and  there  are  few  other 
signs  of  freethinking  tendencies  in  popular  Dutch  culture.  It  was 
impossible,  however,  that  the  influences  at  work  in  the  neighbourmg 
lands  should  be  shut  out ;  and  if  Holland  did  not  produce  mnovatmg 
books  she  printed  many  throughout  the  century. 

In  1708  there  was  published  at  Amsterdam  a  work  under  the 
pseudonym  of  "  Juan  di  Posos."  wherein,  by  way  of  a  relation  of 
imaginary  travels,  something  like  atheism  was  said  to  be  taught ; 
but  the  pastor  Leenhof  had  in  1703  been  accused  of  atheism^  for  his 
treatise,  Heaven  on  Earth,  which  was  at  most  Spinozistic.  Even 
as  late  as  1714  a  Spinozist  shoemaker,  BOOMS,  was  bamshed  for 
his  writings ;  but  henceforth  liberal  influences,  largely  traceable  to 
the  works  of  Bayle,  begin  to  predominate.  Welcomed  by  students 
everywhere,  Bayle  must  have  made  powerfully  for  tolerance  and 
rationalism  in  his  adopted  country,  which  after  his  time  became  a 
centre  of  culture  for  the  States  of  northern  Europe  rather  than  a 
source  of  original  works.  Holland  in  the  eighteenth  century  was 
receptive   ahke    of    French    and   English    thought   and   literature, 

1  Jonckbloet,  Beknopte  Qeschiedenis  dermderl.  Letterkunde,  ed.  1880.  p.  282. 
8  cp  l\\^^%reydenker^Lexicon,  pp.  336-37 ;  Colerus.  Vie  de  Spinoza,  as  cited,  p.  Iviii. 

362 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  HOLLAND 


353 


especially  the  former;'  and,  besides  reprinting  many  of  the  French 
deists'  works  and  translating  some  of  the  Enghsh,  the  Dutch  cities 
harboured  such  heretics  as  the  Italian  Alberto  Radicati,  Count 
Passerano,  who,  dying  at  Rotterdam  in  1736,  left  a  collection  of 
deistic  treatises  of  a  strongly  freethinking  cast  to  be  posthumously 
published. 

The  German  traveller  Alberti,^  citing  the  London  Magazine,  1732, 
states  that  Passerano  visited  England  and  published  works  in 
English  through  a  trauslator,  Joseph  Morgan,  and  that  both  were 
sentenced  to  imprisonment.  This  presumably  refers  to  his  anony- 
mous Philosophical  Dissertation  upon  Death,  "  by  a  friend  to  truth," 
pubhshed  in  English  in  1732.'  It  is  a  remarkable  treatise,  being 
a  hardy  justification  of  suicide,  "  composed  for  the  consolation  of 
the  unhappy,"  from  a  practically  atheistic  standpoint.  Two  years 
earlier  he  had  published  in  English,  also  anonymously,  a  tract 
entitled  Christianity  set  in  a  True  Light,  by  a  Pagan  Philosopher 
neivly  converted;  and  it  may  be  that  the  starthng  nature  of  the 
second  pamphlet  ehcited  a  prosecution  which  included  both.  The 
pamphlet  of  1730,  however,  is  a  eulogy  of  the  ethic  of  Jesus,  who 
is  deistically  treated  as  a  simple  man,  but  with  all  the  amenity 
which  the  deists  usually  brought  to  bear  on  that  theme.  Passerano's 
Becneil  des  pieces  curieuses  sur  les  matidres  les  plus  interessants, 
published  with  his  name  at  Rotterdam  in  1736,'  includes  a  transla- 
tion of  Swift's  ironical  Project  concerning  babies,  and  an  Histoire 
abregde  de  la  profession  sacerdotale,  which  was  published  in  a 
separate  English  translation.^  Passerano  is  noticeable  chiefly  for 
the  relative  thoroughness  of  his  rationaHsm.^  In  the  Recueil  he 
speaks  of  deists  and  atheists  as  being  the  same,  those  called  atheists 
having  always  admitted  a  first  cause  under  the  names  God,  Nature, 
Eternal  Germs,  movement,  or  universal  soul.^ 

^  In  1737  was  pubhshed  in  French  a  small  mystification  con- 
sisting of  a  Sermon  prechS  dans  la  grande  Assemblee  des  Quakers 

o  See  Texte,  Bousseau  and  the  Cosmopolitan  Spirit,  Eng.  tr.  p.  29. 
2  Briefe,  1752,  p.  451. 

^nfiZ^^^JoJ'^^^^f^^^t  Pope'8  reference  to  "illustrious  Passeran"  in  his  Epilogue  to  the 
noi!I  »  o ^'^'  "'  }?K  ^^®  ^®^-  J-  Bramstone's  satire.  The  Man  of  Tante  (1733),  spells  the 
name    Fasaran,    whence  may  be  inferred  the  extent  of  the  satirist's  knowledge  of  his  topic. 

«nKi;  t^^i  K  t"  ^^  French,  at  London  in  1749,  in  a  more  complete  and  correct  edition, 
puDiished  by  J.  Brmdley.  ' 

oo  "'^^^.*^°Py  i°  **^®  British  Museum  is  dated  1737,  and  the  title-page  describes  Passerano 
a  re-?s8ue^™  ^         ^^°^  *^  ^^^^^'^^^  ^  Christian  Freethinker."     It  is  presumably 

Pol2^^''^'i^*5°^^°  ^  °°^®  *^°  ^^'P®  (Epilogue,  as  cited)  characteristically  alleges  that 
rasserano  had  been  bamshed  from  Piedmont  "for  his  impieties,  and  lived  in  the  utmost 
misery,  yet  feared  to  practise  his  own  precepts ;  and  at  last  died  a  penitent."  The  source 
oi  luese  ailefiations  may  serve  as  warrant  for  disbelieving  them,  Warburton,  it  will  be 
ODserved  says  nothing  of  an  imprisonment  in  England. 
^  London  ed.  1749,  pp.  24-25. 

VOL.   II  2A 


354    SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUETES 

de  Londres,  par  le  fameux  Fr^re  E.  E.,  and  another  little  tract, 
La  Beligion  Muhamedane  comparde  a  la  pa'ienne  de  VIndostan, 
par  Ali-Ehn-Omar.  "  E.  E."  stood  for  Edward  Elwall,  a  well- 
known  Unitarian  of  the  time,  who,  as  we  saw,  was  tried  at 
Stafford  x\ssizes  in  1726  for  publishing  a  Unitarian  treatise,  and 
who   in    1742    published   another,   entitled    The    Supernatural 

Incarnation  of  Jesus  Christ  proved  to  he  false a^id  that  our 

Lord  Jesus  Christ  was  the  real  son  of  Joseph  and  Mary.     The 
two   tracts  are  both  by  Passerano,  and  ^  are   on  deistic  lines, 
the  text  of  the  Sermon  being  (in  English)  "  The  Keligion  of  the 
Gospel  is  the  true  Original  Keligion  of  Keason  and  Nature." 
The  proposition  is  of  course  purely  ethical  in  its  bearing. 
The  currency  given  in  Holland  to  such  literature  tells  of  growing 
liberality  of  thought  as  well  as  of  political  freedom.     But  the  con- 
ditions w^ere  not  favourable   to   such   general   literary  activity   as 
prevailed   in   the   larger   States,  though   good   work   was   done   in 
medicine  and  the  natural  sciences.     Not  till  the  nineteenth  century 
did  Dutch  scholars  again  give  a  lead  to  Europe  in  religious  thought. 

§  2.  The  Scandinavian  States 

1.  Traces  of  new  rationalistic  life  are  to  be  seen  in  the  Scan- 
dinavian countries  at  least  as  early  as  the  times  of  Descartes. 
There,  as  elsewhere,  the  Keformation  had  been  substantially  a  fiscal 
or  economic  revolution,  proceeding  on  various  lines.  In  Denmark 
the  movement,  favoured  by  the  king,  began  among  the  people  ;  the 
nobility  rapidly  following,  to  their  own  great  profit;  and  finally 
Christian  III,  who  ruled  both  Denmark  and  Norway,  acting  with 
the  nobles,  suppressed  Catholic  worship,  and  confiscated  to  the 
crown  the  "castles,  fortresses,  and  vast  domains  of  the  prelates." 
In  Sweden  the  king,  Gustavus  Vasa,  took  the  initiative,  moved  by 
sore  need  of  funds,  and  a  thoroughly  anti-ecclesiastical  temper,^  the 
clergy  having  supported  the  Danish  rule  which  he  threw  off.  The 
burghers  and  peasants  promptly  joined  him  against  the  clergy  and 
nobles,  enabling  him  to  confiscate  the  bishops'  castles  and  estates, 
as  was  done  in  Denmark ;  and  he  finally  secured  himself  with  the 
nobles  by  letting  them  reclaim  lands  granted  by  their  ancestors  to 
monasteries.'  His  anti-feudal  reforms  having  stimulated  new  life 
in  many  ways,  further  evolution  followed. 

In  Sweden  the  stimulative  reign  of  Gustavus  Vasa  was  followed 

1  Koch    Mistor.  View  of  the  European  Nations,  Eng.  tr.  3rd  ed.  p.  103-    9^'  ^^\^^^oI^. 
and  ^he^ton    ScandinatL.  1837,1.383-96;  Otte    Sra„di„a.tan  m«^^ 
Villiers.  Esmy  on  the  Reformation,  Eng.  tr.  1836,  p.  lOo.     But  cp.  Allen.  Histoiye  ao 

^"2"  OttT  pp^232-36 :  Cr^kfhton-Wheaton,  i,  398-400 ;  Geijer.  Hist,  of  the  Swedes.  Eng.  tr.  i.  125. 
8  Koch.  p.  104:  Geijer.  i,  129. 


THE  SCANDINAVIAN  STATES 


355 


by  a  long  period  of  the  strife  which  everywhere  trod  on  the  heels  of 
the  Eeformation.  The  second  successor  of  Gustavus,  his  son  John, 
had  married  a  daughter  of  the  Catholic  Sigismund  of  Poland,  and 
sought  to  restore  her  religion  to  power,  causing  much  turmoil  until 
her  death,  whereafter  he  abandoned  the  cause.  His  Catholic  son 
Sigismund  recklessly  renewed  the  effort,  and  was  deposed  in  conse- 
quence;  John's  brother  Charles  becoming  king.  In  Denmark, 
meanwhile,  Frederick  II  (d.  1588)  had  been  a  bigoted  champion  of 
Lutheranism,  expelling  a  professor  of  Calvinistic  leanings  on  the 
Eucharist,  and  refusing  a  landing  to  the  Calvinists  who  fled  from 
the  Netherlands.  On  the  other  hand  he  patronized  and  pensioned 
Tycho  Brahe,  who,  until  driven  into  banishment  by  a  court  cabal 
during  the  minority  of  Christian  IV,  did  much  for  astronomy, 
though  unable  to  accept  Copernicanism. 

In  1611  there  broke  out  between  Sweden  and  Denmark  the 
sanguinary  two-years'  "War  of  Calmar,"  their  common  religion 
availing  nothing  to  avert  strife.  Thereafter  Gustavus  Adolphus  of 
Sweden,  as  Protestant  champion  in  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  in 
succession  to  Christian  IV  of  Denmark,  fills  the  eye  of  Europe  till 
his  death  in  1632  ;  eleven  years  after  which  event  Sweden  and 
Denmark  were  again  at  war.  In  1660  the  latter  country,  for  lack 
of  goodwill  between  nobles  and  commoners,  underwent  a  political 
revolution  whereby  its  king,  whose  predecessors  had  held  the  crown 
on  an  elective  tenure,  became  absolute,  and  set  up  a  hereditary  line. 
The  first  result  was  a  marked  intellectual  stagnation.  "Divinity, 
law,  and  philosophy  were  w^iolly  neglected  ;  surgery  was  practised 
only  by  barbers  ;  and  when  Frederick  IV  and  his  queen  required 
medical  aid,  no  native  physician  could  be  found  to  whom  it  was 

deemed  safe  to  entrust  the  cure  of  the  royal  patients The  only 

name,  after  Tycho  Brah6,  of  which  astronomy  can  boast,  is  that  of 
Peter  Horrebow,  and  with  him  the  cultivation  of  the  science 
became  extinct."  ^ 

2.  For  long,  the  only  personality  making  powerfully  for  culture 
was  HOLBERG,'  certainly  a  host  in  himself.  Of  all  the  writers  of 
his  age,  the  only  one  who  can  be  compared  with  him  in  versatility 
of  power  is  Voltaire,  whom  he  emulated  as  satirist,  dramatist,  and 
historian  ;  but  all  his  dramatic  genius  could  not  avail  to  sustain 
against  the  puritanical  pietism  which  then  flourished,  the  Danish 

J  Crichton-Wheaton,  ii.  322. 

2  Ludwig  Holberg.  Baron  Holberg,  born  at  Bergen.  Norway,  1684.  After  a  youth  of 
poverty  and  struggle  he  settled  at  Copenhagen  in  1718,  as  professor  of  metaphysics,  and 
attained  the  chair  of  eloquence  in  1720.  Made  Baron  by  King  Frederick  V  of  Denmark  at 
his  accession  in  1747.    D.  1754. 


356    SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKIES 

drama  of  which  he  was  the  fecimd  creator.  After  producing  a 
briUiant  series  of  plays  (1722-1727)  he  had  to  witness  the  closing 
of  the  Copenhagen  Theatre,  and  take  to  general  writing,  historical 
and  didactic.  In  1741  he  produced  in  Latin  his  famous  Subterranean 
Journey  of  Nicolas  Kliniiiis'  one  of  the  most  widely  famous  perform- 
ances of  its  age.'*  He  knew  English,  and  must  have  been  influenced 
by  Swift's  Gulliver's  Travels,  which  his  story  frequently  recalls. 
The  hero  catastrophically  reaches  a  "subterranean"  planet,  with 
another  social  system,  and  peopled  by  moving  trees  and  civilized 
and  socialized  animals.  With  the  tree-people,  the  Potuans,  the  tale 
deals  at  some  length,  giving  a  chapter  on  their  religion,'  after  the 
manner  of  Tyssot  de  Patot  in  Jacques  Massi.  They  are  simple 
deists,  knowing  nothing  of  Christianity;  and  the  author  makes 
them  the  mouthpieces  of  criticisms  upon  Christian  prayers,  Te 
Deums,  and  hymn-singing  in  general.  They  believe  in  future  recom- 
penses, but  not  in  providential  government  of  this  life  ;  and  at  various 
points  they  improve  upon  the  current  ethic  of  Christendom. 

There  is  a  trace  of  the  tone  of  Frederick  alike  in  the  eulogy  of 
tolerance   and  in  the  intimation  that  anyone  who  disputes  about 
the  character  of  the  deity  and  the  properties  of  spirits  or  souls  is 
"condemned  to  phlebotomy"   and  to  be  detained    in  the  general 
hospital  {nosocomium)  .^     It  was  probably  by  way  of  precaution  that 
in  the  closing  paragraph  of  the  chapter  the  Potuans  are  alleged  to 
maintain  that,  though  their  creed  "  seemed  mere  natural  reUgion,  it 
was  all  revealed  in  a  book  which   was   sent   from  the  sky  some 
centuries  ago";  but  the  precaution  is  slight,  as  they  are  declared  to 
have  practically  no  dogmas  at  all.     It  is  thus  easy  to  read  between 
the  lines  of  the  declaration  of  Potuan  orthodoxy :  "  Formerly  our 
ancestors  contented  themselves  to  live  in  natural  religion  alone  ; 
but  experience  has  shown  that  the  mere  light  of  nature  does  not 
suffice,  and  that  its  precepts  are  efl'aced  in  time  by  the  sloth  and 
negligence  of  some  and  the  philosophic  subtleties  of  others,  so  that 
nothing   can    arrest   freethinking    {lihertatem   cogitandi)  or  keep  it 
within  just  bounds.     Thence  came  depravation  ;    and  therefore  it 
was  that  God  had  chosen  to  give  them  a  written  law."®     Such  a 
confutation  of  "  the  error  of  those  who  pretend  that  a  revelation 
is  unnecessary"  must  have  given  more  entertainment  to  those  in 


1  Nicolai  Klimii  Iter  Subterraneum  novam   telluris  theoviam  ac  Jiitdonam  quir\t(B 

monarchicB exhibens,  etc.    Dr.  Gosse,  in  art.  Holbebg.  Encyc.  Brit,,  makes  the  mistake 

of  caUing  the  book  a  poem.    It  is  in  Latin  prose,  with  verse  passages.  ^.  ^   ^,    .      • 

3  It  was  published  thrice  in  Danish,  ten  times  in  German,  thrice  in  Swedish,  thnce  in 
Dutch,  thrice  in  English,  twice  in  French,  twice  in  Russian,  and  once  in  Hungarian. 

8  Cap.  vi,  De  religione  geiitis  Potuance.  \  Cp.  pp.  75-78.  ed.  1754. 

«  Cap.  vi,  p.  69 ;  cp.  cap.  viii,  De  Academia,  p.  101.  °  Id.  p.  77. 


THE  SCANDINAVIAN  STATES 


357 


question  than  satisfaction  to  the  defenders  of  the  faith.  But  a 
general  tone  of  levity  and  satire,  maintained  at  the  expense  of 
various  European  nations,  England  included,^  together  with  his 
popularity  as  a  dramatist,  saved  Holberg  from  the  imputation  of 
heresy.  His  satire  reached  and  was  realized  by  the  cultured  few 
alone  :  the  multitude  was  quite  unaffected  ;  and  during  the  reign  of 
Christian  VI  all  intellectual  efforts  beyond  the  reign  of  science  were 
subjected  to  rigorous  control.^  As  a  culture  force,  Protestantism  had 
failed  in  the  north  lands  as  completely  as  CathoHcism  in  the  south. 

3.  In  Sweden,  meantime,  there  had  occurred  some  reflex  of  the 
intellectual  renascence.  Towards  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century  there  are  increasing  traces  of  rationalism  at  the  court  of  the 
famous  Christina,  who  already  in  her  youth  is  found  much  interested 
in  the  objections  of  "Jews,  heathens,  and  philosophers  against 
Christian  doctrine";^  and  her  invitation  of  Descartes  to  her  court 
(1649)  implies  that  Sweden  had  been  not  a  little  affected  by  the 
revulsion  of  popular  thought  which  followed  on  the  Thirty  Years' 
War  in  Germany.  Christina  herself,  however,  was  a  remarkable 
personahty,  unfeminine,  strong-willed,  with  a  vigorous  but  immature 
intelligence  ;  and  she  did  much  of  her  early  skeptical  thinking  for 
herself.  In  the  course  of  a  few  years,  the  new  spirit  had  gone  so  far 
as  to  make  church-going  matter  for  open  scoffing  at  the  Swedish 
court;*  and  the  Queen's  adoption  of  Komanism,  for  which  she 
prepared  by  abdicating  the  crown,  appears  to  have  been  by  way  of 
revulsion  from  a  state  of  mind  approaching  atheism,  to  w^hich  she 
had  been  led  by  her  freethinking  French  physician,  Bourdelot,  after 
Descartes's  death.*^  It  has  been  confidently  asserted  that  she  really 
cared  for  neither  creed,  and  embraced  Catholicism  only  by  way  of  con- 
formity for  social  purposes,  retaining  her  freethinking  views.^  It  is 
certain  that  she  was  always  unhappy  in  her  Swedish  surroundings. 
But  her  course  may  more  reasonably  be  explained  as  that  of  a  mind 
which  could  not  rest  in  deism  or  face  atheism,  and  sought  in  Catho- 
licism the  sense  of  anchorage  which  is  craved  by  temperaments  ill- 
framed  for  the  discipline  of  reason.  The  author  of  the  Histoire  des 
intrigues  galantes  de  la  reine  Christine  de  Suede  (1697),  who  seems  to 
have  been  one  of  her  suite,  insists  that  while  she  "  loved  bigots  no 
more  than  atheists,"' and  although  her  religion  had  been  shaken  in 


1  He  had  visited  England  in  his  youth. 

2  Crichton-Wheatou,  ii,  32-2.    On  p.  159  a  somewhat  contrary  statement  is  made,  which 
obscures  the  facts.    Cp.  Schlosser,  iv,  13,  as  to  Christian's  martinet  methods. 

8  Geijer.  i.  324.  4  j^.  p.  343  ;  Otte,  p.  292. 

s  Geijer.  i.  342.    Cp.  Ranke.  Hist,  of  the  Popes,  Eng.  tr.  ed.  1908.  ii,  399 ;  iii.  345-46. 

6  Crichton-Wheaton,  ii.  88-89,  and  refs.  7  Cp.  Ranke,  as  cited,  ii,  407. 


358 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


her  youth  by  Bourdelot  and  other  freethinkers,  she  was  regular  in  all 
Cathohc  observances  ;  and  that  once,  looking  at  the  portrait  of  her 
father,  she  said  he  had  failed  to  provide  for  the  safety  of  his  soul, 
and  thanked  God  for  having  guided  her  aright/ 

Her  annotations  of  Descartes  are  of  little  importance  ;  but  it  is 
noteworthy  that  she  accorded  to  his  orthodox  adherents  a  declara- 
tion that  ho  had  "  greatly  contributed  "  to  her  **  glorious  conversion" 
to  the  Catholic  faith.'^  Whatever  favour  she  may  have  shown  to 
liberty  of  thought  in  her  youth,  no  important  literary  results  could 
follow  in  the  then  state  of  Swedish  culture,  when  the  studies  at  even 
the  new  colleges  were  mainly  confined  to  Latin  and  theology.^  The 
German  Pufendorf,  indeed,  by  his  treatises  O71  the  Law  of  Nature 
and  Nations  and  On  the  Duty  of  Man  and  Citizen  (published  at 
Lund,  where  he  was  professor,  in  1672-73),  did  much  to  establish 
the  utilitarian  and  naturalistic  tendency  in  ethics  which  was  at  work 
at  the  same  time  in  England ;  but  his  latent  deism  had  no  great  influ- 
ence even  in  Germany,  his  Scripture-citing  orthodoxy  countervailing 
it,  although  he  argued  for  a  separation  of  Church  and  State.* 

4.  That  there  was,  however,  in  eighteenth-century  Sweden  a  con- 
siderable amount  of  unpublished  rationalism  may  be  gathered  from 
the  writings  of  Emanuel  Swedenborg,  himself  something  of  a  free- 
thinker in  his  very  supernaturalism.  His  frequent  subacid  allusions 
to  those  who  "  regarded  Nature  instead  of  the  divine,"  and  "  thought 
from  science,"^  tell  not  merely  of  much  passive  opposition  to  his  own 
prophetic  claims  (which  he  avenged  by  much  serene  malediction  and 
the  allotment  of  bad  quarters  in  the  next  world),  but  of  reasoned 
rejection  of  all  Scriptural  claims.  Thus  in  his  Sapientia  Angelica  de 
Divina  Providentia^  (1764)  he  sets  himself^  to  deal  with  a  number 
of  the  ways  in  which  "  the  merely  natural  man  confirms  himself  in 
favour  of  Nature  against  God"  and  "comes  to  the  conclusion  that 
religion  in  itself  is  nothing,  but  yet  that  it  is  necessary  because  it 
serves  as  a  restraint."  Among  the  sources  of  unbelief  specified  are 
ethical  revolt  alike  against  the  Biblical  narratives  and  against  the 
lack  of  moral  government  in  the  world ;  the  recognition  of  the 
success  of  other  religions  than  the   Christian,    and   of   the   many 

1  Work  cited,  pp.  288-89.  This  writer  gives  the  only  intelligible  account  of  the  private 
execution  of  Christina's  secretary.  Monaldeschi,  by  her  orders.  Monaldeschi  had  either 
passed  over  to  other  hands  some  of  her  letters  to  him,  or  kept  them  so  carelessly  as  to  let 
them  be  stolen.  Id.  p.  11.  For  her  cruel  act  she  shows  no  trace  of  religious  or  any  other 
remorse.    She  was,  in  fact,  a  neurotic  egoist.    Cp.  Ranke.  ii,  394.  405. 

'i  BomlliBr,  Hist.de  laphiloa.  car tis.,i,U9-50.  »  Geijer,  1.342.  ,     ^.   ., 

*  See  his  treatise.  Of  the  Nature  and  Qualijicaticm  of  Behaimi  m  Bejerence  to  Ciml 
Societi/.  Eng.  tr.  by  Crull.  1698.  ,_        ,  ^  ^       »»t    •»%.  ■      -r.       -^ 

fi  Heave>i  and  Hell,  1758.  §§  353.  354,  464.  •  Translated  as  TTui  Btmne  Providence. 

7  §§  235-264. 


THE  SCANDINAVIAN  STATES 


359 


heresies  within  that ;  and  dissatisfaction  with  the  Christian  dogmas. 
As  Swedenborg  sojourned  much  in  other  countries,  he  may  be 
describing  men  other  than  his  countrymen ;  but  it  is  very  unlikely 
that  the  larger  part  of  his  intercourse  with  his  fellows  counted  for 
nothing  in  this  account  of  contemporary  rationalism. 

With  his  odd  mixture  of  scripturalism  and  innovating  dogmatism, 
Swedenborg  disposes  of  difficulties  about  Genesis  by  reducing  Adam 
and  Eve  to  an  allegory  of  the  "  Most  Ancient  Church,"  tranquilly 
dismissing  the  orthodox  behef  by  asking,  "  For  who  can  suppose  that 
the  creation  of  the  world  could  have  been  as  there  described?"^ 
His  own  scientific  training,  which  had  enabled  him  to  make  his 
notable  anticipation  of  the  nebular  theory,'^  made  it  also  easy  for 
him  to  reduce  to  allegory  the  text  of  what  he  nevertheless  insisted 
on  treating  as  a  divine  revelation ;  and  his  moral  sense,  active  where 
he  felt  no  perverting  resentment  of  contradiction  by  reasoners,^  made 
him  reject  the  orthodox  doctrine  of  salvation  by  faith,  even  as  he 
did  the  orthodox  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  On  these  points  he  seems 
to  have  had  a  lead  from  his  father.  Bishop  Jasper  Svedberg,^  as  he 
had  in  his  overwhelming  physiological  bias  to  subjective  vision- 
making.  But  a  message  which  finally  amounted  to  the  oracular 
propounding  of  a  new  and  bewildering  supernaturalism,  to  be  taken 
on  authority  like  the  old,  could  make  for  freethought  only  by  rousing 
rational  reaction.  It  was  Swedenborg's  destiny  to  establish,  in  virtue 
of  his  great  power  of  orderly  dogmatism,  a  new  supernaturalist  and 
scripturalist  sect,  while  his  scientific  conceptions  were  left  for  other 
men  to  develop.  In  his  own  country,  in  his  own  day,  he  had  little 
success  qua  prophet,  though  always  esteemed  for  his  character  and 
his  high  secular  competence  ;  and  he  finally  figured  rather  as  a 
heresiarch  than  otherwise.^ 

5.  According  to  one  of  Swedenborg's  biographers,  the  worldliness 
of  most  of  the  Swedish  clergy  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  so  far  outwent  even  that  of  the  English  Church  that  the 
laity  were  left  to  themselves  ;  while  "  gentlemen  disdained  the  least 
taint  of  religion,  and  except  on  formal  occasions  would  have  been 
ashamed  to  be  caught  church-going."  ^  But  this  was  a  matter 
rather  of  fashion  than  of  freethought;  and  there  is  little  trace  of 


1  Work  cited,  §  241. 

2  De  cultu  et  amore  Dei,  1745,  tr.  as  The  Worship  and  Love  of  God,  ed.  1885.  p.  18, 

8  "  When  he  was  contradicted  he  kept  silence."   Documents  concerning  Swedenborg,  ed. 
by  Dr.  Tafel,  1875-1877.  ii,  564. 

*  Cp.  Swedenborg's  letter  to  Beyer,  in  Documents,  as  cited,  ii,  279. 

5  For  many  years  he  seldom  went  to  church,  being  unable  to  listen  peacefully  to  the 
trinitarian  doctrine  he  heard  there.    Documents,  as  cited,  ii,  560. 

6  W.  White,  Swedenborg  :  his  Life  and  Writitigs,  ed.  1867,  i,  188. 


360 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


critical  life  in  the  period.     In  the  latter  part  of   the  eighteenth 
century,  doubtless,  the  aristocracies  and  the  cultured  class  in  the 
Scandinavian  States  were  influenced  like  the  rest  of  Europe  by  the 
spirit  of  French  freethought,^  which  everywhere  followed  the  vogue 
of  the  French  language  and  literature.     Thus  we  find  Gustavus  III 
of  Sweden,  an  ardent  admirer  of  Voltaire,  defending  him  in  company, 
and  proposing  in  1770,  before  the  death  of  his  father  prevented  it,  to 
make  a  pilgrimage  to  Ferney.''    It  is  without  regard  to  this  testimony 
that  Gustavus,  who  was  assassinated,  is  said  to  have  died  **  with  the 
fortitude  and  resignation  of  a  Christian/*  *     He  was  indeed  flighty 
and  changeable,^  and  after  growing  up  a  Voltairean  was  turned  for 
a  year  or  two  into  a  credulous  mystic,  the  dupe  of  pseudo-Sweden- 
borgian  charlatans  \^  but  there  is  small  sign  of  religious  earnestness 
in  his  fashion  of  making  his  dying  confession.^     Claiming  at  an 
earlier  date  to  beheve  more  than  Joseph  II,  who  in  his  opinion 
"beheved  in  nothing  at  all,"  he  makes  light  of  their  joint  parade  of 
piety  at  Kome,'^  and  seems  to  have  been  at  bottom  a  good  deal  of  an 
indifferentist.     During  his  reign  his  influence  on  literature  fostered 
a  measure  of  the  spirit  of  freethought  in  belles  lettres ;  and  in  the 
poets  J.  H.  Kjellgren  and  J.  M.  Bellman  (both  d.  1795)  there  is  to 
be  seen  the  effect  of   the  German  Aufkldrung  and   the  spirit  of 
Voltaire.^     Their  contemporary,  Tomas  Thoren,  who  called  himself 
Torild  (d.  1812),  though  more  of  an  innovator  in  poetic  style  than  in 
thought,  wrote  among  other  things  a  pamphlet  on  The  Freedom  of 
the  General  Intelligence,    But  Torild's  nickname,  "  the  mad  nmgister;' 
tells  of  his  extravagance ;  and  none  of  the  Swedish  belletrists  of  that 
age  amounted  to  a  European  influence.     Finally,  in  the  calamitous 
period  which  followed  on  the  assassination  of  Gustavus   III,  all 
Swedish  culture  sank  heavily.    The  desperate  energies  of  Charles  XII 
had  left  his  country  half-ruined  in  1718;  and  even  while  Linnaeus 
and  his  pupils  were  building  up  the  modern  science  of  botany  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  century  the  economic  exhaustion  of  the  people  was 
a  check  on  general  culture.     The  University  of  Upsala,  which  at 
one  time  had  over  2,000  students,  counted  only  some  500  at  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth  century .'' 

1  Schweitzer.  Oeschichte  der   skandinaviachen  Literatur,  ii.  175,  225;    C.-F.  Allen, 
Histoire  de  Danemark.  Fr.  tr.  ii.  1900-1901 ;  B.  N.  Bain,  austavua  Vaaa  and  his  Contem- 

noTCLT^BS  1894  1,  226. 

2  corremmdance  de  Grimm,  ed.  182&-1831.  vii.  229.  »  Crichton-Wheaton,  ii.  206. 
*  Writing  to  his  mother  on  his  first  visit  to  Paris,  he  takes  her.  ostensibly  as  a  libre 

esvrit  into  his  confidence,  disparaging  Marmontel  and  Grimm  as  vain.  Joseph  II  m  turn 
nronounced  Gustavus  "a  conceited  fop.  an  impudent  braggart"  (Bam.  as  cited,  i.  266). 
Both  monarchs  set  up  an  impression  of  want  of  balance,  and  the  mother  of  Gustavus, 
who  forced  him  to  break  with  her.  does  the  same. 

5  Bain,  as  cited,  i,  224-31.  «  Id.  n,  208-12.  J  Id.i,  267-68. 

8  Cp.  Bain,  ii,  272, 287.  293-96.  "  Crichton-Wheaton.  u.  3d5. 


THE  SCANDINAVIAN  STATES 


361 


6.  In  Denmark,  on  the  other  hand,  the  stagnation  of  nearly 
a  hundred  years  had  been  ended  at  the  accession  of  Frederick  V  in 
1746.^  National  literature,  revivified  by  Holberg,  was  further 
advanced  by  the  establishment  of  a  society  of  polite  learning  in 
1763  ;  under  Frederick's  auspices  Danish  naturalists  and  scholars 
were  sent  abroad  for  study  ;  and  in  particular  a  literary  expedition 
was  sent  to  Arabia.  The  European  movement  of  science,  in  short, 
had  gripped  the  little  kingdom,  and  the  usual  intellectual  results 
began  to  follow,  though,  as  in  Catholic  Spain,  the  forces  of  reaction 
soon  rallied  against  a  movement  which  had  been  imposed  from 
above  rather  than  evolved  from  within. 

The  most  celebrated  northern  unbeliever  of  the  French  period 
was  Count  Struensee,  who  for  some  years  (1770-72)  virtually  ruled 
Denmark  as  the  favourite  of  the  young  queen,  the  king  being  half- 
witted and  worthless.  Struensee  was  an  energetic  and  capable 
though  injudicious  reformer :  he  abolished  torture ;  emancipated 
the  enslaved  peasantry  ;  secured  toleration  for  all  sects  ;  encouraged 
the  arts  and  industry;  established  freedom  of  the  press;  and 
reformed  the  finances,  the  police,  the  law  courts,  and  sanitation.* 
His  very  reforms,  being  made  with  headlong  rapidity,  made  his 
position  untenable,  and  his  enemies  soon  effected  his  downfall  and 
death.  The  young  queen,  who  was  not  alleged  to  have  been  a 
freethinker,  was  savagely  seized  by  the  hostile  faction  and  put  on 
her  trial  on  a  charge  of  adultery,  which  being  wholly  unproved,  the 
aristocratic  faction  proposed  to  try  her  on  a  charge  of  drugging  her 
husband.  Only  by  the  efforts  of  the  British  court  was  she  saved 
from  imprisonment  for  life  in  a  fortress,  and  sent  to  Hanover,  where, 
three  years  later,  she  died.  She  too  was  a  reformer,  and  it  was 
on  that  score  that  she  was  hated  by  the  nobles.^  Both  she  and 
Struensee,  in  short,  were  the  victims  of  a  violent  political  reaction. 
There  is  an  elaborate  account  of  Struensee's  conversion  to  Christianity 
in  prison  by  the  German  Dr.  Munter,^  which  makes  him  out  by 
his  own  confession  an  excessive  voluptuary.  It  is  an  extremely 
suspicious  document,  exhibiting  strong  political  bias,  and  giving 
Struensee  no  credit  for  reforms;  the   apparent   assumption  being 


»  Crichton-Wheaton,  ii,  322.    Cp.  pp.  161-63.    Schlosser,  iv.  15. 

a  Crichton-Wheaton.  ii.  190  ;  Ott6.  p.  322  ;  C.-F.  Allen,  as  cited,  ii.  194-201 ;  Schlosser. 
iv.  319  sq. 

8  Cp.  Mary  Wollstonecraft's  Letters  from  Sweden,  Norway,  and  Denmark,  1796,  Let. 
xviii.  One  of  the  grounds  on  which  the  queen  was  charged  with  unchastity  was.  that  she 
had  established  a  hospital  for  foundlings. 

*  Trans,  from  the  German,  1774 ;  2nd  ed.  1825.  See  it  also  in  the  work,  Converts  from 
Infidelity,  by  Andrew  Crichton  ;  vols,  vi  and  vii  of  Constable's  Miscellany,  1827.  This 
singular  compilation  includes  lives  of  Boyle,  Bunyan,  Haller,  and  others,  who  were  never 
infidels." 


362 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


THE  SLAVONIC  STATES 


363 


that  the  conversion  of  a  reprobate  was  of   more  evidential  value 
than  that  of  a  reputable  and  reflective  type. 

In  spite  of  the  reaction,  rationalism  persisted  among  the  cultured 
class.     Mary  WoUstonecraft,  visiting  Denmark  in  1795,  noted  that 
there  and  in  Norway  the  press  was  free,  and  that  new  French  publi- 
cations were  translated  and  freely  discussed.     The  press  had  in  fact 
been  freed  by  Struensee,  and  was  left  free  by  his  enemies  because 
of  the  facilities  it  had  given  them  to  attack  him/     "  On  the  subject 
of  religion,"  she  added,  "they  are  likewise  becoming  tolerant,  at 
least,  and  perhaps  have  advanced  a  step  further  in  freethinking. 
One  writer  has  ventured  to  deny  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ,  and 
to  question  the  necessity  or  utility  of  the  Christian  system,  without 
being  considered  universally  as  a  monster,  which  would  have  been 
the  case  a  few  years  ago."^     She  likewise  noted  that  there  was  in 
Norway  very  little  of  the  fanaticism  she  had  seen  gaining  ground, 
on  Wesleyan  lines,  in  England.'     But  though  the  Danes  had  "  trans- 
lated many  German  works  on  education,"  they  had  "not  adopted 
any  of  their  plans";  there  were  few  schools,  and  those  not  good. 
Norway,  again,  had  been  kept  without  a  university  under  Danish 
rule  ;  and  not  until  one  was  established  at  Christiania  in  1811  could 
Norwegian  faculty  play  its  part  in  the  intellectual  life  of  ^  Europe. 
The   reaction,    accordingly,  soon   afterwards   began   to   gain   head. 
Already  in   1790  "precautionary   measures"   had   been   attempted 
against  the  press;'  and,  these  being  found  inefficient,  an  edict  was 
issued  in  1799  enforcing  penalties  against  all  anonymous  writers— 
a  plan  which  of  course  struck  at  the  publishers.     But  the  great 
geographer,  Malte-Brun,  was  exiled,  as  were  Heiberg,  the  dramatic 
poet,  and  others ;  and  again  there  was  "  ^  temporary  stagnation  in 
literature,"  which,  however,  soon  passed  away  in  the  nineteenth 
century.     Meantime  Sweden  and  Denmark  had  alike  contributed 
vitally  to  the  progress  of  European  science;  though  neither  had 
shared  in  the  work  of  freethought  as  against  dogma. 

§  3.  The  Slavonic  States 

1.  In  Poland,  where,  as  we  saw,  Unitarian  heresy  had  spread 
considerably  in  the  sixteenth  century,  positive  atheism  is  heard  of 
in  1688-89,  when  Count  LiSZmSKi  (or  Lyszczynski),  among  whose 
papers,  it  was  said,  had  been  found  the  written  statement  that  there 
is  no  God,  or  that  man  had  made  God  out  of  nothing,  was  denounced 


t  Crichton-Wheaton.  ii.  190-91. 
8  Id.  Letter  viii,  near  end. 


a  Work  cited,  Letter  vii. 
*  Crichton-Wheaton,  ii,  324. 


by  the  bishops  of  Posen  and  Kioff,  tried,  and  found  guilty  of  denying 
not  only  the  existence  of  God  but  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  and  the 
Virgin  Birth.  After  being  tortured,  beheaded,  and  burned,  his  ashes 
were  scattered  from  a  cannon.^  The  first  step  was  to  tear  out  his 
tongue,  "  with  which  he  had  been  cruel  towards  God  ";  the  next  to 
burn  his  hands  at  a  slow  fire.  It  is  all  told  by  Zulaski,  the  leading 
Inquisitionist.^  But  even  had  a  less  murderous  treatment  been 
meted  out  to  such  heresy,  anarchic  Poland,  ridden  by  Jesuits,  was 
in  no  state  to  develop  a  rationalistic  literature.  The  old  king,  John 
Sobieski,  made  no  attempt  to  stop  the  execution,  though  he  is 
credited  with  a  philosophical  habit  of  mind,  and  with  reprimanding 
the  clergy  for  not  admitting  modern  philosophy  in  the  universities 
and  schools.^ 

2.  In  Eussia  the  possibilities  of  modern  freethought  emerge  only 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  when  Muscovy  was  struggling  out  of 
Byzantine  barbarism.  The  late-recovered  treasure  of  ancient  folk- 
poesy,  partly  preserved  by  chance  among  the  northern  peasantry, 
tells  of  the  complete  rupture  wrought  in  the  racial  life  by  the 
imposition  of  Byzantine  Christianity  from  the  south.  As  early  as 
the  fourteenth  century  the  Strigolniks,  who  abounded  at  Novgorod, 
had  held  strongly  by  anti-ecclesiastical  doctrines  of  the  Paulician 
and  Lollard  type;^  but  orthodox  fanaticism  ruled  life  in  general 
down  to  the  age  of  Peter  the  Great.  In  the  sixteenth  century  we 
find  the  usual  symptom  of  criticism  of  the  lives  of  the  monks  ;^  but 
the  culture  was  almost  wholly  ecclesiastical ;  and  in  the  seventeenth 
century  the  effort  of  the  turbulent  Patriarch  Nikon  (1605-1681),  to 
correct  the  corrupt  sacred  texts  and  the  traditional  heterodox  prac- 
tices, was  furiously  resisted,  to  the  point  of  a  great  schism.®  He 
himself  had  violently  denounced  other  innovations,  destroying 
pictures  and  an  organ  in  the  manner  of  Savonarola ;  but  his  own 
elementary  reforms  were  found  intolerable  by  the  orthodox,'  though 
they  were  favoured  by  Sophia,  the  able  and  ambitious  sister  of 

*  He  claimed  that  the  remarks  penned  by  him  in  an  anti-atheistic  work,  challenging 
Its  argument,  represented  not  unbelief  but  the  demand  for  a  better  proof,  which  he  under- 
took to  produce.  See  Krasinski.  Sketch  of  the  Religious  History  of  the  Slavonic  Nations, 
1851,  pp.  2-24-25.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  Pope,  Innocent  XI,  bitterly  censured  the 
execution. 

2  Fletcher,  History  of  Poland,  1831,  p.  141. 
»  Fletcher,  pp.  145-46. 

*  Hardwick,  Church  History:  Middle  Age,  1853,  pp.  386-87. 

^  L.  Sichler,  Hist,  de  la  litt.  Busse,  1887,  pp.  88-89, 139.  Cp.  Eambaud,  Hist,  de  Bussie, 
2e  6dit.  pp.  249,  259.  etc.  (Eng.  tr.  i,  309,  321,  328). 

6  R  N.  Bain,  The  First  Boma7iovs,  1905,  pp.  136-51 ;  Rambaud.  p.  333  (tr.  i,  414-17).  The 
struggle  (1654)  elicited  old  forms  of  heresy,  going  back  to  Manicheism  and  Gnosticism.  In 
this  furious  schism  Nikon  destroyed  irregular  ikons  or  sacred  images;  and  savage  perse- 
cutions resulted  from  his  insistence  that  the  faithful  should  use  three  fingers  instead  of 
two  in  crossing  themselves.    Many  resisted  to  the  death. 

'  Prince  Serge  Wolkonsky,  Russian  History  aud  Literature,  1897,  pp.  98-101. 


364 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


ITALY 


365 


Peter/     The  priest  Kriezanitch  (1617-1678),  who  wrote  a  work  on 
"The    Kussian    Empire   in   the   second   half   of    the   Seventeenth 
Century,"  denounced  researches   in  physical  science   as  '  devilish 
heresies";'  and  it  is  on  record  that  scholars  were  obliged  to  study 
in  secret  and  by  night  for  fear  of  the  hostility  of  the  common  people. 
Half-a-century  later  the  orthodox  majority  seems  to  have  remained 
convinced  of  the  atheistic  tendency  of  all  science  ;*  and  the  friends 
of  the  new  light  doubtless  included  deists  from  the  first.     Not  till 
the  reforms  of  Peter  had  begun  to  bear  fruit,  however,  could  free- 
thought  raise  its  head.     The  great  Czar,  who  promoted  printing  and 
literature  as  he  did  every  other  new  activity  of  a  practical  kind,  took 
the  singular  step  of  actually  withdrawing  writing  materials  from  the 
monks,  whose  influence  he  held  to  be  wholly  reactionary.'     In  1703 
appeared  the  first  Kussian  journal;  and  in  1724  Peter  founded  the 
first  Academy  of  Sciences,  enjoining  upon  it  the  study  of  languages 
and  the  production  of  translations.     Now  began  the  era  of  foreign 
culture  and  translations  from  the  French."     Prince  Kantemir,  the 
satirist,  who  was  with  the  Eussian  embassy  in  London  in  1733, 
pronounced  England,  then  at  the  height  of  the  deistic^  tide,      the 
most  civilized  and  enlightened  of  European  nations."       The  fact 
that   he   translated   Fontenelle  on   The  Phiralittj  of   Worlds  tells 
further   of   his  liberalism.'     Gradually  there  arose  a  new  secular 
fiction,  under  Western  influences ;  and  other  forms  of  culture  slowly 
advanced  likewise,  notably  under  Elisabeth  Petrovna.     At  length,  m 
the  reign  of  Catherine  II,  called  the  Great,  French  ideas,  already 
heralded  by  belles  lettres,  found  comparatively  free  headway.  ^  She 
herself  was  a  deist,  and  a  satirist  of  bigots  in  her  comedies ;    she 
accomplished  what  Peter  had  planned,  th^e  secularization  of  Church 
property;''  and  she  was  long  the  admiring  correspondent  of  Voltaire, 
to  whom  and  to  D'Alembert  and  Diderot  she  offered  warm  invita- 
tions to  reside  at  her  court.     Diderot  alone  accepted,  and  him  she 
specially  befriended,  buying  his  library  when  he  was  fain  to  sell  it, 
and  constituting  him  its  salaried  keeper.    In  no  country,  not  excepting 
England,  was  there  more  of  practical  freedom  than  in  Eussia  under 

1  Morfill.  History  of  Russia,  1902.  p.  14 ;  Bain.  p^L  ^  Cp.  Wolkonsky.  p.  101. 

8  C  E  Turner,  Studies  in  Russian  Literature,  ibB'Z,  p.  J. 

t  'd^llrV\^'fe^ei's'd^^^^^  won  him  the  repute  of  a  freethinker 

Morfill  P^  ^Hewaaactualira  tacked  as  "Antichrist"  in  a  printed  PampMet  on  he 
fJ^^anf  his  innovations  Personally,  be  detested  religious  persecution,  and  was  willing 
tn  Serate  anvboc^^^  JewsT  but  he  had  to  let  persecution  take  place ;  and  even  to 
conseSfo  remo^ng  s?atues  of  pagan  deities  from  his  palace.    Bam.  pp.  304-309. 

?  TSrne^r^^p.'^^a'^antemir  was  the  friend  of  Bolingbroke  and  Montesquieu  in  Paris. 

8  Kir»Vi1flr    n    147  XUrner,  pp.  'ku-^x. 

10  See  the'passages  cited  by  Rambaud.  p.  482.  from  her  letter  to  Voltaire. 


her  rule;^  and  if  after  the  outbreak  of  the  Eevolution  she  turned 
poHtical  persecutor,  she  was  still  not  below  the  English  level.  Her 
half-crazy  son  Paul  II,  whom  she  had  given  cause  to  hate  her,  undid 
her  work  wherever  he  could.  But  neither  her  reaction  nor  his  rule 
could  eradicate  the  movement  of  thought  begun  in  the  educated 
classes;  though  in  Eussia,  as  in  the  Scandinavian  States,  it  was 
not  till  the  nineteenth  century  that  original  serious  literature 
flourished. 

§  4.  Italy 

1.  Eeturning  to  Italy,  no  longer  the  leader  of  European  thought, 
but  still  full  of  veiled  freethinking,  we  find  in  the  seventeenth  century 
the  proof  that  no  amount  of  such  predisposition  can  countervail 
thoroughly  bad  political  conditions.  Ground  down  by  the  matchless 
misrule  of  Spain,  from  which  the  conspiracy  of  the  monk  Campanella 
vainly  sought  to  free  her,  and  by  the  kindred  tyranny  of  the  papacy, 
Italy  could  produce  in  its  educated  class,  save  for  the  men  of  science 
and  the  students  of  economics,  only  triflers,  whose  unbelief  was  of  a 
piece  with  their  cynicism.  While  Naples  and  the  south  decayed, 
mental  energy  had  for  a  time  flourished  in  Tuscany,  where,  under 
the  grand  dukes  from  Ferdinando  I  onwards,  industry  and  commerce 
had  revived ;  and  even  after  a  time  of  retrogression  Ferdinando  II 
encouraged  science,  now  made  newly  glorious  by  the  names  of 
Galileo  and  Torricelli.  But  again  there  was  a  relapse ;  and  at  the 
end  of  the  century,  under  a  bigoted  duke,  Florence  was  priest-ridden 
and,  at  least  in  outward  seeming,  gloomily  superstitious ;  while,  save 
for  the  better  conditions  secured  at  Naples  under  the  viceroyalty  of 
the  Marquis  of  Carpi,'^  the  rest  of  Italy  was  cynically  corrupt  and 
intellectually  superficial.^  Even  in  Naples,  of  course,  enlightenment 
was  restricted  to  the  few.  Burnet  observes  that  "  there  are  societies 
of  men  at  Naples  of  freer  thoughts  than  can  be  found  in  any  other 
place  of  Italy";  and  he  admits  a  general  tendency  of  intelligent 
Italians  to  recoil  from  Christianity  by  reason  of  Catholic  corruption. 
But  at  the  same  time  he  insists  that,  though  the  laity  speak  with 
scorn  of  the  clergy,  '*  yet  they  are  masters  of  the  spirits  of  the 
people."  ^  Yet  it  only  needed  the  breathing  time  and  the  improved 
conditions  under  the  Bourbon  rule  in  the  eighteenth  century  to  set 
up  a  wonderful  intellectual  revival. 

2.  First  came  the  great  work  of  ViCO,  the  Principles  of  a  New 

^  Seume,  Ueher  das  Leben der  Kaiserin  Catharina  II:   Werke,  ed.  1839,  v,  239-40; 

Kambaud.  pp.  482-84. 

'^  See  Bisliop  Burnet's  Letters,  iv,  ed.  Rotterdam.  1686,  pp.  187-91. 

J  Zeller,  Histoire  d'ltalie,  pp.  426-32,  450;  Procter,  Hist,  of  Italy,  2nd  ed.  pp.  240,  268. 

*  Burnet,  as  cited,  pp.  195-97. 


366 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


ITALY 


367 


Science  (1725),  whereof  the  originality  and  the  depth— qualities  in 
which,  despite  its  incoherences,  it  on  the  whole  excels  Montesquieu's 
Spirit  of  Laws—i>la>CQ  him  among  the  great  freethinkers  in  philo- 
sophy. It  was  significant  of  much  that  Vico's  book,  while  constantly 
using  the  vocabulary  of  faith,  grappled  with  the  science  of  human 
development  in  an  essentially  secular  and  scientific  spirit.  This  is 
the  note  of  the  whole  eighteenth  century  in  Italy.^  Vico  posits 
Deity  and  Providence,  but  proceeds  nevertheless  to  study  the  laws 
of  civilization  inductively  from  its  phenomena.  He  permanently 
obscured  his  case,  indeed,  by  insisting  on  putting  it  theologically, 
and  condemning  Grotius  and  others  for  separating  the  idea  of  law 
from  that  of  rehgion.  Only  in  a  pantheistic  sense  has  Vico's  formula 
any  validity ;  and  he  never  avows  a  pantheistic  view,  refusing  even 
to  go  with  Grotius  in  allowing  that  Hebrew  law  was  akin  to  that  of 
other  nations.  But  a  rationalistic  view,  had  he  put  it,  would  have 
been  barred.  The  wonder  is,  in  the  circumstances,  not  that  he  makes 
so  much  parade  of  religion,  but  that  he  could  venture  to  undermine 
so  vitally  its  pretensions,  especially  after  he  had  found  it  prudent  to 
renounce  the  project  of  annotating  the  great  work  of  Grotius,  De  Jure 
Belli  et  Pads,  on  the  score  that  (as  he  puts  it  in  his  Autobiography) 
a  good  Catholic  must  not  endorse  a  heretic. 

Signer  Benedetto  Croce,  in  his  valuable  work  on  Vico  {The 
Philosophy  of  Giambattista  Vico,  Eng.  tr.  1913,  pp.  89-94), 
admits  that  Vico  is  fundamentally  at  one  with  the  Naturalists : 
"  Like  them,  in  constructing  his  science  of  human  society,  he 
excludes  with  Grotius  all  idea  of  God.  and  with  Pufendorf  con- 
siders man  as  without  help  or  attention  from  God,  excludmg 
him,  that  is,  from  revealed  religion  and  its  God."  Of  Vico's 
opposition  to  Grotius,  Signor  Croce  offers  two  unsatisfactory 
explanations.     First:   "Vico's  opposition,  which  he  expresses 

with  his  accustomed  confusion  and  obscurity,  turns upon 

the   actual   conception   of    religion Keligion means    for 

Vico  not  necessarily  revelation,  but  conception  of  reality." 
This  reduces  the  defence  lio  a  quibble;  but  finally  Signor 
Croce  asks  himself  "  Why— if  Vico  agreed  with  the  natural- 
right  school  in  ignoring  revelation,  and  if  he  instead  of  it 
deepened  their  superficial  immanental  doctrine— why  he  put 
himself  forward  as  their  implacable  enemy  and  persisted  m 
boasting  loudly  before  prelates  and  pontiffs  of  having  formu- 
lated a  system  of  natural  rights  different  from  that  of  the  three 
Protestant  authors  and  adapted  to  the  Eoman  Church."  The 
natural   suggestion  of  **  politic  caution  "  Signor  Croce  rejects, 

1  Prof.  Flint,  who  insists  on  the  deep  piety  of  Vico.  notes  that  he  "appears  to  have  had 
strangely  little  interest  in  Christian  systematic  theology"  iVtco,  1884.  p.  70J. 


declaring  that  the  spotless  character  of  Vico  entirely  precludes 
It ;  and  we  can  only  suppose  that,  lacking  as  his  ideas  always 
tvere  m  clarity,  on  this  occasion  he  indulged  his  tendency  to 
cojifusion  and  nourished  his  illusions,  to  the  extent  of  conferring 
upon  himself  the  flattering  style  and  title  of  Defensor  Ecclesice 
at  the  very  moment  when  he  was  destroying  the  rehgion  of  the 
Lhurch  by  means  of  humanity." 

It  is  very  doubtful  whether  this  equivocal  vindication  is  more 
serviceable  to  Vico's  fame  than  the  plain  avowal  that  a  writer 
placed  as  he  was,  in  the  CathoHc  world  of  1720,  could  not  be 
expected  to  be  straightforward  upon  such  an  issue.  Vico  com- 
ported himself  towards  the  Catholic  Church  verv  much  as 
Descartes  did.  His  own  declaration  as  to  his  motives  is 
surely  valid  as  against  a  formula  which  combines  "  spotless 
character^"  with  a  cherished  "  tendency  to  confusion."  The 
famihar     tendency  to  hedge  "  is  a  simpler  conception. 

3.  It  is  noteworthy,  indeed,  that  the  "  New  Science,"  as  Vico 
boasted,  arose  in  the  Cathohc  and  not  in  the  Protestant  world.     We 
might  say  that,  genius  apart,  the  reason  was  that  the  energy  which 
elsewhere  ran  to  criticism  of  religion  as  such  had  in  Cathohc  Italy 
to  take  other  channels.     By  attacking  a  Protestant  position  which 
was  really  less  deeply  heterodox  than  his  own,  Vico  secured  Catholic 
currency  for  a   philosopheme  which   on   its   own   merits   Catholic 
theologians   would   have   scouted   as    atheism.     As   it   was,  Vico's 
sociology  aroused  on  the  one  hand  new  rationahstic  speculation  as 
to  the  origin  of  civiHzation,  and  on  the  other  orthodox  protest  on 
the  score  of  its  fundamentally  anti-BibHcal  character.     It  was  thus 
attacked   in    1749   by  Damiano   Eomano,    and   later  by  Finetti,  a 
professor  at  Padua,  Apropos  of   the  propaganda   raised   by  Vico's 
followers  as  to  the  animal  origin  of  the  human  race.     This  began 
with  Vico's  disciple,  Emmanuele  Duni,  a  professor  at  Eome,  who 
puWished  a  series  of  sociological  essays  in  1763.     Thenceforth  for 
many  years  there  raged,  "  under  the  eyes  of  Pope  and  cardinals,"  an 
Itahan  debate  between  the  Feri7ii  and  Antiferini,  the  affirmers  and 
deniers  of  the  animal  origin  of  man,  the  latter  of  course  taking  up 
their  ground  on  the  Bible,  from  which  Finetti  drew  twenty-three 
objections  to  Vico.'     Duni  found  it  prudent  to  declare  that  he  had 
no  intention  of  discussing  the  origin  of  the  world,  still  less  that  of 
the  Hebrew  nation,  but  solely  that  of  the  Gentile  nations  ";  but  even 
when  thus  limited  the  debate  set  up  far-reaching  disturbance.     At 
this  stage  Italian  sociology  doubtless  owed  something  to  Montesquieu 
and  Rousseau ;  but  the  fact  remains  that  the  Scienza  Nicova  was  a 

*    Sicilian!,  Sul  Binnovamento  delta  filosofia  positiva  in  Italia,  1871,  pp.  37-41. 


368 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUKY 


ITALY 


369 


book  "  truly  Italian  ;  Italian  par  excellencer '     It  was  Vico,  too, 
who  led  the  way  in  the  critical  handling  of  early  Eoman  history, 
taken  up  later  by  Beaufort,  and  still  later  by  Niebuhr ;  and  it  was 
he  who  began  the  scientific  analysis  of  Homer,  followed  up  later  by 
F.  A.  Wolf.'     By  a  fortunate  coincidence,  the  papal  chair  was  held  at 
the  middle  of  the  century  (1740-1758)  by  the  most  learned,  tolerant, 
and  judicious  of  modern  popes,  Benedict  XIV,'  whose  influence  was 
used  for  political  peace  in  Europe  and  for  toleration  in  Italy ;  and 
whom  we  shall  find,  Uke  Clement  XIV,  on  friendly  terms  with  a 
freethinker.     In  the  same  age  Muratori  and  Giannone  amassed  their 
unequalled  historical  learning  ;  and  a  whole  series  of  Italian  writers 
broke  new  ground  on  the  field  of  social  science,  Italy  having  led  the 
way  in  this  as  formerly  in  philosophy  and  physics.*    The  Hanoverian 
Dr.  G.  W.  Alberti,  of  Italian  descent,  writes  in  1752  that  "  Italy  is 
full  of  atheists  ";'  and  Grimm,  writing  in  1765,  records  that  according 
to  capable  observers  the  effect  of  the  French  freethinking  literature 
in  the  past  thirty  years  had  been  immense,  especially  in  Tuscany. 

4.  Between  1737  and  1798  may  be  counted  twenty-eight  Italian 
writers  on  political  economy  ;  and  among  them  was  one,  Cesare 
Beccaeia,  who  on  another    theme    produced   perhaps    the  most 
practically  influential  single  book  of  the  eighteenth  century,'  the 
treatise  on  Crinies  and  Punishments  (1761),  which  affected  penal 
methods  for  the  better  throughout   the  whole  of   Europe.     Even 
were  he  not  known  to  be  a  deist,  his  strictly  secular  and  rationalist 
method  would  have  brought  upon  him  priestly  suspicion ;    and  he 
had  in  fact  to  defend  himself  against  pertinacious  and  unscrupulous 
attacks,'  though  he  had  sought  in  his  book  to  guard  himself  by 
occasionally   "veiling  the  truth  in   clouds.'"     As   we  have   seen, 
Beccaria  owed  his  intellectual  awakening  first  to  Montesquieu  and 
above  all  to  Helv6tius— another  testimony  to  the  reformative  virtue 
of  all  freethought. 

a  inTroduc^^^^^  to  the  Princess  Belgiojoso's  tr.  ia  Science  Nouvelle,  18U, 

^'  s'^GanS^iw!  Papr'cteLns  XIV,  seine  Briefe  und  seine.   Zeit,  vom  Verfasser  des 
ESmischen  Briefe  (Von  Reumont).  1847.  pp.  35-36.  and  p.  155,  note.     ,„„  ^   .^  ^^    ^^  .     ., 

*  See  the  Storia  della  economia  ptibblica  tn  Italia  of  G.  Pecchio.  1829,  p.  61  sq.,  as  to  wie 
claim  of  Antonio  Serra  (JBreva  frattato.  etc.  1613)  to  be  the  pioneer  of  modern  political 
eco^my  Cp  Hallam.  Lit.  of  Europe,  iii.  164-66.  Buckle  (1-vol.  ed.  p.  W2,  note)  has 
clai?SS  the  Utle  for  William  Stafford,  whose  Compeudious  or  brtefe  Examxnat^onof 
certain  ordinary  Complaints  (otherwise  called  A  Brtefe  Concetpt 
appeared  in  1581.  But  cp.  Ingram  (Hist,  of  Pol.  E con.  1888.  PP-  43-45)  as  to  the  prior 
claims  of  Bodin  5  jBrie/«,  as  before  cited,  p.  408.  „.       „„ 

^  Correspondance  littiraire,  ed.  1829-31.  vii.  331.    Cp.  Von  Reumont  Ganaan^Kt.  p.  33. 

7  The  Dei  delittiedelU  pern  was  translated  into  23  languages.    Pecchio.  p.  144. 

8  See  in  the  6th  ed.  of  the  Dei  delitti  (Harlem,  1766)  the  appended  Bisposta  ad  uno  scritto, 
etc..  Parte  prima.  Accuse  d'empietd.  ,     ,,     „  •      r,        t  r,j„  „^   «*  /-»w.«/.e 

9  See  his  letter  to  the  Abbe  Morellet.  cited  by  Mr.  Farrer  in  ch.  i  of  his  ed.  of  Crimes 
and  Punishments,  1880.  p.  5.    It  describes  the  Milanese  as  deeply  sunk  in  prejudices. 


Of  the  aforesaid  eight-and-twenty  writers  on  economics,  probably 
the  majority  were  freethinkers.  Among  them,  at  all  events,  were 
Count  Algarotti  (1712-1764),  the  distinguished  sesthetician,  one 
of  the  group  round  Frederick  at  Berlin  and  author  of  II  Neiutonian- 
ismo  per  le  dame  (1737) ;  FiLANGlERl,  whose  work  on  legislation 
(put  on  the  Index  by  the  papacy)  won  the  high  praise  of  Frankhn ; 
the  Neapolitan  ahhate  Ferdinando  Galiani,  one  of  the  brightest 
and  soundest  wits  in  the  circle  of  the  French  philosophes ;  the  other 
Neapolitan  abbate  Antonio  Genovesi  (1712-1769),  the  "  redeemer 
of  the  Itahan  mind,"  ^  and  the  chief  establisher  of  economic  science 
for  modern  Italy .^  To  these  names  may  be  added  those  of  Alfieri, 
one  of  the  strongest  anti-clericalists  of  his  age ;  Bettinelli,  the 
correspondent  of  Voltaire  and  author  of  The  Restcrrection  of  Italy 
(1775)  ;  Count  Dandolo,  author  of  a  French  work  on  The  New 
Men  (1799) ;  and  the  learned  GlANNONE,  author  of  the  great  anti- 
papal  History  of  the  Kingdom  of  Naples  (1723),  who,  after  more  than 
one  narrow  escape,  was  thrown  in  prison  by  the  king  of  Sardinia, 
and  died  there  (1748)  after  twelve  years'  confinement. 

To  the  merits  of  Algarotti  and  Genovesi  there  are  high  contem- 
porary testimonies.  Algarotti  was  on  friendly  terms  with  Cardinal 
Ganganelli,  who  in  1769  became  Pope  Clement  XIV.  In  1754  the 
latter  writes^  him  :  "  My  dear  Count,  Contrive  matters  so,  in  spite 
of  your  philosophy,  that  I  may  see  you  in  heaven  ;  for  I  should  be 
very  sorry  to  lose  sight  of  you  for  an  eternity.  You  are  one  of  those 
rare  men,  both  for  heart  and  understanding,  whom  we  could  wish  to 
love  even  beyond  the  grave,  when  we  have  once  had  the  advantage 
of  knowing  them.  No  one  has  more  reasons  to  be  convinced  of  the 
spirituality  and  immortality  of  the  soul  than  you  have.  The  years 
glide  away  for  the  philosophers  as  well  as  for  the  ignorant ;  and 
what  is  to  be  the  term  of  them  cannot  but  employ  a  man  who  thinks. 
Own  that  I  can  manage  sermons  so  as  not  to  frighten  away  a  bet 
esprit;  and  that  if  every  one  delivered  as  short  and  as  friendly 
sermons  as  I  do,  you  would  sometimes  go  to  hear  a  preacher.     But 

barely  hearing  will  not  do the  amiable  Algarotti  must  become  as 

good  a  Christian  as  he  is  a  philosopher :  then  should  I  doubly  be  his 
friend  and  servant."^ 

In  an  earlier  letter,  Ganganelli  writes  :  "The  Pope  [Benedict  XIV] 
IS  ever  great  and  entertaining  for  his  bo7is  mots.     He  was  saying  the 

^  Pecchio.  p.  123. 

^  Cp.  McCulIoch.  Literature  of   Political   Economy,  1845,  p.  64;    Blanqui.  Hist,   de 
I  ecoiwmie  politique ,  2e  edit.  ii.  432. 

*  As  to  the  genuineness  of  the  Ganganelli  letters,  originally  much  disputed,  see  Von 
Keumont's  Ganganelli,  Papst  Clemens  XIV;  seine  Briefe  und  seine  Zeit,  1847.  pp.  40-44. 

*  Lett.  Ivi,  Eng.  tr.  1777.  i.  141-42.    No.  Ixxii  in  Von  Reumont's  Ganganelli,  1847. 

VOL.  II  2B 


370 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


other  day  that  he  had  always  loved  you.  and  that  it  would  give  him 
very  great  pleasure  to  see  you  again.     He  speaks  with  admiration  of 

the  king  of  Prussia whose  history  will  make  one  of  the  finest 

monuments  of  the  eighteenth  century.  See  here  and  acknowledge 
my  generosity  !  For  that  prince  makes  the  greatest  jest  possible  of 
the  Court  of  Rome,  and  of  us  monks  and  friars.  Cardinal  Querini 
will  not  be  satisfied  unless  he  have  you  with  him  for  some  time  at 
Brescia.  He  one  day  told  me  that  he  would  invite  you  to  come  and 
dedicate  his  library There  is  no  harm  in  preaching  to  a  philo- 
sopher who  seldom  goes  to  hear  a  sermon,  and  who  will  not  have 
become  a  great  saint  by  residing  at  Potsdam.  You  are  there  three 
men  whose  talents  might  be  of  great  use  to  religion  if  you  would 
change  their  direction— viz.  Yourself,  Mons.  de  Voltaire,  and  M.  de 
Maupertuis.  But  that  is  not  the  ton  of  the  age,  and  you  are  resolved 
to  follow  the  fashion." '  Ganganelli  in  his  correspondence  reveals 
himself  as  an  admirer  of  Newton '  and  somewhat  averse  to  religious 
zeal'  Of  the  papal  government  he  admitted  that  it  was  favourable 
"  neither  to  commerce,  to  agriculture,  nor  to  population,  which 
precisely  constitute  the  essence  of  (public  feUcity,"  while  suavely 
reminding  the  Englishman  of  the  "  inconveniences  "  of  his  own 
government.*  To  the  learned  Muratori,  who  suffered  at  the  hands 
of  the  bigots,  he  and  Pope  Benedict  XIV  gave  their  sympathy.' 

But  Ganganelli's  own  thinking  on  the  issues  between  reason  and 
religion  was  entirely  commonplace.  "Whatever,"  he  wrote,  '*  departs 
from  the  account  given  of  the  Creation  in  the  book  of  Genesis  has 
nothing  to  support  it  but  paradoxes,  or,  at  most,  mere  hypotheses. 
Moses  alone,  as  being  an  inspired  author^  could  perfectly  acquaint  us 
with  the  formation  of  the  world,  and  the  development  of  its  parts. 

Whoever   does  not  see  the  truth  in  what  Moses  relates  was 

never  born  to  know  it."^  It  was  only  in  his  relation  to  the  bigots 
of  his  own  Church  that  his  thinking  was  rationalistic.  "  The  Pope," 
he  writes  to  a  French  marquis,  "  relies  on  Providence  ;  but  God  does 
not  perform  miracles  every  time  he  is  asked  to  do  it.  Besides,  is  he 
to  perform  one  that  Kome  may  enjoy  a  right  of  seignory  over^  the 
Duchy  of  Parma  ? "^  At  his  death  an  Italian  wrote  of  him  that  the 
distinction  he  was  able  to  draw  between  dogmas  or  discipline  and 
ultramontane  opinions  gave  him  the  courage  to  take  many  oppor- 

1  Lett.  xiii.  1749.    Eng.  tr.  i.  44-46 :  No.  cxiv  in  Von  Reumont'a  translation. 

«  I/ett.  vi  and  xiv  ;  Nos.  ix  and  xxii  in  Von  Reunaont. 

'  Lett.  XXX.  p.  83;  No.  xxxiv  in  VonReumont.  T>^„^,.„f 

*  Lett,  xci ;  No  xcii  in  Von  Reumont.         «  Lett,  cxlvi ;  No.  xiii  in  Von  Reumont. 

6  Lett.  Ixxxii.  1753  or  1754  ;  No.  Ixi  in  Von  Reumont.  „_x;„„   „„^  onnAnrq  to  be 

7  Lett,  cxxiv,  1769.    This  letter  is  not  in  Von  Reumont'a  collection,  and  appears  to  oe 
regarded  by  him  as  spurious— or  unduly  indiscreet. 


ITALY 


371 


tunities  of  promoting  the  peace  of  the  State."  His  tolerance  is 
sufficiently  exhibited  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Algarotti :  "  I  hope  that 
you  will  preach  to  me  some  of  these  days,  so  that  each  may  have 
his  turn."'  Freet bought  had  achieved  something  when  a  Roman 
Cardinal,  a  predestinate  Pope,  could  so  write  to  an  avowed  free- 
thinker. ^Concerning  Galiani  we  have  the  warm  panegyric  of 
Grimm,  ''li  I  have  any  vanity  with  which  to  reproach  myself." 
he  writes.  "  it  is  that  which  I  derive  in  spite  of  myself  from  the 
fact  of  the  conformity  of  my  ideas  with  those  of  the  two  rarest  men 
whom  I  have  the  happiness  to  know,  Galiani  and  Denis  Diderot."' 
Grimm  held  Galiani  to  be  of  all  men  the  best  qualified  to  write 
a  true  ecclesiastical  history.  But  the  history  that  would  have 
satisfied  him  and  Grimm  was  not  to  be  published  in  that  age. 

Italy,  however,  had  done  her  full  share,  considering  her  heritage 
of  burdens  and  hindrances,  in  the  intellectual  work  of  the  century  ; 
and  in  the  names  of  Galvani  and  Volta  stands  the  record  of  one 
more  of  her  great  contributions  to  human  enlightenment.     Under 
Duke  Leopold  II  of  Tuscany  the  papacy  was  so  far  defied  that  books 
put   on    the  Lidex  were  produced  for  him  under   the   imprint  of 
London;^  and  the  papacy  itself  at  length  gave  way  to  the  spirit  of 
reform,  Clement  XIV  consenting  among  other  things  to  abolish  the 
Order  of  Jesuits  (1773),  after  his  predecessor  had  died  of  grief  over 
his  proved  impotence  to  resist  the   secular   policy  of   the   States 
around  him.*     In  Tuscany,  indeed,  the  reaction  against  the  French 
Kevolution  was  instant  and  severe.     Leopold  succeeded  his  brother 
Joseph  as  emperor  of  Austria  in  1790,  but  died  in  1792  ;  and  in 
his  realm,  as  was  the  case  in  Denmark  and  in  Spain  in  the  same 
century,  the  reforms   imposed   from  above  by  a  liberal  sovereign 
were  found   to   have   left   much   traditionahsm   untouched.     After 
1792.  Ferdinando  III  suspended  some  of  his  father's  most  liberal 
edicts,  amid  the  applause  of  the  reactionaries ;  and  in  1799,  after 
the  first  short  stay  of  the  revolutionary  French  army,  out  of  its 
one  million  inhabitants  no  fewer  than  22,000  were  prosecuted  for 
"French   opinions."^     Certainly  some  of  the  "French  opinions" 
were  wild  enough  ;  for  instance,  the  practice  among  ladies  of  dressing 
alia  ghigliottina,  with  a  red  ribbon  round  the  neck,  a  usage  borrowed 
about  1795  from  France.^    As  Quinet  sums  up,  the  revolution  was 
too  strong  a  medicine  for  the  Italy  of  that  age.     The  young  abbate 


I  Lett.  Ixxxiii.  1754;  No.  Ixxiii  in  Von  Reumont.  2  corr.  Litt.  as  cited,  vii,  104. 

Z  Zeller.  p.  473.  4  Zeller,  pp.  478-79. 

»  Juhen  Luchaire.  Essai  sur  I'evolution  intellectuelle  de  I'ltaUe  de  1815  d  1830, 1906,  p.  3. 
irv^  Parini  wrote  a  reproving  Ode  on  the  subject.    (Henri  Hauvette,  LitUrature  Italienne, 
1906.  p.  371.)    He  was  one  of  those  disillusioned  by  the  course  of  the  Revolution.    (Id.  p.  375.) 


372  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

Monti,  the  chief  poet  of  the  time,  was  a  freethinker,  but  he  alter- 
nated his  strokes  for  freedom  with  unworthy  comphances.  Such 
was  the  dawn  of  the  new  Italian  day  that  has  smce  slowly  but 
steadily  broadened,  albeit  under  many  a  cloud. 

§  5.  Spain  and  Portugal 
1    For  the  rest  of  Europe  during  the  eighteenth  century,  we  have 
to  note  only  traces  of  receptive  thought.     Spain   under   Bourbon 
rule,  as  already  noted,  experienced  an  administrative  renascence. 
Such  men  as  Count  Aeanda  (1718-99)  and  Aszo  y  del  Eio  U742 
1814)  wrought  to  cut  the  claws  of  the  Inquisition  and  to  put  down 
the  Jesuits ;  but  not  yet,  after  the  long  work  of  destruction  accom- 
plished by  the  Church  in  the  past,  could  Spain  produce  a  fresh 
literature  of  any  far-reaching  power.     When  Aranda  was  about  to 
be  appointed  in  1766,  his  friends  the  French  Encyclopedistes  prema- 
turely proclaimed  their  exultation  in  the  reforms  he  was  to  accom- 
plish •  and  he  sadly  protested  that  they  had  thereby  limited  his 
possibilities."    Nonetheless  he  wrought  much,  the   power   of    the 
Inquisition   in    Spain   being   already   on   the   wane.      Dr.    Joaquin 
Villanueva  one  of  the  ecclesiastical  statesmen  who  took  part  in  its 
suppression  by  the  Cortes  at  Cadiz  in  1813,  tells  how,  in  his  youth, 
under  the  reign  of  Charles  III.  it  was  a  current  saying  among  the 
students  at  college  that  while  the  clever  ones  could  rise  to  important 
posts  in  the  Church,  or  in  the  law,  the  blockheads  would  be  sure  to 
find  places  in  the  Inquisition.'     It  was  of  course  still  powerful  for 
social  terrorism  and  minor  persecution  ■  but  its  power  of  taking  life 
was  rapidly  dwindling.     Between  1746  and  1759  it  had  burned  only 
ten  persons ;  from  1759  until  1781  it  burned  only  four ;  thereafter 
none,'  the  last  case  having  provoked  protests  which  testified  to  the 
moral  change  wrought  in  Europe  by  a  generation  of  freethought. 

In  Spain  too,  as  elsewhere,  freethought  had  made  way  among 
the  upper  classes  ;  and  in  1773  we  find  the  Duke  d'Alba  (formerly 
Huescar),  ex-ambassador  of  Spain  to  France,  subscribing  eighty 
louis  for  a  statue  to  Voltaire.  "  Condemned  to  cultivate  my  reason 
in  secret,"  he  wrote  to  D'Alembert,  "  I  see  this  opportunity  to  give 
a  public  testimony  of  my  gratitude  to  and  admiration  for  the  great 
man  who  first  showed  me  the  way." 

J  CO  "e!  Mem^frs"?/"^  BourTxm  Kings  of  Spain,  ed.  WIS.  iv,  403. 

»  Villanueva.  fi-Ja  S"«™"'''.;£?S?i?°'Thtla9t  victim  seems  to  have  been  a  woman 
.cou?ero\";iicl*J;aT-'He/-^^;cuW^^  exeo.tion.     See  the  MaroU- 

kanische  Briefe,  1785.  p.  36 :  and  Buckle's  note  272 

5  Letter  of  DAlembert  to  Voltaire,  13  mai,  177d. 


SPAIN  AND  POETUGAL 


373 


2.  Still  all  freethinking  in  Spain  ran  immense  risks,  even  under 
Charles  III.     The  Spanish  admiral  Solano  was  denounced  by  his 
almoner   to   the   Inquisition   for   having  read  Kaynal,  and  had  to 
demand  pardon  on  his  knees  of  the  Inquisition  and  God.'     Aranda 
himself   was   from   first   to   last   four  times   arraigned   before   the 
Inquisition,'  escaping  only  by  his  prestige  and  power.     So  eminent 
a  personage  as  P.  A.  J.  Olavid^s,  known  in  France  as  the  Count  of 
Piles  (1726-1803),  could  not  thus  escape.     He  had  been  appointed 
by  Charles  III  prefect  of  Seville,  and  had  carried  out  for  the  king 
the  great  work  of  colonizing  the  Sierra  Morena,'  of  which  region  he 
was  governor.     At  the  height  of  his  career,  in  1776,  he  was  arrested 
and  imprisoned,   "as  suspected  of  professing   impious  sentiments, 
particularly  those  of  Voltaire  and  Eousseau,  with   whom  he  had 
carried    on   a   very   intimate    correspondence."      He    had    spoken 
unwarily  to  inhabitants  of    the  new  towns  under  his  jurisdiction 
concerning  the  exterior  worship  of  deity  in  Spain,  the  worship  of 
images,  the  fast  days,  the  cessation  of   work  on    holy   days,  the 
offerings   at   mass,  and  all  the  rest   of   the  apparatus  of  popular 
Catholicism.'     Olavid^s  prudently  confessed  his  error,  declaring  that 
he  had  "never  lost  his  inner  faith."     After  two  years'  detention  he 
was  forced  to  make  his  penance  at  a  lesser  aicto  da  fe  in  presence 
of  sixty  persons   of  distinction,  many  of  whom  were  suspected  of 
holding  similar  opinions,  and  were  thus  grimly  warned  to  keep  their 
counsel.     During  four  hours  the  reading  of  his  process  went  on,  and 
then  came  the  sentence.     He  was  condemned  to  pass  eight  years 
in  a  convent ;  to  be  banished  forever  from  Madrid,  Seville,  Cordova, 
and  the  new  towns  of  the  Sierra  Morena,  and  to  lose  all  his  property  ; 
he   was   pronounced   incapable   henceforth    of   holding   any   public 
employment  or  title  of  honour;  and  he  was  forbidden  to  mount  a  horse, 
to  wear  any  ornament  of  gold,  silver,  pearls,  diamonds,  or  other 
precious  stones,  or  clothing  of  silk  or  fine  linen.     On  hearing  his 
sentence  he  fainted.     Afterwards,  on  his  knees,  he  received  absolution. 
Escaping  some  time  afterwards  from  his  convent,  he  reached  France. 
After  some  years  more,  he  cynically  produced  a  work  entitled  The 
Gospel  Triumphajit,  or  the  Philosopher  Converted,  which  availed  to 
procure  a  repeal  of  his  sentence ;  and  he  returned  into  favour.^     In 
his  youth  he  "had  not  the  talent  to  play  the  hypocrite."     In  the 
end  he  mastered  the  art  as  few  had  done. 

3.  Another  grandee,  Don  Christophe  Ximenez  de  Gongora,  Duke 
of   Almodobar,   published   a   free    and    expurgated    translation   of 


'  Grimm.  Corr.  Litt.  x,  393. 
*  Llorente,  ii,  544. 


2  Llorente.  ii.  534. 


3  As  to  which  see  Buckle,  p.  607. 
5  Id.  ii.  544-47. 


374  EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 

Eaynal's  History  of  the  Indies  under  another  title  •/  and  though  he 
put  upon  the  book  only  an  anagram  of  his  name,  he  presented  copies 
to  the  king.  The  inquisitors,  learning  as  much,  denounced  him  as 
"  suspected  of  having  embraced  the  systems  of  unbelievmg  philo- 
sophers"; but  this  time  the  prosecution  broke  down  for  lack  of 
evidence.'  A  similar  escape  was  made  by  Don  Joseph  Nicholas 
d'Azara,  who  had  been  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  minister  plenipo- 
tentiary of  the  king  at  Eome,  and  ambassador  extraordinary  at  Paris, 
and  was  yet  denounced  at  Saragossa  and  Madrid  as  an  "  unbelieving 
philosopher,"'  Count  Eicla,  minister  of  war  under  Charles  III,  was 
similarly  charged,  and  similarly  escaped  for  lack  of  proofs.* 

4.  In  another  case,  a  freethinking   priest   skilfully  anticipated 
prosecution.     Don    Philip   de    Samaniego,   "priest,    archdeacon   of 
Pampeluna,  chevalier  of  the  order  of  St.  James,  counsellor  of  the 
king  and  secretary-general,  interpreter  of  foreign  languages,"  was 
one  of  those  invited  to  assist  at  the  auto  da  f4  of  Olavid^s.     The 
impression  made  upon  him  was  so  strong  that  he  speedily  prepared 
with  his  own  hand  a  confession  to  the  effect  that  he  had  read  many 
forbidden   books,  such  as  those  of  Voltaire,  Mirabeau,  Eousseau, 
Hobbes,  Spinoza.  Montesquieu.  Bayle,  D'Alembert.  and    Diderot; 
and  that  he  had  been  thus  led  into  skepticism ;  but  that  after  serious 
reflection  he  had  resolved  to  attach  himself  firmly  and  forever  to  the 
Catholic  faith,  and  now  begged  to  be  absolved.     The  sentence  was 
memorable.     He  was  ordered  first  to  confirm  his  confession  by  oath  ; 
then  to  state  how  and  from  whom  he  had  obtained  the  prohibited 
books,  where  they  now  were,  with  what  persons  he  had  talked  on 
these  matters,  what  persons  had  either.refuted  or  adopted  his  views, 
and  which  of  those  persons  had  seemed  to  be  aware  of  such  doctrines 
in  advance  ;  such  a  detailed  statement  being  the  condition  of  his 
absolution.     Samaniego  obeyed,  and  produced  a  long  declaration  in 
which  he  incriminated  nearly  every  enlightened  man  at  the  court, 
naming  Aranda,  the  Duke  of  Almodobar,  Eicla,  and  the  minister 
Florida  Blanca ;  also  General  Eicardos,  Count  of  Truillas,  General 
Massones,  Count  of  Montalvo.  ambassador  at  Paris  and  brother  of 
the  Duke  of  Sotomayor;  and  Counts  Campomanes,  Orreilly,  and 
Lascy.     Proceedings  were  begun  against  one  and  all ;  but  the  under- 
taking was  too  comprehensive,  and  the  proofs  were  avowed  to  be 


1  arimm  is  evidently  in  error  in  his  statement  Worrespondance,  ed  1829-31.  x.  394)  that 
nnA  nf  tlS  maircrievances  against  Olavid^^s  was  his  having  caused  to  be  made  a  Span)sh 
^ranslat  on  oT  uf yna^^^^^  was  never  published  .  No  such  offence  is  mentioned 

by  Llorent^^   The  case  of  Almodobar  had  been  connected  m  French  rumour  with  that  of 

^'^ri'J^rcnto,  ii.  532.  ^  Id.  ii.  531-35.  *  Id.  PP.  547-48. 


SPAIN  AND  POETUGAL 


375 


insufficient.*  What  became  of  Samaniego,  history  saith  not.  A 
namesake  of  his,  Don  Felix-Maria  de  Samaniego,  one  of  the  leading 
men  of  letters  of  the  reign  of  Charles  IV,  was  arraigned  before  the 
Inquisition  of  Logrogno  as  "  suspected  of  having  embraced  the  errors 
of  modern  philosophers  and  read  prohibited  books,"  but  contrived, 
through  his  friendship  with  the  minister  of  justice,  to  arrange  the 
matter  privately.** 

5.  Out  of  a  long  series  of  other  men  of  letters  persecuted  by  the 
Inquisition  for  giving  signs  of  enlightenment,  a  few  cases  are 
preserved  by  its  historian,  Llorente.  Don  Benedict  Bails,  professor 
of  mathematics  at  Madrid  and  author  of  a  school-book  on  the  subject, 
was  proceeded  against  in  his  old  age,  towards  the  end  of  the  reign  of 
Charles  III,  as  suspected  of  "  atheism  and  materialism."  He  was 
ingenuous  enough  to  confess  that  he  had  "had  doubts  on  the 
existence  of  God  and  the  immortality  of  the  soul,"  but  that  after 
serious  reflection  he  was  repentant  and  ready  to  abjure  all  his  errors. 
He  thus  escaped,  after  an  imprisonment.  Don  Louis  Cagnuelo, 
advocate,  was  forced  to  abjure  for  having  written  against  popular 
superstition  and  against  monks  in  his  journal  The  Censor,  and  was 
forbidden  to  write  in  future  on  any  subject  of  religion  or  morals. 
P.  P.  Centeno,  one  of  the  leading  critics  of  the  reigns  of  Charles  III 
and  Charles  IV,  was  an  Augustinian  monk  ;  but  his  profession  did 
not  save  him  from  the  Inquisition  when  he  made  enemies  by  his 
satirical  criticisms,  though  he  was  patronized  by  the  minister  Florida 
Blanca.  To  make  quite  sure,  he  was  accused  at  once  of  atheism 
and  Lutheranism.  He  had  in  fact  preached  against  ceremonialism, 
and  as  censor  he  had  deleted  from  a  catechism  for  the  free  schools 
of  Madrid  an  article  afifirming  the  existence  of  the  Limbo  of  children 
who  had  died  unbaptized.  Despite  a  most  learned  defence,  he  was 
condemned  as  "  violently  suspected  of  heresy  "  and  forced  to  abjure, 
whereafter  he  went  mad  and  in  that  state  died.^ 

6.  Another  savant  of  the  same  period,  Don  Joseph  de  Clavijo  y 
Faxardo,  director  of  the  natural  history  collection  at  Madrid,  was  in 
turn  arraigned  as  having  "  adopted  the  anti-Christian  principles  of 
modern  philosophy."  He  had  been  the  friend  of  Buffon  and  Voltaire 
at  Paris,  had  admirably  translated  Buffon's  Natural  History,  with 
notes,  and  was  naturally  something  of  a  deist  and  materialist. 
Having  the  protection  of  Aranda,  he  escaped  with  a  secret  penance 
and  abjuration.*    Don  Thomas  Iriarte,  chief  of  the  archives  in  the 


;  Llorente.  ii.  549-50.  a  j^.  ij,  472-73.  s  j^^  pp,  435.40. 

,^    «  Id.  ii,  440-42.    Llorente  mentions  that  Clavijo  edited  a  journal  named  Tlw  ThinT<er, 
at  a  time  when  hardly  anyone  was  to  be  found  who  thought,"    A  Frenchman,  liangle 


376 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


ministry  of  foreign  affairs,  was  likewise  indicted  towards  the  end  of 
the  reign  of  Charles  III,  as  "suspected  of  anti-Christian  philo- 
sophy,"  and  escaped  with  similarly  light  punishment/ 

7.  Still  in  the  same  reign,  the  Jesuit  Francisco  de  Ista,  author 
of  an  extremely  popular  satire  against  absurd  preachers,  the  History 
of  the  famous  preacher  Fray  Gerondif,  published  under  the  pseudonym 
of  Don  Francisco  Lobon  de  Salazar— a  kind  of  ecclesiastical  Don 
Quixote— so  infuriated  the  preaching  monks  that  the  Holy  Ofiice 
received  "  an  almost  infinite  number  of  denunciations  of  the  book." 
Ista,  however,  was  a  Jesuit,  and  escaped,  through  the  influence  of 
his  order,  with  a  warning.'     Influence,  indeed,  could  achieve  almost 
anything  in  the  Holy  Ofiice,  whether  for  culprits  or  against  the 
uninculpable.     In    1796,  Don   Kaymond   de   Salas,  a  professor  at 
Salamanca,  was  actually  prosecuted  by  the  Inquisition  of  Madrid 
as  being  suspected  of  having  adopted  the  principles   of  Voltaire, 
Eousseau,  and  other  modern   philosophers,  he  having  read   their 
works.     The  poor  man  proved  that  he  had  done  so  only  in  order  to 
refute  them,  and  produced  the  theses  pubHcly  maintained  at  Sala- 
manca by  his  pupils  as  a  result  of  his  teachings.     The  prosecution 
was  a  pure  work  of  personal  enmity  on  the  part  of  the  Archbishop 
of  Santiago  (formerly  bishop  of   Salamanca)  and  others,  and   Salas 
was  acquitted,  with  the  statement  that  he  was  entitled  to  reparation. 
Again  and  again  did  his  enemies  revive  the  case,  despite  repeated 
acquittals,  he  being  all  the  while  in  durance,  and  at  length  he  had 
to  "  abjure,"  and  was  banished  the  capital.     After  a  time  the  matter 
was  forced  on  the  attention  of  the  Government,  with  the  result  that 
even  Charles  IV  was  asked  by  his  ministers  to  ordain  that  hence- 
forth the  Inquisition  should  not  arrest  anyone  without  prior  intima- 
tion to  the  king.     At  this  stage,  however,  the  intriguing  archbishop 
successfully  intervened,  and  the  ancient  machinery  for  the  stifling 
of  thought  remained  intact  for  the  time.® 

8.  It  is  plain  that  the  combined  power  of  the  Church,  the  orders, 
and  the  Inquisition,  even  under  Charles  III,  had  been  substantially 
unimpaired,  and  rested  on  a  broad  foundation  of  popular  fanaticism 
and  ignorance.  The  Inquisition  attacked  not  merely  freethought 
but  heresy  of  every  kind,  persecuting  Jansenists  and  Molinists  as 
of  old  it  had  persecuted  Lutherans,  only  with  less  power  of  murder. 

having  asserted,  in  his  Voyage  d'Espagne,  that  the  Thinker  was  without  merit  the  his- 
torian comments  that  if  Langle  is  right  in  the  assertion,  it  wiU  be  the  sole  verity  in  his 
book  but  that,  in  view  of  his  errors  on  aU  other  matters,  it  is  probable  that  he  is  wrong 
there  also  ^  Llorente.  p.  449. 

■^  Id.  ii,' 450-51.  The  book  was  prohibited,  but  a  printer  at  Bayonne  reissued  it  with 
an  additional  volume  of  the  tracts  written  for  and  against  it. 

3  Id.  ii.  469-7^2. 


SPAIN  AND  POETUGAL 


377 


That  much  the  Bourbon  kings  and  their  ministers  could  accomplish, 
but  no  more.  The  trouble  was  that  the  enlightened  administration 
of  Charles  III  in  Spain  did  not  build  up  a  valid  popular  education, 
the  sole  security  for  durable  rationalism.  Its  school  policy,  though 
not  without  zeal,  was  undemocratic,  and  so  left  the  priests  in  control 
of  the  mind  of  the  multitude ;  and  throughout  the  reign  the  eccle- 
siastical revenues  had  been  allowed  to  increase  greatly  from  private 
sources.^  Like  Leopold  of  Tuscany,  he  was  in  advance  of  his 
people,  and  imposed  his  reforms  from  above.  When,  accordingly, 
the  weak  and  pious  Charles  IV  succeeded  in  1788,  three  of  the 
anti-clerical  Ministers  of  his  predecessor,  including  Aranda,  were 
put  under  arrest,^  and  clericalism  resumed  full  sway,  to  the  extent 
even  of  vetoing  the  study  of  moral  philosophy  in  the  universities.^ 
Mentally  and  materially  alike,  Spain  relapsed  to  her  former  state 
of  indigence ;  and  the  struggle  for  national  existence  against  Napoleon 
helped  rather  traditionalist  sentiment  than  the  spirit  of  innovation. 

9.  Portugal  in  the  same  period,  despite  the  anti-clerical  policy 
of  the  famous  Marquis  of  Pombal,  made  no  noticeable  intellectual 
progress.      Though    that    powerful    statesman    in    1761    abolished 
slavery  in  the  kingdom,'  he  too  failed  to  see  the  need  for  popular 
education,  while  promoting  that  of  the  upper  classes.^     His  expul- 
sion of  the  Jesuits,  accordingly,  did  but  raise  up  against  him  a  new 
set  of  enemies  in  the  shape  of  the  Jacobeos,  "  the  Blessed,"  a  species 
of  Catholic  Puritan,  who  accused  him  of  impiety.     His  somewhat 
forensic  defence^  leaves   the   impression  that  he  was  in  reality  a 
deist ;  but  though  he  fought  the  fanatics  by  imprisoning  the  Bishop 
of  Coimbra,  their  leader,  and  by  causing  Moli^re's  Tartufe  to  be 
translated  and  performed,  he  does  not  seem  to  have  shown  any 
favour  to  the  deistical  literature  of  which  the  Bishop  had  composed 
a  local  hidex   Expurgatorius.'^      In   Portugal,    as   later  in   Spain, 
accordingly,  a  complete   reaction   set   in   with   the   death    of    the 
enlightened  king.     Dom  Joseph  died  in  1777,  and  Pombal  was  at 
once  disgraced  and  his  enemies  released,  the  pious  Queen  Maria 
and  her  Ministers  subjecting  him  to  persecution  for  some  years.     In 
1783,  the  Queen,  who  became  a  religious  maniac,  and  died  insane,® 
is  found  establishing  new  nunneries,  and  so  adding  to  one  of  the 
main  factors  in  the  impoverishment,  moral  and  financial,  of  Portugal. 


\  Buckle,  p.  618.  2  j^.  p.  gjg. 

*  Carnota.  The  Marquis  of  Pombal,  2nd  ed.  1871,  p.  242. 

«  Id.  p.  240.  6  Id.  pp.  261-62.  7  Id.  p.  262, 


3  Id.  p.  613. 
8  Id,  p.  375. 


378 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


§  6.  Switzerland 
During  the  period  we  have  been  surveying,  up  to  the  French 
Eevolution,  Switzeriand,  which  owed  much  of  new  intellectual  life 
to  the  influx  of  French  Protestants  at  the  revocation  of  the  Edict 
of  Nantes/  exhibited  no  less  than  the  other  European  countries  the 
inability  of  the  traditionary  creed  to  stand  criticism.     Calvinism  by 
its  very  rigour  generated  a  reaction  within  its  own  special  field  ;  and 
the  spirit  of  the  slain  Servetus  triumphed  strangely  over  that  of  his 
slayer.     Genevan  Calvinism,  like  that  of  the  English  Presbyterians, 
was   transmuted   first    into    a    modified    Arminianism,   then    into 
"  Arianism"  or  Socinianism,  then  into  the  Unitarianism  of  modern 
times.     In  the  eighteenth  century  Switzeriand  contributed  to  the 
European  movement  some  names,  of  which  by  far  the  most  famous 
is  Kousseau ;  and  the  potent  presence  of  Voltaire  cannot  have  failed 
to  affect  Swiss  culture.     Before  his  period  of  influence,  indeed,  there 
had  taken  place  not  a  Uttle  silent  evolution  of  a  Unitarian  and 
deistic  kind ;  Socinianism,  as  usual,  leading  the  way.     Among  the 
families  of  Italian  Protestant  refugees  who  helped  to  invigorate  the 
life  of  Switzeriand,  as  French  Protestants  did  later  that  of  Germany, 
were  the  Turrettini,  of  whom  Francesco  came  to  Geneva  in  the  last 
quarter  of  the  sixteenth  century.     One  of  his  sons,  Benedict,  made 
a  professor  at  twenty-four,  became  a  leading  theologian  and  preacher 
of  orthodox  Calvinism,  and  distinguished  himself  as  an  opponent  of 
Arminianism.^     Still  more  distinguished  in  his  day  was  Benedict  s 
son  Frangois  (1623-1687).  also  a  professor,  who  repeated  his  father  s 
services,  political  and  controversial,  to   orthodoxy,    and   combated 
Socinianism,  as  Benedict  had  done  Arminianism.     But  Fran90is's 
son  Jean-Alphonse,  also  a  professor  (whose  Latin  work  on  Christian 
evidences,  translated   into   French   by  a  colleague,  we  have    seen 
adopted  and  adapted  by  the  Catholic  authorities  in  France),  became 
a  virtual  Unitarian^  (1671-1737),  and  as  such  is  still  anathematized 
by  Swiss  Calvinists.     Against  the  deists,  however,  he  was  industrious, 
as  his  grandfather,  a  heretic  to  CathoHcism,  had  been  against  the 
Arminians,  and  his  father  against  the  Socinians.     The  family  evolu- 
tion in  some  degree  typifies  the  theological  process  from  the  sixteenth 
to  the  eighteenth  century  ;    and  the  apologetics  of  Jean-Alphonse 

1  Cp.  P.  Godet.  Hist.  litt.  de  la  Suisse  frauioise  1900.  Turrettini  was  commis- 

^ T.'^^l^.^d?  as'S   PP.  24  (birth-date  wrong).  2<14;  and  the  Avisde  vMiteur  to  tbo 
Traai^^f ia  P-e^a/rfa  Ztgion  Ck  retienne  of  J.  A.  Turretm.  Pans.  1753. 


SWITZEELAND 


379 


testify  to  the  vogue  of  critical  deism  among  the  educated  class  at 
Geneva  in  the  days  of  Voltaire's  nonage.  He  (or  his  translator) 
deals  with  the  "  natural "  objections  to  the  faith,  cites  approvingly 
Locke,  Lardner,  and  Clarke,  and  combats  Woolston,  but  names  no 
other  English  deist.  The  heresy,  therefore,  would  seem  to  be  a 
domestic  development  from  the  roots  noted  by  Viret  nearly  two 
centuries  before.  One  of  Turrettini's  annotators  complacently 
observes^  that  though  deists  talk  of  natural  religion,  none  of  them 
has  ever  written  a  book  in  exposition  of  it,  the  task  being  left  to  the 
Christians.  The  writer  must  have  been  aware,  on  the  one  hand, 
that  any  deist  who  in  those  days  should  openly  expound  natural 
religion  as  against  revealed  would  be  liable  to  execution  for 
blasphemy  in  any  European  country  save  England,  where,  as  it 
happened,  Herbert,  Hobbes,  Blount,  Toland,  Collins,  Shaftesbury, 
and  Tindal  had  all  maintained  the  position,  and  on  the  other  hand 
he  must  have  known  that  the  Ethica  of  Spinoza  was  naturalistic. 
The  false  taunt  merely  goes  to  prove  that  deists  could  maintain 
their  heresy  on  the  Continent  at  that  time  without  the  support  of 
books.  But  soon  after  Turrettini's  time  they  give  literary  indication 
of  their  existence  even  in  Switzerland ;  and  in  1763  we  find  Voltaire 
sending  a  package  of  copies  of  his  treatise  on  Toleration  by  the  hand 
of  "  a  young  M.  Turretin  of  Geneva,"  who  "  is  worthy  to  see  the 
brethren,  though  he  is  the  grandson  of  a  celebrated  priest  of  Baal. 
He  is  reserved,  but  decided,  as  are  most  of  the  Genevese.  Calvin 
begins  in  our  cantons  to  have  no  more  credit  than  the  pope."^  For 
this  fling  there  was  a  good  deal  of  justification.  When  in  1763  the 
Council  of  Geneva  officially  burned  a  pamphlet  reprint  of  the 
Vicaire  Savoyard  from  Eousseau's  Emile  there  was  an  immediate 
public  protest  by  "  two  hundred  persons,  among  whom  there  were 
three  priests";^  and  some  five  weeks   later  "a   hundred   persons 

came  for  the  third  time  to  protest They  say  that  it  is  permissible 

to  every  citizen  to  write  what  he  will  on  religion ;  that  he  should 
not  be  condemned  without  a  hearing ;  and  that  the  rights  of  men 
must  be  respected."  *  All  this  was  not  a  sudden  product  of  the 
freethinking  influence  of  Voltaire  and  Kousseau,  which  had  but 
recently  begun.  An  older  leaven  had  long  been  at  work.  The 
Principes  du  Droit  Naturel  of  J.  J.  Burlamaqui  (1748),  save  for  its 


^  Work  cited,  i,  8,  note. 

2  Lettre  k  Damilaville,  6  d^cembro,  1763.  The  reserved  youth  may  have  been  either 
Jean-Alphonse,  grandson  of  the  Socinian  professor,  who  was  born  in  1735  and  died  child- 
less, or  some  other  member  of  the  numerous  Turrettini  clan. 

3  Voltaire  to  Damilaville,  12  juillet,  1763.    "  II  faut  que  vous  sachiez,"  explains  Voltaire 
"  que  Jean  Jacques  n'a  6t6  condamne  que  parco  qu'on  n'aime  pas  sa  personne," 

^  Voltaire  to  Damilaville,  21  auguste,  1763, 


380 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTUEY 


subsumption  of  deity  as  the  originator  of  all  human  tendencies,  is 
strictly  naturalistic  and  utilitarian  in  its  reasoning,  and  clearly 
exhibits  the  influence  of  Hobbes  and  Mandeville/  Voltaire,  too,  in 
his  correspondence,  is  found  frequently  speaking  with  a  wicked 
chuckle  of  the  Unitarianism  of  the  clergy  of  Geneva,^  a  theme  on 
which  D'Alembert  had  written  openly  in  his  article  Geneve  in  the 
Encyclopedic  in  1756.^  So  early  as  1757,  Voltaire  roundly  affirms 
that  there  are  only  a  few  Calvinists  left :  "  tous  les  honn^tes  gens 
sont  d6istes  par  Christ."  *  And  when  the  younger  Salchi,  professor 
at  Lausanne,  writes  in  1759  that  '*  deism  is  become  the  fashionable 

religion Europe  is  inundated  with  the  works  of  deists ;  and  their 

partisans  have  made  perhaps  more  proselytes  in  the  space  of  eighty 
years  than  were  made  by  the  apostles  and  the  first  Fathers  of  the 
Church,"' he  must  be  held  to  testify  in  some  degree  concerning 
Switzerland.  The  chief  native  service  to  intellectual  progress  thus 
far,  however,  was  rendered  in  the  field  of  the  natural  sciences, 
Swiss  religious  opinion  being  only  passively  liberalized,  mainly  in 
a  Unitarian  direction. 


1  Cp.  i,  2. 16,  56,  58.  65.  68.  70.  71.  73.  94  ;  ii.  290.  etc.  v  ,  ,      .       ,       , 

3  For  instance :  "  Je  me  recommande  contr'eux  [les  prdtresj  a  Dieu  le  p6re,  car  pour 
lefils.  vouB  savez  qu'il  a  aussi  peu  de  credit  que  sa  m6re  4  Geneve"  (Lettre  k  D'Alembert. 

2.5  mars.  1758) Une  republique  ou  ;tout  le  monde  est  ouvertement  socinien.  except6s 

ceux  qui  font  anabaptistes  ou  moraves.     Figurez-vous.  mon  cher  ami,  qu'il  n'y  a  pas 
actuellement  un  Chretien  de  Gendve  &  Berne ;  cela  fait  fr^mir  !  "    (To  the  same.  8  fev.  1776.) 
8  On  this  see  the  correspondence  of  Voltaire  and  D'Alembert.  under  dates  8.  28,  and  29 
Janvier.  1757.  *  Lettre  k  D'Alembert,  27  aoAt,  1757. 

Lettres  sur  le  DHsme,  1759.  p.  6.    Cp.  pp.  84.  94,  103, 105.  412. 


Chapter  XX 
EAELY  FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 


1.  Perhaps  the  most  signal  of  all  the  proofs  of  the  change  wrought 
in  the  opinion  of  the  civilized  world  in  the  eighteenth  century  is  the 
fact  that  at  the  time  of  the  War  of  Independence  the  leading  states- 
men of  the  American  colonies  were  deists.  Such  were  Benjamin 
Franklin,  the  diplomatist  of  the  Eevolution ;  Thomas  Paine,  its 
prophet  and  inspirer;  WASHINGTON,  its  commander ;  and  JEFFERSON, 
its  typical  legislator.  But  for  these  four  men  the  American  Eevolu- 
tion probably  could  not  have  been  accomplished  in  that  age ;  and 
they  thus  represent  in  a  peculiar  degree  the  power  of  new  ideas,  in 
fit  conditions,  to  transform  societies,  at  least  politically.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  fashion  in  which  their  relation  to  the  creeds  of  their 
time  has  been  garbled,  alike  in  American  and  English  histories, 
proves  how  completely  they  were  in  advance  of  the  average  thought 
of  their  day ;  and  also  how  effectively  the  mere  institutional  influence 
of  creeds  can  arrest  a  nation's  mental  development.  It  is  still  one 
of  the  stock  doctrines  of  religious  sociology  in  England  and  America 
that  deism,  miscalled  atheism,  wrought  the  Eeign  of  Terror  in  the 
French  Eevolution ;  when  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  same  deism  was 
at  the  head  of  affairs  in  the  American. 

2.  The  rise  of  rationalism  in  the  colonies  must  be  traced  in  the 
main  to  the  imported  English  literature  of  the  eighteenth  century ; 
for  the  first  Puritan  settlements  had  contained  at  most  only  a 
fraction  of  freethought  ;  and  the  conditions,  so  deadly  for  all 
manner  even  of  devout  heresy,  made  avowed  unbelief  impossible. 
The  superstitions  and  cruelties  of  the  Puritan  clergy,  however,  must 
have  bred  a  silent  reaction,  which  prepared  a  soil  for  the  deism  of 
the  next  age.*  "  The  perusal  of  Shaftesbury  and  Collins,"  writes 
Franklin  with  reference  to  his  early  youth,  "  had  made  me  a  skeptic," 
after  being  "  previously  so  as  to  many  doctrines  of  Christianity. 


M  a 


*  John  Wesley  in  his  Journal,  dating  May,  1737,  speaks  of  having  everywhere  met 
many  more  "converts  to  infidelity"  than  "converts  to  Popery,"  with  apparent  reference 
to  Carolina. 

2  Such  is  the  wording  of  the  passage  in  the  Autobiography  in  the  Edinburgh  edition  of 
1803,  p.  25,  which  follows  the  French  translation  of  the  original  MS.  In  the  edition  of  the 
Autobiography  and  Letters  in  the  Minerva  Library,  edited  by  Mr.  Bettany  (1891,  p.  11), 
which  follows  Mr.  Bigelow's  edition  of  1879,  it  runs :  "  Being  then,  from  reading  Shaftesbury 
and  Collins,  become  a  real  doubter  in  many  points  of  our  religious  doctrine " 

381 


382 


EAKLY  FEEETHOUGHT  IN 


This  was  in  his  seventeenth  or  eighteenth  year,  about  1720,  so  that 
the  importation  of  deism  had  been  prompt.'  Throughout  life  he 
held  to  the  same  opinion,  conforming  sufficiently  to  keep  on  fair 
terms  with  his  neighbours,'*  and  avoiding  anything  like  critical 
propaganda ;  though  on  challenge,  in  the  last  year  of  his  life,  he 
avowed  his  negatively  deistic  position.'* 

3.  Similarly  prudent  was  JEFFERSON,  who,  like  Franklin  and 
Paine,  extolled  the  Gospel  Jesus  and  his  teachings,  but  rejected  the 
notion  of  supernatural  revelation.*  In  a  letter  written  so  late  as 
1822  to  a  Unitarian  correspondent,  while  refusing  to  publish  another 
of  similar  tone,  on  the  score  that  he  was  too  old  for  strife,  he 
declared  that  he  "should  as  soon  undertake  to  bring  the  crazy 
skulls  of  Bedlam  to  sound  understanding  as  to  inculcate  reason  into 
that  of  an  Athanasian.'"  His  experience  of  the  New  England 
clergy  is  expressed  in  allusions  to  Connecticut  as  having  been  '  the 
last  retreat  of  monkish  darkness,  bigotry,  and  abhorrence  of  those 
advances  of  the  mind  which  had  carried  the  other  States  a  century 
ahead  of  them  ";  and  in  congratulations  with  John  Adams  (who  had 
written  that  "  this  would  be  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds  if  there 
were  no  religion  in  it "),  when  "  this  den  of  the  priesthood  is  at  last 
broken  up.*"'  John  Adams,  whose  letters  with  their  "crowd  of 
skepticisms  "  kept  even  Jefferson  from  sleep,'  seems  to  have  figured 
as  a  member  of  a  Congregationalist  church,  while  in  reality  a 
Unitarian.'  Still  more  prudent  was  Washington,  who  seems  to 
have  ranked  habitually  as  a  member  of  the  Episcopal  church; 
but  concerning  whom  Jefferson  relates  that,  when  the  clergy,  having 
noted  his  constant  abstention  from  "any  pubHc  mention  of  the 
Christian  religion,  so  penned  an  address  to  him  on  his  withdrawal 
from  the  Presidency  as  almost  to  force  him  to  some  declaration,  he 
answered  every  part  of  the  address  but  that,  which  he  entirely 
ignored.  It  is  further  noted  that  only  in  his  valedictory  letter  to 
the  governors  of  the  States,  on  resigning  his  commission,^  did  he 
speak  of  the  "benign  influence  of  the  Christian  religion "*— the 
common  tone  of  the  American  deists  of  that  day.     It  is  further 

1  Only  in  1784.  however,  appeared  the  first  anti-Christian  work  published  in  America. 
Eth^nllle^l  mason  the  oZ  Oracle  of  Man.  As  to  its  r''"??\f  ?4^^'' «?/ *  ^"^^  ^ 
Faine  ii  192-93.  '^  Autobiography,  Bettany's  ed.  pp.  56.  65.  U,  77.  etc. 

8  Letter  of  March  9, 1790.    Id.  p.  636. 

*  Cp.  J.  T.  Morse's  Thomas  Jefferson,  pp.  339-40. 

5  MS  cited  by  Dr.  Conway.  I/i/eo/Pain^.  ii.  310-11.  _,  ,     ^,  „„-„„ 

6  MenS^rsSf^ Jefferson.  18^.  iv,  300-p.  The  date  is  P^.  These  a^d  other  p^s^^^^^^^^ 
exhibiting  Jefferson's  deism  are  cited  in  Rayner's  Sketches  of  the  Life,  etc.,  of  Jefferson, 

^'Me^rl\f  Jefferscm,  iv.  331.  »  Dr.  Conway.  Life  of  Paine,  ii,  310. 

»  Srctf?omJeKon%  Journal  under  date  February  1. 1800.  in  the  Memoirs  iv  512. 
Gtouverneur  Morris,  whom  Jefferson  further  cites  as  to  Washington  s  unbelief,  is  not  a 
very  good  witness  ;  but  the  main  fact  cited  is  significant. 


THE  UNITED  STATES 


383 


established  that  Washington  avoided  the  Communion  in  church.^ 
For  the  rest,  the  broad  fact  that  all  mention  of  deity  was  excluded 
from  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  must  be  historically 
taken  to  signify  a  profound  change  in  the  convictions  of  the  leading 
minds  among  the  people  as  compared  with  the  beliefs  of  their 
ancestors.  At  the  same  time,  the  fact  that  they  as  a  rule  dissembled 
their  unbelief  is  a  proof  that,  even  where  legal  penalties  do  not 
■attach  to  an  avowal  of  serious  heresy,  there  inheres  in  the  menace 
of  mere  social  ostracism  a  power  sufiScient  to  coerce  the  outward 
life  of  public  and  professional  men  of  all  grades,  in  a  democratic 
community  where  faith  maintains  and  is  maintained  by  a  compe- 
titive multitude  of  priests.  With  this  force  the  freethought  of  our 
own  age  has  to  reckon,  after  Inquisitions  and  blasphemy  laws  have 
become  obsolete. 

4.  Nothing  in  American  culture-history  more  clearly  proves  the 
last  proposition  than  the  case  of  Thomas  Paine,  the  virtual  founder 
of  modern  democratic  freethought  in  Great  Britain  and  the  States.'^ 
It  does  not  appear  that  Paine  openly  professed  any  heresy  while  he 
lived  in  England,  or  in  America  before  the  French  Eevolution.  Yet 
the  first  sentence  of  his  Age  of  Beason,  of  which  the  first  part  was 
written  shortly  before  his  imprisonment,  under  sentence  of  death 
from  the  Kobespierre  Government,  in  Paris  (1793),  shows  that  he 
had  long  held  pronounced  deistic  opinions.*  They  were  probably 
matured  in  the  States,  where,  as  we  have  seen,  such  views  were  often 
privately  held,  though  there,  as  Franklin  is  said  to  have  jesuitically 
declared  in  his  old  age,  by  way  of  encouraging  immigration : 
Atheism  is  unknown  ;  infidelity  rare  and  secret,  so  that  persons 
may  live  to  a  great  age  in  this  country  without  having  their  piety 
shocked  by  meeting  with  either  an  atheist  or  an  infidel."  Paine  did 
an  unequalled  service  to  the  American  Eevolution  by  his  Common 
Sense  and  his  series  of  pamphlets  headed  The  Crisis  :  there  is,  in 
fact,  little  question  that  but  for  the  intense  stimulus  thus  given  by 
him  at  critical  moments  the  movement  might  have  collapsed  at  an 
early  stage.  Yet  he  seems  to  have  had  no  thought  there  and  then 
of  avowing  his  deism.  It  was  in  part  for  the  express  purpose  of 
resisting  the  ever-strengthening  attack  of  atheism  in  France  on  deism 


T)  l,^^™P*i*e  tbe  testimony  given  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Wilson,  of  Albany,  in  1831,  as  cited  by 
A  Vo^n^®°  *^  ^^^  Discussion  on  the  Authenticity  of  the  Bible  with  O.  Bacheler  (London, 
^r;*  !j  ^'  ''^^''  ^^^^  *^^  replies  on  the  other  side  (pp.  233-34).  Washington's  death-bed 
auitude  was  that  of  a  deist.  See  all  the  available  data  for  his  supposed  orthodoxy  in 
Bparks  s  Ltfe  of  Washington,  1852,  app.  iv. 

So  far  as  is  known.  Paine  was  the  first  writer  to  use  the  expression,  "the  religion  of 
ttumanity."     See  Conway's  Life  of  Faine.  ii,  206.    To  Paine's  influence,  too,  appears  to 
f^J^  '^^  founding  of  the  first  American  Anti-Slavery  Society.     Id.  i,  61-52,  60,  80,  etc. 
'  Cp.  Conway's  Life  of  Faine,  ii,  205-207. 


384 


EAELY  FREETHOUGHT  IN 


THE  UNITED  STATES 


385 


itself  that  he  undertook  to  save  it  by  repudiating  the  Judaeo-Christian 
revelation ;  and  it  is  not  even  certain  that  he  would  have  issued  the 
Age  of  Beason  when  it  did  appear,  had  he  not  supposed  he  was  going 
to  his  death  when  put  under  arrest,  on  which  score  he  left  the 
manuscript  for  publication/ 

5.  Its  immediate  effect  was  much  greater  in  Britain,  where  his 
Rights  of  Man  had  already  won  him  a  vast  popularity  in  the  teeth 
of  the  most  furious  reaction,  than  in  America.  There,  to  his  profound 
chagrin,  he  found  that  his  honest  utterance  of  his  heresy  brought  on 
him  hatred,  calumny,  ostracism,  and  even  personal  and  political 
molestation.  In  1797  he  had  founded  in  Paris  the  little  "  Church  of 
Theo-philanthropy,"  beginning  his  inaugural  discourse  with  the 
words:  "Religion  has  two  principal  enemies,  Fanaticism  and 
Infidelity,  or  that  which  is  called  atheism.  The  first  requires  to  be 
combated  by  reason  and  morality  ;  the  other  by  natural  philosophy."'^ 
These  were  his  settled  convictions ;  and  he  lived  to  find  himself 
shunned  and  viHfied,  in  the  name  of  religion,  in  the  country  whose 
freedom  he  had  so  puissantly  wrought  to  win.*  The  Quakers,  his 
father's  sect,  refused  him  a  burial-place.  He  has  had  sympathy  and 
fair  play,  as  a  rule,  only  from  the  atheists  whom  he  distrusted  and 
opposed,  or  from  thinkers  who  no  longer  hold  by  deism.  There  is 
reason  to  think  that  in  his  last  years  the  deistic  optimism  which 
survived  the  deep  disappointments  of  the  French  Revolution  began 
to  give  way  before  deeper  reflection  on  the  cosmic  problem,*  if  not 
before  the  treatment  he  had  undergone  at  the  hands  of  Unitarians 
and  Trinitarians  alike.  The  Butlerian  argument,  that  Nature  is  as 
unsatisfactory  as  revelation,  had  been  pressed  upon  him  by  Bishop 
Watson  in  a  reply  to  the  Age  of  Beason;  and  though,  like  most 
deists  of  his  age,  he  regarded  it  as  a  vain  defence  of  orthodoxy,  he 
was  not  the  man  to  remain  long  blind  to  its  force  against  deistic 
assumptions.     Like  Franklin,  he  had  energetically  absorbed  and  given 

1  A  letter  of  Franklin  to  someone  who  had  shown  him  a  freethinking  manuscript, 
advising  against  its  publication  (Bettany's  ed.  p.  630),  has  been  conjecturally  connected 
with  Paine,  but  was  clearly  not  addressed  to  him.  Franklin  died  in  1790,  and  Paine  was 
out  of  America  from  1787  onwards.  But  the  letter  is  in  every  way  inapplicable  to  the  Age 
of  Beason.  The  remark:  "  If  men  are  so  wicked  with  religion,  what  would  they  be  with. 
out  it?  "  could  not  be  made  to  a  devout  deist  like  Paine, 

^  Conway,  Life  of  Paine,  ii,  254-55.  ^ 

8  See  Dr.  Conway's  chapter.  "The  American  Inquisition."  vol.  ii,  ch.  xvi ;  also  pp.  361-62, 
374,  379.  The  falsity  of  the  ordinary  charges  against  Paine's  character  is  finally  made 
clear  by  Dr.  Conway,  ch.  xix,  and  pp.  371. 383.  419, 423.  Cp.  the  author's  pamphlet,  Thovuis 
Paine :  An  Investigation  (Bonner).  The  chronically  revived  story  of  his  death-bed  remorse 
for  his  writings— long  ago  exposed  (Conway,  ii,  420)— is  definitively  discredited  in  the  latest 
reiteration.  That  occurs  in  the  Life  and  Letters  of  Dr.  R.  H.  Thomas  (1905),  the  mother 
of  whose  stepmother  was  the  Mrs.  Mary  Hinsdale,  n6e  Roscoe,  on  whose  testimony  the 
legend  rests.  Dr.  Thomas,  a  Quaker  of  the  highest  character,  accepted  the  story  without 
Question,  but  incidentally  tells  of  the  old  lady  (p.  13)  that  "  her  wandering  fancies  had  all 
the  charm  of  a  present  fairy-tale  to  us."  No  further  proof  is  needed,  after  the  previous 
exposure,  of  the  worthlessness  of  the  testimony  in  question.  *  Conway,  ii.  371. 


\ 


out  the  new  ideals  of  physical  science ;  his  originality  in  the  inven- 
tion of  a  tubular  iron  bridge,  and  in  the  application  of  steam  to 
navigation,^  being  nearly  as  notable  as  that  of  Franklin's  great 
discovery  concerning  electricity.  Had  the  two  men  drawn  their 
philosophy  from  the  France  of  the  latter  part  of  the  century  instead 
of  the  England  of  the  first,  they  had  doubtless  gone  deeper.  As  it 
was,  temperamental  optimism  had  kept  both  satisfied  with  the 
transitional  formula  ;  and  in  the  France  of  before  and  after  the 
Revolution  they  lived  pre-occupied  with  politics. 

6.  The  habit  of  reticence  or  dissimulation  among  American  public 
men  was  only  too  surely  confirmed  by  the  treatment  meted  out  to 
Paine.  Few  stood  by  him  ;  and  the  vigorous  deistic  movement  set 
up  in  his  latter  years  by  Elihu  Palmer  soon  succumbed  to  the  con- 
ditions,^ though  Palmer's  book.  The  Principles  of  Nature  (1802,  rep. 
by  Richard  Carlile,  1819),  is  a  powerful  attack  on  the  Judaic  and 
Christian  systems  all  along  the  line.  George  Houston,  leaving 
England  after  two  years'  imprisonment  for  his  translation  of 
d'Holbach's  Ecce  Homo,  went  to  New  York,  where  he  edited  the 
Minerva  (1822),  reprinted  his  book,  and  started  a  freethought 
journal,  The  Correspondence.  That,  however,  lasted  only  eighteen 
months.  All  the  while,  such  statesmen  as  Madison  and  Monroe, 
the  latter  Paine's  personal  friend,  seem  to  have  been  of  his  way  of 
thinking,^  though  the  evidence  is  scanty.  Thus  it  came  about 
that,  save  for  the  liberal  movement  of  the  Hicksite  Quakers,*  the 
American  deism  of  Paine's  day  was  decorously  transformed  into  the 
later  Unitarianism,  the  extremely  rapid  advance  of  which  in  the 
next  generation  is  the  best  proof  of  the  commonness  of  private 
unbelief.  The  influence  of  Priestley,  who,  persecuted  at  home, 
went  to  end  his  days  in  the  States,  had  doubtless  much  to  do  with 
the  Unitarian  development  there,  as  in  England ;  but  it  seems 
certain  that  the  whole  deistic  movement,  including  the  work  of 
Paine  and  Palmer,  had  tended  to  move  out  of  orthodoxy  many  of 
those  who  now,  recoiling  from  the  fierce  hostihty  directed  against 
the  outspoken  freethinkers,  sought  a  more  rational  form  of  creed 
than  that  of  the  orthodox  churches.  The  deistic  tradition  in  a 
manner  centred  in  the  name  of  Jefferson,  and  the  known  deism  of 
that  leader  would  do  much  to  make  fashionable  a  heresy  which 
combined  his  views  with  a  decorous  attitude  to  the  Sacred  Books. 


See  the  details  in  Conway's  Life,  ii,  280-81,  and  note.    He  had  also  a  scheme  for  a 
gunpowder  motor  (id.  and  i,  240),  and  various  other  remarkable  plana. 

^  Conway,  ii  362-71.  8  Testimonies  quoted  by  R.  D.  Owen,  as  cited,  pp.  231-32. 

*  Conway,  ii,  422. 


VOL.  II 


2C 


Chapter  XXI 
FBEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


The  Reaction 

All  over  the  civilized  world,  as  we  have  seen,  the  terrors  of  the 
French  Revolution  evoked  an  intellectual  no  less  than  a  political 
reaction,  its  stress  being  most  apparent   and   most   destructive  in 
those   countries  in  which   there  had  been  previously  the   largest 
measure  of  liberty.     Nowhere  was  it  more  intense  or  more  disastrous 
than  in  England.     In  countries  such  as  Denmark  and   Spain,  only 
lately  and  superficially  liberalized,  there  was  no  great  progress  to 
undo  :  in  England,  though  hberty  was  never  left  without  an  indomit- 
able witness,  there  was  a  violent  reversal  of  general  movement,  not 
to  be  wholly  rectified  in  half  a  century.     Joined  in  a  new  activity 
with  the  civil  power  for  the  suppression  of  all  innovating  thought, 
the  Church  rapidly  attained  to  an  influence  it  had  not  possessed 
since  the  days  of  Sacheverel  and  a  degree  of  wealth  it  had  not  before 
reached  since  the  Reformation.     The  wealth  of  the  upper  class  was 
at  its  disposal  to  an  unheard-of  extent,  there  being  apparently  no 
better  way  of  fighting  the  new  danger  of  democracy ;  and  dissent 
joined  hands  with  the  estabUshment  to  promote  orthodoxy. 

The  average  tone  in  England  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  century 
may  be  gathered  from  the  language  held  by  a  man  so  enlightened, 
comparatively  speaking,  as  Sydney  Smith,  wit,  humourist,  Whig,  and 
clergyman.  In  1801  we  find  him,  in  a  preface  never  reprinted, 
prescribing  various  measures  of  religious  strategy  in  addition  "  to  the 
just,  necessary,  and  innumerable  invectives  which  have  been  levelled 
against  Rousseau,  Voltaire,  D'Alembert,  and  the  whole  pande- 
monium of  those  martyrs  to  atheism,  who  toiled  with  such 
laborious  mahce,  and  suffered  odium  with  such  inflexible  profli- 
gacy, for  the  wretchedness  and  despair  of  their  fellow  creatures." 
That  this  was  not  jesting  may  be  gathered  from  his  daughter's 
account  of  his  indignation  when  a  publisher  sent  him  "  a  work  of 
irreligious    tendency,"    and    when    Jeffrey    admitted    "irreligious 

1  Memoir  of  Sydney  Smith,  by  his  daughter.  Lady  Holland,  ed.  1869.  p.  49.    Lady  Holland 
remarks  on  the  same  page  that  her  father's  religion  had  in  it    nothing  intolerant. 

386 


THE  REACTION 


387 


opinions  "  to  the  Edinburgh  Beview.  To  the  former  he  writes  that 
"  every  principle  of  suspicion  and  fear  would  be  excited  in  me  by  a 
man  who  professed  himself  an  infidel";  and  to  Jeffrey:  "Do  you 
mean  to  take  care  that  the  Review  shall  not  profess  infidel  principles  ? 
Unless  this  is  the  case  I  must  absolutely  give  up  all  connection  with 
it."^  All  the  while  any  semblance  of  "  infidelity  "  in  any  article  in 
the  Review  must  have  been  of  the  most  cautious  kind. 

In  the  Catholic  countries,  naturally,  the  reaction  was  no  less 
violent.  In  Italy,  as  we  saw,  it  began  in  Tuscany  almost  at  once. 
The  rule  of  Napoleon,  it  is  true,  secured  complete  freedom  of  the 
Press  as  regarded  translation  of  freethinking  books,  an  entire  liberty 
of  conscience  in  religious  matters,  and  a  sharp  repression  of 
clericalism,  the  latter  policy  going  to  the  length  of  expelling  all  the 
religious  orders  and  confiscating  their  property.'^  All  this  counted 
for  change  ;  but  the  Napoleonic  rule  all  the  while  choked  one  of  the 
springs  of  vital  thought — to  wit,  the  spirit  of  political  liberty ;  and 
in  1814-15  the  clerical  system  returned  in  full  force,  as  it  did  all 
over  Italy.  Everywhere  freethought  was  banned.  All  criticism  of 
Catholicism  was  a  penal  offence ;  and  in  the  kingdom  of  Naples 
alone,  in  1825,  there  were  27,612  priests,  8,455  monks,  8,185  nuns, 
20  archbishops,  and  73  bishops,  though  in  1807  the  French  influence 
had  caused  the  dissolution  of  some  250  convents.^  At  Florence  the 
Censure  forbade,  in  1817,  the  issue  of  a  new  edition  of  the  translated 
work  of  Cabanis  on  Les  Rapports  du  physiqtce  et  du  moral;  and 
Mascagni,  the  physiologist,  was  invited  to  delete  from  his  work  a 
definition  of  man  in  which  no  notice  was  taken  of  the  soul.^  It  was 
even  proclaimed  that  the  w^orks  of  Voltaire  and  Rousseau  were  not  to 
be  read  in  the  public  libraries  without  ecclesiastical  permission ;  but 
this  veto  was  not  seriously  treated.^  All  native  energy,  however,  was 
either  cowed  or  cajoled  into  passivity.  If,  accordingly,  the  mind  of 
Italy  was  to  survive,  it  must  be  by  the  assimilation  of  the  culture  of 
freer  States  ;  and  this  culture,  reinforced  by  the  writings  of  Leopardi, 
generated  a  new  intellectual  life,  which  w^as  a  main  factor  in  the 
ultimate  achievement  of  Italian  liberation  from  Austrian  rule. 

Spain,  under  Charles  IV,  became  so  thoroughly  re-clericalized  at 
the  very  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  that  no  more  leeway  seemed 
possible;  but  even  in  Spain,  early  in  the  nineteenth  century,  the 
government  found  means  to  retrogress  yet  further,  and  the  minister 
Caballero  sent  an  order  to  the  universities  forbidding  the  study  of 

J  Memoir  of  Sydney  Smith,  p.  142. 

*  Julien  Luchaire.  Essai  sur  I'^volution  intellecttielle  de  Vltalie,  1906,  pp.  5-7. 
8  Dr.  Ramage.  Nooks  and  Byeways  of  Italy,  1868,  pp.  76, 105-13.    Ramage  describes  the 
helplessness  of  the  better  minds  before  1830.  ^  Luchaire.  pp.  35.  3S.  ^  Id.  p.  30. 


388     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

moral   philosophy.      The   king,  he  justly  declared,  did  not  want 
philosophers,  but  good  and  obedient  subjects.* 

In  France,  where  the  downfall  of  Napoleon  meant  the  restoration 
of  the  monarchy,  the  intellectual  reaction  was  really  less  powerful 
than  in  England.     The  new  spirit  had  been  too  widely  and  continu- 
ously at  work,  from  Voltaire  onwards,  to  be  politically  expelled  ;  and 
the  revolutions  of  1830  and  1848  gave  the  proof  that  even  on  the 
political  side  the  old  spirit  was  incapable  of  permanent  recovery.     In 
Germany,  where  freethinking  was  associated  not  with  the  beaten 
cause  of   the  Revolution   but  in  large  measure  with  the  national 
movement  for  liberation  from  the  tyranny  of  Napoleon,^  the  reUgious 
reaction  was  substantially  emotional  and  unintellectual,  though  it 
had   intellectual    representatives,   notably   Schleiermacher.      Apart 
from  his  culture-movement,  the  revival  consisted  mainly  in  a  new 
Pietism,  partly  orthodox,  partly  mystical  ;^  and  on  those  lines  it  ran 
later  to  the  grossest  excesses.     But  among  the  educated  classes  of 
Germany  there  was  the  minimum  of  arrest,  because  there  the  intel- 
lectual life  was  least  directly  associated  with  the  political,  and  the 
ecclesiastical  life  relatively  the  least  organized.     The  very  separate- 
ness  of  the  German   States,  then  and  later  so  often   deplored  by 
German  patriots,  was  really  a  condition  of    relative   security  for 
freedom  of  thought  and  research  ;  and  the  resulting  multiplicity  of 
universities  meant  a  variety  of  intellectual  effort  not  then  paralleled 
in  any  other  country.'     What  may  be  ranked  as  the  most  important 
effect  of  the  reaction  in  Germany—the  turning  of  Kant,  Fichte,  and 
Hegel  in  succession  to  the  task  of  reconciling  rational  philosophy 
with  religion  in  the  interests  of  social  order— was  in  itself  a  rational- 
istic process  as  compared  with  the  attitude  of  orthodoxy  in  other 
lands.     German  scholarship,  led  by  the  re-organized  university  of 
Berlin,  was  in  fact  one  of  the  most  progressive  intellectual  forces  in 
Europe  during  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century ;  and  only 
its    comparative    isolation,    its    confinement    to  a    cultured   class, 
prevented  it  from  affecting  popular  thought  as  widely  as  deism  had 
done  in  the  preceding  century.     Even  in  the  countries  in  which 
popular  and  university  culture  were  less  sharply  divided,  the  German 
influence  was  held  at  bay  like  others. 


1  Doblado  (Blanco  White).  Letters  from  Spain,  1822.  p.  3^.  „„„^„„„f  ^f  flfbfiiRm 

a  Thus  the  traveller  and  belletrist  J.  G.  Seume,  a  zealous  deist  and  opponent  of  atheism. 
and  a  no  less  zealous  patriot,  penned  many  fiercely  freethinking  maxims  as  :AJ1  ere 
were  the  most  so-called  positive  religJons.  there  was  always  the  least  morality  ,  Or.p^^^» 
and  the  Bible  are  the  best  supports  of  despotism  ";  Heaven  has  lost  us  the  earth  The 
best  apostles  of  despotism  and  slavery  are  the  mystics."  Apokryphen,  1806  1B07.  in 
Sammtliche  Werke,  1839.  iv.  157. 173. 177,  219. 

3  C.  H.  Cottreil.  Religious  Movements  of  Germany,  1849,  p.  12  sq. 

*  Cp.  the  author's  Evolution  of  States,  pp.  138-39. 


THE  FOECES  OF  EENASCENCE 


389 


But  in  time  the  spirit  of  progress  regained  strength,  the  most 
decisive  form  of  recovery  being  the  new  development  of  the  struggle 
for  political  liberty  from  about  1830  onwards.  In  England  the 
advance  thenceforward  was  to  be  broadly  continuous  on  the  political 
side.  On  the  Continent  it  culminated  for  the  time  in  the  explosions 
of  1848,  which  were  followed  in  the  Germanic  world  by  another 
political  reaction,  in  which  freethought  suffered  ;  and  in  France, 
after  a  few  years,  by  the  Second  Empire,  in  which  clericalism  was 
again  fostered.     But  these  checks  have  proved  impermanent. 

The  Forces  of  Eenascence 

As  with  the  cause  of  democracy,  so  with  the  cause  of  rationalism, 
the  forward  movement  grew  only  the  deeper  and  more  powerful 
through  the  check ;  and  the  nineteenth  century  closed  on  a  record  of 
freethinking  progress  which  may  be  said  to  outbulk  that  of  all  the 
previous  centuries  of  the  modern  era  together.  So  great  was  the 
activity  of  the  century  in  point  of  mere  quantity  that  it  is  impossible, 
within  the  scheme  of  a  "  Short  History,"  to  treat  it  on  even  such  a 
reduced  scale  of  narrative  as  has  been  applied  to  the  past.  A 
detailed  history  on  national  lines  from  the  French  Eevolution 
onwards  would  mean  another  book  as  large  as  the  present.  On 
however  large  a  scale  it  might  be  written,  further,  it  would  involve 
a  recognition  of  international  influences  such  as  had  never  before 
been  evolved,  save  when  on  a  much  smaller  scale  the  educated  world 
all  round  read  and  wrote  Latin.  Since  Goethe,  the  international 
aspect  of  culture  upon  which  he  laid  stress  has  become  ever  more 
apparent ;  and  scientific  and  philosophical  thought,  in  particular,  are 
world-wide  in  their  scope  and  bearing.  It  must  here  sufiQce,  there- 
fore, to  take  a  series  of  broad  and  general  views  of  the  past  century's 
work,  leaving  adequate  critical  and  narrative  treatment  for  separate 
undertakings.^  The  most  helpful  method  seems  to  be  that  of  a  con- 
spectus (1)  of  the  main  movements  and  forces  that  during  the 
century  affected  in  varying  degrees  the  thought  of  the  civilized 
world,  and  (2)  of  the  main  advances  made  and  the  point  reached  in 
the  culture  of  the  nations,  separately  considered.    At  the  same  time, 


1  When  I  thus  planned  the  treatment  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  the  first  edition  of 
this  book,  it  was  known  to  me  that  Mr.  Alfred  W.  Benn  had  in  hand  a  work  on  The  History 
of  English  Bationalism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century;  and  the  knowledge  made  me  the  more 
resolved  to  keep  my  own  record  condensed.  Duly  published  in  1906  (Longmans,  2  vols.), 
Mr.  Benn's  book  amply  fulfilled  expectations ;  and  to  it  I  would  refer  every  reader  who 
seeks  a  fuller  survey  than  the  present.  Its  freshness  of  thought  and  vigour  of  execution 
will  more  than  repay  him.  Even  Mr.  Benn's  copious  work,  however— devoting  as  it  does 
a  large  amount  of  space  to  a  preliminary  survey  of  the  eighteenth  century— leaves  room 
for  various  English  monographs  on  the  nineteenth,  to  say  nothing  of  the  culture  history 
01  a  dozen  other  countries. 


390    FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


the  forces  of  rationalism  may  be  discriminated  into  Particular  and 
General.     We  may  then  roughly  represent  the  lines  of  movement,  in 
non-chronological  order,  as  follows  : — 
1.— Forces  of  criticism  and  corrective  thcmght  hearing  expressly  on  religious  beliefs. 

1.  In  Great  Britain  and  America,  tlie  new  movements  of  popular  freethought 
begun  by  Paine,  and  lasting  continuously  to  the  present  day. 

2.  In  France  and  elsewhere,  the  reverberation  of  the  attack  of  Voltaire, 
d'Holbach,  Dupuis,  and  Volney,  carried  on  most  persistently  in  Catholic 
countries  by  the  Freemasons,  as  against  official  orthodoxy  after  1815. 

3.  German  "  rationalism,"  proceeding  from  English  deism,  moving  towards 
naturalist  as  against  supernaturalist  conceptions,  dissolving  the  notion  of  the 
miraculous  in  both  Old  and  New  Testament  history,  analysing  the  literary 
structure  of  the  sacred  books,  and  all  along  affecting  studious  thought  in  other 
countries. 

4.  The  literary  compromise  of  Lessing,  claiming  for  all  religious  a  place  in  a 
scheme  of  "  divine  education." 

5.  In  England,  the  neo-Christianity  of  the  school  of  Coleridge,  a  disinte- 
grating force,  promoting  the  "  Broad  Church  "  tendency,  which  in  Dean  Milman 
was  so  pronounced  as  to  bring  on  him  charges  of  rationalism. 

6.  The  utilitarianism  of  the  school  of  Bentham,  carried  into  moral  and  social 
science. 

7.  Comtism,  making  little  direct  impression  on  the  "  constructive  "  lines  laid 
by  the  founder,  but  affecting  critical  thought  in  many  directions. 

8.  German  philosophy,  Kantian  and  post-Kantian,  in  particular  the  Hegelian, 
turned  to  anti-Christian  and  anti-supernaturalist  account  by  Strauss,  Vatke, 
Bruno  Bauer,  Feuerbach,  and  Marx. 

9.  German  atheism  and  scientific  "  materialism  "—represented  by  Feuerbach 
and  Biichner  (who,  however,  rejected  the  term  "materialism"  as  inappropriate). 

10.  Revived  English  deism,  involving  destructive  criticism  of  Christianity,  as 
in  Hennell,  F.  W.  Newman,  R.  W.  Mackay,  W.  R.  Greg,  Theodore  Parker,  and 
Thomas  Scott,  partly  in  co-operation  with  Unitarianism. 

11.  American  transcendentalism  or  pantheism — the  school  of  Emerson. 

12.  Colenso's  preliminary  attack  on  the  narrative  of  the  Pentateuch,  a 
systematized  return  to  Voltairean  common-sense,  rectifying  the  unscientific 
course  of  the  earlier  "  higher  criticism  "  on  the  historical  issue. 

13.  The  later  or  scientific  "  higher  criticism  "  of  the  Old  Testament— repre- 
sented by  Kuenen,  Wellhausen,  and  their  successors. 

14.  New  historical  criticism  of  Christian  origins,  in  particular  the  work  of 
Strauss  and  Baur  in  Germany,  Renan  and  Havet  in  France,  and  their  successors. 

15.  Exhibition  of  rationalism  within  the  churches,  as  in  Germany,  Holland, 
and  Switzerland  generally;  in  England  in  the  Essays  and  Reviews;  later  in 
multitudes  of  essays  and  books,  and  in  the  ethical  criticism  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment ;  in  America  in  popular  theology. 

16.  Association  of  rationalistic  doctrine  with  the  Socialist  movements,  new 
and  old,  from  Owen  to  Bebel. 

17.  Communication  of  doubt  and  moral  questioning  through  poetry  and 
belles-lettres— 3.S  in  Shelley,  Byron,  Coleridge,  Clough,  Tennyson,  Carlyle,  Arnold, 
Browning,  Swinburne,  Goethe,  Schiller,  Heine,  Victor  Hugo,  Leconte  de  Lisle, 
Leopardi,  and  certain  French  and  English  novelists. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  AND  CULTURE 


391 


II. — Modern  Science,  physical,  mental,  and  moral,  sapping  the  bases  of  all 

supernaturalist  systems. 

1.  Astronomy,  newly  directed  by  Laplace. 

2.  Geology,  gradually  connected  (as  in  Britain  by  Chambers)  with 

3.  Biology,  made  definitely  non-deistic  by  Darwin. 

4.  The  comprehension  of  all  science  in  the  Evolution  Theory,  as  by  Spencer, 

advancing  on  Comte. 

5.  Psychology,  as  regards  localization  of  brain  functions. 

6.  Comparative  mythology,  as  yet  imperfectly  applied  to  Christism. 

7.  Sociology,  as  outlined  by  Comte,  Buckle,  Spencer,  Winwood  Reade,  Lester 
Ward,  Giddings,  Tarde,  Durkheim,  and  others,  on  strictly  naturalistic  lines. 

8.  Comparative  Hierology ;  the  methodical  application  of  principles  insisted 
on  by  all  the  deists,  and  formulated  in  the  interests  of  deism  by  Lessing,  but 
latterly  freed  of  his  implications. 

9.  Above  all,  the  later  development  of  Anthropology  (in  the  wide  English 
sense  of  the  term),  which,  beginning  to  take  shape  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
came  to  new  life  in  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  ;  and  is  now  one  of  the 
most  widely  cultivated  of  all  the  sciences— especially  on  the  side  of  religious 
creed  and  psychology. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  may  group  somewhat  as  follows  the  general 
forces  of  retardation  of  freethought  operating  throughout  the 
century : — 

1.  Penal  laws,  still  operative  in  Britain  and  Germany  against  popular  free- 
thought  propaganda,  and  till  recently  in  Britain   against  any  endowment  of 

freethought. 

2.  Class  interests,  involving  in  the  first  half  of  the  century  a  social  conspiracy 

against  rationalism  in  England. 

3.  Commercial  pressure  thus  set  up,  and  always  involved  in  the  influence  of 

churches. 

4.  In  England,  identification  of  orthodox  Dissent  with  political  Liberalism— 

a  sedative. 

5.  Concessions  by  the  clergy,  especially  in  England  and  the  United  States— 

to  many,  another  sedative. 

6.  Above  all,  the  production  of  new  masses  of  popular  ignorance  in  the 
industrial  nations,  and  continued  lack  of  education  in  the  others. 

7.  On  this  basis,  business-like  and  in  large  part  secular-minded  organization 
of  the  endowed  churches,  as  against  a  freethought  propaganda  hampered  by  the 
previously  named  causes,  and  in  England  by  laws  which  veto  all  direct  endow- 
ment of  anti-Christian  heresy. 

It  remains  to  make,  with  forced  brevity,  the  surveys  thus  outlined. 


Section  1.— Popular  Propaganda  and  Culture 

1.  If  any  one  circumstance  more  than  another  differentiates  the 
life  of  to-day  from  that  of  older  civilizations,  or  from  that  of  previous 
centuries  of  the  modern  era,  it  is  the  diffusion  of  rationalistic  views 
among  the  "  common  people."     In  no  other  era  is  to  be  found  the 


392    FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 


phenomenon  of  widespread  critical  skepticism  among  the  labouring 
masses  :  in  all  previous  ages,  though  chronic  complaint  is  made 
of  some  unbelief  among  the  uneducated,  the  constant  and  abject 
ignorance  of  the  mass  of  the  people  has  been  the  sure  foothold  of 
superstitious  systems.  Within  the  last  century  the  area  of  the 
recognizably  civilized  world  has  grown  far  vaster;  and  in  the 
immense  populations  that  have  thus  arisen  there  is  a  relative 
degree  of  enlightenment,  coupled  with  a  degree  of  political  power 
never  before  attained.  Merely  to  survey,  then,  the  broad  movement 
of  popular  culture  in  the  period  in  question  will  yield  a  useful  notion 
of  the  dynamic  change  in  the  balance  of  thought  in  modern  times, 
and  will  make  more  intelligible  the  special  aspects  of  the  culture 
process. 

This  vital  change  in  the  distribution  of  knowledge  is  largely  to 
be  attributed  to  the  written  and  spoken  teaching  of  a  line  of  men 
who  made  popular  enlightenment  their  great  aim.  Their  leading 
type  among  the  English-speaking  races  is  THOMAS  Paine,  whom 
we  have  seen  combining  a  gospel  of  democracy  with  a  gospel  of 
critical  reason  in  the  midst  of  the  French  Eevolution.  Never  before 
had  rationalism  been  made  widely  popular.  The  English  and  French 
deists  had  written  for  the  middle  and  upper  classes.  Peter  Annet 
was  practically  the  first  who  sought  to  reach  the  multitude ;  and 
his  punishment  expressed  the  special  resentment  aroused  in  the 
governing  classes  by  such  a  policy.  Of  all  the  English  freethinkers 
of  the  earlier  deistical  period  he  alone  was  selected  for  reprinting  by 
the  propagandists  of  the  Paine  period.  Paine  was  to  Annet,  however, 
as  a  cannon  to  a  musket,  and  through  the  democratic  ferment  of  his 
day  he  won  an  audience  a  hundredfold  wider  than  Annet  could  have 
dreamt  of  reaching.  The  anger  of  the  governing  classes,  in  a  time 
of  anti-democratic  panic,  was  proportional.  Paine  would  have  been 
at  least  imprisoned  for  his  Bights  of  Man  had  he  not  fled  from 
England  in  time  ;  and  the  sale  of  all  his  books  was  furiously  pro- 
hibited and  ferociously  punished.  Yet  they  circulated  everywhere, 
even  in  Protestant  Ireland,^  hitherto  affected  only  under  the  surface 
of  upper-class  life  by  deism.  The  circulation  of  Bishop  Watson's 
Apology  in  reply  only  served  to  spread  the  contagion,  as  it  brought 
the  issues  before  multitudes  who  would  not  otherwise  have  heard  of 
them.''  All  the  while,  direct  propaganda  was  carried  on  by  trans- 
lations and  reprints  as  well  as  by  fresh  English  tractates.  Diderot's 
Thoughts   on  Religion,   and   Fr^ret's   Letter  from   Thrasybulus   to 


1  Lecky.  Hist,  of  Ireland  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  ed.  1892,  iii,  382. 

2  Cp.  Conway's  Life  of  Faine,  ii,  262-53. 


POPULAE  PEOPAGANDA  AND  CULTUEE 


393 


Leucippus,  seem  to  have  been  great  favourites  among  the  Painites, 
as  was  Elihu  Palmer's  Principles  of  Nature  ;  and  Volney's  Ruins 
of  Empires  had  a  large  vogue.  Condorcet's  Esquisse  had  been 
promptly  translated  in  1795  ;  the  translation  of  d'Holbach's  System 
of  Nature  reached  a  third  edition  in  1817  ;^  that  of  Eaynal's  History 
had  been  reprinted  in  1804 ;  and  that  of  Helv6tius  Oji  the  Mind  in 
1810 ;  while  an  English  abridgment  of  Bayle  in  four  volumes,  on 
freethinking  lines,  appeared  in  1826. 

2.  Meantime,  new  writers  arose  to  carry  into  fuller  detail  the 
attacks  of  Paine,  sharpening  their  weapons  on  those  of  the  more 
scholarly  French  deists.  A  Life  of  Jesus,  including  his  Apocryphal 
History,^  was  published  in  1818,  with  such  astute  avoidance  of  all 
comment  that  it  escaped  prosecution.  Others,  taking  a  more  daring 
course,  fared  accordingly.  George  Houston  translated  the  Ecce 
Homo  of  d'Holbach,  first  publishing  it  at  Edinburgh  in  1799,  and 
reprinting  it  in  London  in  1813.  For  the  second  issue  he  was 
prosecuted,  fined  £200,  and  imprisoned  for  two  years  in  Newgate. 
Eobert  Wedderburn,  a  mulatto  calling  himself  "the  Eev.,"  in  reality 
a  superannuated  journeyman  tailor  who  ofi&ciated  in  Hopkins  Street 
Unitarian  Chapel,  London,  was  in  1820  sentenced  to  two  years' 
imprisonment  in  Dorchester  Jail  for  a  "blasphemous  libel"  con- 
tained in  one  of  his  pulpit  discourses.  His  Letters  to  the  Eev. 
Solomon  Herschell  (the  Jewish  Chief  Eabbi)  and  to  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  show  a  happy  vein  of  orderly  irony  and  not  a  little 
learning,  despite  his  profession  of  apostolic  ignorance ;  and  at  the 
trial  the  judge  admitted  his  defence  to  be  "  exceedingly  well  drawn 
up."  His  publications  naturally  received  a  new  impetus,  and  passed 
to  a  more  drastic  order  of  mockery. 

3.  As  the  years  went  on,  the  persecution  in  England  grew  still 
fiercer ;  but  it  was  met  with  a  stubborn  hardihood  which  wore  out 
even  the  bitter  malice  of  piety.  One  of  the  worst  features  of  the 
religious   crusade  was  that  it  affected  to  attack  not  unbelief  but 

vice,"  such  being  the  plea  on  which  Wilberforce  and  others  prose- 
cuted, during  a  period  of  more  than  twenty  years,  the  publishers 
and  booksellers  who  issued  the  works  of  Paine.^  But  even  that 
dissembling  device  did  not  ultimately  avail.     A  name   not  to  be 


1  This  translation,  issued  by  "Sherwood,  Neely.  and  Jones,  Paternoster  Eow,  and  all 
booksellers."  purports  to  be  "with  additions."  The  translation,  however,  has  altered 
d  Holbach's  atheism  to  deism. 

2  By  W.  Huttman.  The  book  is  "embellished  with  a  head  of  Jesus"— a  conventional 
religious  picture.  Huttman's  opinions  may  be  divined  from  the  last  sentence  of  his 
preface,  alludmg  to  "the  high  pretentions  and  inflated  stile  of  the  lives  of  Christ  which 
issue  periodically  from  the  English  press." 

^  Cp.  Dynamics  of  Religion,  pp.  208-209. 


394    FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 

forgotten  by  those  who  value  obscure  service  to  human  freedom  is 
that  of  ElCHARD  Carlile,  who  between  1819  and  1835  underwent 
nine  years'  imprisonment  in  his  unyielding  struggle  for  the  freedom 
of   the   Press,  of   thought,  and  o£  speech.'     John  Clarke,  an  ex- 
Methodist,  became  one  of  Carlile's  shopmen,  was  tried  in  1824  for 
selling  one  of  his  publications,  and  "  after  a  spirited  defence,  in 
which  he  read  many  of   the   worst   passages   of   the   Bible,"  was 
sentenced  to  throe  years'  imprisonment,  and  to  find  securities  for 
good  behaviour   during  life.     The   latter   disability   he  effectively 
anticipated  by  writing,  while  in  prison,  A  Critical  Beview  of  the 
Life,  Gharacten  and  Miracles  of  Jesus,  wherein  Christian  feelings 
were  treated  as  Christians  had  treated  the  feelings  of  freethinkers, 
with  a  much  more  destructive  result.      Published  first,  strangely 
enough,  in  the  Newgate  Magazine,  it  was  republished  in  1825  and 
1839,  with  impunity.     Thus  did  a  brutal  bigotry  bring  upon  itself 
ever  a  deadlier  retaliation,  till  it  sickened  of  the  contest.     Those 
who  threw  up  the  struggle  on  the  orthodox  side  declaimed  as  before 
about  the  tone  of  the  unbeliever's  attack,  failing  to  read  the  plain 
lesson  that,  while  noisy  fanaticism,  doing  its  own  worst  and  vilest, 
deterred  from  utterance  all  the  gentler  and  more  sympathetic  spirits 
on  the  side  of  reason,  the  work  of  reason  could  be  done  only  by  the 
harder  natures,  which  gave  back  blow  for  blow  and  insult  for  insult, 
rejoicing  in  the  encounter.     Thus   championed,  freethought  could 
not  be  crushed.     The  propagandist  and  publishing  work  done  by 
Carlile  was  carried  on  diversely  by  such  free  lances  as  KOBERT 
Taylor    (ex-clergyman,    author   of    the   Diegesis,    1829.    and   The 
Devil's   Pulpit,   1830),    CHARLES   SOUTHWELL    (1814-1860),   and 
William  Hone,^  who  ultimately  became  an  independent  preacher, 
Southwell,  a  disciple  of  Kobert  Owen,  who  edited  The  Oracle  of 
Beason,  was  imprisoned  for  a  year  in  1840  for  publishing  in  that 
journal  an  article  entitled  "  The  Jew  Book  ";  and  was  succeeded  in 
the  editorship  by  George  Jacob  Holyoake  (1817-1906),  another 
Owenite  missionary,  who  met  a  similar  sentence  ;  whereafter  George 
Adams  and  his  wife,  who  continued  to  publish  the  journal,  were 
imprisoned  in  turn.     Matilda  Koalfe  and  Mrs.  Emma  Martin  about 

I  See  Harriet  Martineau's  History  of  the  Peace,  ed.  1877.  ii.  87,  and  Mrs.  Carlile  Camp- 
bell'  8  T/^XfTl.  0/  f/i.  Press  (Bonner.  1899),pa9sim.  as  to  ^he  treatment  of  those  who 

ac  ed  as  Carliles  shopmen.  Women  were  ^"iP"^°°?f,,'^«,,rrarUl?sv^fe  and  sister 
Wrtoht  as  to  whom  see  Wheeler  s  Dtcttonary,  and  last  ref .  Carlile  s  wiie  ana  sibuer 
we/e  Ukewise  imSne^  with  him;  and  over  twenty  volunteer  shopmen  in  all  weut 

^^  ^Hone's  most  important  service  to  popular  culture  was  his  issue  of  the  Apocryphal 
ArJ.,T^XnS^?t  which  b^y  CO  oM^^  work  of  the  same  kind,  gave  a  /resh  scientiflc 

Ss'is^olSe  popular'  critic'^lsm  gospel  history.     As  to  ^'^,il^9;^\XnUon''^B^^^^^^ 

on  the  score  of  his  having  published  certain  parodies  political  m  intention,  see  bk.  1. 
oh.  X  (by  Knight)  of  Harriet  Martineau's  History  of  the  Peace. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  AND  CULTURE 


395 


the  same  period  underwent  imprisonment  for  like  causes.^  In  this 
fashion,  by  the  steady  courage  of  a  much-enduring  band  of  men  and 
women,  was  set  on  foot  a  systematic  Secularist  propaganda — the 
name  having  relation  to  the  term  "  Secularism,"  coined  by  Holyoake. 

4.  In  this  evolution  political  activities  played  an  important  part. 
Henry  Hetherington  (1792-1849),  the  strenuous  democrat  who  in 
1830  began  the  trade  union  movement,  and  so  became  the  founder 
of  Chartism,  fought  for  the  right  of  pubHcation  in  matters  of  free- 
thought  as  in  politics.  After  undergoing  two  imprisonments  of  six 
months  each  (1832),  and  carrying  on  for  three  and  a  half  years  the 
struggle  for  an  untaxed  Press,  which  ended  in  his  victory  (1834),  he 
was  in  1840  indicted  for  publishing  Haslavi's  Letters  to  the  Clergy 
of  all  Denominations,  a  freethinking  criticism  of  Old  Testament 
morality.  He  defended  himself  so  ably  that  Lord  Denman,  the 
judge,  confessed  to  have  "listened  with  feelings  of  great  interest 
and  sentiments  of  respect  too  ";  and  Justice  Talfourd  later  spoke  of 
the  defence  as  marked  by  "  great  propriety  and  talent."  Neverthe- 
less, he  was  punished  by  four  months'  imprisonment.^  In  the 
following  year,  on  the  advice  of  Francis  Place,  he  brought  a  test 
prosecution  for  blasphemy  against  Moxon,  the  poet-publisher,  for 
issuing  Shelley's  complete  works,  including  Queen  Mah.  Talfourd, 
then  Serjeant,  defended  Moxon,  and  pleaded  that  there  "must  be 
some  alteration  of  the  law,  or  some  restriction  of  the  right  to  put 
it  in  action";  but  the  jury  were  impartial  enough  to  find  the 
publisher  guilty,  though  he  received  no  punishment.^  Among  other 
works  published  by  Hetherington  was  one  entitled  A  Runt  after 
the  Devil,  "by  Dr.  P.  Y."  (really  by  Lieutenant  Lecount),  in  which 
the  story  of  Noah's  ark  was  subjected  to  a  destructive  criticism.* 

5.  Holyoake  had  been  a  missionary  and  martyr  in  the  movement 
of  Socialism  set  up  by  ROBERT  OWEN,  whose  teaching,  essentially 
scientific  on  its  psychological  or  philosophical  side,  was  the  first 
effort  to  give  systematic  effect  to  democratic  ideals  by  organizing 
industry.  It  was  in  the  discussions  of  the  "Association  of  all 
Classes  of  all  Nations,"  formed  by  Owen  in  1835,  that  the  word 
"  Socialism  "  first  became  current.^  Owen  was  a  freethinker  in  all 
things;®  and  his  whole  movement  was  so  penetrated  by  an  anti- 
theological  spirit  that  the  clergy  as  a  rule  became  its  bitter  enemies, 
though  such  publicists  as  Macaulay  and  John  Mill  also  combined 

1  Holyoake,  Sixty  Years  of  an  Agitator's  Life,  i,  109-10.    See  p.  Ill  as  to  other  cases. 

2  Art.  by  Holyoake  in  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.    Cp.  Sixty  Years,  per  index. 

8  Articles  in  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.  *  Holyoake,  Sixty  Years,  i,  47. 

6  Kirkup,  History  of  Socialism,  1892,  p.  64.  „  .      ,.  . 

6  '•  From  an  early  age  he  had  lost  all  belief  in  the  prevailing  forms  of  religion " 
(Kirkup.  p.  59). 


) 


396    FBEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 


with  them  in  scouting  it  on  political  and  economic  grounds/  Up 
till  the  middle  of  1817  he  had  on  his  side  a  large  body  of  "  respect- 
able "  and  highly-placed  philanthropists,  his  notable  success  in  his 
own  social  and  commercial  undertakings  being  his  main  recom- 
mendation. His  early  Essays  on  the  Formation  of  Character, 
indeed,  were  sufi&cient  to  reveal  his  heterodoxy  ;  but  not  until,  at 
his  memorable  public  meeting  on  August  21,  1817,  he  began  to 
expatiate  on  *'  the  gross  errors  that  have  been  combined  with  the 
fundamental  notions  of  every  religion  that  has  hitherto  been  taught 
to  men  "  ^  did  he  rank  as  an  aggressive  freethinker.  It  was  in  his 
own  view  the  turning-point  of  his  life.  He  was  not  prosecuted ; 
though  Brougham  declared  that  if  any  politician  had  said  half  as 
much  he  would  have  been  "burned  alive";  but  the  alienation  of 
moderate"  opinion  at  once  began;  and  Owen,  always  more  fervid 
than  prudent,  never  recovered  his  influence  among  the  upper  classes. 
Nonetheless,  "  his  secularistic  teaching  gained  such  influence  among 
the  working  classes  as  to  give  occasion  for  the  statement  in  the 
Westminster  Beview  (1839)  that  his  principles  were  the  actual  creed 
of  a  great  portion  of  them."  ^ 

Owen's  polemic  method — if  it  could  properly  be  so  called — was 
not  so  much  a  criticism  of  dogma  as  a  calm  impeachment  of  rehgion 
in  a  spirit  of  philanthropy.  No  reformer  was  ever  more  entirely  free 
from  the  spirit  of  wrath :  on  this  side  Owen  towers  above  com- 
parison. "  There  is  no  place  found  in  him  for  scorn  or  indignation. 
He  cannot  bring  himself  to  speak  or  think  evil  of  any  man.  He 
carried  out  in  his  daily  life  his  own  teaching  that  man  is  not  the 
proper  object  of  praise  or  blame.  Throughout  his  numerous  works 
there  is  hardly  a  sentence  of  indignation — of  personal  denunciation 
never.  He  loves  the  sinner,  and  can  hardly  bring  himself  to  hate 
the  sin."  *  He  had  come  by  his  rationalism  through  the  influence 
rather  of  Rousseau  than  of  Voltaire ;  and  he  had  assimilated  the 
philosophic  doctrine  of  determinism— of  all  ideals  the  most  difficult 
to  realize  in  conduct — with  a  thoroughness  of  which  the  flawed 
Rousseau  was  incapable.  There  was  thus  presented  to  the  world 
the  curious  case  of  a  man  who  on  the  side  of  character  carried 
rationahsm  to  the  perfection  of  ideal  "  saintliness,"  while  in  the 
general  application  of  rational  thought  to  concrete  problems  he  was 
virtually  unteachable.     For  an  absolute  and  immovable  conviction 

*  Reformers  of  almost  all  schools,  indeed,  from  the  first  regarded  Owen  with  more  or 
less  genial  incredulity,  some  criticizing  him  acutely  without  any  ill-will.  See  Podmore's 
Robert  Owen,  1906,  i.  238-42.  Southey  was  one  of  the  first  to  detect  his  lack  of  religious 
belief.    Id.  p.  222.  n. 

a  Podmore.  i,  246.  »  lOrkup,  as  cited,  p.  64.  *  Podmore,  ii,  640. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  AND  CULTURE 


397 


in  his  own  practical  rightness  was  in  Owen  as  essential  a  constituent 
as  his  absolute  benevolence.^  These  were  the  two  poles  of  his  per- 
sonaHty.  He  was,  in  short,  a  fair  embodiment  of  the  ideal  formed 
by  many  people — doctrine  and  dogma  apart — of  the  Gospel  Jesus. 
And  most  Christians  accordingly  shunned  and  feared  or  hated  him. 

Such  a  personality  was  evidently  a  formidable  force  as  against 
the  reinforced  English  orthodoxy  of  the  first  generation  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  The  nature  of  Owen's  propaganda  as  against 
religion  may  be  best  sampled  from  his  lecture,  "  The  New  Beligion : 
or,  Rehgion  founded  on  the  Immutable  Laws  of  the  Universe, 
contrasted  with  all  ReHgions  founded  on  Human  Testimony," 
dehvered  at  the  London  Tavern  on  October  20,  1830  :^ — 

"  Under  the  arrangements  which  have  hitherto  existed  for 
educating  and  governing  man,  four  general  characters  have  been 
produced  among  the  human  race.  These  four  characters  appear  to 
be  formed,  under  the  past  and  present  arrangements  of  society,  from 
four  different  original  organizations  at  birth 

'*  No.  1.  May  be  termed  the  conscientious  religious  in  all  countries. 

"  No.  2.  Unbelievers  in  the  truth  of  any  rehgion,  but  who  strenu- 
ously support  the  religion  of  their  country,  under  the  conviction  that, 
although  rehgion  is  not  necessary  to  insure  their  own  good  conduct, 
it  is  eminently  required  to  compel  others  to  act  right. 

"  No.  3.  Unbehevers  who  openly  avow  their  disbehef  in  the  truth 
of  any  rehgion,  such  as  Deists,  Atheists,  Skeptics,  etc.,  etc.,  but  who 
do  not  perceive  the  laws  of  nature  relative  to  man  as  an  individual, 
or  when  united  in  a  social  state. 

"  No.  4.  Disbelievers  in  all  past  and  present  religions,  but  believers 
in  the  eternal  unchanging  laws  of  the  universe,  as  developed  by  facts 
derived  from  all  past  experience ;  and  who,  by  a  careful  study  of  these 
facts,  deduce  from  them  the  religion  of  nature. 

"  Class  No.  1  is  formed,  under  certain  circumstances,  from  those 
original  organizations  which  possess  at  birth  strong  moral  and  weak 

intellectual  faculties Class  No.  2  is  composed  of  those  individuals 

who  by  nature  possess  a  smaller  quantity  of  moral  and  a  larger 

quantity  of  intellectual  faculty Class  No.  3  is  composed  of  men 

of  strong  moral  and  moderate  intellectual  faculty Class  No.  4 

comprises  those  who,  by  nature,  possess  a  high  degree  of  intellectual 
and  moral  faculty " 

Thus  all  forms  of  opinion  were  shown  to  proceed  either  from 
intellectual  or   moral   defect,  save   the   opinions  of    Owen.     Such 


'  "Extraordinary  self-complacency."  "autocratic  action,"  "arrogance,"  are  among  the 
expressions  used  of  him  by  his  ablest  biographer.    (Podmore,  ii,641.)    Of  him  might  be 


said,  as  of  Emerson  by  himself,  "  the  children  of  the  Gods  do  not  argue ' 
absent. 

2  Pamphlet  sold  at  lid.,  and  "  to  be  had  of  all  the  Booksellers." 


-the  faculty  being 


398    FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 

propositions,  tranquilly  elaborated,  were  probably  as  effective  in  pro- 
ducing irritation  as  any  frontal  attack  upon  any  dogmas,  narratives, 
or  polities.  But,  though  not  even  consistent  (inasmuch  as  the 
fundamental  thesis  that  "  character  is  formed  by  circumstances  "  is 
undermined  by  the  datum  of  four  varieties  of  organization),  they 
were  potent  to  influence  serious  men  otherwise  broadly  instructed 
as  to  the  nature  of  religious  history  and  the  irrationality  of  dogma ; 
and  Owen  for  a  generation,  despite  the  inevitable  failure  and  frustra- 
tion of  his  social  schemes,  exercised  by  his  movement  a  very  wide 
influence  on  popular  life.  To  a  considerable  extent  it  was  furthered 
by  the  popular  deistic  philosophy  of  GEORGE  and  ANDREW  COMBE 
—a  kind  of  deistic  positivism— which  then  had  a  great  vogue ;'  and 
by  the  impHcations  of  phrenology,  then  also  in  its  most  scientific 
and  progressive  stage.  When,  for  various  reasons,  Owen's  move- 
ment dissolved,  the  freethinking  element  seems  to  have  been  absorbed 
in  the  secular  party,  while  the  others  appear  to  have  gone  in  large 
part  to  build  up  the  movement  of  Co-operation.  On  the  whole,  the 
movement  of  popular  freethought  in  England  could  be  described  as 
poor,  struggUng,  and  persecuted,  only  the  most  hardy  and  zealous 
venturing  to  associate  themselves  with  it.  The  imprisonment  of 
Holyoake  (1842)  for  six  months,  on  a  trifling  charge  of  blasphemy, 
is  an  illustration  of  the  brutal  spirit  of  pubHc  orthodoxy  at  the 
time.'  Where  bigotry  could  thus  only  injure  and  oppress  without 
suppressing  heresy,  it  stimulated  resistance ;  and  the  result  of  the 
stimulus  was  a  revival  of  popular  propaganda  which  led  to  the 
founding  of  a  Secular  Society  in  1852. 

6.  This  date  broadly  coincides  with  the  maximum  domination 
of  conventional  orthodoxy  in  English  Hfe.  From  about  the  middle 
of  the  century  the  balance  gradually  changes.  In  1852  we  find  the 
publisher  Henry  Bohn  reissuing  the  worthless  apologetic  works  of 
the  Eev.  Andrew  Fuller,  with  a  "pubHsher's  prelace "  in  which 
they  are  said  to  "  maintain  an  acknowledged  pre-eminence,"  though 
written  "  at  a  period  of  our  national  history  when  the  writings  of 
Volney  and  Gibbon,  and  especially  of  Thomas  Paine,  fostered  by 
the  political  effects  of  the  French  Eevolution,  had  deteriorated  the 
morals  of  the  people,  and  infused  the  poison  of  infidelity  into  the 
disaffected  portion  of  the  public."  Wa  have  here  still  the  note  of 
early-nineteenth-century  Anglican  respectability,  not  easily  to  be 
matched  in  human  history  for  hollowness  and  blatancy.     Fuller  is 

1  Of  George  Combe's  Constitiitwn  of  Man  (1828).  a  deistic  work  over  50.000  copies  were 
sold  in  Britain  within  twelve  years,  and  10,000  in  America  Advt.  to  4th  ed.  1839.  Combe 
avows  that  his  impulse  came  from  the  P^ireuologist  Spurzheim. 

a  See  the  details  in  his  Last  Trial  by  Jury  for  Atheism  m  England. 


POPULAE  PEOPAGANDA  AND  CULTUEE 


399 


at  once  one  of  the  most  rabid  and  one  of  the  most  futile  of  the 
thousand  and  one  defenders  of  the  faith.  A  sample  of  his  mind 
and  method  is  the  verdict  that  "  If  the  light  that  is  gone  abroad  on 
earth  would  permit  the  rearing  of  temples  to  Venus,  or  Bacchus,  or 
any  of  the  rabble  of  heathen  deities,  there  is  little  doubt  but  that 
modern  unbelievers  would  in  great  numbers  become  their  devotees  ; 
but,  seeing  they  cannot  have  a  God  whose  worship  shall  accord  with 
their  inclinations,  they  seem  determined  not  to  worship  at  all."* 
In  the  very  next  year  the  same  publisher  began  the  issue  of  a 
reprint  of  Gibbon,  with  variorum  notes,  edited  by  "An  English 
Churchman,"  who  for  the  most  part  defended  Gibbon  against  his 
orthodox  critics.  This  enterprise  in  turn  brought  upon  the  pious 
pubHsher  a  fair  share  of  odium.  But  the  second  half  of  the  century, 
albeit  soon  darkened  by  new  wars  in  Europe,  Asia,  and  America, 
was  to  be  for  England  one  of  Liberalism  alike  in  politics  and  in 
thought,  free  trade,  and  relatively  free  publication,  with  progress  in 
enlightenment  for  both  the  populace  and  the  "  educated"  classes. 

7.  In  1858  there  was  elected  to  the  presidency  of  the  London 
Secular  Society  the  young  CHARLES  Bradlaugh,  one  of  the 
greatest  orators  of  his  age,  and  one  of  the  most  powerful  personali- 
ties ever  associated  with  a  progressive  movement.  Early  experience 
of  clerical  persecution,  which  even  drove  the  boy  from  his  father's 
roof,  helped  to  make  him  a  fighter,  but  never  infirmed  his  humanity. 
In  the  main  self-taught,  he  acquired  a  large  measure  of  culture  in 
French  and  English,  and  his  rare  natural  gift  for  debate  was 
sharpened  by  a  legal  training.  A  personal  admirer  of  Owen,  he 
never  accepted  his  social  polity,  but  was  at  all  times  the  most 
zealous  of  democratic  reformers.  Thenceforward  the  working  masses 
in  England  were  in  large  part  kept  in  touch  with  a  freethought 
which  drew  on  the  results  of  the  scientific  and  scholarly  research 
of  the  time,  and  wielded  a  dialectic  of  which  trained  opponents 
confessed  the  power.'^  In  the  place  of  the  bland  dogmatism  of 
Owen,  and  the  calm  assumption  that  all  mankind  could  and  should 
be  schoolmastered  into  happiness  and  order,  there  came  the  alert 
recognition  of  the  absoluteness  of  individualism  as  regards  convic- 
tion, and  its  present  pre-potency  as  regards  social  arrangements. 
Every  thesis  was  brought  to  the  test  of  argument  and  evidence ; 
and  in  due  course  many  who  had  complained  that  Owen  would  not 


*  The  Oospel  its  Own  Witness,  1799.  rep.  in  Bohn's  ed.  of  The  Principal  Works  and 
Bemains  of  the  Rev.  Andrew  Fuller,  1852,  pp.  136-37. 

2  See  Prof.  Flint's  tribute  to  the  reasoning  power  of  Bradlaugh  and  Holyoake  in  his 
Anti'Theistic  Theories,  4th  ed.  pp.  518-19. 


400     FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


argue,  complained  that  the  new  school  argued  everything.  The 
essential  thing  was  that  the  people  were  receiving  vitally  needed 
instruction ;  and  were  being  taught  with  a  new  power  to  think  for 
themselves.  Incidentally  they  were  freed  from  an  old  burden  by 
Bradlaugh's  successful  resistance  to  the  demand  of  suretyship  from 
newspapers,  and  by  his  no  less  successful  battle  for  the  right  of 
non-theistic  witnesses  to  make  affirmation  instead  of  taking  the 
oath  in  the  law  courts.^ 

The  inspiration  and  the  instruction  of  th'e  popular  movement 
thus  maintained  were  at  once  literary,  scientific,  ethical,  historical, 
scholarly,  and  philosophic.  Shelley  was  its  poet ;  Voltaire  its  first 
story-teller ;  and  Gibbon  its  favourite  historian.  In  philosophy, 
Bradlaugh  learned  less  from  Hume  than  from  Spinoza  ;  in  Biblical 
criticism— himself  possessing  a  working  knowledge  of  Hebrew— bo 
collated  the  work  of  EngHsh  and  French  specialists,  down  to 
and  including  Colenso,  applying  all  the  while  to  the  consecrated 
record  the  merciless  tests  of  a  consistent  ethic.  At  the  same  time, 
the  whole  battery  of  argument  from  the  natural  sciences  was  turned 
against  traditionalism  and  supernaturalism,  alike  in  the  lectures  of 
Bradlaugh  and  the  other  speakers  of  his  party,  and  in  the  pages  of 
his  journal.  The  National  Beformer.  The  general  outcome  was  an 
unprecedented  diffusion  of  critical  thought  among  the  English 
masses,  and  a  proportionate  antagonism  to  those  who  had  wrought 
such  a  result.  When,  therefore,  Bradlaugh,  as  deeply  concerned 
for  political  as  for  intellectual  righteousness,  set  himself  to  the  task 
of  entering  Parliament,  he  commenced  a  struggle  which  shortened 
his  life,  though  it  promoted  his  main  objects.  Not  till  after  a  series 
of  electoral  contests  extending  over  twelve  years  was  he  elected  for 
Northampton  in  1880 ;  and  the  House  of  Commons  in  a  manner 
enacted  afresh  the  long  resistance  made  to  him  in  that  city.'  When, 
however,  on  his  election  in  1880,  the  Conservative  Opposition  began 
the  historic  proceedings  over  the  Oath  question,  they  probably  did 
even  more  to  deepen  and  diffuse  the  popular  freethought  movement 
than  Bradlaugh  himself  had  done  in  the  whole  of  his  previous 
career.  The  process  was  furthered  by  the  policy  of  prosecuting  and 
imprisoning  (1883)  Mr.  G.  W.  Foote,  editor  of  the  Freethinker, 
under  the  Blasphemy  Laws — a  course  not  directly  ventured  on  as 
against  Bradlaugh,  though  it  was  sought  to  connect  him  with  the 
publication  of  Mr.  Foote's  journal. 


1  See  Mrs.  Bradlaugh  Bonner's  Charles  Bradlaugh.  i,  149,  288-89. 

2  For  a  fuU  record  see  Part  II  of  Mrs.  Bradlaugh  Bonner's  Charles  Braillaugh. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  AND  CULTURE 


401 


To  this  day  it  is  common  to  give  a  false  account  of  the  origin 
of  the  episode,  representing  Bradlaugh  as  having  "forced"  his 
opinions  on  the  attention  of  the  House.  Rather  he  strove  unduly 
to  avoid  wounding  religious  feeling.  Wont  to  make  affirmation  by 
law  in  the  courts  of  justice,  he  held  that  the  same  law  applied  to 
the  "oath  of  allegiance,"  and  felt  that  it  would  be  unseemly  on  his 
part  to  use  the  words  of  adjuration  if  he  could  legally  affirm.  On 
this  point  he  expressly  consulted  the  law  officers  of  the  Crown,  and 
they  gave  the  opinion  that  he  had  the  legal  right,  which  was  his 
own  belief  as  a  lawyer.  The  faction  called  the  "fourth  party," 
however,  saw  an  opportunity  to  embarrass  the  Gladstone  Govern- 
ment by  challenging  the  act  of  affirmation,  and  thus  arose  the 
protracted  struggle.  Only  when  a  committee  of  the  House  decided 
that  he  could  not  properly  affirm  did  Bradlaugh  propose  to  take 
the  oath,  in  order  to  take  his  seat. 

The  pretence  of  zeal  for  religion,  made  by  the  politicians  who 
had  raised  the  issue,  was  known  by  all  men  to  be  the  merest 
hypocrisy.  Lord  Randolph  Churchill,  who  distinguished  himself 
by  insisting  on  the  moral  necessity  for  a  belief  in  "  some  divinity  or 
other,"  is  recorded  to  have  professed  a  special  esteem  for  Mr.  (now 
Lord)  Morley,  the  most  distinguished  Positivist  of  his  time.^  The 
whole  procedure,  in  Parliament  and  out,  was  so  visibly  that  of  the 
lowest  political  malice,  exploiting  the  crudest  religious  intolerance, 
that  it  turned  into  active  freethinkers  many  who  had  before  been 
only  passive  doubters,  and  raised  the  secularist  party  to  an  intensity 
of  zeal  never  before  seen.  At  no  period  in  modern  British  history 
had  there  been  so  constant  and  so  keen  a  platform  propaganda  of 
unbelief ;  so  unsparing  an  indictment  of  Christian  doctrine,  history, 
and  practice ;  such  contemptuous  rebuttal  of  every  Christian  pre- 
tension ;  such  asperity  of  spirit  against  the  creed  which  was  once 
more  being  championed  by  chicanery,  calumny,  and  injustice.  In 
those  five  years  of  indignant  warfare  were  sown  the  seeds  of  a 
more  abundant  growth  of  rationalism  than  had  ever  before  been 
known  in  the  British  Islands.  With  invincible  determination 
Bradlaugh  fought  his  case  through  Parliament  and  the  law  courts, 
incurring  debts  which  forced  upon  him  further  toils  that  clearly 
shortened  his  life,  but  never  yielding  for  an  instant  in  his  battle 
with  the  bigotry  of  half  the  nation.  Liberalism  was  shamed  by 
many  defections;  Conservatism,  with  the  assent  of  Mr.  Balfour, 
was  solid  for  injustice;^  and  in  the  entire  Church  of  England  less 

*  After  Bradlaugh  had  secured  his  seat,  the  noble  lord  even  sought  his  acquaintance, 
a  Though  young  Conservative  members,  after  1886,  privately  professed  sympathy. 

VOL.  II  2d 


402    FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 

than  a  dozen  priests  stood  for  tolerance.  But  the  cause  at  stake 
was  indestructible.  When  Bradlaugh  at  length  took  the  oath  and 
his  seat  in  1886.  under  a  ruling  of  the  new  Speaker  (Peel)  which 
stultified  the  whole  action  of  the  Speaker  and  majorities  of  the 
previous  Parliament,  and  no  less  that  of  the  law  courts,  straight- 
forward freethought  stood  three-fold  stronger  in  England  than  in 
any  previous  generation.  Apart  from  their  educative  work,  the 
struggles  and  sufferings  of  the  secularist  leaders  won  for  Great 
Britain  the  abolition  within  one  generation  of  the  old  burden  of 
suretyship  on  newspapers,  and  of  the  disabihties  of  non-theistic 
witnesses  ;  the  freedom  of  public  meeting  in  the  London  parks ;  the 
right  of  avowed  atheists  to  sit  in  Parhament  (Bradlaugh  having 
secured  in  1888  their  title  to  make  affirmation  instead  of  oath) ; 
and  the  virtual  discredit  of  the  Blasphemy  Laws  as  such.  It  is 
probable  also  that  the  treatment  meted  out  to  Mrs.  Besant— then 
associated  with  Bradlaugh  in  freethought  propaganda— marked  the 
end  of  another  form  of  tyrannous  outrage,  already  made  historic  in 
the  case  of  Shelley.  Secured  the  custody  of  her  children  under  a 
marital  deed  of  separation,  she  was  deprived  of  it  at  law  (1879)  on 
her  avowal  of  atheistic  opinions,  with  the  result  that  her  influence 
as  a  propagandist  was  immensely  increased. 

8.  The  special  energy  of  the  English  secularist  movement  in 
the  ninth  decade  was  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  by  that  time  there 
had  appeared  a  remarkable  amount  of  modern  freethinking  literature 
of  high  literary  and  intellectual  quality,  and  good  "social"  status. 
Down  to  1870  the  new  literary  names  committed  to  the  rejection  of 
Christianity,  apart  from  the  men  of  science  who  kept  to  their  own 
work,  were  the  theists  Hennell,  F.  W.  Newman,  W.  E.  Greg.  E.  W. 
Mackay,  Buckle,  and  W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  all  of  them  influential,  but 
none  of  them  at  once  recognized  as  a  first-rate  force.  But  with  the 
appearance  of  Lecky's  History  of  Die  Bise  and  Influence  of  the  Spirit 
of  Eationalism  in  Europe  (1865),  lacking  though  it  was  in  clear- 
ness of  thought,  a  new  tone  began  to  prevail ;  and  his  History  of 
European  Morals  from  Augustus  to  Charlemagne  (1869),  equally 
readable  and  not  more  uncompromising,  was  soon  followed  by  a 
series  of  powerful  pronouncements  of  a  more  explicit  kind.  One  of 
the  first  of  the  literary  class  to  come  forward  with  an  express 
impeachment  of  Christianity  was  MONCUEE  Daniel  Conway, 
whose  Earthward  Pilgrirnage  (1870)  was  the  artistic  record  of  a 
gifted  preacher's  progress  from  Wesleyan  Methodism,  through 
Unitarianism,  to  a  theism  which  was  soon  to  pass  into  agnosticism. 
In  1871  appeared  the  remarkable  work  of  WiNWOOD  Eeade,  The 


POPULAE  PEOPAGANDA  AND  CULTUEE 


403 


Martyrdom  of  Man,  wherein  a  rapid  survey  of  ancient  and  medieval 
history,  and  of  the  growth  of  religion  from  savage  beginnings,  leads 
up  to  a  definitely  anti-theistic  presentment  of  the  future  of  human 
life  with  the  claim  to  have  shown  "  that  the  destruction  of  Chris- 
tianity is  essential  to  the  interests  of  civilization."  ^  Some  eighteen 
editions  tell  of  the  acceptance  won  by  the  book.  Less  vogue,  but 
some  startled  notice,  was  won  by  the  Duke  of  Somerset's  Christian 
Theology  and  Modern  Scepticism  (1872),  a  work  of  moderate 
rationahsm,  but  by  a  peer.  In  1873  appeared  HERBERT  Spencer'S 
Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Sociology,  wherein  the  implicit  anti- 
supernaturalism  of  that  philosopher's  First  Principles  was  advanced 
upon,  in  the  chapter  on  "  The  Theological  Bias,"  by  a  mordant 
attack  on  that  Christian  creed. 

That  attack  had  been  preceded  by  Matthew  Arnold's  Litcratiire 
and  Dogma  (1872),  wherein  the  publicist  who  had  censured  Colenso 
for  not  writing  in  Latin  described  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  as  "the  fairy-tale  of  three  Lord  Shaftesburys."  Much 
pleading  for  the  recognition  by  unbelievers  of  the  value  of  the  Bible 
failed  to  convince  Christians  of  the  value  of  such  a  thinker's  Chris- 
tianity. A  more  important  sensation  was  provided  in  1873  by  the 
posthumous  publication  of  Mill's  Autobiography,  and,  in  the  following 
year,  by  his  Three  Essays  on  Beligion,  which  exhibited  its  esteemed 
author  as  not  only  not  a  Christian  but  as  never  having  been  one, 
although  he  formulated  a  species  of  limited  liabihty  theism,  as 
unsatisfactory  to  the  rationalists  as  to  the  orthodox.  Still  the  fresh 
manifestations  of  freethinking  multiplied.  On  the  one  hand  the 
massive  treatise  entitled  Supernatural  Beligion  (1874),  and  on  the 
other  the  freethinking  essays  of  Prof.  W.  K.  Clifford  in  the  Fortnightly 
Bevieio,  the  most  vigorously  outspoken  ever  yet  written  by  an 
English  academic,  showed  that  the  whole  field  of  debate  was  being 
reopened  with  a  new  power  and  confidence.  The  History  of  English 
Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  by  Leslie  Stephen  (1876),  set 
up  the  same  impression  from  another  side;  yet  another  social 
sensation  was  created  by  the  appearance  of  Viscount  Amberley'S 
Analysis  of  Beligious  Belief  (1877) ;  and  all  the  while  the  "  Higher 
Criticism  "  proceeded  within  the  pale  of  the  Church. 

The  literary  situation  was  now  so  changed  that,  whereas  from  1850 
to  1880  the  "sensations"  in  the  religious  world  were  those  made  by 
rationalistic  attacks,  thereafter  they  were  those  made  by  new  defences. 
H.  Drummond's  Natural  Law  in  the  Spiritual  World  (1883),  Mr. 


»  Work  cited,  p.  524. 


404      FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


Balfour's  Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt  (1879)  and  Foundations  of 
J5e/iV(l895),and  Mr.Kidd's  Social  Evolution  {lS9i),  were  successively 
welcomed  as  being  declared  to  render  such  a  service.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  they  are  to-day  valued  upon  that  score  in  any  quarter. 

9.  In  the  first  half  of  the  century  popular  forms  of  freethought 
propaganda  were  hardly  possible  in  other  European  countries.    France 
had   been  too  long  used   to  regulation  alike  under    the  monarchy 
and  undei*  the  empire  to  permit  of  open  promotion  of  unbelief  in  the 
early  years  of  the  Restoration.     Yet  as  early  as  1828  we  find  the 
Protestant  Coquerel  avowing  that  in  his  day  the  Bourbonism  of  the 
Catholic  clergy  had  revived  the  old  anti-clericalism,  and  that  it  was 
common  to  find   the  most  high-minded   patriots   unbelievers   and 
materialists.^    But  still  more  remarkable  was  the  persistence  of  deep 
freethinking  currents  in  the  Catholic  world  throughout  the  century. 
About  1830  rationalism  had  become  normal  among  the  younger 
students  at  Paris  ;^  and  the  revolution  of  that  year  elicited  a  charter 
putting  all  religions  on   an  equality.®     Soon   the   throne   and   the 
chambers  were  on  a  footing  of  practical  hostility  to  the  Church.* 
Under  Louis  Philippe  men  dared  to  teach  in  the  Coll<^ge  de  France 
that  "the  Christian  dispensation  is  but  07ie  link  in  the  chain  of 
divine  revelations  to  man."  ^    Even  during  the  first  period  of  reaction 
after  the  restoration  numerous  editions  of  Volney's  Euines  and  of 
the  AbrSge^  of  Dupuis's  Origine  de  tons  les  Cultes  served  to  maintain 
among  the  more  intelligent  of  the  proletariat  an  almost  scientific 
rationalism,  which  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  been  improved  on  by 
such  historiography  as  that  of  Renan's   Vie  de  Jisus.     And  there 
were  other  forces,  over  and  above  freemasonry,  which  in  France  and 
other  Latin  countries  has  since  the  Revolution  been  steadily  anti- 
clerical.    The   would-be  social   reconstructor  Charles    Fourier 
(1772-1837)  was  an  independent  and  non-Christian  though  not  an 
anti-clerical  theist,  and  his  system  may  have  counted  for  something 
as  organizing  the  secular  spirit  among  the  workers  in  the  period  of 
the   monarchic   and    Catholic   reaction.     Fourier   approximated   to 
Christianity  inasmuch  as  he  believed  in  a  divine  Providence  ;  but 
like  Owen  he  had  an  unbounded  and  heterodox  faith  in  human 

J  Coquerel.  Esmi  sur  VhiHtoire  ghi^rale  du  christianisme,  1828,  pr6f. 

2  Dr.  Christopher  Wordsworth.  Diary  in  France,  1845,  pp.  75-77. 

8  The  miserable  and  deistical  principle  of  the  eqiuiUty  of  all  religions"  (id.  p.  188). 
Cp.  pp.  151,  1.53.  ,     ^     ^^  ,  *  Id.  pp.  15.  37.  4.5.  181.  185.  190. 

»  Id.  pp.  157-61.  As  to  the  general  vogue  of  rationalism  in  France  at  that  period,  see 
pp.  35, 204  :  and  compare  Saisset.  Essais  sur  la  philosophieet  la  religion,  1845 ;  The  Progress 
»L^^*»*«"!r?^''"«t/'(f  as  illustrated  in  the  Protestant  Church  of  France,hy  Dr.  J.  R.  Beard, 
1861;  and  Wilsoas  article  in  Essays  and  Reviews.  As  to  Switzerland  and  Holland,  see 
Pearson,  Injidehty,  its  Aspects,  etc..  ia53,  pp.  560-64,  575-84. 

V,  *  H"oo^^'^l!^^^'r.?  so^>S]Lt  to  suppress  this  book,  of  whicb  many  editions  had  appeared 
before  1830.    See  Blanco  White's  Life,  1845.  ii,  168. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  AND  CULTURE 


405 


goodness  and  perfectibility ;  and  he  claimed  to  have  discovered  the 
"plan  of  God"  for  men.  But  Fourier  was  never,  like  Owen,  a 
popular  force ;  and  popular  rationalism  went  on  other  lines.  At  no 
time  was  the  proletariat  of  Paris  otherwise  than  largely  Voltairean 
after  the  Revolution,  of  which  one  of  the  great  services  (carried  on 
by  Napoleon)  was  an  improvement  in  popular  education.  The  rival 
non-Christian  systems  of  Saint-Simon  (1760-1823)  and  AUGUSTE 
COMTE  (1798-1857)  also  never  took  any  practical  hold  among  them  ; 
but  throughout  the  century  they  have  been  fully  the  most  free- 
thinking  working-class  population  in  the  world. 

As  to  Fourier  see  the  CEuvres  Choisies  de  Fourier,  ed.  Ch.  Gide, 
pp.  1-3,  9.  Cp.  Solidarity  :  Vue  Syiithetique  sur  la  doctrine  de 
Ch.  Fourier,  par  Hippolyte  Renaud,  3e  6dit.  1846,  ch.  i  :^  *  Pour 
ramener  I'homme  k  la  foi  "  [en  Dieu] ,  writes  Renaud,  '  il  faut 
lui  offrir  aujourd'hui  une  foi  complete  et  compos^e,  une  foi 
solidement  assise  sur  le  t6moignage  de  la  raison.  Pour  cela  il 
faut  que  la  flambeau  de  la  science  dissipe  toutes  les  obscurit^s  " 
(p.  9).  This  is  not  propitious  to  dogma ;  but  Fourier  planned 
and  promised  to  leave  priests  and  ministers  undisturbed  in  his 
new  world,  and  even  declared  religions  to  be  "  much  superior  to 
uncertain  sciences."  Gide,  introd.  to  CEuvres  Choisies,  pp.  xxii- 
xxiii,  citing  Manuscrits,  vol.  de  1853-1856,  p.  293.  Cp.  Dr.  Ch. 
Pellarin,  Fourier,  sa  vie  et  sa  theorie,  5e  6dit.  p.  143. 

Saint-Simon,  who  proposed  a  "new  Christianity,"  expressly 
guarded  against  direct  appeals  to  the  people.  See  Weil,  Sat7it- 
Simon  et  son  CEuvre,  1894,  p.  193.  As  to  the  Saint- Simonian 
sect,  see  an  interesting  testimony  by  Renan,  Les  Apotres,  p.  148. 

The  generation  after  the  fall  of  Napoleon  was  pre-eminently  the 
period  of  new  schemes  of  society ;  and  it  is  noteworthy  that  they 
were  all  non-Christian,  though  all,  including  even  Owen's,  claimed 
to  provide  a  "  religion,"  and  the  French  may  seem  all  to  have  been 
convinced  by  Napoleon's  practice  that  some  kind  of  cult  must  be 
provided  for  the  peoples.  Owen  alone  rejected  alike  supernaturahsm 
and  cultus;  and  his  movement  left  the  most  definite  rationalistic 
traces.  All  seem  to  have  been  generated  by  the  double  influence  of 
(1)  the  social  failure  of  the  French  Revolution,  which  left  so  many 
anxious  for  another  and  better  effort  at  reconstruction,  and  (2)  of  the 
spectacle  of  the  rule  of  Napoleon,  which  seems  to  have  elicited  new 
ideals  of  beneficent  autocracy.  Owen,  Fourier,  Saint-Simon,  and 
Comte  were  all  alike  would-be  founders  of  a  new  society  or  social 
religion.  It  seems  probable  that  this  proclivity  to  systematic  recon- 
struction, in  a  world  which  still  carried  a  panic-memory  of  one 
great  social  overturn,  helped  to  lengthen  the  rule  of    orthodoxy. 


406    FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 

Considerably  more  progress  was  made  when  freethoughfc  became 
detached  from  special  plans  of  polity,  and  grew  up  anew  by  way 
of  sheer  truth-seeking  on  all  the  lines  of  inquiry. 

In  France,  however,  the  freethinking  tradition  from  the  eighteenth 
century  never  passed  away,  at  least  as  regards  the  life  of  the  great 
towns.     And  while  Napoleon  III  made  it  his  business  to  conciliate 
the  Church,  which  in  the  person  of  the  somewhat  latitudinarian 
Darboy,  Archbishop  of  Paris,  had  endorsed  his  coiip  d'Mat  of  1851,' 
even  under  his  rule  the  irreversible  movement  of  freethought  revealed 
itself  among  his  own  ministers.     Victor  Duruy,  the  eminent  his- 
torian, his  energetic  Minister  of  Education,  was  a  freethinker,  non- 
aggressive   towards   the  Church,  but  perfectly  determined  not  to 
permit  aggression  by  it.'     And  when  the  Church,  in  its  immemorial 
way,  declaimed  against  all  forms  of  rationalistic  teaching  in  the 
colleges,    and    insisted   on   controUing   the   instruction   in   all   the 
schools,^   his   firm   resistance   made   him    one   of    its   most   hated 
antagonists.     Even  in  the  Senate,  then  the  asylum  of  all  forms 
of  antiquated  thought  and  prejudice,  Duruy  was  able  to  carry  his 
point    against    the   prelates,    Sainte-Beuve   strongly   and   skilfully 
supporting   him.'    Thus  in  the  France  of  the  Third  Empire,  on 
the  open  field  of  the  educational  battle-ground  between  faith  and 
reason,  the  rationalistic  advance  was  apparent  in  administration  no 
less  than  in  the  teaching  of  the  professed  men  of  science  and  the 
polemic  of  the  professed  critics  of  religion. 

10.  In  other  Catholic  countries  the  course  of  popular  culture  in 
the  first  half  of  the  century  was  not  greatly  dissimilar  to  that  seen 
m  France,  though  less  rapid  and  expansive.  Thus  we  find  the 
Spanish  Inquisitor-General  in  1815  declaring  that  "  all  the  world 
sees  with  horror  the  rapid  progress  of  unbehef,"  and  denouncing 
the  errors  and  the  new  and  dangerous  doctrines"  which  have 
passed  from  other  countries  to  Spain,'  This  evolution  was  to  some 
extent  checked ;  but  in  the  latter  half  of  the  century,  especially  in 
the  last  thirty  years,  all  the  Catholic  countries  of  Europe  were  more 
or  less  permeated  with  demotic  freethought,  usually  going  hand  in 
hand  with  republican  or  socialistic  propaganda  in  poHtics.  It  is 
indeed  a  significant  fact  that  freethought  propaganda  is  often  most 
active  in  countries  where  the  Catholic  Church  is  most  powerful. 
Thus  in  Belgium   there   are  at  least   three  separate   federations, 


2  Id.  pp.  99-105.  8  j^    pp   107-1  Ifi  4  Tjf   ^rx   lio-OT 

5  Llorente,  Hist.  crit.  de  I' Inquisition  de  i'Espagne,  2e  Mit.  iv.  153 


POPULAE  PEOPAGANDA  AND  CULTUEE    407 

standing  for  hundreds  of  freethinking  "  groups  ";  in  Spain,  a  few 
years  ago,  there  were  freethought  societies  in  all  the  large  towns, 
and  at  least  half-a-dozen  freethought  journals  ;  in  Portugal  there 
have  been  a  number  of  societies— a  weekly  journal,  0  Secolo,  of 
Lisbon,  and  a  monthly  review,  0  Livre  Exame.     In  France  and 
Italy,  where  educated  society  is  in  large  measure  rationalistic,  the 
Masonic  lodges  do  most  of  the  personal  and  social  propaganda ;  but 
there  are  federations  of  freethought  societies  in  both  countries.     In 
Switzerland  freethought  is  more  aggressive  in  the  Catholic  than  in 
the  Protestant  cantons.'     In  the  South  American  republics,  again, 
as   in    Italy  and  France,  the   Masonic   lodges   are   predominantly 
freethinking  ;  and  in  Peru  there  was,  a  few  years  ago,  a  Freethought 
League,  with  a  weekly  organ.     As  long  ago  as  1856  the  American 
diplomatist  and  archaeologist,   Squier,   wrote   that,   "  Although  the 
people  of  Honduras,  in  common  with  those  of  Central  America  m 
general,    are   nominally    CathoHcs,   yet,    among    those    capable   of 
reflection  or  possessed  of  education,  there  are  more  who  are  destitute 
of  any  fixed  creed—Eationalists  or,  as  they  are  sometimes  called, 
Freethinkers,  than  adherents  of  any  form  of  religion."'     That  the 
movement  is  also  active  in  the   other  republics   of  the   southern 
continent  may  be  inferred  from  the  facts  that  a  Positivist  organiza- 
tion has  long  subsisted  in  Brazil ;  that  its  members  were  active  in 
the  peaceful  revolution  which  there  substituted  a  republic  for  a 
monarchy  ;  and  that  at  the  Freethought  Congresses  of  Eome  and 
Paris   in   1904   and   1905   there  was  an  energetic   demand   for   a 
Congress  at  Buenos  Aires,  which  was  finally  agreed  to  for  1906.  ^ 

While  popular  propaganda  is  hardly  possible  save  on  political 
lines,  freethinking  journahsm  has  counted  for  much  in  the  most 
Catholic  parts  of  Southern  Europe.  The  influence  of  such  journals 
is  to  be  measured  not  by  their  circulation,  which  is  never  great,  but 
by  their  keeping  up  a  habit  of  more  or  less  instructed  freethinking 
among  readers,  to  many  of  whom  the  instruction  is  not  otherwise 
easily  accessible.  Probably  the  least  ambitious  of  them  is  an 
intellectual  force  of  a  higher  order  than  the  highest  grade  of  popular 
religious  journalism ;  while  some  of  the  stronger,  as  De  Dageraad 
of  Amsterdam,  have  ranked  as  high-class  serious  reviews.  In  the 
more  free  and  progressive  countries,  however,  freethought  affects 
aU  periodical  literature;  and  in  France  it  partly  permeates  the 
ordinary  newspapers.  In  England,  where  a  series  of  monthly  or 
weekly  publications  of  an  emphatically  freethinking  sort  has  been 

1  Ratrport  of  Ch.  Fulpius  in  the  Almanack  de  Libre  Pensie,  1906. 

2  Squier,  Notes  on  Central  America,  1856.  p.  227. 


408    FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUBY 


nearly  continuous  from  about  1840/  new  ones  rising  in  place  of 
those  which  succumbed  to  the  commercial  difficulties,  such 
periodicals  suffer  an  economic  pinch  in  that  they  cannot  hope  for 
much  income  from  advertisements,  which  are  the  chief  sustenance 
of  popular  journals  and  magazines.  The  same  law  holds  elsewhere ; 
but  in  England  and  America  the  high-priced  reviews  have  been 
gradually  opened  to  rationalistic  articles,  the  way  being  led  by  the 
English  Westminster  Revieio'^  and  Fortnightly  Review,  both  founded 
with  an  eye  to  freer  discussion. 

Among  the  earlier  freethinking  periodicals  may  be  noted  The 
Bepuhlican,  1819-26  (edited  by  Carlile)  ;  The  Deist's  Magazine, 
1820 ;  The  Lion,  1828  (Carlile) ;  The  Proynpter,  1830  (Carlile)  ; 
The    Gauntlet,    1833    (Carlile);  The   Atheist    and    Bepublican, 
1841-42  ;  The  Blasphemer,  1842  ;  The  Oracle  of  Beason  (founded 
by  Southwell),  1842.  etc.;  The  Beasoner  and  Herald  of  Progress 
(largely  conducted  by  Holyoake),  1846-1861  ;  Coopers  Journal ; 
or,  unfettered  Thinker,  etc.,   1850.  etc.;  The  Movement,   1843 ; 
The  Freethi7iker's  Information  for  the  People  (undated  :  after 
1840) ;  Freethinker's  Magazine,  1850,  etc.;  London  Investigator, 
1854,  etc.      Bradlaugh's  National  Beformer,  begun   in    I860 
lasted  till  1893.     Mr.  Foote's  Freethinker,  begun  in  1881,  still 
subsists.     Various  freethinking  monthlies  have  risen  and  fallen 
smce  imO~e.g.,  Our  Comer,  edited  by  Mrs.  Besant,  1883-88  ; 
The  Liberal  and  Progress,  edited  by  Mr.  Foote,  1879-87  ;  the 
Free  Beview,  transformed  into  the   Universitij  Magazine,  1893- 
1898.     The  Beformer,  a   monthly,  edited  by  Mrs.  Bradlaugh 
Bonner,  subsisted  from   1897  to  1904,     The  Literary  Guide, 
which  began  as  a  small  sheet  in  1885,  flourishes.     Since  1900, 
a   popular    Socialist  journal,    The    Clarion,   has   declared    for 
rationalism  through  the  pen  of  its  editor,  Mr.  K.  Blatchford 
(    Nunquam  "),  whose  polemic  has  caused  much  controversy. 
For  a  generation  back,  further,  rationalistic  essays  have  appeared 
from  time  to  time  not  only  in  the  Fortnightly  Beview  (founded 
by  G.  H.  Lewes,  and    long   edited    by  Mr.  John  (now  Lord) 
Morley,  much  of   whose  writing   on   the   French  philosophes 
appeared  in  its  pages),  but  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  wherein 
was  carried  on,  for  instance,  the  famous   controversy  between 
Mr.  Gladstone  and  Prof.  Huxley.     In  the  early  'seventies,  the 
Cornhill  Magazine,  under   the   editorship   of   Leslie    Stephen, 

/.^«^?«f°«®i-^^°i*^^®  popular  freethought  propaganda  bad  been  partly  carried  on  under 
Wmfam  Honr^rTW*  «°wr^'^^  '  ^"^?.*«l«.  and  Li>».  and  in  Various  publicaWons  of 
Sh  ed.™    152       ^^■^'^'  Wilson's  article  "Tbe  National Cburch."  in  JEssays  and  Reviews, 

T  ^  Described  as  "our  cbief  atheistic  organ"  by  the  late  F.  W.Newman  "because  Dr. 
f  ?tTnf.J^w '°^''^^-^'    "^•^^''  continue  writing  for  it.  because  it  inte™fated  aUiefstica 

Card^a^^rZ^^n^  ^Contributions ^to  the  early  history  of  the  late 

varatnul  ^leixmian,1891,  p.  103).    The  review  was  for  a  time  edited  by  J  S  Mill  and  for 

edU^o?HhTn  orn^'^m '•  '^°^°-  ^h?P«^^°-  Ji  ^^^^ed  into  the  twentieth  centur^  under  the 
editorship  of  Dr.  Chapman's  widow,  and  kept  a  free  platform  to  the  end. 


POPULAK  PKOPAGANDxV  AND  CULTUKE  409 

issued   serially  Matthew  Arnold's   Literature  and  Dogma  and 
St.  Paul    and    Protestantism.      In    the   latter    years    of    the 
century  quite  a  number  of  reviews,  some  of  them  short-lived, 
gave  space  to  advanced  opinions.     But  propaganda  has  latterly 
become   more   and   more   a   matter   of   all-pervading    literary 
influence,  the  immense  circulation  of  the  sixpenny  reprints  of 
the  K.  P.  A.   having  put  the  advanced   literature   of   the   last 
generation  within  the  reach  of  all. 
11.  In  Germany,   as  we  have  seen,  tbe   relative  selectness  of 
culture,  the  comparative  aloofness  of  the  "enlightened"  from  the 
mass  of  the  people,  made  possible  after  the  War  of  Independence 
a  certain  pietistic  reaction,  in  the  absence  of  any  popular  propa- 
gandist machinery  or  purpose  on  the  side  of  the  rationalists.     In 
the  opinion  of  an  evangelical  authority,  at  the  beginning  of   the 
nineteenth  century,  "  through   modern  enlightenment   (Aufklarung) 
the  people  had  become  indifferent  to  the  Church  ;  the  Bible  was 
regarded  as  a  merely  human  book,  the  Saviour  merely  as  a  person 
who  had  lived  and  taught  long  ago,  not  as  one  whose  almighty 
presence  is  with  his  people  still."  '     According  to  the  same  authority, 
"  before  the  war,  the  indifference  to  the  word  of  God  which  prevailed 
among  the  upper  classes  had  penetrated  to  the  lower ;  but  after  it, 
a  desire  for  the  Scriptures  was  everywhere  felt."^     This  involves 
an   admission   that   the   "religion   of   the   heart"    propounded   by 
Schleiermacher  in  his  addresses  On  Beligion  "  to  the  educated  among 
its  despisers"'  (1799)   was   not   really  a  Christian   revival  at  all. 
Schleiermacher  himself  in  1803  declared  that  in  Prussia  there  was 
almost  no  attendance  on  public  worship,  and  the  clergy  had  fallen 
into  profound  discredit.*     A  pietistic  movement  had,  however,  begun 
during  the  period  of  the  French  ascendancy  ;*  and  seeing  that  the 
freethinking   of   the   previous   generation   had   been  in   part  asso- 
ciated with  French  opinion,  it  was  natural  that  on  this  side  anti- 
French    feeling   should   promote    a   reversion    to   older    and    more 
"national"  forms  of  feeling.     Thus  after  the  fall  of  Napoleon  the 
tone  of  the  students  who  had  fought  in  the  war  seems  to  have  been 
more  religious  than  that  of  previous  years.^     Inasmuch,  however, 
as  the  "enlightenment"  of  the  scholarly  class  was  maintained,  and 

1  Pastor  W.  Baur,  Hamburg,  Beligious  Life  in  Germany  during  the  Wars  of  Inde- 
pendence, Eng.  tr.  1872.  p.  41.  H.  J.  Rose  and  Pusey,  in  their  controversy  as  to  the  causes 
of  German  rationalism,  were  substantially  at  one  on  this  point  of  fact.  Rose,  Letter  to  th£ 
Bishop  of  London,  1829.  pp.  19,  150,  161.  ^  Id.  p.  481. 

8  Ueber  die  Beligion:  Beden  an  die  gebildeten  unter  ihren  Verdchtern.  These  are 
discussed  bGirpinfli^tiPi* 

*  Lichtenberger,  Hist,  of  Ger.  Theol.  in  the  Nineteenth  Cent.  Eng.  tr,  1889,  pp.  122-23. 

6  See  the  same  volume,  23assi?n.  .      _        ,     ^„__       __ 

6  Karl  von  Raumer.  Coiitrib.  to  the  Hist,  of  the  German  Universities,  Eng.  tr.  1859.  p.  79. 
The  intellectual  tone  of  W.  Baur  and  K.  von  Raumer  certainly  protects  them  from  any 
charge  of  "  enlighteumeut." 


A.ir\      TS^'D'P'P  TIT  ATT  PITT'    TXT    rpTT"p    XTTXrT?'T'T?'P\r'PTT    PTJ'MTTT'DV 

applied  anew  to  critical  problems,  the  religious  revival  did  not  turn 
back  the  course  of  progress.  "  When  the  third  centenary  comme- 
moration, in  1817,  of  the  Keformation  approached,  the  Prussian 
people  were  in  a  state  of  stolid  indifference,  apparently,  on  religious 
matters."^  Alongside  of  the  pietistic  reaction  of  the  Liberation 
period  there  went  on  an  open  ecclesiastical  strife,  dating  from  an 
anti-rationalist  declaration  by  the  Court  preacher  Eeinhard  at 
Dresden  in  1811,^  between  the  rationalists  or  "Friends  of  Light" 
and  the  Scripturalists  of  the  old  school ;  and  the  effect  was  a  general 
disintegration  of  orthodoxy,  despite,  or  it  may  be  largely  in  virtue 
of,  the  governmental  policy  of  rewarding  the  Pietists  and  discouraging 
their  opponents  in  the  way  of  official  appointments.^  The  Prussian 
measure  (1817)  of  forcibly  uniting  the  Lutheran  and  Calvinistic 
Churches,  with  a  neutral  sacramental  ritual  in  which  the  eucharist 
was  treated  as  a  historical  commemoration,  tended  to  the  same 
consequences,  though  it  also  revived  old  Lutheran  zeal;*  and  when 
the  new  revolutionary  movement  broke  out  in  1848,  popular  feeling 
was  substantially  non-religious.  "In  the  south  of  Germany 
especially  the  conflict  of  political  opinions  and  revolutionary 
tendencies  produced,  in  the  first  instance,  an  entire  prostration  of 
religious  sentiment."  The  bulk  of  society  showed  entire  indifference 
to  worship,  the  churches  being  everywhere  deserted  ;  and  **  atheism 
was  openly  avowed,  and  Christianity  ridiculed  as  the  invention  of 
priestcraft."*^  One  result  was  a  desperate  effort  of  the  clergy  to 
"effect  a  union  among  all  who  retained  any  measure  of  Christian  belief, 
in  order  to  raise  up  their  national  religion  and  faith  from  the  lowest 
state  into  which  it  has  ever  fallen  since  the  French  Kevolution." 

But  the  clerical  effort  evoked  a  counter  effort.  Already,  in  1846, 
official  interference  with  freedom  of  utterance  led- to  the  formation  of 
a  "  free  religious  "  society  by  Dr.  Eupp,  of  Konigsberg,  one  of  the 
"Friends  of  Light"  in  the  State  Church;  and  he  was  followed  by 
Wislicenus  of  Halle,  a  Hegehan,  and  by  Uhhch  of  Magdeburg.®  As 
a  result  of  the  determined  pressure,  social  and  official,  which  ensued 
on  the  collapse  of  the  revolution  of  1848,  these  societies  failed  to 
develop  on  the  scale  of  their  beginnings;  and  that  of  Magdeburg, 
which  at  the  outset  had  7,000  members,  has  latterly  only  500 ; 
though  that  of  Berlin  has  nearly  4,000.'^  There  is  further  a 
Freidenker  Bund,  with  branches   in   many   to^vns;    and   the  two 

*  Laing,  Notes  of  a  Traveller,  1842.  p.  181. 

2  C.  H.  Cotterill,  Belig.  Movements  of  Qermany  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  1849.  pp.  39-40. 

8  Id.  pp.  27-28,  41-42.  *  Cp.  Laing.  as  cited,  pp.  206-207.  211. 

8  Cotterill.  as  cited,  p.  84.  6  Cotterill.  as  cited,  pp.  43-47. 

7  Rapport  de  Ida  Altmann,  in  Almanach  de  Libre  Pais^e,  1906,  p.  20. 


POPULAH  PEOPAGANDA  AND  CULTUEE    411 

organizations,  with  their  total  membership  of  some  fifty  thousand, 
may  be  held  to  represent  the  militant  side  of  popular  freethought  m 
Germany.     This,  however,  constitutes  only  a  fraction  of  the  total 
amount    of    passive   rationalism.      There   is    a    large    measure   of 
enlightenment  in  both  the  working  and  the  middle  classes  ;  and  the 
ostensible  force  of   orthodoxy   among   the   official   and   conformist 
middle  class  is  in  many  respects  illusory.     The  German  police  laws 
put  a  rigid  check  on  all  manner  of  platform  and  press  propaganda 
which  could  be  indicted  as  hurting  the  feelings  of  religious  people ; 
so  that  a  jest  at  the  Holy  Coat  of  Treves  could  even  in  recent  years 
send  a  journalist  to  jail,  and  the  platform  work  of  the  mihtant 
societies  is  closely  trammelled.     Yet  there  are,  or  have  been,  over  a 
dozen  journals  which  so  far  as  may  be  take  the  freethought  side;' 
and  the  whole  stress  of  Bismarckian  reaction  and  of  official  ortho- 
doxy under  the  present  Kaiser  has  never  availed  to  make  the  tone  of 
popular  thought  pietistic.     KARL  MARX,  the  prophet  of  the  German 
Socialist  movement  (1818-1883).  laid  it  down  as  part  of  its  mission 
"to  free  consciousness  from  the  religious  spectre";   and  his  two 
most  influential  followers  in  Germany,  Bebel  and  LlEBKNECHT, 
were  avowed  atheists,  the  former  even  going  so  far  as  to  avow 
officially  in  the  Eeichstag  that  "  the  aim  of  our  party  is  on  the 
pohtical   plane   the   republican   form    of    State;    on   the  economic, 
SociaHsm  ;  and  on  the  plane  which  we  term  the  religious,  atheism  "; 
though   the  party   attempts   no   propaganda   of    the  latter   order. 
"Christianity    and    Social-Democracy,"    said    Bebel    again,    "are 
opposed  as  fire  and  water."  ^ 

Some  index  to  the  amount  of  popular  freethought  that  normally 
exists  under  the  surface  in  Germany  is  furnished,  further,  by  the 
strength  of  the  German  freethought  movement  in  the  United  States, 
where,  despite  the  tendency  to  the  adoption  of  the  common  speech, 
there  grew  up  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  many 
German  freethinking  societies,  a  German  federation  of  atheists,  and 
a  vigorous  popular  organ,  Der  Freidenker. 

Thus,  under  the  sounder  moral  and  economic  conditions  of  the 
life  of  the  proletariate  in  Germany,  straightforward  rationalism,  as 
apart  from  propaganda,  is  becoming  among  them  more  and  more 
the  rule.     The  bureaucratic   control  of   education  forces  religious 


1  The  principal  have  been:  Das  freie  Wort  and  Franlcfurter  Zeitung,  Yi^nMoxt-on- 
Main;  Der  Freidenker,  Friedricbshagen.  near  Berlin;  Der  freirelxgibsesSonnUg  matt, 
Breslau  ;  Diefreie  Gerneinde,  Magdeburg ;  Der  Atheist,  Nuremberg ;  Menschentiim,  (rotha  , 
Voasische  Zeitung,  Berlin  ;  Berliner  Volkszeitung,  Berlin  ;  rorwarts  ^Socialist)  Berlin . 
Weaer  Zeitung,  Bremen  ;  Hartungsche  Zeitimg,  Konigsberg ;  Kohnsche  Zeitung.  ^o^ogne- 

a  Studemund,  Der  moderne  JJnglauhe  in  den  unteren  Stdnden,  1901.  P.  14.  -i"-.  p.  -^-s. 


412    FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


teaching   in   the   common   schools ;   and   there   is   no    "  conscience 
clause "  for  unbelieving  parents/     A  Protestant  pastor  at  the  end 
of  the  century  made  an  investigation  into   the   state   of   religious 
opinion  among  the  working  Socialists  of  some  provincial  towns  and 
rural   districts,    and    found    everywhere   a   determined   attitude  of 
rationalism.     The  formula  of  the  Social  Democrats,  "Religion  is  a 
private  matter,"  he  bitterly  perceives  to  carry  the  imphcation  "  a 
private  matter  for  the  fools  ";  and  while  he  holds  that  the  belief  in 
a  speedy  collapse  of  the  Christian  religion  is  latterly  less  common 
than  formerly  among  the  upper  and  middle  classes,  he  complains 
that  the  Socialists  are  not  similarly  enlightened."     Bebel's  drastic 
teaching  as  to   the  economic  and  social  conditions  of  the  rise  of 
Christianity,^  and  the  materialistic  theory  of  history  set  forth  by 
Marx   and  Engels,  he  finds  generally  accepted.     Not  only  do  most 
of  the  party  leaders  declare  themselves  to  be  without  religion,  but 
those  who  do  not  so  declare  themselves  are  so  no  less.*     Nor  is  the 
unbelief  a  mere  sequel  to  the  Socialism  :  often  the  development  is 
the  other  way.'     The  opinion  is  almost  universal,  further,  that  the 
clergy  in  general  do   not   believe  what  they  teach.'     Atheists  are 
numerous  among  the  peasantry ;  more  numerous  among  the  workers 
in  the  provincial  towns  ;  and  still  more  numerous  in  the  large  towns  ;  ^ 
and  while  many  take  a  sympathetic  view  of  Jesus  as  a  man  and 
teacher,  not  a  few  deny  his  historic  existence'— a  view  set  forth  in 
non- Socialist  circles  also." 

12.  Under   the  widely-different   political   conditions    in    Russia 
and  the  Scandinavian  States  it  is  the  more  significant  that  in  all 
alike  rationalism  is  latterly  common  among  the  educated  classes. 
In  Norway  the  latter  perhaps  include  a  larger  proportion  of  work- 
ing people  than  can  be  so  classed  even  in  Germany ;  and  rationalism 
is  relatively  hopeful,  though  social  freedom  is  still  far  from  perfect. 
It  is  the  old  story  of  toleration  for  a  dangerously  well-placed  free- 
thought,  and  intolerance  for  that  which  reaches  the  common  people. 
In  Russia  rationalism  has  before  it  the  task  of  transmuting  a  system 
of  autocracy  into  one  of  self-government.     In  no  European  country, 
perhaps,  is  rationalism  more  general  among  the  educated  classes  ; 


I  c;  "R"  ^°^5'^e^'  ^»»  Australian  in  Germany,  1911.  pp.  181, 184 
3  OloteT'lt'  ^:;^:'^^^n^Pnglajihe  in  den;mteren%Zd^:im,  pp.  17.  21. 
ChrtftZtums'^    ^'''   ^"^'^'^    ""^    Sw«mu«d    Lacroix's  "I}ie  wahre    Oestalt  des 

oping^hSt2^<fn^^S:^Sl^^^;^i^-,^;.  1^1-    Since  that  date  the 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  AND  CULTURE 


413 


and  in  none  is  there  a  greater  mass  of  popular  ignorance.^  The 
popular  icon-worship  in  Moscow  can  hardly  be  paralleled  outside  of 
Asia.  On  the  other  hand,  the  aristocracy  became  Voltairean  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  has  remained  more  or  less  incredulous 
since,  though  it  now  joins  hands  with  the  Church  ;  while  the  demo- 
cratic movement,  in  its  various  phases  of  socialism,  constitutionalism, 
and  Nihilism,  has  been  markedly  anti-religious  since  the  second 
quarter  of  the  century.'*  Subsidiary  revivals  of  mysticism,  such  as 
are  chronicled  in  other  countries,  are  of  course  to  be  seen  in  Russia ; 
but  the  instructed  class,  the  intelliguentia,  is  essentially  naturalistic 
in  its  cast  of  thought.  This  state  of  things  subsists  despite  the 
readiness  of  the  government  to  suppress  the  shghtest  sign  of  official 
heterodoxy  in  the  universities.^  The  struggle  is  thus  substantially 
between  the  spirit  of  freedom  and  that  of  arbitrary  rule  ;  and  the 
fortunes  of  freethought  go  with  the  former. 

13.  "Free-religious"  societies,  such  as  have  been  noted  in 
Germany,  may  be  rated  as  forms  of  moderate  freethought  propa- 
ganda, and  are  to  be  found  in  all  Protestant  countries,  with  all 
shades  of  development.  A  movement  of  the  kind  has  existed  for 
a  number  of  years  back  in  America,  in  the  New  England  States  and 
elsewhere,  and  may  be  held  to  represent  a  theistic  or  agnostic 
thought  too  advanced  to  adhere  even  to  the  Unitarianism  which 
during  the  two  middle  quarters  of  the  century  was  perhaps  the 
predominant  creed  in  New  England.  The  Theistic  Church  con- 
ducted by  the  Rev.  Charles  Voysey  after  his  expulsion  from  the  Church 
of  England  in  1871  to  his  death  in  1912,  and  since  then  by  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Walter  Walsh,  is  an  example.  Another  type  of  such  a  gradual  and 
peaceful  evolution  is  the  South  Place  Institute  (formerly  "  Chapel") 
of  London,  where,  under  the  famous  orator  W.  J.  Fox,  nominally 
a  Unitarian,  there  was  preached  between  1824  and  1852  a  theism 
tending  to  pantheism,  perhaps  traceable  to  elements  in  the  doctrine 
of  Priestley,  and  passed  on  by  Mr.  Fox  to  Robert  Browning.'*  In 
1864  the  charge  passed  to  MONCUKE  D.  CONWAY,  under  whom  the 
congregation  quietly  advanced  during  twenty  years  from  Unitarianism 
to  a  non-scriptural  rationalism,  embracing  the  shades  of  philosophic 
theism,  agnosticism,  and  anti-theism.     In  Conway's  Lessons  for  the 

1  *•  The  people  in  the  country  do  not  read ;  in  the  towns  they  read  little.  The  journals 
are  little  circulated.  In  Russia  one  never  sees  a  cabman,  an  artisan,  a  labourer  reading 
a  newspaper"  (Ivan  Strannik,  La  yetisee  russe  contemporaine,  1903,  p.  5). 

'^  Cp.  E.  Lavigne,  Introduction  d  I'histoire  du  nihilisme  russe,  1880.  pp.  149, 161.  224 ; 
Arnaudo,  Le  Nihilisme,  French  trans,  pp.  37.  58,  61,  63,  77,  86,  etc.;  Tikhorairov,  La 
Bussie.  p.  290. 

8  Tikhomirov,  La  Bussie,  pp.  325-26.  338-39. 

*  Cp.  Priestley,  Essay  on  the  First  Principles  of  Government,  2nd  ed.  1771.  pp.  257-61. 
and  Conway's  Centenary  History  of  South  Flace,  pp.  63,  77,  80. 


414     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

Day  will  be  found  a  series  of  peculiarly  vivid  mementos  of  that 
period,  a  kind  of  itinerary,  more  intimate  than  any  retrospective 
record.  The  latter  part  of  his  life,  partly  preserved  in  one  of  the 
most  interesting  autobiographies  of  the  century,  was  spent  between 
England  and  the  United  States  and  in  travel.  After  his  first  with- 
drawal to  the  States  in  1884  the  Institute  became  an  open  platform 
for  rationaUst  and  non-theological  ethics  and  social  and  historical 
teaching,  and  it  now  stands  as  an  "  Ethical  Society  "  in  touch  with 
the  numerous  groups  so  named  which  have  come  into  existence  in 
England  in  the  last  dozen  years  on  lines  originally  laid  down  by 
Dr.  Felix  Adler  in  New  York.  At  the  time  of  the  present  writing 
the  English  societies  of  this  kind  number  between  twenty  and  thirty, 
the  majority  being  in  London  and  its  environs.  Their  open 
adherents,  who  are  some  thousands  strong,  are  in  most  cases  non- 
theistic  rationalists,  and  include  many  former  members  of  the 
Secularist  movement,  of  which  the  organization  has  latterly 
dwindled.  On  partly  similar  lines  there  w^ero  developed  in  pro- 
vincial towns  about  the  end  of  the  century  a  small  number  of 
"Labour  Churches,"  in  which  the  tendency  was  to  substitute  a 
rationalist  humanitarian  ethic  for  supernafcuralism  ;  and  the  same 
lecturers  frequently  spoke  from  their  platforms  and  from  those  of 
Ethical  and  Secularist  societies.  Of  late,  however,  the  Labour 
Churches  have  tended  to  disappear.  All  this  means  no  resumption 
of  church-going,  but,  by  the  confession  of  the  Churches,  a  completer 
secularization  of  the  Sunday. 

14.  Alongside  of  the  lines  of  movement  before  sketched,  there  has 
subsisted  in  England  during  the  greater  part  of  the  nineteenth  century 
a  considerable  organization  of  Unitarianism.  In  the  early  years  of 
the  nineteenth  century  it  was  strong  enough  to  obtain  the  repeal 
(1813)  of  the  penal  laws  against  anti-Trinitarianism,  whereafter  the 
use  of  the  name  "  Unitarian  "  became  more  common,  and  a  sect  so 
called  was  founded  formally  in  1825.  When  the  heretical  preachers 
of  the  Presbyterian  sect  began  openly  to  declare  themselves  as 
Unitarians,  there  naturally  arose  a  protest  from  the  orthodox,  and 
an  attempt  was  made  in  1833  to  save  from  its  new  destination  the 
property  owned  by  the  heretical  congregations.^  This  was  frustrated 
by  the  Dissenters'  Chapels  Act  of  1844,  which  gave  to  each  group 
singly  the  power  to  interpret  its  trust  in  its  own  fashion.  Thence- 
forward the  sect  prospered  considerably,  albeit  not  so  greatly  as  in 

1  See  Rev.  Joseph  Hunter,  An  Historical  Defence  of  the  Trustees  of  Lady  Henley's 
Foundations,  1834;  The  History,  Opinions,  and  Present  Legal  Position  of  the  Lngiisn 
Presbyterians  (official).  1834  ;  An  Examination  and  Defence  of  the  Principles  of  i  ro- 
testant  Dissent,  by  the  Rev.  W.  Hamilton  Drummond,  of  Dublin,  1842. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  AND  CULTURE 


415 


I 


the  United  States.  During  the  century  EngHsh  Unitarianism  has 
been  associated  with  scholarship  through  such  names  as  John  Kenrick 
and  Samuel  Sharpe,  the  historians  of  Egypt,  and  J.  J.  Tayler ;  and, 
less  directly,  with  philosophy  in  the  person  of  Dr.  James  Martineau, 
who,  however,  was  rather  a  coadjutor  than  a  champion  of  the  sect. 
In  the  United  States  the  movement,  greatly  aided  to  popularity  by 
the  eloquent  humanism  of  the  two  Channings,  lost  the  prestige  of  the 
name  of  Emerson,  who  had  been  one  of  its  ministers,  by  the  inability 
of  his  congregation  to  go  the  whole  way  with  him  in  his  opinions. 
In  1853  Emerson  told  the  young  Moncure  Conway  that  **  the 
Unitarian  Churches  were  stated  to  be  no  longer  producing  ministers 
equal  to  their  forerunners,  but  were  more  and  more  finding  their  best 
men  in  those  coming  from  orthodox  Churches,"  who  "would,  of 
course,  have  some  enthusiasm  for  their  new  faith."  Latterly 
Unitarians  have  been  entitled  to  say  that  the  Trinitarian  Churches 
are  approximating  to  their  position.'^  Such  an  approach,  however, 
involves  rather  a  weakening  than  a  strengthening  of  the  smaller 
body;  though  some  of  its  teachers  are  to  the  full  as  bigoted  and 
embittered  in  their  propaganda  as  the  bulk  of  the  traditionally 
orthodox.  Others  adhere  to  their  ritual  practices  in  the  spirit  of 
use  and  wont,  as  Emerson  found  when  he  sought  to  rationalize  in 
his  own  Church  the  usage  of  the  eucharist.^  On  the  other  hand, 
numbers  have  passed  from  Unitarianism  to  thoroughgoing  ration- 
ahsm  ;  and  some  whole  congregations,  following  more  or  less  the 
example  of  that  of  South  Place  Chapel,  have  latterly  reached  a 
position  scarcely  distinguishable  from  that  of  the  Ethical  Societies. 

15.  A  partly  similar  evolution  has  taken  place  among  the  Pro- 
testant Churches  of  France,  Switzeriand,  Hungary,  and  Holland. 
French  Protestantism  could  not  but  be  intellectually  moved  by  the 
intense  ferment  of  the  Revolution  ;  and,  when  finally  secured  against 
active  oppression  from  the  Catholic  side,  could  not  but  develop  an 
intellectual  opposition  to  the  Catholic  Reaction  after  1815.  In 
Switzeriand,  always  in  inteUectual  touch  with  France  and  Germany, 
the  tendencies  which  had  been  stamped  as  Socinian  in  the  days  of 
Voltaire  soon  reasserted  themselves  so  strongly  as  to  provoke 
fanatical  reaction.*  The  nomination  of  Strauss  to  a  chair  of  theo- 
logy at  Ziirich  by  a  Radical  Government  in  1839  actually  gave  rise 
to  a  violent  revolt,  inflamed  and  led  by  Protestant  clergymen.     The 

*  Conway,  Autobiography,  1905,  i,  123. 

2  So  Prof.  William  James,  The  Will  to  Believe,  etc.,  1897,  p.  133. 

^  Conw&y,  Ernerson  at  Hotne  and  Abroad,  18SZ,ch.\ii.  ..  r>„f;««oHc«^ 

*  Hagenbach.  Kirchengeschichte  des  18.  und  19.  Jahrhunderts,  1848,  ii.  422.    Rationalism 
Beems  to  have  spread  soonest  in  the  canton  of  Ziirich.    Id.  ii,  427. 


416    FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

Executive  Council  were  expelled,  and  a  number  of  persons  killed  in 
the  strife/  In  the  canton  of  Aargau  in  1841,  again,  the  cry  of 
"  religion  in  danger"  sufificed  to  bring  about  a  Catholic  insurrection 
against  a  Liberal  Council ;  and  yet  again  in  1844  it  led,  among  the 
Catholics  of  the  Valais  canton,  to  the  bloodiest  insurrection  of  all. 
Since  these  disgraceful  outbreaks  the  progress  of  Rationalism  in 
Switzerland  has  been  steady.  In  1847  a  chair  was  given  at  Berne 
to  the  rationahstic  scholar  Zeller,  without  any  such  resistance  as 
was  made  to  Strauss  at  Zurich.  In  1892,  out  of  a  total  number  of 
3,151  students  in  the  five  universities  of  Switzerland  and  in  the 
academies  of  Fribourg  and  Neuchatel,  the  number  of  theological 
students  was  only  374,  positively  less  than  that  of  the  teaching  staff, 
which  was  431.  Leaving  out  the  academies  named,  which  had  no 
medical  faculty,  the  number  of  theological  students  stood  at  275  out 
of  2,917.  The  Church  in  Switzerland  has  thus  undergone  the 
relative  restriction  in  power  and  prestige  seen  in  the  other  European 
countries  of  long-established  culture.  The  evolution,  however, 
remains  negative  rather  than  positive.  Though  a  number  of  pastors 
latterly  call  themselves  lihrcs  penseurs  or  penseurs  libres,  and  a  move- 
ment of  ethical  culture  [ynorale  sociale)  has  made  progress,  the  forces 
of  positive  freethought  are  not  numerically  strong.  An  economic 
basis  still  supports  the  Churches,  and  the  lack  of  it  leaves  rationalism 
non-aggressive.'* 

A  somewhat  similar  state  of  things  exists  in  Holland,  where  tlie 
"  higher  criticism  "  of  both  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  made 
notable  progress  in  the  middle  decades  of  the  century.  There  then 
resulted  not  only  an  extensive  decay  of  orthodoxy  within  the 
Protestant  Church,  but  a  movement  of  aggressive  popular  free- 
thought,  which  was  for  a  number  of  years  -well  represented  in 
journaHsm.  To-day,  orthodoxy  and  freethought  are  alike  less 
demonstrative  ;  the  broad  explanation  being  that  the  Dutch  people 
in  the  mass  has  ceased  to  be  pietistic,  and  has  secularized  its  life. 
Even  in  the  Bible-loving  Boer  Republic  of  South  Africa  (Transvaal), 
in  its  time  one  of  the  most  orthodox  of  the  civilized  communities  of 
the  world,  there  was  seen  in  the  past  generation  the  phenomenon  of 
an  agnostic  ex-clergyman's  election  to  the  post  of  president,  in  the 
person  of  T.  F.  Burgers,  who  succeeded  Pretorius  in  1871.  His 
election  was  of  course  on  political  and  not  on  religious  grounds ;  and 
panic  fear  on  the  score  of  his  heresy,  besides  driving  some  fanatics 


1  Grote,  Seven  Letters  concerning  the  Folitics  of  Switzerland,  pp.  34-35.  Hagenbach 
(Kirchengeschichte,  ii,  427-28)  shows  no  shame  over  the  insurrection  at  Zurich.  But  cp. 
Beard,  in  Voices  of  the  Church  in  Reply  to  Dr.  Strauss,  1845.  pp.  17-18. 

2  Cp.  the  rapport  of  Ch.  Fulpius  in  the  Almanack  de  Libre  Fenaie,  1906. 


t 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  AND  CULTURE 


417 


I 


to  emigrate,  is  said  to  have  disorganized  a  Boer  expedition  under  his 
command;^  but  his  views  were  known  when  he  was  elected.  In 
the  years  1899-1902  the  terrible  experience  of  the  last  Boer  War,  in 
South  Africa  as  in  Britain,  perhaps  did  more  to  turn  critical  minds 
against  supernaturalism  than  was  accomplished  by  almost  any  other 
agency  in  the  same  period.  In  Britain  the  overturn  was  by  way  of 
the  revolt  of  many  ethically-minded  Christians  against  the  attitude 
of  the  orthodox  churches,  which  were  so  generally  and  so  unscrupu- 
lously belligerent  as  to  astonish  many  even  of  their  freethinking 
opponents.^  As  regards  the  Boers  and  the  Cape  Dutch  the  resultant 
unbelief  was  among  the  younger  men,  who  harassed  their  elders 
with  challenges  as  to  the  justice  or  the  activity  of  a  God  who  per- 
mitted the  liberties  of  his  most  devoted  worshippers  to  be  wantonly 
destroyed.  Among  the  more  educated  burghers  in  the  Orange  Free 
State  commandos  unbelief  asserted  itself  with  increasing  force  and 
frequency.^  An  ethical  rationalism  thus  motived  is  not  likely  to  be 
displaced ;  and  the  Christian  churches  of  Britain  have  thus  the 
sobering  knowledge  that  the  war  which  they  so  vociferously 
glorified*  has  wrought  to  the  discredit  of  their  creed  ahke  in  their 
own  country  and  among  the  vanquished. 

16.  The  history  of  popular  freethought  in  Sweden  yields  a  good 
illustration,  in  a  compact  form,^  of  the  normal  play  of  forces  and 
counter- forces.  Since  the  day  of  Christina,  as  we  saw,  though  there 
have  been  many  evidences  of  passive  unbelief,  active  rationalism  has 
been  little  known  in  her  kingdom  down  till  modern  times,  Sweden 
as  a  whole  having  been  little  touched  by  the  great  ferment  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  The  French  Revolution,  however,  stirred  the 
waters  there  as  elsewhere.  Tegn^r,  the  poet-bishop,  author  of  the 
once-famous  Frithiofs  Saga,  was  notable  in  his  day  for  a  deter- 
mined rejection  of  the  evangelical  doctrine  of  salvation  ;  and  his 
letters  contain  much  criticism  of  the  ruling  system.  But  the  first 
recognizable  champion  of  freethought  in  Sweden  is  the  thinker 
and  historian  E.  G.  Geijer  (d.  1847),  whose  history  of  his  native 
land  is  one  of  the  best  European  performances  of  his  generation. 

»  G.  M.  Theal.  South  Africa  ("Story  of  the  Nations"  series),  pp.  340,  345.  Mr.  Theal's 
view  of  the  mental  processes  of  the  Boers  is  somewhat  k  priori,  and  his  explanation  seems 
in  part  inconsistent  with  his  own  narrative. 

2  An  English  acquaintance  of  my  own  at  Cape  Town,  who  before  the  war  not  only  was 
an  orthodox  believer,  but  found  his  chief  weekly  pleasure  in  attending  church,  was  so 
astounded  by  the  general  attitude  of  the  clergy  on  the  war  that  he  severed  his  connection, 
once  for  all.    Thousands  did  the  same  in  England.  . 

^  I  write  on  the  strength  of  personal  testimonies  spontaneously  given  to  me  in  South 
Africa,  some  of  them  by  clergymen  of  the  Dutch  Reformed  Church. 

*  See  the  evidence  collected  in  the  pamphlet  The  Churches  and  the  War,  by  Alfred 
Marks.    New  Age  Office,  1905. 

5  For  the  survey  here  reduced  to  outline  I  am  indebted  to  two  Swedish  friends. 

VOL.   II  2e 


i 


418    FKEETHOUGHT  IH  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEt 

In  1820  he  was  prosecuted  for  hk  attack  upon  the  dogmas  of  the 
Trinity  and  redemption— long  the  special  themes  of  discussion  in 
Sweden— in  his  book  Thorild ;  but  was  acquitted  by  the  jury. 
Thenceforth  Sweden  follows  the  general  development  of  Europe. 
In  1841  Strauss's  Leben  Jesu  was  translated  in  Swedish,  and 
wrought  its  usual  effect.  On  the  popular  side  the  poet  Wilhelm 
von  Braun  carried  on  an  anti-Biblical  warfare  ;  and  a  blacksmith 
in  a  provincial  town  contrived  to  print  in  1850  a  translation  of 
Paine's  Age  of  Beason.  Once  more  the  spirit  of  persecution  blazed 
forth,  and  he  was  prosecuted  and  imprisoned.  H.  B.  Palmaer 
(d.  1854)  was  likewise  prosecuted  for  his  satire,  The  Last  Judgment 
in  Cocaigne  (Krakwinkel),  with  the  result  that  his  defence  extended 
his  influence.  In  the  same  period  the  Stockholm  curate  Nils  Ignell 
(d.  1864)  produced  a  whole  series  of  critical  pamphlets  and  a 
naturalistic  History  of  the  Development  of  Man,  besides  supplying 
a  preface  to  the  Swedish  translation  of  Kenan's  Vie  de  Jesus. 
Meantime  translations  of  the  works  of  Theodore  Parker,  by  V.  Pfeiff 
and  A.  F.  Akerberg,  had  a  large  circulation  and  a  wide  influence  ; 
and  the  courage  of  the  gymnasium  rector  N.  J.  Cramer  (d.  1893), 
author  of  The  Farewell  to  the  Church,  gave  an  edge  to  the  movement. 
The  partly  rationalistic  doctrine  of  Victor  Kydberg  (d.  1895)  was  in 
comparison  uncritical,  and  was  proportionally  popular. 

On  another  line  the  books  of  Dr.  Nils  Lilja  (d.  1870),  written  for 
working  people,  created  a  current  of  rationalism  among  the  masses ; 
and  in  the  next  generation  G.  J.  Leufstedt  maintained  it  by  popular 
lectures  and  by  the  issue  of  translations  of  Colenso,  Ingersoll, 
Blichner,  and  Renan.  Hjalraar  Stromer  (d.  1886)  did  similar 
platform  work.  Meantime  the  followers  of  Parker  and  Kydberg 
founded  in  1877  a  monthly  review,  Tlie  Truthseeker,  which  lasted 
tiU  1894,  and  an  association  of  ''Believers  in  Keason,"  closely 
resembling  the  British  Ethical  Societies  of  our  own  day.  Among  its 
leading  adherents  has  been  K.  P.  Arnoldson,  the  well-known  peace 
advocate.  Liberal  clerics  were  now  fairly  numerous;  Positivism, 
represented  by  Dr.  Anton  Nystrom's  General  History  of  Civilization, 
played  its  part;  and  the  more  radical  freethinking  movement, 
nourished  by  new  translations,  became  specially  active,  with  the 
usual  effect  on  orthodox  feeling.  AUGUST  Strindberg,  author  and 
lecturer,  was  prosecuted  in  1884  on  a  charge  of  ridiculing  the 
eucharist,  but  was  declared  not  guilty.  The  strenuous  VICTOR 
Lennstrand,  lecturer  and  journalist,  prosecuted  in  1888  and  later  for 
his  anti- Christian  propaganda,  was  twice  fined  and  imprisoned,  with 
the  result  of  extending  his  influence  and  discrediting  his  opponents. 


POPULAE  PROPAGANDA  AND  CULTURE 


419 


Utilitarian  Associations,"  created  by  his  activity,  were  set  up  in 
many  parts  of  the  country ;  and  his  movement  survives  his  death. 

17.  Only  in  the  United  States  has  the  public  lecture  platform 
been  made  a  means  of  propaganda  to  anything  like  the  extent  seen 
in  Britain ;  and  the  greatest  part  of  the  work  in  the  States  has  thus 
far  been  done  by  the  late  Colonel  iNGERSOLL,  the  leading  American 
orator  of  the  last  generation,  and  the  most  widely  influential  platform 
propagandist  of  the  last  century.  No  other  single  freethinker,  it  is 
believed,  has  reached  such  an  audience  by  public  speech ;  and 
between  his  propaganda  and  that  of  the  freethought  journals  there 
has  been  maintained  for  a  generation  back  a  large  body  of  vigorous 
freethinking  opinion  in  all  parts  of  the  States.  Before  the  Civil  War 
this  could  hardly  be  said.  In  the  middle  decades  of  the  century  the 
conditions  had  been  so  little  changed  that  after  the  death  of  Presi- 
dent Lincoln,  who  was  certainly  a  non-Christian  deist,  and  an 
agnostic  deist  at  that,^  it  was  sought  to  be  established  that  he  was 
latterly  orthodox.  In  his  presidential  campaign  of  1860  he  escaped 
attack  on  his  opinions  simply  because  his  opponent,  Stephen  A. 
Douglas,  was  likewise  an  unbeliever.'^  The  great  negro  orator, 
Frederick  Douglas,  was  as  heterodox  as  Lincoln.^  It  is  even 
alleged  that  President  Grant*  was  of  the  same  cast  of  opinion. 
Such  is  the  general  drift  of  intelligent  thought  in  the  United  States, 
from  Washington  onwards ;  and  still  the  social  conditions  impose 
on  public  men  the  burden  of  concealment,  while  popular  history  is 
garbled  for  the  same  reasons.  Despite  the  great  propagandist 
power  of  the  late  Colonel  Ingersoll,  therefore,  American  freethought 
remains  dependent  largely  on  struggling  organizations  and  journals,^ 
and  its  special  literature  is  rather  of  the  popularizing  than  of  the 
scholarly  order.  Nowhere  else  has  every  new  advance  of  ration- 
alistic science  been  more  angrily  opposed  by  the  priesthood  ;  because 
nowhere  is  the  ordinary  prejudice  of  the  priest  more  voluble  or 
better-bottomed  in  self-complacency.  As  late  as  1891  the  Methodist 
Bishop  Keener  delivered  a  ridiculous  attack  on  the  evolution  theory 
before  the  (Ecumenical  Council  of  Methodism  at  Washington, 
declaring  that  it  had  been  utterly  refuted  by  a  certain  "  wonderful 
deposit  of  the  Ashley  beds."  ®  Various  professors  in  ecclesiastical 
colleges  have  been  driven  from  their  posts  for  accepting  in  turn  the 
discoveries   of  geology,  biology,  and  the  "  higher  criticism  " — for 


1  Cp.  Lamon'8  Life  of  Lincoln,  and  J.  B.  Remsburg's  Ahralmm  Lincoln  :   Was  he  a 
Christian?    (New  York.  1893.) 

2  Remsburg.  pp.  318-19.  »  Personal  information.  ^  Remsburg.  p.  324. 

5  Of  these  the  New  York  TruthseeTcer  has  been  the  most  energetic  and  successful. 

6  White,  Warfare,  i.  81. 


420     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUKY 

instance,  Woodrow  of  Columbia,  South  Carolina  ;  Toy  of  Louisville  ; 
Winchell  of  Vanderbilt  University  ;  and  more  than  one  professor  in 
the  American  college  at  Beyrout.^  In  every  one  of  the  three  former 
cases,  it  is  true,  the  denounced  professor  has  been  called  to  a  better 
chair ;  and  latterly  some  of  the  more  Hberal  clergy  have  even  com- 
mercially exploited  the  higher  criticism  by  producing  the  "  Rainbow 
Bible."  Generally  speaking,  however,  in  the  United  States  sheer 
preoccupation  with  business,  and  lack  of  leisure,  counteract  in  a 
measure  the  relative  advantage  of  social  freedom  ;  and  while  culture 
is  more  widely  diffused  than  in  England,  it  remains  on  the  whole 
less  radical  in  the  "  educated "  classes  so-called.  So  far  as  it  is 
possible  to  make  a  quantitative  estimate,  it  may  be  said  that  in  the 
more  densely  populated  parts  of  the  States  there  is  latterly  less  of 
studious  freethinking  because  there  is  less  leisure  than  in  England ; 
but  that  in  the  Western  States  there  is  a  relative  superiority,  class 
for  class,  becaijse  of  the  special  freedom  of  the  conditions  and  the 
independent  character  of  many  of  the  immigrants  who  constitute 
the  new  populations.^ 

Section  2.— Biblical  Ckiticism 

It  is  within  the  last  generation  that  the  critical  analysis  of  the 
Jewish  and  Christian  sacred  books  has  been  most  generally  carried 
on  ;  but  the  process  has  never  been  suspended  since  the  German 
Aufklarung  arose  on  the  stimuli  of  English  and  French  deism. 

1.  At  the  beginning  of  the  century,  educated  men  in  general 
believed  in  the  Semitic  myths  of  creation,  as  given  in  Genesis  :  long 
before  the  end  of  it  they  had  more  or  less  exphcitly  rectified  their 
beliefs  in  the  light  of  new  natural  science  and  new  archtBology.  The 
change  became  rapid  after  1860 ;  but  it  had  been  led  up  to  even 
in  the  period  of  reaction.  While  in  France,  under  the  restored 
monarchy,  rationalistic  activity  was  mainly  headed  into  historical, 
philosophical,  and  sociological  study,  and  in  England  orthodoxy 
predominated  in  theological  discussion,  the  German  rationahstic 
movement  went  on  among  the  specialists,  despite  the  liberal 
religious  reaction  of  Schleiermacher,®  who  himself  gave  forth  such 

*  White,  Warfare,  i.  84,  86,  314.  317,  318. 

2  This  view  is  not 'inconsistent' wi til  the  fact  that  popular  forms  of  credulity  are  also 
found  specially  flourishing  in  the  West.  Cp.  Bryce,  The  American  Commonwealth,  3rd  ed. 
ii  832—33, 

'  8  Aa  to  the  absolute  predominance  of  rationalistic  unbelief  (in  the  orthodox  sense  of 
the  word)  in  educated  Germany  in  the  first  third  of  the  century,  see  the  Metnoirs  of 
F.  Perthes,  Eng.  tr.  2nd  ed.  ii.  210-45.  255,  266-75.  Despite  the  various  reactions  claimed 
by  Perthes  and  others,  it  is  clear  that  the  tables  have  never  since  been  turned,  cp. 
Pearson.  Infidelity,  pp.  554-59,  56&-74.  Schleiermacher  was  charged  on  his  own  side  with 
making  fatal  concessions,  Kahnis,  Internal  Hist,  of  German  Protestantism,  Eng.  tr.  IbSb 
pp.  210-11 ;  Robins.  A  Defence  of  the  Faith,  1862,  i.  181 :  and  Quinet  as  there  cited. 


BIBLICAL  CEITICISM 


421 


an  uncertain  sound.  His  case  and  that  of  his  father,  an  army 
chaplain,  tell  signally  of  the  power  of  the  mere  clerical  occupation 
to  develop  a  species  of  emotional  belief  in  one  who  has  even  attained 
rationalism.  When  the  son,  trained  for  the  church,  avowed  to  his 
father  (1787)  that  he  had  lost  faith  in  the  supernatural  Jesus,  the 
father  professed  to  mourn  bitterly,  but  three  years  later  avowed  that 
he  in  his  own  youth  had  preached  Christianity  for  twelve  years  while 
similarly  disbelieving  its  fundamental  tenet.^  He  professionally 
counselled  compromise,  which  the  son  duly  practised,  with  such 
success  that,  whereas  he  originally  addressed  his  Discourses  on 
Beligion  (1799)  to  "the  educated  among  its  despisers,"  he  was  able 
to  say  in  the  preface  to  the  third  edition,  twenty  years  later  (1821), 
that  the  need  now  was  to  reason  with  the  pietists  and  literalists,  the 
ignorant  and  bigoted,  the  credulous  and  superstitious.^  In  short,  he 
and  others  had  been  able  to  set  up  a  fashion  of  poetic  religion 
among  deists,  but  not  to  lighten  the  darkness  of  orthodox  belief. 

The  ostensible  religious  revival  associated  with  Schleiermacher's 
name  was  in  fact  a  reaction  of  temperament,  akin  to  the  romantic 
movement  in  Hterature,  of  which  Chateaubriand  in  France  was  the 
exponent  as  regarded  religious  feeling.  The  German  "rationalism  " 
of  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  with  its  stolid  translation 
of  the  miraculous  into  the  historical,  and  its  official  accommodation 
of  the  result  to  the  purposes  of  the  pulpit,  had  not  reached  any  firm 
scientific  foundation;  and  Schleiermacher  on  the  other  side,  pro- 
testing that  religion  was  a  matter  not  of  knowledge  but  of  feeUng, 
attracted  ahke  the  religious  emotionalists,  the  seekers  of  compromise, 
and  the  romantics.  His  personal  and  literary  charm,  and  his  toler- 
ance of  mundane  morals,  gave  him  a  German  vogue  not  unhke  that 
of  Chateaubriand  in  France.  His  intellectual  cast  and  ultimate 
philosophic  bias,  however,  together  with  his  freedom  of  private  life,' 
ultimately  alienated  him  from  the  orthodox,  and  thus  it  was  that  he 
died  (1834)  in  the  odour  of  heresy.  Heresy,  in  fact,  he  had  preached 
from  the  outset ;  and  it  was  only  in  a  highly  emancipated  society 
that  his  teaching  could  have  been  fashionable.  The  statement  that 
by  his  Discourses  "  with  one  stroke  he  overthrew  the  card-castle  of 
rationahsm  and  the  old   fortress  of  orthodoxy'"  is  literally  quite 

1  Aus  Schleiermachers  Leben  :  In  Briefest,  1860.  i.  42.84.  The  f^-tli^.^'s  betters,  with  t^^^^^ 
unctuous  rhetoric,  are  a  revelation  of  the  power  of  declamatory  habit  to  eliminate  sincere 
thoufiht  '^  Werke,  lSi3,i,liO.  ..-rr    i    t         ^  *■ 

3  See  Kahnis,  p.  214.  and  refs.  as  to  his  relations  with  Frau  Grunow.  He  belonged  to 
the  circle  of  Prince  Louis,  in  which  iutellect  and  art.  but  not  morality  reigned.  i&. 
Compare  the  sympathetic  Lichtenberger,  Hi.sf .  of  Ger.  Thjiol.tnthe  ^^''^^««'^^'' ^^''*:,^°^  • 
tr.  1889,  pp.  103-104.  It  was  of  course  his  clerical  character  that  disadvantaged  bcHieier- 
macher  in  such  matters. 

*  Lichtenberger,  aa  cited,  p.  87, 


422     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 


false,  for  the  old  compromising  psendo-rationalism  survived  a  long 
while,  and  orthodoxy  still  longer ;  and  it  is  quite  misleading  inasmuch 
as  it  suggests  a  resurgence  of  faith.  The  same  historian  proceeds 
to  record  that  some  saw  in  the  work  "only  a  slightly  disguised 
return  to  superstition,  and  others  a  brilliant  confession  of  unbelief." 
The  general  public  saw  in  the  Discourses  a  new  assault  of 
romanticism  upon  religion.  The  clergy  in  particular  were  pain- 
fully aroused,  and  did  not  dissemble  their  irritation.  Spalding 
himself  could  not  restrain  his  anger."  Schleiermacher's  friend 
Sach,  w^ho  had  passed  the  Discourses  in  manuscript,  woke  up  to 
denounce  them  as  unchristian,  pantheistic,  and  denuded  of  the  ideas 
of  God,  immortality,  and  morality.* 

In  England  the  work  would  have  been  so  denounced  on  all  sides ; 
and  the  bulk  of  Schleiermacher's  teaching  would  there  have  been 
reckoned  revolutionary  and  "godless."  He  was  a  lover  of  both 
political  and  social  freedom ;  and  in  his  Tivo  Mevwranda  on  the 
Church  Question  in  regard  to  Prussia  (1803)  he  made  "  a  veritable 
declaration  of  war  on  the  clerical  spirit."^  Eecognizing  that  eccle- 
siastical discipline  had  reached  a  low  ebb,  he  even  proposed  that  civil 
marriage  should  precede  religious  marriage,  and  be  alone  obligatory ; 
besides  planning  a  drastic  subjection  of  the  Prussian  Church  to  State 
regulation.^  In  his  pamphlet  on  The  So-called  Epistle  to  Timothy,  of 
w^hich  he  denied  the  authenticity,  he  played  the  part  of  a  "  destruc- 
tive "  critic."*  He  "  saw  with  pain  the  approach  of  the  rising  tide  of 
confessionalism  " — that  is,  the  movement  for  an  exact  statement  of 
creed.^  Nor  can  it  be  said  that,  despite  his  attempts  in  later  life  to 
reach  a  more  definite  theology,  Schleiermacher  really  held  firmly  any 
Christian  or  even  theistic  dogma.  He  seems  to  have  been  at  bottom 
a  pantheist;^  and  the  secret  of  his  attraction  Tor  so  many  German 
preachers  and  theologians  then  and  since  is  that  he  offered  them  in 
eloquent  and  moving  diction  a  kind  of  profession  of  faith  which 
avoided  alike  the  fatal  undertaking  of  the  old  religious  rationalism  to 
reduce  the  sacred  narratives  to  terms  of  reason,  and  the  dogged 
refusal  of  orthodoxy  to  admit  that  there  was  anything  to  explain 
away.  Philosophically  and  critically  speaking,  his  teaching  has  no 
lasting  intellectual  substance,  being  first  a  negation  of  intellectual 
tests  and  then  a  belated  attempt  to  apply  them.  It  is  not  even 
original,  being  a  development  from  Rousseau  and  Lessing.  But  it 
had  undoubtedly  a  freeing  and  civilizing  influence  for  many  years ; 


1  Lichtenberger,  as  cited,  p.  89.  «  Id.  p.  109. 

8  Id.  pp.  123-24.  4  Id.  p.  110.  5  Id.  p.  129. 

6  Strauss,  Die  Halben  tmd  die  Ganzen,  1865.  p.  18, 


BIBLICAL  CEITICISM 


423 


and  it  did  little  harm  save  insofar  as  it  fostered  the  German 
proclivity  to  the  nebulous  in  thought  and  language,  and  partly 
encouraged  the  normal  resistance  to  the  critical  spirit.  All  irration- 
alism,  to  be  sure,  in  some  sort  spells  self-will  and  lawlessness  ;  but 
the  orthodox  negation  of  reason  was  far  more  primitive  than  Schleier- 
macher's. From  that  side,  accordingly,  he  never  had  any  sympathy. 
When,  soon  after  his  funeral,  in  which  his  coffin  was  borne  and 
followed  by  troops  of  students,  his  church  was  closed  to  the  friends 
who  wished  there  to  commemorate  him,  it  was  fairly  clear  that  his 
own  popularity  lay  mainly  with  the  progressive  spirits,  and  not 
among  the  orthodox  ;  and  in  the  end  his  influence  tended  to  merge 
in  that  of  the  critical  movement.^ 

2.  Gradually  that  had  developed  a  greater  precision  of  method, 
though  there  were  to  be  witnessed  repetitions  of  the  intellectual 
anomalies  of  the  past,  so-called  rationalists  losing  the  way  while 
supernaturalists    occasionally  found  it.     It  has  been  remarked  by 
Keuss  that  Paulus,  a  clerical  "  rationalist,"  fought  for  the  Pauline 
authorship  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  in  the  very  year  in  which 
Tholuck,  a  reconverted  evangelical,  gave  up  the  Pauline  authorship 
as   hopeless  ;    that  when   Schleiermacher,  ostensibly  a  believer   in 
inspiration,  denied  the  authenticity  of  the  Epistle  to  Timothy,  the 
[theological]  rationalist  Wegscheider  opposed  him;   and  that    the 
rationalistic  Eichhorn    maintained  the   Mosaic    authorship   of   the 
Pentateuch  long  after  the  supernaturalist  Vater  had  disproved  it.' 
Still  the  general  movement  was  inevitably  and  irrevocably  ration- 
ahstic.     Beginning  with  the  Old  Testament,  criticism  gradually  saw 
more  and  more  of  mere  myth  where  of  old  men  had  seen  miracle, 
and  where  the  first  rationalists  saw  natural  events  misconceived. 
Soon  the  process  reached  the  New  Testament,  every  successive  step 
being  resisted  in  the  old  fashion  ;  and  much  laborious  work,  now 
mostly  forgotten,  was  done  by  a  whole  company  of  scholars,  among 
whom   Paulus,   Eichhorn,  De  Wette,  G.  L.  Bauer,  Wegscheider, 
Bretschneider,  and  Gabler  were  prominent.'     The  train  as  it  were 
exploded  on  the  world  in  the  great  Life  of  Jesus  by  STRAUSS  (1835), 
a  year  after  the  death  of  Schleiermacher. 

This   was   in   some   respects   the  high^water  mark   of   rational 
critical   science   for  the  century,  inasmuch   as   it  represented  the 

1  For  estimates  of  his  work  cp.  Baur.  Kirchengeschichte  des  IdtenJahrh.  p  45 ;  Kahnis. 
as  last  cited;  F&eiderev,  Development  of  Theology  in  ^^K^l'%\^^i  r^;,!>,«   Tnlv  1869 
nv.  ii  •  T.iohtAnhprtipr  as  cited'  and  art.  by  Rev.  F.  J.  Smith  m  Theol.  Review,  July,  i«by. 
""^'Re^ltu^torl^^^^^^  P.  387.     Cp.  Strauss,  EinleiUcng   inDas 

^'s'seeTgood' account  of  the  development  in  Strauss's  Introductions  to  his  two  Lim 
of  Jesus, 


424    FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 


fullest  use  of  free  judgmeni     The  powerful  and  orderly  mind  of 
Strauss,  working  systematically  on  a  large  body  of  previous  unsys- 
tematic criticism,  produced  something  more  massive  and  coherent 
than  any  previous  writer  had  achieved.     It  was  not  that  he  applied 
any  new  principle.     Criticism   had   long   been   slowly  disengaging 
itself  from  the  primary  fallacy  of  taking  all  scriptural  records  as 
standing  for  facts,  and  explaining  away  the  supernatural  side.     Step 
by  step  it  was  recognized  that  not  misinterpretation  of  events  but 
mythology  underlay  much  of  the  sacred  history.    Already  in  1799  an 
anonymous  and  almost  unnoticed  writer*  had  argued  that  the  entire 
gospel  story  was  a  pre-existent  conception  in  the  Jewish  mind.     In 
1802  G.  L.  Bauer  had  produced  a  treatise  on  Hebrew  Mythology^  in 
which  not  only  was  the  actuality  of  myth  in  Bible  narrative  insisted 
on,  but  the  general  principle  of  animism  in  savage  thought  was  clearly 
formulated.    Semler  had  seen  that  the  stories  of  Samson  and  Esther 
were  myths.     Even  Eichhorn— who  reduced  all  the  Old  Testament 
stories  to  natural  events  misunderstood,   accepted  Noah  and   the 
patriarchs  as  historical  personages,  and  followed  Bahrdt  in  making 
Moses  light  a  fire  on  Mount  Sinai — changed  his  method  on  coming 
to  the  New  Testament,  and  pointed  out  that  only  indemonstrable 
hypotheses  could  be  readied  by  turning  supernatural  events  into 
natural    where   there  was   no   outside   historical   evidence.     Other 
writers— as  Krug,  Gabler,  Kaiser,  Wegscheider,  and  Horst— ably 
pressed  the  mythical  principle,  some  of  them  preceding  Bauer.     The 
so-called    "natural"    theory — which    was   not   at   all   that   of   the 
"  naturalists  "  but  the  specialty  of  the  compromising  "  rationahsts  " 
— was  thus  effectively  shaken  by  a  whole  series  of  critics. 

But  the  power  of  intellectual  habit  and  environment  was  still 
strikingly  illustrated  in  the  inability  of  all  of  the  critics  to  shake  off 
completely  the  old  fallacy.  Bauer  explained  the  divine  promise  to 
Abraham  as  standing  for  the  patriarch's  own  prophetic  anticipation, 
set  up  by  a  contemplation  of  the  starry  heavens.  Another  gave  up 
the  supernatural  promise  of  the  birth  of  the  Baptist,  but  held  to  the 
dumbness  of  Zechariah.  Krug  similarly  accepted  the  item  of  the 
childless  marriage,  and  claimed  to  be  applying  the  mythical  principle 
in  taking  the  Magi  without  the  star,  and  calling  them  oriental 
merchants.  Kaiser  took  the  story  of  the  fish  with  a  coin  in  its 
mouth  as  fact,  while  complaining  of  other  less  absurd  reductions  of 
miracle  to  natural  occurrences.     The  method  of  Paulus,''  the  "  Chris- 


>  In  a  volume  entitled  Offenharung  und  Mythnlogie. 

^  Hebraische  Mythologie  des  alien  und  neuen  Testaments 

»  Evangeliencomimntar^  1800-1801 ;  Leben  Jesti.  1828. 


BIBLICAL  CEITIOISM 


425 


tian  Ev6meros  " — who  loyally  rejected  all  miracles,  but  got  rid  of 
them  on  the  plan  of  explaining,  e.g.,  that  when  Jesus  was  supposed 
to  be  walking  on  the  water  he  was  really  walking  on  the  bank — was 
still  popular,  a  generation  after  Schleiermacher's  Beden.  The 
mythical  theory  as  a  whole  went  on  hesitating  among  definitions 
and  genera — saga  and  legend,  historical  myth,  mythical  history, 
philosophical  myth,  poetic  myth — and  the  differences  of  the  mytho- 
logical school  over  method  arrested  the  acceptance  of  their  funda- 
mental principle. 

3.  No  less  remarkable  was  the  check  to  the  few  attempts  which 
had  been  made  at  clearing  the  ground  by  removing  the  Fourth 
Gospel  from  the  historical  field.  Lessing  had  taken  this  gospel  as 
peculiarly  historical,  as  did  Fichte  and  Schleiermacher  and  the  main 
body  of  critics  after  him.  Only  in  England  (by  Evanson)  had  the 
case  been  more  radically  handled. .  In  1820  Bretschneider,  following 
up  a  few  tentative  German  utterances,  put  forth,  by  way  of  hypo- 
thesis, a  general  argument  ^  to  the  effect  that  the  whole  presentment 
of  Jesus  in  the  Fourth  Gospel  is  irreconcilable  with  that  of  the 
Synoptics,  that  it  could  not  be  taken  as  historical,  and  that  it  could 
not  therefore  be  the  work  of  the  Apostle  John.^  The  result  was  a 
general  discussion  and  a  general  rejection.  The  innovation  in  theory 
was  too  sudden  for  assimilation :  and  Bretschneider,  finding  no 
support,  later  declared  that  he  had  been  "  relieved  of  his  doubts  "  by 
the  discussion,  and  had  thus  attained  his  object.  Strauss  himself, 
in  his  first  Leben  Jesii,  failed  to  realize  the  case ;  and  it  was  not  till 
the  second  (1863)  that  he  developed  it,  profiting  by  the  intermediate 
work  of  F.  0.  Baur. 

4.  But  as  regards  the  gospel  history  in  general,  the  first  Leben 
Jesu  is  a  great  "advance  in  force"  as  compared  with  all  preceding 
work.  Himself  holding  undoubtingly  to  the  vital  assumption  of  the 
rationahzing  school  that  the  central  story  of  Jesus  and  the  disciples 
and  the  crucifixion  was  history,  he  yet  applied  the  mythical  principle 
systematically  to  nearly  all  the  episodes,  handling  the  case  with  the 
calmness  of  a  great  judge  and  the  skill  of  a  great  critic.  Even 
Strauss,  indeed,  paid  the  penalty  which  seems  so  generally  to  attach 
to  the  academic  discipline — the  lack  of  ultimate  hold  on  life.  After 
showing  that  much  of  the  gospel  narrative  was  mere  myth,  and 
leaving  utterly  problematical  all  the  rest,  he  saw  fit  to  begin  and  end 
with  the  announcement  that  nothing  really  mattered — that  the  ideal 

^  Probahilia  de  Evangelii  et  Epistolarum  Joannis  Avostoli  indole  et  origine. 

2  It  is  thus  inaccurate— Strauss  himself  being  the  witness— to  say,  as  does  Dr.  Conybeare 
{Hist,  of  N.  T.  Crit.  p.  107),  that  Strauss  was  the  first  German  writer  to  discern  the  unbis- 
toricity  of  the  Fourth  Gospel. 


426    FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

Jesus  was  unaffected  by  historic  analysis,  and  that  it  was  the  ideal 
that  counted.'  In  a  world  in  which  nine  honest  believers  out  of  ten 
held  that  the  facts  mattered  everything,  there  could  be  no  speedy  or 
practical  triumph  for  a  demonstration  which  thus  announced  its  own 
inutility.  Strauss  had  achieved  for  New  Testament  criticism  what 
Kant  and  Fichte  and  Hegel  had  compassed  for  rational  philosophy 
in  general,  ostensibly  proffering  together  bane  and  antidote.  As  in 
their  case,  however,  so  in  his,  the  truly  critical  work  had  an  effect 
in  despite  of  the  theoretic  surrender.  Among  instructed  men, 
historical  belief  in  the  gospels  has  never  been  the  same  since  Strauss 
wrote ;  and  he  lived  to  figure  for  his  countrymen  as  one  of  the  most 
thoroughgoing  freethinkers  of  his  age. 

5.  For  a  time  there  was  undoubtedly  "reaction,"  engineered 
with  the  full  power  of  the  Prussian  State  in  particular.  The  pious 
Frederick  William  IV,  already  furious  against  Swiss  Radicalism  in 
1847,  was  moved  by  the  revolutionary  outbreaks  of  1848  to  a  fierce 
repression  of  everything  liberal  in  theological  teaching.  "This 
dismal  period  of  Prussian  history  was  the  bloom-period  of  the 
Hengsterbergan  theology"— the  school  of  rabid  orthodoxy.  In 
1854,  Eduard  Zeller,  bringing  out  in  book  form  his  work  on  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles  (originally  produced  in  the  Tilhingcn  Theological 
Journal  1848-51),  writes  that  "  The  exertions  of  our  ecclesiastics, 
assisted  by  political  reaction,  have  been  so  effectual  that  the  majority 
of  our  theologians  not  only  look  with  suspicion  or  indifference  on 
this  or  that  scientific  opinion,  but  regard  scientific  knowledge  in 
general  with  the  same  feelings";  and  he  leaves  it  an  open  question 
"  whether  time  will  bring  a  change,  or  whether  German  Protestantism 
will  stagnate  in  the  Byzantine  conditions  towards  which  it  is  now 
hastening  with  all  sail  on."'  For  his  own  part,  Zeller  abandoned 
the  field  of  theology  for  that  of  philosophy,  producing  a  history 
of  Greek  philosophy,  and  one  of  German  philosophy  since  Leibnitz. 

6.  Another  expert  of  Baur's  school,  Albrecht  Schwegler,  author  of 
works  on  Montanism,  the  Post- Apostolic  Age,  and  other  problems 
of  early  Christian  history,  and  of  a  Handbook  of  the  History  of 
Philosophy  which  for  half  a  century  had  an  immense  circulation, 
was  similarly  driven  out  of  theological  research  by  the  virulence  of 
the  reaction,*  and  turned  to  the  task  of  Roman  history,  in  which  he 
distinguished  himself   as  he  did  in  every  other  he  essayed.     The 


I  Das  Lehen  Jesu,  wef.  to  &ret  ed.  end.      ,  ,.   „^    ,    ,       .        „  ..  ,0-0  ;;  om  qi 
a  Hausrath.  David  Friedrich  Strauss  und  die  Tfteologie  seiner  Zett,  1878.  n.  233-34. 
8  Pref .  to  work  cited.  Eng.  tr.  1875.  i,  86,  89. 
*  Jjichtenbergcr,  as  cited,  p.  391, 


BIBLICAL  CRITICISM 


427 


brains  were  being  expelled  from  the  chairs  of  theology.  But  this 
very  fact  tended  to  discredit  the  reaction  itself ;  and  outside  of  the 
Prussian  sphere  of  influence  German  criticism  went  actively  on. 
Gustav  Volkmar,  turning  his  back  on  Germany  in  1854,  settled  in 
Switzerland,  and  in  1863  became  professor  at  Ziirich,  where  he 
added  to  his  early  Religion  Jesu  (1857)  and  other  powerful  works 
his  treatises  on  the  Origin  of  the  Gospels  (1866),  The  Gospels  (1869), 
Commentary  on  the  Apocalypse  (1860-65),  and  Jesus  Nazarenus 
(1881) — all  stringent  critical  performances,  irreconcilable  with  ortho- 
doxy.    Elsewhere  too  there  was  a  general  resumption  of  progress. 

To  this  a  certain  contribution  was  made   by  Bkuno   Bauer 
(1809-1882),  who,  after  setting  out  as  an  orthodox  Hegelian,  out- 
went Strauss  in  the  opposite  direction.     In  1838,  as  a  licentiate  at 
Bonn,  he  produced  two  volumes  on  The  Beligion  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, in  which  the  only  critical  element  is  the  notion  of  a  "  historical 
evolution  of  revelation."     Soon  he  had  got  beyond  belief  in  revela- 
tion.    In  1840  appeared  his  Critique  of  the  Gospel  History  of  John, 
and   in   1841    his   much   more   disturbing    Critique   of  the   Gospel 
History  of  the  Synoptics,  wherein  there  is  substituted  for  Strauss's 
formula  of  the  "community-mind"  w^orking  on  tradition,  that  of 
individual  literary  construction.     Weisse  and  Wilcke  had  convinced 
him  that  Mark  was  the  first  gospel,  and  Wilcke  in  particular  that 
it  was  no  mere  copy  of  an  oral  tradition  but  an  artistic  construction. 
As  he  claimed,  this  was  a  much  more  "positive"  conception  than 
Strauss's,  which  was  fundamentally  "  mysterious."  ^     Unfortunately, 
though  he  saw  that  the  new  position  involved  the  non-historicity  of 
the  Gospel  Jesus,  he  left  his  own  historic  conception  "mysterious," 
giving   no    reason   why  the   "  Urevangelist "  framed   his   romance. 
Bauer  was  non-anthropological,  and  left  his  theory  as  it  began,  one 
of  an  arbitrary  construction  by  gospel-makers.     Immediately  after 
his  book  appeared  that  of  Ghillany  on  Human  Sacrifice  among  the 
ancient  Hebreivs  (1842),  which  might  have  given  him  clues;  but 
they  seem  to  have  had  for  him  no  significance. 

As  it  was,  his  book  on  the  Synoptics  raised  a  great  storm ;  and 
when  the  official  request  for  the  views  of  the  university  faculties  as 
to  the  continuance  of  his  licence  evoked  varying  answers,  Bauer 
settled  the  matter  by  a  violent  attack  on  professional  theologians  in 
general,  and  was  duly  expelled.'  For  the  rest  of  his  long  life  he 
was  a  freelance,  doing  some  relatively  valid  work  on  the  Pauhne 
problem,  but  pouring  out  his  turbid  spirit  in  a  variety  of  political 

1  Eritik  der  evang.  GescJi.  der  Synoptilxer,  ed.  1816.  Vorrede,  pp.  v-xiii, 

2  J3aur,  Kirchengesch.  des  19ten  Jahrh.  pp.  388-89. 


428    FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

writings,  figuring  by  turns  as  an  anti-Semite  (1843),  a  culture- 
historian/  and  a  pre-Bismarckian  imperialist,  despairing  of  German 
unity,  but  looking  hopefully  to  German  absorption  in  a  vast  empire 
of  Eussia.^  Naturally  he  found  political  happiness  in  1870,"'  living 
on,  a  spent  force,  to  do  fresh  books  on  Christian  origins,*  on  German 
culture-history,  and  on  the  glories  of  imperialism. 

7.  In  1864,  after  an  abstention  of  twenty  years  from  discussion 
of  the  problem,  Strauss  restated  his  case  in  a  Life  of  Jesus, 
adapted  for  the  German  People,  Here,  accepting  the  contention  of 
F.  C.  Baur  that  the  proper  line  of  inquiry  was  to  settle  the  order  of 
composition  of  the  synoptic  gospels,  and  agreeing  in  Baur's  view 
that  Matthew  came  first,  he  undertook  to  offer  more  of  positive 
result  than  was  reached  in  his  earlier  research,  which  simply  dealt 
scientifically  with  the  abundant  elements  of  dubiety  in  the  records. 
The  new  procedure  was  really  much  less  valid  than  the  old.  Baur 
had  quite  unwarrantably  decided  that  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
was  one  of  the  most  certainly  genuine  of  the  discourses  ascribed  to 
Jesus  ;^  and  Strauss,  while  exhibiting  a  reserve  of  doubt®  as  to  all 
"such  speeches,"  nonetheless  committed  himself  to  the  "certain" 
genuineness  alike  of  the  Sermon  and  of  the  seven  parables  in  the 
thirteenth  chapter  of  Matthew.'  Many  scholars  who  continue  to 
hold  by  the  historicity  of  Jesus  have  since  recognized  that  the 
Sermon  is  no  real  discourse,  but  a  compilation  of  gnomic  sayings  or 
maxims  previously  current  in  Jewish  literature.^  .  Thus  the  certain- 
ties of  Baur  and  Strauss  pass  into  the  category  of  the  cruder 
certainties  which  Strauss  impugned ;  and  the  latter  left  the  life  of 
Jesus  an  unsolved  enigma  after  all  his  analysis. 

As  he  himself  noted,  the  German  New  Testament  criticism  of 
the  previous  twenty  years  had  "run  to  seed "^  in  a  multitude  of 
treatises  on  the  sources,  aims,  composition,  and  mutual  relations  of 
the  Synoptics,  as  if  these  were  the  final  issues.  They  had  settled 
nothing;  and  after  a  lapse  of  fifty  years  the  same  problems  are 
being  endlessly  discussed.  The  scientific  course  for  Strauss  would 
have  been  to  develop  more  radically  the  method  of  his  first  Life : 
failing  to  do  this,  he  made  no  new  contribution  to  the  problem, 
though  he  deftly  enough  indicated  how  little  difference  there  was, 
save  in  formula,  between  Baur's  negations  and  liis  own. 

»  Gesch.  der  Politik.  Kidtur,  und  AufM&rwm  <l«t  Mtm  JuAtI.  I  Bde.  1843-45  ;  Ge^cli. 
der  franzOa.  Revolution,  3  Bde.  1847. 

2  Bussland  und  das  Germanenthtim,  1847.  "  Licbtenber^er.  p.  378. 

*  Philo,  StrauHS,  Benan,und  das  Urchristenthum,  1874 ;  Christus  uiid  die  Cdaaren,  1877. 

5  Daft  Christenthum  und  die  chr.  Kirche,  1&54.  p.  34. 

6  Das  Leben  Jesu  filr  das  deutnche  Volk  bearlteitet,  §  41,  3te  Atifl.  p.  254.  Ist  par. 
'  Id.  ib.  ^  Cp.  Christianity  and  Mythology,  pt.  iii,  div.  ii,  §  6. 

0  Pref.  to  second  hehen  Jesu,  ed.  cited,  p.  xv, 


BIBLICAL  CEITICISM 


429 


[ 


r| 


Something  of  the  explanation  is  to  be  detected  in  the  sub-title, 
"Adapted  for  the  German  People."  From  his  first  entrance  into 
the  arena  he  had  met  with  endless  odium  theologicum ;  being  at 
once  deprived  of  his  post  as  a  philosophical  lecturer  at  Tiibingen, 
and  virulently  denounced  on  all  hands.  His  proposed  appointment 
to  a  chair  at  Ziirich  in  1839,  as  we  have  seen,  led  there  to  something 
approaching  a  revolution.  Later,  he  found  that  acquaintance  with 
him  was  made  a  ground  of  damage  to  his  friends  ;  and  though  he 
had  actually  been  elected  to  the  Wirtemberg  Diet  in  1848  by  his 
fellow  citizens  of  Ludwigsburg  town,  after  being  defeated  in  his 
candidature  for  the  new  parliament  at  Frankfort  through  the 
hostility  of  the  rural  voters,  he  had  abundant  cause  to  regard  himself 
as  a  banned  person  in  Germany.  A  craving  for  the  goodwill  of  the 
people  as  against  the  hatred  of  the  priests  was  thus  very  naturally 
and  justifiably  operative  in  the  conception  of  his  second  work ;  and 
this  none  the  less  because  his  fundamental  political  conservatism 
had  soon  cut  short  his  representation  of  radical  Ludwigsburg.  As 
he  justly  said,  the  question  of  the  true  history  of  Christianity  was 
not  one  for  theologians  alone.  But  the  emotional  aim  affected  the 
intellectual  process.  As  previously  in  his  Life  of  Ulrich  von  Hutten, 
he  strove  to  establish  the  proposition  that  the  new  Eeformation  he 
desired  was  akin  to  the  old ;  and  that  the  Germans,  as  the  "  people 
of  the  Eeformation,"  would  show  themselves  true  to  their  past  by 
casting  out  the  religion  of  dogma  and  supernaturalism.  Such  an 
attempt  to  identify  the  spirit  of  freethought  with  the  old  spirit  of 
Bibliolatry  was  in  itself  fantastic,  and  could  not  create  a  genuine 
movement,  though  the  book  had  a  wide  audience.  The  Glaubeiis- 
lehre,  in  which  he  made  good  his  maxim  that  "the  true  criticism  of 
dogma  is  its  history,"  is  a  sounder  performance.  Strauss's  avowed 
desire  to  write  a  book  as  suitable  to  Germans  as  was  Eenan's  Vie 
de  J&sus  to  Frenchmen  was  something  less  than  scientific.  The 
right  book  would  be  written  for  all  nations. 

Like  most  other  Germans,  Strauss  exulted  immensely  over  the 
war  of  1870.  In  what  is  now  recognized  as  the  national  manner, 
he  wrote  two  boastful  open-letters  to  Eenan  explaining  that  what- 
soever Germany  did  was  right,  and  whatsoever  France  did  was 
wrong,  and  that  the  annexation  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine  was  altogether 
just.  These  letters  form  an  important  contribution  to  the  vast 
cairn  of  self-praise  raised  by  latter-day  German  culture.  But 
Strauss's  literary  life  ended  on  a  nobler  note  and  in  a  higher  warfare. 
After  all  his  efforts  at  popularity,  and  all  his  fraternization  with  his 
people  on  the  ground  of  racial  animosity  (not  visible  in  his  volume 


i 


tl 


II 


430    FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

of  lectures  on  Voltaire,  written  and  delivered  at  the  request  of  the 
Princess  Alice),  his  fundamental  sincerity  moved  him  to  produce 
a  final  **  Confession,"  under  the  title  of  The  Old  and  the  New  Faith 
(1872).      It   asked   the   questions  :    "  Are   we   still   Christians  ? "  ; 

Have  we  still  religion?";  "How  do  we  conceive  the  world?"; 

How  do  we  order  our  life?";  and  it  answered  them  all  in  a 
calmly  and  uncompromisingly  naturalistic  sense,  dismissing  all  that 
men  commonly  call  religious  belief.  The  book  as  a  whole  is 
heterogeneous  in  respect  of  its  two  final  chapters,  "  Of  our  Great 
Poets"  and  "Of  our  Great  Musicians,"  which  seem  to  have  been 
appended  by  way  of  keeping  up  the  attitude  of  national  fraternity 
evoked  by  the  war.  But  they  could  not  and  did  not  avail  to 
conciliate  the  theologians,  who  opened  fire  on  the  book  with  all 
their  old  animosity,  and  with  an  unconcealed  delight  in  the  definite 
committal  of  the  great  negative  critic  to  an  attitude  of  practical 
atheism.  The  book  ran  through  six  editions  in  as  many  months, 
and  crystaUized  much  of  the  indefinite  freethinking  of  Germany 
into  something  clearer  and  firmer.  All  the  more  was  it  a  new 
engine  of  strife  and  disintegration  ;  and  the  aging  author,  shocked 
but  steadied  by  the  unexpected  outburst  of  hostility,  penned  a 
quatrain  to  himself,  ending :  "  In  storm  hast  thou  begun  ;  in  storm 
shalt  thou  end." 

On  the  last  day  of  the  year  he  wrote  an  "  afterword  "  summing 
up  his  work  and  his  position.  He  had  not  written,  he  declared,  by 
way  of  contending  with  opponents  ;  he  had  sought  rather  to  com- 
mune with  those  of  his  own  way  of  thinking  ;  and  to  them,  he  felt, 
he  had  the  right  to  appeal  to  live  up  to  their  convictions,  not  com- 
promising with  other  opinions,  and  not  adhering  to  any  Church.  For 
his  "  Confession  "  he  anticipated  the  thanks  of  a  more  enlightened 
future  generation.  "  The  time  of  agreement,"  he  concluded,  will 
come,  as  it  came  for  the  Leben  Jesu ;  only  this  time  I  shall  not  live 
to  see  it."  ^  A  little  more  than  a  year  later  (1874)  he  passed  away. 
It  is  noteworthy  that  he  should  have  held  that  agreement  had 
come  as  to  the  first  Lehen  Jesu.  He  was  in  fact  convinced  that 
all  educated  men — at  least  in  Germany — had  ceased  to  believe  in 
miracles  and  the  supernatural,  however  they  might  affect  to  conform 
to  orthodoxy.  And,  broadly  speaking,  this  was  true:  all  New 
Testament  criticism  of  any  standing  had  come  round  to  the 
naturalistic  point  of  view.  But,  as  we  have  seen,  the  second 
Lehen  Jesu  was  far  enough  from  reaching  a  solid  historical  footing ; 

1  Zeller,  David  FHedrich  Strauss,  2te  Atafl.  p.  113. 


BIBLICAL  CRITICISM 


431 


and  the  generation  which  followed  made  only  a  piecemeal  and 
unsystematic  advance  to  a  scientific  solution. 

8.  And  it  was  long  before  even  Strauss's  early  method  of 
scientific  criticism  was  applied  to  the  initial  problems  of  Old 
Testament  history.  The  investigation  lagged  strangely.  Starting 
from  the  clues  given  by  Hobbes,  Spinoza,  and  Simon,  and  above 
all  by  the  suggestion  of  Astruc  (1753)  as  to  the  twofold  element 
implied  in  the  God-names  Jehovah  and  Elohim,  it  had  proceeded, 
for  sheer  lack  of  radical  skepticism,  on  the  assumption  that  the 
Pentateuchal  history  was  true.  On  this  basis,  modern  Old  Testa- 
ment criticism  of  a  professional  kind  may  be  said  to  have  been 
founded  by  Eichhorn,  who  hoped  by  a  quasi-rationalistic  method 
to  bring  back  unbelievers  to  belief.^  Of  his  successors,  some,  like 
Ilgen,  were  ahead  of  their  time ;  some,  like  De  Wette,  failed  to 
make  progress  in  their  criticism  ;  some,  like  Ewald,  remained 
always  arbitrary  ;  and  some  of  the  ablest  and  most  original,  as 
Vatke,  failed  to  coordinate  fully  their  critical  methods  and  results.'* 
Thus,  despite  all  the  German  activity,  little  sure  progress  had  been 
made,  apart  from  discrimination  of  sources,  between  the  issue  of  the 
Critical  Bemarks  07i  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  of  the  Scotch  Catholic 
priest,  Dr.  Geddes,  in  1800,  and  the  publication  of  the  first  part  of 
the  work  of  Bishop  COLENSO  on  The  Pentateuch  (1862).  This,  by 
the  admission  of  KUENEN,  who  had  begun  as  a  rather  narrow 
believer,'  corrected  the  initial  error  of  the  German  specialists  by 
applying  to  the  narrative  the  common-sense  tests  suggested  long 
before  by  Voltaire.'  That  academic  scholarship  thus  wasted  two 
generations  in  its  determination  to  adhere  to  the  "reverent" 
method,  and  in  its  aversion  to  the  "  irreverence  "  which  proceeded 
on  the  simple  power  to  see  facts,  is  a  sufiQcient  comment  on  the 
Kantian  doctrine  that  it  was  the  business  of  scholars  to  adapt 
the  sacred  books  to  popular  needs.  Tampering  with  the  judgment 
of  their  flocks,  the  German  theologians  injured  their  own. 

As  of  old,  part  of  the  explanation  lay  in  the  malignant  resistance 
of  orthodoxy  to  every  new  advance.  We  have  seen  how  Strauss's 
appointment  to  a  chair  at  Zurich  was  met  by  Swiss  pietism.  The 
same  spirit  sought  to  revert,  even  in  "  intellectually  free"  Germany, 
to  its  old  methods  of  repression.    The  authorities  of  Berlin  discussed 

1  Cheyne,  Founders  of  Old  Testament  Criticism,  1893,  p.  16.  Eichhorn  seems  to  have 
known  Astruc's  work  only  at  second-hand,  yet.  without  him,  it  might  be  contended, 
Astruc's  work  would  have  been  completely  lost  to  science.    (Id.  p.  23.)  .  •„„  „„ 

a  See  Dr.  Cheyne's  surveys,  which  are  those  of  a  liberal  ecclesiastic— a  point  of  view  on 
which  he  has  since  notably  advanced.  ^  Cheyne,  pp.  187-88. 

<  Kuenen.  The  Hexateuch,  Eng.  tr  introd.  pp.  xiv-xvii. 


\ 


432     FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


P  :;'/:'-■       ^ 


with  Neander  the  propriety  of  suppressing  Strauss's  Leben  Jesii ; ' 
and  after  a  time  those  who  shared  his  views  were  excluded  even 
from  philosophical  chairs.''     Later,  the  brochure   in  which   Edgar 
Bauer  defended  his  brother  Bruno  against  his  opponents  (1842)  was 
seized  by  the  poUce ;  and  in  the  following  year,  for  publishing  The 
Strife  of  Criticism  with   Church  and   State,  the  same  writer  was 
sentenced  to  four  years'  imprisonment.     In  private  life,  persecution 
was  carried  on  in  the  usual  ways  ;  and  the  virulence  of  the  theo- 
logical resistance  recalled  the  palmy  days  of  Lutheran  polemics. 
In  the  sense  that  the  mass  of  orthodoxy  held  its  ground  for  the 
time  being,  the  attack  failed.     Naturally  the  most  advanced  and 
uncompromisingly   scientific    positions    were    least    discussed,   the 
stress  of   dispute   going   on    around   the  criticism  which  modified 
without  annihilating  the   main  elements  in  the  current  creed,  or 
that  which    did   the   work   of   annihilation   on   a  popular  level  of 
thought.     Only  in  our  day  is  German  *'  expert  "  criticism  beginning 
openly  to  reckon  with  propositions  fairly  and  fully  made  out  by 
German  writers  of  three  or  more  generations  back.     Thus  m  1781 
Corodi  in  his  Geschichte  des  Chiliasmus  dwelt  on  the  pre-Hebraic 
origins  of  the  belief  in  angels,  in  immortaUty,  and  heaven  and  hell, 
and  on  the   Persian   derivation  of   the   Jewish  seven   archangels; 
Wegscheider  in  1819  in  his  Institutes  of  Theology  indicated  further 
connections  of  the  same  order,  and  cited  pagan  parallels  to  the 
virgin-birth  ;  J.  A.  L.  Kichter  in  the  same  year  pointed  to  Indian 
and  Persian  precedents  for  the  Logos  and  many  other  Christian 
doctrines  ;  and  several  other  writers,  Strauss  included,  pointed  to 
both  Persian  and  Babylonian  influences  on  Jewish  theology  and 
myth.'     The   mythologist   and   Hebraist    F.   Korn   (who  wrote   as 
**F.  Nork"),  in  a  series  of  learned  and  vigorous  but  rather  loosely 
speculative  works,'  indicated  many  of  the  mythological  elements  in 
Christianity,  and  endorsed  many  of  the  astronomical  arguments  of 
Dupuis,  while  holding  to  the  historicity  of  Jesus.'' 

When  even  these  theses  were  in  the  main  ignored,  more  mordant 
doctrine  was  necessarily  burked.  Such  subversive  criticism  of  religious 
history  as  Ghillany's  Die  Menschenopfer  der  alten  Hebrder  (1842), 
insisting  that  human  sacrifice  had  been  habitual  in  early  Jewry,  and 

1  Dr.  Beard,  in  Voices  of  the  Church  in  Beply  to  Strauss,  1845.  pp.  16-17. 

a  Zeller.  D.  F.  Strauss.  Eng.  tr.  1879,  p.  56.  ,    .     ,      ■„  m^„*^^/«if«   T¥« 

8  See  Gunkel.  Zum  religionsgeschichtlichm  Verstandnis  des  Neuen  Testaments,  190d. 

^^'^^mthmder  altsn  Perser  als  Quellen  christlicher  Glauhmslehrenim',  J^^f^Jj;^^^^^: 
Oder  Deutung  der  Geheimenlehreiu  Symbole  und  Feste  der  f''^7/'/*f,'''^'S.^^^i^A,JSe 
Babhinische  Quellen  nnd  Farallelen  zu  neutestame^ith^hen  SchrtftsteUen   im ,  Btbhsche 
Mvthologie  des  alten  und  nenen  Testaments,  1842;  Der  Festkalender,  1847,  etc. 
5  Der  Mystagog,  1838.  p.  vii.  7iote,  and  p.  241. 


BIBLICAL  CEITICISM 


433 


that  ritual  cannibalism  underlay  the  paschal  eucharist,  found  even 
fewer  students  prepared  to  appreciate  it  than  did  the  searching 
ethico-philosophical  criticism  passed  on  the  Christian  creed  by 
Feuerbach.  F.  Daumer,*  who  in  1842  published  a  treatise  on  the 
same  lines  as  Ghillany's  {Der  Feuer  und  MolocJidienst) ,  and  followed 
it  up  in  1847  with  another  on  the  Christian  mysteries,  nearly  as 
drastic,  wavered  later  in  his  rationalism  and  avowed  his  conversion 
to  a  species  of  faith.  Hence  a  certain  setback  for  his  school.  In 
France  the  genial  German  revolutionist  and  exile  Ewerbeck  published, 
under  the  titles  of  Qii'est  ce  que  la  Beligion  ?  and  QiCest  ce  que  la 
Bible  ?  (1850),  two  volumes  of  very  freely  edited  translations  from 
Feuerbach,  Daumer,  Ghillany,  Liitzelberger  (on  the  simple  humanity 
of  Jesus),  and  Bruno  Bauer,  avowing  that  after  vainly  seeking  a 
publisher  for  years  he  had  produced  the  books  at  his  own  expense. 
He  had,  however,  so  mutilated  the  originals  as  to  make  the  work 
ineffectual  for  scholars,  without  making  it  attractive  to  the  general 
public  ;  and  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  his  formidable-looking 
arsenal  of  explosives  had  much  effect  on  contemporary  French 
thought,  which  developed  on  other  lines. 

Old  Testament  criticism,  nevertheless,  has  in  the  last  generation 
been  much  developed,  after  having  long  missed  some  of  the  first 
lines  of  advance.  After  Colenso's  rectification  of  the  fundamental 
error  as  to  the  historicity  of  the  narrative  of  the  Pentateuch,  so  long 
and  so  obstinately  persisted  in  by  the  German  specialists  in  contempt 
of  Voltaire,  the  "  higher  criticism  "  proceeded  with  such  substantial 
certainty  on  the  scientific  lines  of  KuENEN  and  Wellhausen  that, 
whereas  Professor  Kobertson  Smith  had  to  leave  the  Free  Church  of 
Scotland  in  1881^  for  propagating  Kuenen's  views,  before  the  century 
was  out  Canons  of  the  Enghsh  Church  were  doing  the  work  with  the 
acquiescence  of  perhaps  six  clergymen  out  of  ten  ;  and  American 
preachers  were  found  promoting  an  edition  of  the  Bible  which 
exhibited  some  of  the  critical  results  to  the  general  reader.  Heresy 
on  this  score  had  "become  merchandise."  Nevertheless,  the  pro- 
fessional tendency  to  compromise  (a  result  of  economic  and  other 
pressures)  keeps  most  of  the  ecclesiastical  critics  far  short  of  the 
outspoken  utterances  of  M.  M.  Kalisch,  who  in  his  Commentary  on 
Leviticus  (1867-72)  repudiates  every  vestige  of  the  doctrine  of 
inspiration.^    Later    clerical    critics,   notably    Canon    Driver,   use 


„.!  See  Nork's  preamble  on  Hr.  Fr.  Daumer,  ein  leurzweiliger  Moloch sfiinger,  in  his 
Bibhsche  Mythologie,  Bd.  i. 

"T*i  f^^er  being  acquitted  in  1880.    The  first  charge  was  founded  on  his  Britannica  article 
moie    ;  the  second  on  the  article  "  Hebrew  Language  and  Literature."  which  appeared 
alter  tne  acquittal. 

8  These  utterances  were  noted  for  their  "  vigour  and  independence  "  by  Kuenen,  and  also 
VOL.    II  2F 


434     FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  HlNETEENTH  CENTUBY 

language  on  that  subject  which  cannot  be  read  with  critical  respect.' 
But  among  students  at  the  end  of  the  century  the  orthodox  view 
was  practically  extinct.  Whereas  the  defenders  of  the  faith  even  a 
generation  before  habitually  stood  to  the  "  argument  from  prophecy," 
the  conception  of  prophecy  as  prediction  has  now  become  meaningless 
as  regards  the  so-called  Mosaic  books  ;  and  the  constant  disclosure  of 
interpolations  and  adaptations  in  the  others  has  discredited  it  as 
regards  the  "prophets"  themselves.  For  the  rest,  much  of  the 
secular  history  still  accepted  is  tentatively  reduced  to  myth  in  the 
Geschichte  Israels  of  Hugo  Winckler  (1895-1900).  The  peculiar 
theory  of  Dr.  Cheyne  is  no  less  "  destructive." 

9.  In  New  Testament  criticism,  though  the  strict  critical  method 
of  Strauss's  first  book  was  not  faithfully  followed,  critical  research 
went  on  continuously ;  and  the  school  of  F.  0-  Baur  of  Tubingen  in 
particular  imposed  a  measure  of  rational  criticism  on  theologians  in 
general.  Apart  from  Strauss,  Baur  was  probably  the  ablest  Chris- 
tian scholar  of  his  day.  Always  lamed  by  his  professionalism,  he  yet 
toiled  endlessly  to  bring  scientific  method  into  Christian  research. 
His  Paulus,  del-  Apostel  Jesu  Christi  1845;  Kritische  Unter- 
suchimgen  ilber  die  Kanonischen  Evangelien,  1847 ;  and  Das  Chris- 
tentJmm  und  die  christliche  Kirche  der  drei  ersten  Jahrhunderte, 
1853,  were  epoch-marking  works,  which  recast  so  radically,  in  the 
name  of  orthodoxy,  the  historical  conception  of  Christian  origins, 
that  he  figured  as  the  most  unsettling  critic  of  his  time  after  Strauss. 
With  his  earlier  researches  in  the  history  of  the  first  Christian  sects 
and  his  history  of  the  Church,  they  constitute  a  memorable  mass  of 
studious  and  original  work.  In  the  case  of  the  Tiibingen  school  as 
of  every  other  there  was  "reaction,"  with  the  usual  pretence  by 
professional  orthodoxy  that  the  innovating  criticism  had  been  dis- 
posed of ;  but  no  real  refutation  has  ever  taken  place.  Where  Barn- 
reduced  the  genuine  Pauline  epistles  to  four,  the  last  years  of  the 
century  witnessed  the  advent  of  VAN  Manen,  who,  following  up 
earlier  suggestions,  wrought  out  the  thesis  that  the  epistles  are  all 
alike  supposititious.  This  may  or  may  not  hold  good  ;  but  there  has 
been  no  restoration  of  traditionary  faith  among  the  mass  of  open- 
minded  inquirers.  Such  work  as  Zeller's  Contents  and  Origin  of  the 
Acts  of  the  Apostles  (1854),  produced  in  Baur's  circle,  has  substantially 

by  Dr.  Cheyne.  who  remarks  that  the  earlier  work  of  Kalisch  on  f;f«/"^(l?^^^„^' St 
what  behind  the  critical  standpoint  of  contemporary  mvestigators  on  the  coniineuu. 
{Foundersof  Old  Testanient  Criticism  p.m.)    ^, ,  ^    ,  /      ^^*     "  if  j=  tv.^  smrit  of 

I  See  bis  Introiluction  to  the  Study  of  the  Old  Testament  pref  It  ^^^^^^^^^PinnS 
compromise  that  I  chiefly  dread  for  our  younger  students,  wrote  Dr  Cheyne  in  i«^^^ 
[Founders,  p.  247).  His  courteous  criticism  of  Dr.  Driver  does  not  fail  to  point  the  morai 
in  that  writer's  direction. 


BIBLICAL  CElTIClSM 


435 


held  its  ground  ;  and  such  a  comparatively  safe  "  book  of  the  next 
generation  as  Weizsacker's  Apostolic  Age  (Eng.  tr.  of  2nd  ed.  1893) 
leaves  no  doubt  as  to  the  untrustworthiness  of  the  Acts.  Thus  at 
the  close  of  the  century  the  current  professional  treatises  indicated  a 
"  Christianity  "  stripped  not  only  of  all  supernaturalism,  and  therefore 
of  the  main  religious  content  of  the  historic  creed,  but  even  of  credi- 
bility as  regards  large  parts  of  the  non-supernaturalist  narratives  of 
its  sacred  books.  The  minute  analysis  and  collocation  of  texts  which 
has  occupied  so  much  of  critical  industry  has  but  made  clearer  the 
extreme  precariousness  of  every  item  in  the  records.  The  amount  of 
credit  for  historicity  that  continues  to  be  given  to  them  is  demon- 
strably unjustifiable  on  scientific  grounds ;  and  the  stand  for  a 
"  Christianity  without  dogma "  is  more  and  more  clearly  seen  to 
be  an  economic  adjustment,  not  an  outcome  of  faithful  criticism. 

10.  The  movement  of  Biblical  and  other  criticism  in  Germany 
has  had  a  significant  effect  on  the  supply  of  students  for  the  theo- 
logical profession.  The  numbers  of  Protestant  and  Catholic  theo- 
logical students  in  all  Germany  have  varied  as  follows  : — Protestant : 
1831,  4,147  ;  1851, 1,631 ;  1860,  2,520 ;  1876, 1.539 ;  1882-83,  3,168. 
Catholic  :  1831,  1,801 ;  1840,  866  ;  1850, 1,393  ;  1860, 1.209  ;  1880, 
619.^  Thus,  under  the  reign  of  reaction  which  set  in  after  1848 
there  was  a  prolonged  recovery ;  and  again  since  1876  the  figures 
rise  for  Protestantism  through  financial  stimulus.  When,  however, 
we  take  population  into  account,  the  main  movement  is  clear.  In 
an  increasing  proportion,  the  theological  students  come  from  the 
rural  districts  (69-4  in  1861-70),  the  towns  furnishing  ever  fewer  ;^ 
so  that  the  conservative  measures  do  but  outwardly  and  formally 
affect  the  course  of  thought ;  the  clergy  themselves  showing  less  and 
less  inclination  to  make  clergymen  of  their  sons.*  Even  among  the 
Catholic  population,  though  that  has  increased  from  ten  millions  in 
1830  to  sixteen  miUions  in  1880,  the  number  of  theological  students 
has  fallen  from  eleven  to  four  per  100,000  inhabitants.'*  Thus,  after 
many  "reactions"  and  much  Bismarckism,  the  Zeit-Geist  in 
Germany  was  still  pronouncedly  skeptical  in  all  classes  in  1881,* 
when  the  church  accommodation  in  Berlin  provided  only  two  per 
cent,  of  the  population,  and  even  that  provision  outwent  the  demand. 

»  Conrad,  The  German  Universities  for  the  Last  Fifty  Years,  Eng.  tr.  1885.  p.  74.  See 
p.  100  as  to  the  financial  measures  taken ;  and  p.  105  as  to  the  essentially  financial  nature 
of  the  "  reaction." 

2  Id.  p.  103.       8  Id.  p.  104.       4  Id.  p.  112.    See  pp.  118-19  as  to  Austria.       «  Id.  pp.  97-98. 

0  White.  Warfare,  i.  239.  In  February.  1914,  on  a  given  Sunday,  out  of  a  Protestant 
population  of  over  two  millions,  only  35,000  persons  attended  church  in  Berlin.  Art.  on 
Creeds.  Heresy-Hunting,  and  Secession  in  German  Protestantism  To-day,"  in  Hibhert 
Journal  for  July,  1914,  p.  722. 


436    FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUBY 

And  though  there  have  been  yet  other  alleged  reactions  since,  and 
the  imperial  influence  is  zealously  used  for  orthodoxy,  a  large  propor- 
tion of  the  intelligent  workers  in  the  towns  remain  socialistic  and 
freethinking ;  and  the  mass  of  the  educated  classes  remain  unorthodox 
in  the  teeth  of  the  socialist  menace.  Keactionary  professors  can 
make  an  academic  fashion  :  the  majority  of  instructed  men  remam 

tacitly  naturalistic. 

Alongside  of  the  inveterate  rationalism  of  modern  Germany,  how- 
ever, a  no  less  inveterate  bureaucratism  preserves  a  certain  official 
conformity  to  religion.  University  freedom  does  not  extend  to  open 
and  direct  criticism  of  the  orthodox  creed.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
applause  won  by  Virchow  in  1877  on  his  declaration  against  the 
doctrine  of  evolution,  and  the  tactic  resorted  to  by  him  in  putting 
upon  that  doctrine  the  responsibility  of  Socialist  violence,  are 
instances  of  the  normal  operation  of  the  lower  motives  against 
freedom  in  scientific  teaching.'  The  pressure  operates  in  other 
spheres  in  Germany,  especially  under  such  a  regimen  as  the  present. 
Men  who  never  go  to  church  save  on  official  occasions,  and  who 
have  absolutely  no  belief  in  the  Church's  doctrine,  nevertheless 
remain  nominally  its  adherents;'  and  the  Press  laws  make  it 
peculiarly  difficult  to  reach  the  common  people  with  freethinking 
literature,  save  through  Socialist  channels.  Thus  the  Catholic 
Church  is  perhaps  nowhere— save  in  Ireland  and  the  United  States 
—more  practically  influential  than  in  nominally  "Protestant" 
Germany,  where  it  wields  a  compact  vote  of  a  hundred  or  more  m 
the  Keichstag,  and  can  generally  count  on  well-filled  churches  as 
beside  the  half-empty  temples  of  Protestantism. 

Another  circumstance  partly  favourable  to  reaction  is  the  simple 
maintenance  of  all  the  old  theological  chairs  in  the  universities.  As 
the  field  of  scientific  work  widens,  and  increasing  commerce  raises 
the  social  standard  of  comfort,  men  of  original  intellectual  power 
grow  less  apt  to  devote  themselves  to  theological  pursuits  even 
under  the  comparatively  free  conditions  which  so  long  kept  German 
Biblical  scholarship  far  above  that  of  other  countries.  It  can  hardly 
be  said  that  men  of  the  mental  calibre  of  Strauss,  Baur,  Volkmar, 
and  Wellhausen  continue  to  arise  among  the  specialists  in  their 
studies.     Harnack,  the  most  prominent  German  Biblical  scholar  of 

1  See  Haeckel'a  Freedom  in  Science  and  Teaching,  Eng.  tr.  with  pref.  by  Huxley.  1879, 
pp.  xix.  XXV.  xxvii,  89-90 ;  and  Clifford.  .       ,.  ..  .4.,    i.i,„  cf„t«  r'i,,i,./.Vi  a. 

*i  BUchner,  for  straightforwardly  renouncing  his  connection  with  the  State  Cliurcn  a 
generation  ago.  was  blamed  by  many  who  held  his  philosophic  opinions.  In  o"' ?,^°jJx 
there  has  arisen  a  considerable  Austrittsbewegicng,  or  Withdrawal  Movement  .while 
creedlesfl  clerics  strive  to  remain  inside  a  Church  bent  on  ejecting  them.  A.  D.  Mcl^aren. 
in  Hibbert  Journal  for  July,  1914,  art.  cited. 


BIBLICAL  CKITICISM 


437 


our  day,  despite  his  great  learning,  creates  no  such  impression  of 
originality  and  insight,  and,  though  latterly  forced  forward  by  more 
independent  minds,  exhibits  often  a  very  uncritical  orthodoxy.  Thus 
it  is  k  priori  possible  enough  that  the  orthodox  reactions  so  often 
claimed  have  actually  occurred,  in  the  sense  that  the  experts  have 
reverted  to  a  prior  type.  A  scientifically-minded  "  theologian  "  in 
Germany  has  now  little  official  scope  for  his  faculty  save  in  the 
analysis  of  the  Hebrew  Sacred  Books  and  the  New  Testament  docu- 
ments as  such  ;  and  this  has  been  on  the  whole  very  well  done, 
short  of  the  point  of  express  impeachment  of  the  historic  delusion  ; 
but  there  is  a  limit  to  the  attraction  of  such  studies  for  minds  of  a 
modern  cast.  Thus  there  is  always  a  chance  that  chairs  will  be 
filled  by  men  of  another  typo. 

11.  On  a  less  extensive  scale  than  in  Germany,  critical  study  of 
the  sacred  books  made  some  progress  in  England,  France,  and 
America  in  the  first  half  of  the  century  ;  though  for  a  time  the 
attention  even  of  the  educated  world  was  centred  much  more  upon 
the  Oxford  "tractarian"  rehgious  reaction  than  upon  the  movement 
of  rationaUsm.  The  reaction,  associated  mainly  with  the  name  of 
John  Henry  Newman,  was  rather  against  the  political  Erastianism 
and  aesthetic  apathy  of  the  Whig  type  of  Christian  than  against 
German  or  other  criticism,  of  which  Newman  knew  little.  But 
against  the  attitude  of  those  moderate  Anglicans  who  were  disposed 
to  disestabhsh  the  Church  in  Ireland  and  to  modernize  the  liturgy 
somewhat,  the  language  of  the  "  Tracts  for  the  Times  "  is  as  authori- 
tarian and  anti-rationalistic  as  that  of  Catholics  denouncing  free- 
thought.  Such  expressions  as  "  the  filth  of  heretical  novelty  "  ^  are 
meant  to  apply  to  anything  in  the  nature  of  innovation ;  the  causes 
at  stake  are  ritual  and  precedent,  the  apostolic  succession  and  the 
status  of  the  priest,  not  the  truth  of  revelation  or  the  credibility 
of  the  scriptures.  The  third  Tract  appeals  to  the  clergy  to  "resist 
the  alteration  of  even  one  jot  or  tittle  "  of  the  liturgy  ;  and  concern- 
ing the  burial  service  the  line  of  argument  is  :  "  Do  you  pretend  you 
can  discriminate  the  wheat  from  the  tares?  Of  course  not."  All 
attempts  even  to  modify  the  ritual  are  an  "abuse  of  reason";  and 
the  true  believer  is  adjured  to  stand  fast  in  the  ancient  ways.^  At 
a  pinch  he  is  to  "  consider  what  Beason  says ;  which  surely,  as 
well  as  Scripture,  was  given  us  for  religious  ends";^  but  the  only 
"reason"  thus  recognized  is  one  which  accepts  the  whole  apparatus 
of    revelation.     Previous   to    and   alongside   of   this    single-minded 

1  Tracts  for  the  Times,  vol.  ii,  ed.  1839 ;  Records  of  the  Church,^o.  xxiv. 

2  Tracts  for  the  Times,  No.  3.  ^  Id.  No.  32. 


438     FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


reversion  to  fehe  ideals  of  the  Dark  Ages — a  phenomenon  not  uncon- 
nected with  the  revival  of  romanticism  by  Scott  and  Chateaubriand 
—there  was  going  on  a  movement  of  modernism,  of  which  one  of  the 
overt  traces  is  Milman's  History  of  the  Jews  (1829),  a  work  to-day 
regarded  as  harmless  even  by  the  orthodox,  but  sufficient  in  its  time 
to  let  Newman  see  whither  religious  **  Liberalism  "  was  heading. 

Other  and  later  researches  dug  much  deeper  into  the  problems 
of  religious  historiography.  The  Unitarian  C.  0.  Hennell  pro- 
duced an  Inquiry  Concerning  the  Origin  of  Christianity  (1838),  so 
important  for  its  time  as  to  be  thought  worth  translating  into 
German  by  Strauss  ;  and  this  found  a  considerable  response  from 
the  educated  English  public  of  its  day.  In  the  preface  to  his  second 
edition  (18 il)  Hennell  spoke  very  plainly  of  "  the  large  and  probably 
increasing  amount  of  unbelief  in  all  classes  around  us  ";  and  made 
the  then  remarkably  courageous  declarations  that  in  his  experience 
*'  neither  deism,  pantheism,  nor  even  atheism  indicates  modes  of 
thought  incompatible  with  uprightness  and  benevolence";  and  that 
"  the  real  or  affected  horror  which  it  is  still  a  prevailing  custom  to 
exhibit  towards  their  names  would  be  better  reserved  for  those  of 
the  selfish,  the  cruel,  the  bigot,  and  other  tormentors  of  mankind." 
It  was  in  the  circle  of  Hennell  that  Makian  Evans,  later  to 
become  famous  as  Geoege  Eliot,  grew  into  a  rationalist  in  despite 
of  her  religious  temperament ;  and  it  was  she  who,  when  Hennell's 
bride  gave  up  the  task,  undertook  the  toil  of  translating  Strauss's 
Leben  Jesu — though  at  many  points  she  "  thought  him  wrong."  ^  In 
the  churches  he  had  of  course  no  overt  acceptance.  At  this  stage, 
English  orthodoxy  was  of  such  a  oust  that  the  pious  Tregelles, 
himself  fiercely  opposed  to  all  forms  of  rationalism,  had  to  complain 
that  the  most  incontrovertible  corrections  of  the  current  text  of  the 
New  Testament  were  angrily  denounced.* 

In  the  next  generation  Theodoke  PARKER  in  the  United  States, 
developing  his  critical  faculty  chiefly  by  study  of  the  Germans,  at 
the  cost  of  much  obloquy  forced  some  knowledge  of  critical  results 
and  a  measure  of  theistic  or  pantheistic  rationalism  on  the  attention 
of  the  orthodox  world ;  promoting  at  the  same  time  a  semi-philo- 
sophic, semi-ethical  reaction  against  the  Calvinistic  theology  of 
Jonathan  Edwards,  theretofore  prevalent  among  the  orthodox  of 
New  England.  In  the  old  country  a  number  of  writers  developed 
new  movements  of  criticism  from  theistic  points  of  view.     F.  W. 


1  Cross's  Life,  1-vol.  ed.  p.  79. 

«  Account  of  the  Printed  Text  of  th^  Greek  N.  T.,  1851.  pref.  and  pp.  47.  Ili2-13.  266. 


BIBLICAL  CRITICISM 


439 


Newman,  the  scholarly  brother  of  John  Henry,^  produced  a  book 
entitled  The  Soul  (1849),  and  another,  Phases  of  Faith  (1853),  which 
had  much  influence   in   promoting  rationalism  of  a  rather  rigidly 
theistic  cast.     R.  W.  Mackay  in  the  same  period  published  two 
learned  treatises,  A  Sketch  of  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  Christianity 
(1854),  notably  scientific  in  method  for  its  time  ;  and  The  Progress 
of  the  Intellect  as  Exemplified  in  the  Religious  Development  of  the 
Greeks  and  Hehreivs  (1850),  which  won  the  admiration  of  Buckle  ; 
"  George   Eliot "    translated    Feuerbach's    Esseyice   of   Christianity 
(1854)  under  her  own  name,  Marian  Evans;    and  W.  R.  Greg, 
one  of  the  leading  publicists  of  his  day,  put  forth  a  rationahst  study 
of  The  Creed  of  Christeiidom  :  Its  Foundations  Contrasted  with  its 
Superstructure  (1850),  which  has  gone  through  many  editions  and 
is  still  reprinted.     In  1864  appeared  The  Prophet  of  Nazareth,  by 
Evan  Powell  Meredith,  who  had  been  a  Baptist  minister  in  Wales. 
The  book  is  a  bulky  prize  essay  on  the  theme  of  New  Testament 
eschatology,  which  develops  into  a  deistic  attack  on  the  central  Chris- 
tian dogma  and  on  gospel  ethics.     Another  zealous  theist,  THOMAS 
ScOTT,  whose  pamphlet-propaganda  on  deistic  lines  had  so  wide  an 
influence  during  many  years,  produced  an  English  Life  of  Jesus  (1871), 
which,  though  less  important  than  the  works  of  Strauss  and  less 
popular  than  those  of   Renan,  played  a  considerable  part  in  the 
disintegration  of  the  traditional  faith  among  English  churchmen. 
Still  the  primacy  in  critical  research  on  scholarly  lines  lay  with 
the  Germans;    and   it   was   the   results   of   their  work   that  were 
co-ordinated,  from  a  theistic  standpoint,'^  in  the  anonymous  work. 
Supernatural  Religion  (1874-77),  a  massive  and  decisive  perform- 
ance, too  powerful  to  be  disposed  of  by  the  episcopal  and  other 
attacks   made   upon   it.^     Since   its   assimilation   the   orthodox  or 
inspirationist  view  of  the  gospels  has  lost  credit  among  competent 
scholars    even   within    the    churches.     The    battleground   is   now 
removed  to  the  problem  of  the  historicity  of  the  ostensible  origins 
of  the  cult ;  and  scholarly  orthodoxy  takes  for  granted  many  positions 
which  fifty  years  ago  were  typical  of  "  German  rationalism." 

12.  In  France  systematic  criticism  of  the  sacred  books  recom- 
menced in  the  second  half  of  the  century  with  such  writings  as 

1  A  third  brother,  Charles  Robert,  became  an  atheist.  This,  as  well  as  his  psychic 
infirmity,  insures  him  sufficiently  severe  treatment  at  the  hands  of  his  theistic  brother  in 
the  introduction  to  the  latter's  Contrihations  Chiefly  to  the  Early  History  of  the  late 
Cardinal  Newman,  1891.  ,        ,  .     ,     ^,    ,.     ,        -,  r,- 

•i  Latterly  abandoned  by  the  learned  author,  who  before  his  death  disclosed  his  name 
■^  jj  Cassels 

8  See  the  testimonies  of  Pfleiderer,  The  Development  of  Theology  since  KatU,  Eng.  tr. 
1890,  p.  397.  and  Dr.  Samuel  Davidson.  Introd.  to  the  Study  of  the  New  Testament, 
pref.  to  2nd  ed. 


440     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUKY 


those  of  P.  Larkoque  {Examen  Critique  des  doctrines  de  la  religion 
chritienne,  1860);  GUSTAVE  D'ElCHTHAL  {Les  Evangiles,  ptie.  i, 
1863) ;  and  Alphonse  Peyrat  {Histoire  dUmentaire  et  critique  de 
Jdsus,  1864)  ;  whereafter  the  rationalistic  view  was  applied  with 
singular  literary  charm,  if  with  imperfect  consistency,  by  Eenan  in 
his  series  of  seven  volumes  on  the  origins  of  Christianity,  and  with 
more  scientific  breadth  of  view  by  ERNEST  Havet  in  his  Christianisme 
et  ses  Origines  (1872,  etc.).  Eenan's  Vie  de  Jdstis  (1863)  especially 
has  been  read  throughout  the  civilized  world.  It  has  been  quite 
justly  pronounced,  by  German  and  other  critics,  a  romance  ;  but  no 
other  "life"  properly  so  called  has  been  anything  else,  Strauss's 
first  Life  being  an  analysis  rather  than  a  construction  ;  and  the 
epithet  was  but  an  unwitting  avowal  that  to  accept  the  gospels, 
barring  miracles,  as  biography — which  is  what  Eenan  did — is  to  be 
committed  to  the  unhistorical.  He  began  by  accepting  the  fourth 
as  equipollent  with  the  synoptics;  and  upon  this  Strauss  in  his 
second  Life  confidently  called  for  a  recantation,  which  came  in  due 
course.  But  Eenan,  in  his  fitful  way,  had  critical  ghmpses  which 
were  denied  to  Strauss— for  instance,  as  to  the  material  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount.  The  whole  series  of  the  Origines,  which 
wound  up  with  Marc  Aurdle  (1882),  has  a  similar  fluctuating  value, 
showing  on  the  whole  a  progressive  critical  sense.  The  Saint  Paul, 
for  example,  at  the  close  suddenly  discards  the  traditional  view  pre- 
viously accepted  in  Les  Apdtres,  and  recognizes  that  the  ministry 
of  Paul  can  have  been  no  more  than  a  propaganda  of  small  conven- 
ticles, whose  total  membership  throughout  the  Empire  could  not 
have  been  above  a  thousand.  But  Eenan's  total  service  consisted 
rather  in  a  highly  artistic  and  winning  application  of  rational 
historical  methods  to  early  Christian  history,  with  the  effect  of  dis- 
placing the  traditionist  method,  than  in  any  lasting  or  comprehen- 
sive solution  of  the  problem  of  the  origins.  Havet's  survey  is  both 
corrective  and  complementary  to  his.  Eenan's  influence  on  opinion 
throughout  the  world,  however,  was  enormous,  were  it  only  because 
he  was  one  of  the  most  finished  literary  artists  of  his  time. 


Section  3.— Poetry  and  General  Literature 

1.  The  whole  imaginative  literature  of  Europe,  in  the  generation 
after  the  French  Eevolution,  reveals  directly  or  indirectly  the  trans- 
mutation that  the  eighteenth  century  had  worked  in  rehgious  thought. 
Either  it  reacts  against  or  it  develops  the  rationalistic  movement. 
In  France  the  literary  reaction  is  one  of  the  first  factors  in  the 


POETEY  AND  GENEEAL  LITEEATUEE 


441 


orthodox  revival.  Its  leader  and  type  was  Chateaubriand,  in  whose 
typical  work,  the  G6nie  du  Christianisme  (1802),  lies  the  proof  that, 
whatever  might  be  the  "  shallowness  "  of  Voltairism,  it  was  pro- 
fundity beside  the  philosophy  of  the  majority  who  repelled  it.  On 
one  who  now  reads  it  with  the  slightest  scientific  preparation,  the 
book  makes  an  impression  in  parts  of  something  like  fatuity.  The 
handling  of  the  scientific  question  at  the  threshold  of  the  inquiry  is 
that  of  a  man  incapable  of  a  scientific  idea.  All  the  accumulating 
evidence  of  geology  and  palaeontology  is  disposed  of  by  the  grotesque 
theorem  that  God  made  the  world  out  of  nothing  with  all  the  marks 
of  antiquity  upon  it — the  oaks  at  the  start  bearing  "  last  year's  nests  " 
— on  the  ground  that,  "  if  the  world  were  not  at  once  young  and  old, 
the  great,  the  serious,  the  moral  would  disappear  from  nature,  for 
these  sentiments  by  their  essence  attach  to  antique  things."  ^  In 
the  same  fashion  the  fable  of  the  serpent  is  with  perfect  gravity 
homologated  as  a  literal  truth,  on  the  strength  of  an  anecdote  about 
the  charming  of  a  rattlesnake  with  music.^  It  is  humiliating,  but 
instructive,  to  realize  that  only  a  century  ago  a  '*  Christian  reaction," 
in  a  civilized  country,  was  inspired  by  such  an  order  of  ideas ;  and 
that  in  the  nation  of  Laplace,  with  his  theory  in  view,  it  was  the 
fashion  thus  to  prattle  in  the  taste  of  the  Dark  Ages.^  The  book  is 
merely  the  eloquent  expression  of  a  nervous  recoil  from  everything 
savouring  of  cool  reason  and  clear  thought,  a  recoil  partly  initiated 
by  the  sheer  stress  of  excitement  of  the  near  past ;  partly  fostered 
by  the  vague  belief  that  freethinking  in  religion  had  caused  the 
Eevolution ;  partly  enhanced  by  the  tendency  of  every  warlike 
period  to  develop  emotional  rather  than  reflective  life.  What  was 
really  masterly  in  Chateaubriand  was  the  style ;  and  sentimental 
pietism  had  now  the  prestige  of  fine  writing,  so  long  the  specialty  of 
the  other  side.  Yet  a  generation  of  monarchism  served  to  wear  out 
the  ill-based  credit  of  the  literary  reaction ;  and  belles  lettres  began 
to  be  rationalistic  as  soon  as  politics  began  again  to  be  radical. 
Thus  the  prestige  of  the  neo-Christian  school  was  already  spent 
before  the  revolution  of  1848  ;^  and  the  inordinate  vanity  of  Chateau- 
briand, who  died  in  that  year,  had  undone  his  special  influence  still 
earlier.     He  had  created  merely  a  literary  mode  and  sentiment. 

2.  The  literary  history  of  France  since  his  death  decides  the 
question,  so  far  as  it  can  be  thus  decided.  From  1848  till  our  own 
day  it  has  been  predominantly  naturalistic  and  non-rehgious.     After 

1  Ptie.  i,  liv.  i,  ch.  v.  ^  j^.  j,  liy.  iji,  ch.  ii. 

8  It  is  further  to  be  remembered,  however,  that  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  saw  fit  to  defend 
Chateaubriand,  caUing  him  "  great,"  when  his  fame  was  being  undone  by  common  sense. 
*  C.  Wordsworth,  Diary  in  France,  1845,  pp.  55-56, 124,  204. 


442     FEBETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUBY 

Guizot  and  the  Thierry s,  the  nearest  approach  to  Christianity  by 
an  influential  French  historian  is  perhaps  in  the  case  of  the  very 
heterodox  Edgar  Quinet.     MiCHELET  was  a  mere  heretic  in  the 
eyes  of  the  faithful,  Saisset  describing  his  book  Du  Pretre,  de  la 
Femnie,  et  de  la  Famille  (1845),  as  a  "  renaissance  of  Voltaireanism." 
His  whole  brilliant  History,  indeed,  is  from  beginning  to  end  ration- 
alistic, challenging  as  it  does  all  the  decorous  traditions,  exposmg  the 
failure  of  the  faith  to  civiUze,  pronouncing  that  "  the  monastic  Middle 
Age  is  an  age  of  idiots"  and  the  scholastic  world  which  followed  it 
an  age  of  artificially  formed  fools,''  flouting  dogma  and  discrediting 
creed  over  each  of  their  miscarriages.'     And  he  was  popular,  withal, 
not  only  because  of  his  vividness  and  unfailing  freshness,  but  because 
his  convictions  were  those  of  the  best  intelligence  around  him.     In 
poetry  and  fiction  the  predominance  of  one  or  other  shade  of  free- 
thinking  is  signal.     Balzac,  who  grew  up  in  the  age  of  reaction, 
makes  essentially  for  rationalism  by  his  intense  analysis ;  and  after 
him  the  difliculty  is  to  find  a  great  French  novelist  who  is  not  frankly 
rationahstic.     George  Sand  will  probably  not  be  claimed  by  ortho- 
doxy   and    Beyle.    Constant.    Flaubert,    Merimee,  Zola, 
Daudet,  Maupassant,  and   the  De  Goncourts  make  a  hst 
against  which  can  be  set  only  the  names  of  M.  Bourget,  an  artist 
of  the  second  order,  and  of  the  distinguished  decadent  Huysmans, 
who  became  a  Trappist  after  a  life  marked  by   a   philosophy  and 
practice  of  an  extremely  different  complexion. 

3.  In  French  poetry  the  case  is  hardly  otherwise.  ^BERANGEE, 
who  passed  for  a  Voltairean,  did  indeed  claim  to  have  "  saved  from 
the  wreck  an  indestructible  belief"/  and  Lamartine  goes  to  the 
side  of  Christianity ;  but  de  Musset,  the  most  inspired  of  decadents, 
was  no  more  Christian  than  Heine,  save  for  what  a  critic  has  called 
"la  banale  religiosity  de  VEspoir  en  Dieu'';'  and  the  pessimist 
Baudelaire  had  not  even  that  to  show.  De  Musset's  absurd  attack 
on  Voltaire  in  his  Byronic  poem,  Bolla,  well  deserves  the  same 
epithets.  It  is  a  mere  product  of  hysteria,  representing  neither 
knowledge  nor  reflection.     The  grandiose  theism  of  VICTOR  HUGO. 


1  Essais  sur  la  pMlosophie  et  la  religion,  1845.  p.  198. 

2  Hiatoire.  torn,  vii,  Renaissance,  introd.  §  6.  -«„•  i_  i  i  ^«^:i.  a  1'A,^-■a  nina 
8  MFacuet  writes  {Etudes  sur  le  XIXe  SUcle,  p.  352)  that  "Michelet  croit  k  1  ame  plus 

*^°°*LS°er\o  Sainte-Beuve,  cited  by  Levallois.  Sainte-Beuve,  1872.  p.  14. 
6  Lanson,  Hist,  de  la  litt.franQaise,  p.  951. 


POETRY  AND  GENERAL  LITERATURE 


443 


again,  is  stamped  only  with  his  own  image  and  superscription ;  and 
in  his  great  contemporary  Leconte  de  Lisle  we  have  one  of  the 
most  convinced  and  aggressive  freethinkers  of  the  century,  a  fine 
scholar  and  a  self-controlled  pessimist,  who  felt  it  well  worth  his 
while  to  write  a  little  Popular  History  of  Christianity  (1871)  which 
would  have  delighted  d'Holbach.  It  is  significant,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  the  exquisite  religious  verse  of  Verlaine  was  the  product 
of  an  incurable  neuropath,  like  the  later  work  of  Huysmans,  and 
stands  for  decadence  pure  and  simple.  While  French  belles  lettres 
thus  in  general  made  for  rationalism,  criticism  was  naturally  not 
behindhand.  Sainte-Beuve,  the  most  widely  appreciative  though 
not  the  most  scientific  or  just  of  critics,  had  only  a  literary  sympathy 
with  the  religious  types  over  whom  he  spent  so  much  effusive 
research ;  ^  Edmond  Scherer  was  an  unbeliever  almost  against 
his  will;  Taine,  though  reactionary  on  political  grounds  in  his 
latter  years,  was  the  typical  French  rationalist  of  his  time ;  and 
though  M.  Bruneti6re,  whose  preferences  were  all  for  Bossuet,  made 
"the  bankruptcy  of  science"  the  text  of  his  very  facile  philo- 
sophy, the  most  scientific  and  philosophic  head  in  the  whole  line  of 
French  critics,  the  late  Emile  Hennequin,  was  wholly  a  rationalist ; 
and  even  the  rather  reactionary  Jules  Lemaitre  did  not  maintain  his 
early  attitude  of  austerity  towards  Renan. 

4.  In  England  it  was  due  above  all  to  Shelley  that  the  very  age 
of  reaction  was  confronted  with  unbelief  in  lyric  form.  His  imma- 
ture Queen  Mah  was  vital  enough  with  conviction  to  serve  as  an 
inspiration  to  a  whole  host  of  unlettered  freethinkers  not  only  in  its 
own  generation  but  in  the  next.  Its  notes  preserved,  and  greatly 
expanded,  the  tract  entitled  The  Necessity  of  Atheism,  for  which  he 
was  expelled  from  Oxford  ;  and  against  his  will  it  became  a  people's 
book,  the  law  refusing  him  copyright  in  his  own  work,  on  the 
memorable  principle  that  there  could  be  no  "protection  "  for  a  book 
setting  forth  pernicious  opinions.  Whether  he  might  not  in  later 
life,  had  he  survived,  have  passed  to  a  species  of  mystic  Christianity, 
reacting  like  Coleridge,  but  with  a  necessary  difference,  is  a  question 
raised  by  parts  of  the  Hellas.     Gladstone  seems  to  have  thought 


*  "L'incr^dulitd  de  Sainte-Beuve  6tait  sincere,  radicale.  et  absolue.  Elle  a  6t6 
invariable  et  invincible  pendant  trente  ans.  Voila  la  verite"  (Jules  Levallois,  Sainte- 
Beuve,  1872,  pr6f .  p.  xxxiii).  M.  Levallois,  who  writes  as  a  theist.  was  one  of  Sainte-Beuve's 
secretaries.  M.  Zola,  who  spoke  of  the  famous  critic's  rationalism  as  "une  negation 
n'osant  conclure."  admitted  later  that  it  was  hardly  possible  for  him  to  speak  more 
boldly  than  he  did  {Documents  Litt&raires,  1881.  pp.  314,  325-28),  And  M.  Lavisse  has 
shown  (as  cited  above,  p.  406)  with  what  courage  he  supported  Duruy  in  the  Senate  against 
the  attacks  of  the  exasperated  clerical  party.  See  also  his  letter  of  1867  to  Louis  Viardot 
in  the  avant-T^rovos  to  that  writer's  Libre  Exameii:  Apologie  d'un  Incr^dule,  6e  6dit. 
1881.  p.  3. 


444    FEBETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUKY 


that  he  had  in  him  such  a  potentiality.  But  Shelley's  work,  as 
done,  sufiQced  to  keep  for  radicalism  and  rationalism  the  crown  of 
song  as  against  the  final  Tory  orthodoxy  ^  of  the  elderly  Wordsworth 
and  of  Southey ;  and  Coleridge's  zeal  for  (amended)  dogma  came 
upon  him  after  his  hour  of  poetic  transfiguration  was  past. 

And  even  Coleridge,  who  held  the  heresies  of  a  modal 
Trinity  and  the  non-expiatory  character  of  the  death  of  Christ, 
was  widely  distrusted  by  the  pious,  and  expressed  himself 
privately  in  terms  which  would  have  outraged  them.  Miracles, 
he  declared,  '*  are  supererogatory.  The  law  of  God  and  the 
great  principles  of  the  Christian  religion  would  have  been  the 
same  had  Christ  never  assumed  humanity.  It  is  for  these 
things,  and  for  such  as  these,  for  telling  unwelcome  truths,  that 
I  have  been  termed  an  atheist.  It  is  for  these  opinions  that 
William  Smith  assured  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  that  I 
was  (what  half  the  clergy  are  in  their  lives)  an  atheist.  Little 
do  these  men  know  what  atheism  is.  Not  one  man  in  a 
thousand  has  either  strength  of  mind  or  goodness  of  heart  to 
be  an  atheist.  I  repeat  it.  Not  one  man  in  ten  thousand  has 
goodness  of  heart  or  strength  of  mind  to  be  an  atheist." 
AUsopp's  Letters,  etc.,  as  cited,  p.  47.  But  at  other  times 
Coleridge  was  a  defender  of  the  faith,  while  contemning  the 
methods  of  the  evidential  school.     Id,  pp,  13-14,  31. 

On  the  other  side,  Scott's  honest  but  unintellectual  romanticism, 
as  we  know  from  Newman,  certainly  favoured  the  Tractarian  reac- 
tion, to  which  it  was  aesthetically  though  hardly  emotionally  akin. 
Yet  George  Eliot  could  say  in  later  life  that  it  was  the  influence  of 
Scott  that  first  unsettled  her  orthodoxy;^  meaning,  doubtless,  that 
the  prevailing  secularity  of  his  view  of  life  and  his  objective  handling 
of  sects  and  faiths  excluded  even  a  theistic  solution.  Scott's  ortho- 
doxy was  in  fact  nearly  on  all  fours  with  his  Jacobitism — a  matter 
of  temperamental  loyalty  to  a  tradition."  But  the  far  more  potent 
influence  of  Bykon,  too  wayward  to  hold  a  firm  philosophy,  but  too 
intensely  alive  to  realities  to  be  capable  of  Scott's  feudal  orthodoxy, 
must  have  counted  much  for  heresy  even  in  England,  and  was  one 
of  the  literary  forces  of  revolutionary  revival  for  the  whole  of  Europe. 
Though  he  never  came  to  a  clear  atheistical  decision  as  did  Shelley,* 


1  That  Wordsworth  was  not  an  orthodox  Christian  is  fairly  certain.  Both  in  talk  and 
in  poetry  he  put  forth  a  pantheistic  doctrine.  Cp.  Benn,  Hist,  of  Eng.  Batioiialism,  i, 
227-29;  and  Coleridge's  letter  of  Aug.  8. 1820,  in  AUsopp's  Letters,  etc.,  of  S.  T.  Coleridge, 
3rd  ed.  1864.  pp.  56-57.  '■*  Leslie  Stephen.  George  Eliot,  p.  27. 

3  Mr.  Benn  (Hist,  of  Eng.  Batioiialism,  i,  226.  309  sq.)  has  some  interesting  discussions 
on  Scott's  relation  to  religion,  but  does  not  take  full  account  of  biographical  data  and  of 
Scott's  utterances  outside  of  his  novels.  The  truth  probably  is  that  Scott's  brain  was  one 
with  "watertight  compartments." 

*  At  the  age  of  twenty-five  we  find  him  writing  to  Gifford  :  "I  am  no  bigot  to  infidelity. 
and  did  not  expect  that  because  I  doubted  the  immortality  of  man  I  should  be  charged 
with  denying  the  existence  of  God"  (letter  of  June  18. 1813). 


POETRY  AND  GENERAL  LITERATURE 


445 


and  often  in  private  gave  himself  out  for  a  Calvinist,  he  so  handled 
theological  problems  in  his  Cain  that  he,  like  Shelley,  was  refused 
copyright  in  his  work;^  and  it  was  widely  appropriated  for  free- 
thinkers' purposes.  The  orthodox  Southey  was  on  the  same  grounds 
denied  the  right  to  suppress  his  early  revolutionary  drama,  Wat 
Tyler,  which  accordingly  was  made  to  do  duty  in  Radical  propa- 
ganda by  freethinking  publishers.  Keats,  again,  though  he  melo- 
diously declaimed,  in  a  boyish  mood,  against  the  scientific  analysis 
of  the  rainbow,  and  though  he  never  assented  to  Shelley's  impeach- 
ments of  Christianity,  was  in  no  active  sense  a  believer  in  it,  and 
after  his  long  sickness  met  death  gladly  without  the  "  consolations  " 
ascribed  to  creed. '^ 

5.  One  of  the  best-beloved  names  in  English  literature,  Charles 
Lamb,  is  on  several  counts  to  be  numbered  with  those  of  the  free- 
thinkers of  his  day — who  included  Godwin  and  Hazlitt — though  he 
had  no  part  in  any  direct  propaganda.  Himself  at  most  a  Unitarian, 
but  not  at  all  given  to  argument  on  points  of  faith,  he  did  his  work 
for  reason  partly  by  way  of  the  subtle  and  winning  humanism  of 
such  an  essay  as  Neiv  Year's  Eve,  which  seems  to  have  been  what 
brought  upon  him  the  pedantically  pious  censure  of  Southey, 
apparently  for  its  lack  of  allusion  to  a  future  state ;  partly  by  his 
delicately-entitled  letter.  The  Tombs  in  the  Abbey,  in  which  he 
replied  to  Southey 's  stricture.  "A  book  which  wants  only  a  sounder 
religious  feeling  to  be  as  delightful  as  it  is  original"  had  been 
Southey's  pompous  criticism,  in  a  paper  on  Infidelity^  In  his  reply, 
Lamb  commented  on  Southey's  life-long  habit  of  scofiQng  at  the 
Church  of  Rome,  and  gravely  repudiated  the  test  of  orthodoxy  for 
human  character. 

Lamb's  words  are  not  generally  known,  and  are  worth 
remembering.  "  I  own,"  he  wrote,  "  I  never  could  think  so 
considerably  of  myself  as  to  decline  the  society  of  an  agreeable 
or  worthy  man  upon  difference  of  opinion  only.  The  impedi- 
ments and  the  facilitations  to  a  sound  belief  are  various  and 
inscrutable  as  the  heart  of  man.  Some  believe  upon  weak 
principles ;  others  cannot  feel  the  efficacy  of  the  strongest. 
One  of  the  most  candid,  most  upright,  and  single-meaning  men 
I  ever  knew  was  the  late  Thomas  Holcroft.  I  believe  he  never 
said  one  thing  and  meant  another  in  his  life ;  and,  as  near  as 
I  can  guess,  he  never  acted  otherwise  than  with   the  most 

*  By  the  Court  of  Chancery,  in  1822,  the  year  in  which  copyright  was  refused  to  the 
Lectures  of  Dr.  Lawrence.    Harriet  Martineau.  History  of  the  Peace,  ii,  87. 

2  W.  Sharp,  ii/e  o/ Sei;eni.  1892,  pp.  86-87,  90,  117-18. 

^  On  reading  Lamb's  severe  rejoinder,  Southey,  in  distress,  apologized,  and  Lamb  at 
once  relented  (Life  and  Letters  of  John  Bicktnan,  by  Orlo  Williams,  1912.  p.  225).  Hence 
the  curtailment  of  Lamb's  letter  in  the  ordinary  editions  of  his  works. 


446    FREETHOUGfiT  IN  THE  l^lNETEENtH  CENTlJR? 

scrupulous  attention  to  conscience.  Ought  we  to  wish  the 
character  false  for  the  sake  of  a  hollow  compliment  to  Chris- 
tianity ?  "  Of  the  freethinking  and  unpopular  Hazlitt,  who  had 
soured  towards  Lamb  in  his  perverse  way,  the  essayist  spoke 
still  more  generously.  Of  Leigh  Hunt  he  speaks  more  critically, 
but  with  the  same  resolution  to  stand  by  a  man  known  as  a 
heretic.  But  the  severest  flout  to  Southey  and  his  Church  is 
in  the  next  paragraph,  where,  after  the  avowal  that  "  the  last 
sect  with  which  you  can  remember  me  to  have  made  common 
profession  were  the  Unitarians,"  he  tells  how,  on  the  previous 
Easter  Sunday,  he  had  attended  the  service  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  and  when  he  would  have  lingered  afterwards  among  the 
tombs  to  meditate,  was  "  turned,  like  a  dog  or  some  profane 
person,  out  into  the  common  street,  with  feelings  which  I  could 
not  help,  but  not  very  congenial  to  the  day  or  the  discourse.  I 
do  not  know,"  he  adds,  **  that  I  shall  ever  venture  myself  again 
into  one  of  your  churches." 

These  words  were  published  in  the  London  Magazine  in  1825  ; 
but  in  the  posthumous  collected  edition  of  the  Essays  of  Elia  all 
the  portions  above  cited  were  dropped,  and  the  paragraph  last 
quoted  from  was  modified,  leaving  out  the  last  words.  The 
essay  does  not  seem  to  have  been  reprinted  in  full  till  it  appeared 
in  R.  H.  Shepherd's  edition  of  1878.  But  the  original  issue  in 
the  London  Magazine  created  a  tradition  among  the  lovers  of 
Lamb,  and  his  name  has  always  been  associated  with  some 
repute  for  freethinking.  There  is  further  very  important  testi- 
mony as  to  Lamb's  opinions  in  one  of  AUsopp's  records  of  the 
conversation  of  Coleridge  : — 

"  No,  no ;  Lamb's  skepticism  has  not  come  lightly,  nor  is  he 
a  skeptic  [sic  :  Query,  scoffer  J].  The  harsh  reproof  to  Godwin 
for  his  contemptuous  allusion  to  Christ  before  a  well-trained 
child  proves  that  he  is  not  a  skeptic  [?  scoffer] .  His  mind, 
never  prone  to  analysis,  seems  to  have  been  disgusted  with  the 
hollow  pretences,  the  false  reasonings  and  absurdities  of  the 
rogues  and  fools  with  whom  all  establishments,  and  all  creeds 
seeking  to  become  estabhshed,  abound.  I  look  upon  Lamb  as 
one  hovering  between  earth  and  heaven ;  neither  hoping  much 
nor  fearing  anything.  It  is  curious  that  he  should  retain  many 
usages  which  he  learnt  or  adopted  in  the  fervour  of  his  early 
religious  feelings,  now  that  his  faith  is  in  a  state  of  suspended 
animation.  Believe  me,  who  know  him  well,  that  Lamb,  say 
what  he  will,  has  more  of  the  essentials  of  Christianity  than 
ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred  professing  Christians.  He  has  all 
that  would  still  have  been  Christian  had  Christ  never  lived  or 
been  made  manifest  upon  earth."  (AUsopp's  Letters,  etc.,  as 
cited,  p.  46.)  In  connection  with  the  frequently  cited  anecdote 
as  to  Lamb's  religious  feeling  given  in  Leigh  Hunt's  Autobio- 
graphy (rep.  p.  253),  also  by  Hazlitt  {Winterslow,  essay  ii,  ed. 


POETRt  AND  GENERAL  LITERATUBli 


447 


i 


I 


1902,  p.  39),  may  be  noted  the  following,  given  by  Allsopp: 
"  After  a  visit  to  Coleridge,  during  which  the  conversation  had 

taken  a  religious  turn,  Leigh  Hunt expressed  his  surprise 

that  such  a  man  as  Coleridge  should,  when  speaking  of  Christ, 
always  call  him  Our  Saviour.  Lamb,  who  had  been  exhilarated 
by  one  glass  of  that  gooseberry  or  raisin  cordial  which  he  has 
so  often  anathematized,  stammered  out :  '  Ne-ne-never  mind 
what  Coleridge  says  ;  he  is  full  of  fun.'  " 
6.  While  a  semi-Bohemian  like  Lamb  could  thus  dare  to  chal- 
lenge the  reigning  bigotry,  the  graver  English  writers  of  the  first 
half  of  the  century  who  had  abandoned  or  never  accepted  orthodoxy 
felt  themselves  for  the  most  part  compelled  to  silence  or  ostensible 
comphance.  It  was  made  clear  by  Carlyle's  posthumous  Reminiscences 
that  he  had  early  turned  away  from  Christian  dogma,  having  in  fact 
given  up  a  clerical  career  because  of  unbelief.  Later  evidence  abounds. 
At  the  age  of  fifteen,  by  his  own  account,  he  had  horrified  his  mother 
with  the  question :  "  Did  God  Almighty  come  down  and  make  wheel- 
barrows in  a  shop?  " '  Of  his  college  life  he  told  :  "  I  studied  the 
evidences  of  Christianity  for  several  years,  with  the  greatest  desire  to 
be  convinced,  but  in  vain.  I  read  Gibbon,  and  then  first  clearly  saw 
that  Christianity  was  not  true.  Then  came  the  most  trying  time  of 
my  life."'*  Goethe,  he  claimed,  led  him  to  peace;  but  philosophic 
peace  he  never  attained.  '*  He  was  contemptuous  to  those  who  held 
to  Christian  dogmas  ;  he  was  angry  with  those  who  gave  them  up ; 
he  was  furious  with  those  who  attacked  them.  If  equanimity  be  the 
mark  of  a  Philosopher,  he  was  of  all  great-minded  men  the  least  of  a 
Philosopher." '  To  all  freethinking  work,  scholarly  or  other,  he  was 
hostile  with  the  hostility  of  a  man  consciously  in  a  false  position. 
Strauss's  Lebe7i  Jesu  he  pronounced,  quite  late  in  life,  "  a  revolu- 
tionary and  ill-advised  enterprise,  setting  forth  in  words  what  all  wise 
men  had  in  their  minds  for  fifty  years  past,  and  thought  it  fittest  to 
hold  their  peace  about."*  He  was,  in  fact,  so  false  to  his  own 
doctrine  of  veracity  as  to  disparage  all  who  spoke  out ;  while 
privately  agreeing  with  Mill  as  to  the  need  for  speaking  out.*  Even 
Mill  did  so  only  partially  in  his  lifetime,  as  in  his  address  to  the 
St.  Andrews  students  (1867),  when,  "in  the  reception  given  to  the 
Address,  he  was  most  struck  by  the  vociferous  applause  of  the 
divinity  students  at  the  freethought  passage."®  In  the  first 
half  of  the  century  such  displays  of  courage  were  rare  indeed.    Only 

^  William  Alliugham:  A  Diary,  19(yi,V-^''^-    Cp.  p.  268. 

2  Id.  p.  232.  ^  Alliugham.  as  cited,  p.  254. 

*  Id.  p.  211.    Carlyle  said  tbe  same  thing  to  Moncure  Couway. 

6  Cp.  Prof.  Bain's  J.  S.  Mill,  pp.  157.  191 ;  Froude's  Lotidon  Life  of  Carlyle,  i,  45b. 

6  Bain,  p.  128. 


448    FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


after  the  death  of  Romilly  was  it  tacitly  avowed,  by  the  publication 
of  a  deistic  prayer  found  among  his  papers,  that  he  had  had  no  belief 
in  revelation/  Much  later  in  the  century,  HARRIET  Martineau, 
for  openly  avowing  her  unbelief,  incurred  the  angry  public  censure 
of  her  own  brother. 

Despite  his  anxious  caution,  Carlyle's  writing  conveyed  to  sus- 
ceptible readers  a  non-Christian  view  of  things.  We  know  from  a 
posthumous  writing  of  Mr.  Fronde's  that,  when  that  writer  had  gone 
through  the  university  and  taken  holy  orders  without  ever  having 
had  a  single  doubt  as  to  his  creed,  Carlyle's  books  "  taught  him  that 
the  religion  in  which  he  had  been  reared  was  but  one  of  many 
dresses  in  which  spiritual  truth  had  arrayed  itself,  and  that  the 
creed  was  not  literally  true  so  far  as  it  was  a  narrative  of  facts."  ** 
It  was  presumably  from  the  Sartor  Besartus  and  some  of  the  Essays, 
such  as  that  on  Voltaire — perhaps,  also,  negatively  from  the  general 
absence  of  Christian  sentiment  in  Carlyle's  works — that  such  lessons 
were  learned  ;  and  though  it  is  certain  that  many  non-zealous  Chris- 
tians saw  no  harm  in  Carlyle,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  for 
multitudes  of  readers  he  had  the  same  awakening  virtue.  It  need 
hardly  be  said  that  his  friend  Emerson  exercised  it  in  no  less  degree. 
Mr.  Froude  was  remarkable  in  his  youth  for  his  surrender  of  the 
clerical  profession,  in  the  teeth  of  a  bitter  opposition  from  his  family, 
and  further  for  his  publication  of  a  f reethinking  romance.  The  Nemesis 
of  Faith  (1849) ;  but  he  went  far  to  conciliate  Anglican  orthodoxy 
by  his  History.  The  romance  had  a  temporary  vogue  rather  above  its 
artistic  merits  as  a  result  of  being  publicly  burned  by  the  authorities 
of  Exeter  College,  Oxford,  of  which  he  was  a  Fellow." 

7.  This  attitude  of  orthodoxy,  threatening  ostracism  to  any  avowed 
freethinker  who  had  a  position  to  lose,  must  be  kept  in  mind  in  esti- 
mating the  English  evolution  of  that  time.  A  professed  man  of  science 
could  write  in  1838  that  "  the  new  mode  of  interpreting  the  Scriptures 
which  has  sprung  up  in  Germany  is  the  darkest  cloud  which  lowers 
upon  the  horizon  of  that  country The  Germans  have  been  con- 
ducted by  some  of  their  teachers  to  the  borders  of  a  precipice,  one 
leap  from  which  will  plunge  them  into  deism."  He  added  that  in 
various  parts  of  Europe  "  the  heaviest  calamity  impending  over  the 
whole  fabric  of  society  in  our  time  is  the  lengthening  stride  of  bold 
skepticism  in  some  parts,  and  the  more  stealthy  onwards-creeping 

»  See  Brougham's  letters  in  the  Corre.woJidence  of  Macvey  Napier,  1879.  pp.  333-37. 
±Jrougham  is  deeply  indignant,  not  at  the  fact,  but  at  the  indiscreet  revelation  of  it— as 
also  at  the  similar  revelation  concerning  Pitt  Ip.  a34). 

*  My  Belations  with  Carlyle,  1903.  p. 2. 

8  Morning  Post,  March  9, 1849. 


POETKY  AND  GENEKAL  LITEEATUKE 


449 


step  of  critical  cavil  in  others."  ^  Such  declamation  could  terrorize 
the  timid  and  constrain  the  prudent  in  such  a  society  as  that  of  early 
Victorian  England.  The  prevailing  note  is  struck  in  Macaulay's 
description  of  Charles  Blount  as  "  an  infidel,  and  the  head  of  a  small 
school  of  infidels  who  were  troubled  with  a  morbid  desire  to  make 
converts."  ^  All  the  while,  Macaulay  was  himself  privately  "  infidel  ";^ 
but  he  cleared  his  conscience  by  thus  denouncing  those  who  had  the 
courage  of  their  opinions.  In  this  simple  fashion  some  of  the  sanest 
writers  in  history  were  complacently  put  below  the  level  of  the 
commonplace  dissemblers  who  aspersed  them ;  and  the  average 
educated  man  saw  no  baseness  in  the  procedure. 

The  opinion  deliberately  expressed  in  this  connection  by  the 
late  Professor  Bain  is  worth  noting : — 

"  It  can  at  last  be  clearly  seen  what  was  the  motive  of 
Carlyle's  perplexing  style  of  composition.  We  now  know  what 
his  opinions  were  when  he  began  to  wTite,  and  that  to  express 
them  would  have  been  fatal  to  his  success ;  yet  he  was  not  a 
man  to  indulge  in  rank  hypocrisy.  He  accordingly  adopted  a 
studied  and  ambiguous  phraseology,  which  for  long  imposed 
upon  the  rehgious  public,  who  put  their  own  interpretation 
upon  his  mystical  utterances,  and  gave  him  the  benefit  of  any 
doubt.  In  the  Life  of  Sterling  he  threw  off  the  mask,  but  still 
was  not  taken  at  his  word.  Had  there  been  a  perfect  tolerance 
of  all  opinions,  he  would  have  begun  as  he  ended;  and  his 
strain  of  composition,  while  still  mystical  and  high-flown, 
would  never  have  been  identified  with  our  national  orthodoxy. 

"  I  have  grave  doubts  as  to  whether  we  possess  Macaulay's 
real  opinions  on  religion.  His  way  of  dealing  with  the  subject 
is  so  like  the  hedging  of  an  unbeliever  that,  without  some  good 
assurance  to  the  contrary,  I  must  include  him  also  among  the 
imitators  of  Aristotle's  'caution.* 

"  When  Sir  Charles  Lyell  brought  out  his  Antiquity  of  Man, 
he  too  was  cautious.  Knowing  the  dangers  of  his  footing,  he 
abstained  from  giving  an  estimate  of  the  extension  of  time 
required  by  the  evidences  of  human  remains.  Society  in 
London,  however,  would  not  put  up  with  this  reticence,  and  he 
had  to  disclose  at  dinner  parties  what  he  had  withheld  from  the 
public— namely,  that  in  his  opinion  the  duration  of  man  could 
not  be  less  than  50,000  years"  {Practical  Essays,  p.  274.) 


1  Germany,  by  Bisset  Hawkins,  M.D.,  F.R.S.,  F.R.C.P.,  Inspector  of  Prisons,  late 
Professor  at  King's  College,  etc.,  1838,  p.  171.  2  History,  ch.  xix.    Student  sed.  11,  411. 

8  Sometimes  he  gives  a  clue  ;  and  we  find  Brougham  privately  denouncing  him  for  his 
remark  (Essay  on  Banke's  History  of  the  Popes,  6th  par.)  that  to  try  "without  the  help  of 
revelation  to  prove  the  immortality  of  man"  is  vain.  "It  is  next  thing  to  preaching 
atheism,"  shouts  Brougham  (Letter  of  Occober  20.  1840.  in  Correspondence  of  Macvey 
Napier,  p.  333).  who  at  the  same  time  hotly  insisted  that  Cuvier  had  made  an  advance  in 
Natural  Theology  by  proving  that  there  must  have  been  one  divine  interposition  alter  the 
creation  of  the  world— to  create  species.    (Id.  p.  337.) 

VOL.  II.  2g 


450    FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

8.  Thus  for  a  whole  generation  honest  and  narrow-minded 
believers  were  trained  to  suppose  that  their  views  were  triumphant 
over  all  attacks/  and  to  see  in  "infidelity"  a  disease  of  an  ill- 
informed  past ;  and  as  the  Church  had  really  gained  in  conventional 
culture  as  well  as  in  wealth  and  prestige  in  the  period  of  reaction, 
the  power  of  mere  convention  to  override  ideas  was  still  enormous. 
But  through  the  whole  stress  of  reaction  and  conservatism,  even 
apart  from  the  positive  criticism  of  creed  which  from  time  to  time 
forced  its  head  up,  there  is  a  visible  play  of  a  new  spirit  in  the  most 
notable  of  the  serious  writing  of  the  time.  Carlyle  undermined 
orthodoxy  even  in  his  asseveration  of  unreasoned  theism  ;  Emerson 
disturbs  it  alike  when  he  acclaims  mystics  and  welcomes  evolu- 
tionary science ;  and  the  whole  inspiration  of  Mill's  Logic  no  less 
than  of  his  Liberty  is  something  alien  to  the  principle  of  authority. 
Of  Ruskin,  again,  the  same  may  be  asserted  in  respect  of  his  many 
searching  thrusts  at  clerical  and  lay  practice,  his  defence  of  Colenso, 
and  the  obvious  disappearance  from  his  later  books  of  the  evangelical 
orthodoxy  of  the  earlier.^  Thus  the  most  celebrated  writers  of 
serious  English  prose  in  the  latter  half  of  the  century  were  in  a 
measure  associated  with  the  spirit  of  critical  thought  on  matters 
religious.  In  a  much  stronger  degree  the  same  thing  may  be 
predicated  finally  of  the  writer  who  in  the  field  of  English  belles 
lettres,  apart  from  fiction,  came  nearest  them  in  fame  and  influence. 
Matthew  Arnold,  passing  insensibly  from  the  English  attitude  of 
academic  orthodoxy  to  that  of  the  humanist  for  whom  Christ  is  but 
an  admirable  teacher  and  God  a  "  Something  not  ourselves  which 
makes  for  righteousness,"  became  for  the  England  of  his  later  years 
the  favourite  pilot  across  the  bar  between  supernaturalism  and 
naturalism.  Only  in  England,  perhaps,  could  his  curious  gospel  of 
church-going  and  Bible-reading  atheism  have  prospered,  but  there 
it  prospered  exceedingly.  Alike  as  poet  and  as  essayist,  even  when 
essaying  to  disparage  Colenso  or  to  confute  the  Germans  where 
they  jostled  his  predilection  for  the  Fourth  Gospel,  he  was  a 
disintegrator  of  tradition,  and,  in  his  dogmatic  way,  a  dissolver  of 
dogmatism.  When,  therefore,  beside  the  four  names  just  mentioned 
the  British  public  placed  those  of  the  philosophers  Spencer,  Lewes, 
and  Mill,  and  the  scientists  Darwin,  Huxley,  Clitford,  and  Tyndall, 
they  could  not  but  recognize  that  the  mind  of  the  age  was  divorced 
from  the  nominal  faith  of  the  Church. 


1  In  1830.  for  instance,  we  And  a  Scottish  episcopal  D.D.  writing  that  "Infidelity  has 
had  its  day ;  it,  depend  upon  it,  will  never  be  revived— no  man  of  genius  will  ever 
WRITE  ANOTHEB  WORD  IN  ITS  SUPPORT."  Morehead.  Dialogues  on  Naticral  avd  Beveaiea 
Beligion,  p.  266.  ^  Cp.  the  author's  Modern  Humanists,  pp.  189-94. 


POETRY  AND  GENERAL  LITERATURE 


451 


9.  In  English  fiction,  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  genuine  faith 
was  apparent  to  the  prophetic  eyes  of  Wilberforce  and  Robert  Hall, 
of  whom  the  former  lamented  the  total  absence  of  Christian  senti- 
ment from  nearly  all  the  successful  fiction  even  of  his  day;*  and 
the  latter  avowed  the  pain  with  which  he  noted  that  Miss  Edge- 
worth,  whom  he  admired  for  her  style  and  art,  put  absolutely  no 
religion  in  her  books,^  while  Hannah  More,  whose  principles  were 
so  excellent,  had  such  a  vicious  style.  With  Thackeray  and 
Dickens,  indeed,  serious  fiction  might  seem  to  be  on  the  side  of 
faith,  both  being  liberally  orthodox,  though  neither  ventured  on 
religious  romance  ;  but  with  GEORGE  Eliot  the  balance  began  to 
lean  the  other  way,  her  sympathetic  treatment  of  religious  types 
counting  for  little  as  against  her  known  rationalism.  At  the  end 
of  the  century  almost  all  of  the  leading  writers  of  the  higher  fiction 
were  known  to  be  either  rationalists  or  simple  theists ;  and  against 
the  heavy  metal  of  Mr.  Meredith,  Mr.  Conrad,  Mr.  Hardy,  Mr. 
Bennett,  Mr.  Moore  (whose  sympathetic  handling  of  religious 
motives  suggests  the  influence  of  Huysmans),  and  the  didactic- 
deistic  Mrs.  Humphry- Ward,  orthodoxy  can  but  claim  artists  of  the 
third  or  lower  grades.  The  championship  of  some  of  the  latter 
may  be  regarded  as  the  last  humiliation  of  faith. 

In  1905  there  was  current  a  vulgar  novel  entitled  When  it 
was  Dark,  wherein  was  said  to  be  drawn  a  blood-curdling 
picture  of  what  would  happen  in  the  event  of  a  general  sur- 
render of  Christian  faith.  Despite  some  episcopal  approbation, 
the  book  excited  much  disgust  among  the  more  enlightened 
clergy.  The  preface  to  Miss  Marie  Corelli's  Mighty  Ato7?i  may 
serve  to  convey  to  the  many  readers  who  cannot  peruse  the 
works  of  that  lady  an  idea  of  the  temper  in  which  she  vindicates 
her  faith.  Another  popular  novelist  of  a  low  artistic  grade,  the 
late  Mr.  Seton-Merriman,  has  avowed  his  religious  soundness 
in  a  romance  with  a  Russian  plot,  entitled  The  Soicers.  Refer- 
ring to  the  impressions  produced  by  great  scenes  of  Nature,  he 
writes  :  These  places  and  these  times  are  good  for  convalescent 
atheists  and  such  as  pose  as  unbeHevers — the  cheapest  form  of 
notoriety  "  (p.  168).     The  novelist's  own  Christian  ethic  is  thus 

indicated:    "He  had   Jewish    blood   in   his  veins,  which 

carried  with  it  the  usual  tendency  to  cringe.    It  is  in  the  blood  ; 
it  is  part  of  that  which  the  people  who  stood  without  Pilate's 

r^niSJ'^^!u^l  ^^-^  9^  !I^  Prevailing  Religious  System  (1797),  8th  ed.  p.  368.  Wilberforce 
poinps  with  chagrin  to  the  superiority  of  Mohammedan  writers  in  these  matters. 
rAo^  ''^Ja?^^\-  tendency  I  should  class  her  books  among  the  most  irreligious  I  ever 
«iii,«\n^  f A /?u  •  f  ^°°*^  characters  in  every  aspect,  "and  all  this  without  the  remotest 
Kr)hpw^J^;r  iQo^o^^^°V^7v  tlje  only  true  religion."  Cited  in  O.  Gregory's  Brief  Memoir  of 
thnnehf^^ir;/  ^*  ^^  ^^'^-  ^^^  context  tells  how  Miss  Edgeworth  avowed  that  she  had  not 
mougnt  religion  necessary  in  books  meant  for  the  upper  classes. 


452    FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

palace  took  upon  themselves  and  their  children"  (p.  59).  But 
the  enormous  mass  of  modern  novels  includes  some  tolerable 
pleas  for  faith,  as  well  as  many  manifestoes  of  agnosticism. 
One  of  the  works  of  the  late  "  Edna  Lyall,"  We  Ttvo,  was 
notable  as  the  expression  of  the  sympathy  of  a  devout,  generous, 
and  amiable  Christian  lady  with  the  personality  and  career  of 
Mr.  Bradlaugh. 

10.  Among  the  most  artistically  gifted  of    the   English  story- 
writers  and  essayists  of   the  last  generation  of   the    century  was 
Richard  Jefferies  (d.  1887).  who  in  The  Story  of  My  Heart  (1883) 
has  told  how  "  the  last  traces  and  relics  of  superstitions  acquired 
compulsorily  in  childhood  "  finally   passed   away  from    his   mind, 
leaving  him  a  Naturalist  in  every  sense  of  the  word.     In  the  Eulogy 
of  Eichard  Jefferies  published  by  Sir  Walter  Besant  in  1888  it  is 
asserted  that  on  his  deathbed  Jefferies  returned  to  his  faith,  and 
"  died  listening  with  faith  and  love  to  the  words  contained  in  the 
Old  Book."     A  popular  account  of  this  "  conversion  "  accordingly 
became  current,  and  was  employed  to  the  usual  purpose.     As  has 
been  shown  by  a  careful  student,  and  as  was  admitted  on  inquiry 
by  Sir  Walter   Besant,  there   had   been  no  conversion  whatever, 
Jefferies  having  simply  listened  to  his  wife's  reading  without  hinting 
at  any  change  in  his  convictions/     Despite  his  biographer's  express 
admission  of  his  error.  Christian  journals,  such  as  the  Spectator, 
have  burked  the  facts  ;  one,  the  Christian,  has  piously  charged  dis- 
honesty on  the  writer  who  brought  them  to  light ;  and  a  third,  the 
Salvationist  War  Cry,  has  pronounced  his  action  "  the  basest  form 
of    chicanery  and   falsehood."^     The   episode   is  worth   noting    as 
indicating  the  qualities  which  still  attach  to  orthodox  propaganda. 

11.  Though  Shelley  was  anathema  to  English  Christians  in  his 
own  day,  his  fame  and  standing  steadily  rose  in  the  generations 
after  his  death.  Nor  has  the  balance  of  English  poetry  ever  reverted 
to  the  side  of  faith.  Even  Tennyson,  who  more  than  once  struck  at 
rationalism  below  the  belt,  is  in  his  own  despite  the  poet  of  doubt  as 
much  as  of  credence,  however  he  might  wilfully  attune  himself  to  the 
key  of  faith ;  and  the  unparalleled  optimism  of  Browning  evolved 
a  form  of  Christianity  sufficiently  alien  to  the  historic  creed."  In 
Clough  and  Matthew  Arnold,  again,  we  have  the  positive 
record  of  surrendered  faith.     Alongside  of  Arnold,  SWINBURNE  put 

»  Art.  "  The  Faith  of  Richard  Jefferies."  by  H.  S.  Salt,  in  Westminster  Bevieiv,  August, 
1905.  rep.  as  pamphlet  by  the  R.  P.  A..  1906.  „,  ,rv.- 

2  The  writer  of  these  scurrilities  is  Mr.  Bramwell  Booth.  War  Cry,  May  27.  I90o.     ,      ,, 
8  Cp.  Mrs.  Sutherland  Orr's  article  on  "The  Religious  Opinions  of  Robert  Browning 
in  the  Contemporary  Review,  December,  1891.  p.  878 ;  and  the  present  writer's  Tennyson 
arid  Browning  as  Teachers,  1903. 


POETEY  AND  GENEEAL  LITEEATUEE 


453 


I 


into  his  verse  the  freethinking  temper  that  Leconte  de  Lisle  reserved 
for  prose;  and  the  ill-starred  but  finely  gifted  James  Thomson 
("  B.V.")  was  no  less  definitely  though  despairingly  an  unbeliever. 
Among  our  later  poets,  finally,  the  balance  is  pretty  much  the  same. 
Mr.  Watson    has    declared   in  worthily  noble   diction   for   a   high 
agnosticism,  and  the  late  John  Davidson  defied  orthodox  ethics  in 
the  name  of  his  very  antinomian  theology  ;^  while  on  the  side  of  the 
regulation  religion— since  Mr.  Yeats  is  but  a  stray  Druid— can  be 
cited   at   best  the  regimental    psalmody  of   Mr.  Kipling,  lyrist  of 
trumpet   and   drum ;    the   stained-glass    Mariolatries   of    the    late 
Francis  Thompson ;  the  declamatory  orthodoxy  of  Mr.  Noyes ;  and 
the  Godism  of  W.  E.  Henley,  whereat  the  prosaic  godly  look  askance. 
12.  Of  the  imaginative  literature  of  the  United  States,  as  of  that 
of    England,   the   same   generalization    broadly   holds    good.     The 
incomparable   Hawthorne,    whatever    his   psychological   sympathy 
with  the  Puritan  past,  wrought  inevitably  by  his  art  for  the  loosen- 
ing of  its  intellectual  hold ;  POE,  though  he  did  not  venture  till  his 
days  of  downfall  to  write  his  Eureka,  thereby  proves  himself   an 
entirely  non-Christian  theist ;  and  Emerson's  poetry,  no  less  than 
his   prose,   constantly   expresses   his   pantheism;   while   his   gifted 
disciple  Thoreau,  in  some  w^ays  a  more  stringent  thinker  than  his 
master,  was  either  a  pantheist  or  a  Lucretian  theist,  standing  aloof 
from  all  churches.^     The  economic  conditions  of  American  life  have 
till  recently  been  unfavourable  to  the  higher  literature,  as  apart  from 
fiction;   but  the  unique  figure  of  Walt  Whitman  stands  for  a 
thoroughly  naturalistic  view  of  life;'  Mr.  HOWELLS  appears  to  be 
at  most  a  theist ;  Mr.  HENRY  James  has  not  even  exhibited  the 
bias  of  his  gifted  brother  to  the  theism  of  their  no  less  gifted  father ; 
and  some  of  the  most  esteemed  men  of  letters  since  the  Civil  War, 
as  Dr.  Wendell  Holmes  and  Colonel  Wentworth  Higginson, 
have  been  avowedly  on  the  side  of  rationalism,  or,  as  the  term  goes 
in  the  States,  "  liberalism."     Though  the  tone  of  ordinary  conversa- 
tion is  more  often  reminiscent  of  religion  in  the  United  States  than 
in  England,  the  novel  and  the  newspaper  have  been  perhaps  more 
thoroughly  secularized  there  than  here ;  and  in  the  public  honour 

»  Apropos  of  his  Theatrocrat,  which  he  pronounced  "  the  most  profound  and  original 
of  English  books."  Mr.  Davidson  in  a  newspaper  article  proclaimed  himself  on  socio- 
political grounds  an  anti-Christian.    "I  take  the  first  resolute  step  out  of  Christendom, 
was  his  claim  (Daily  Chronicle,  December  20.  1906). 

2  See  Talks  with  Emerson,  by  C.  J.  W^oodbury,  1890.  pp.  93-94. 

8  It  was  in  his  old  age  that  Whitman  tended  most  to  theize  "  Nature.  In  conversation 
with  Dr.  Moncure  Conway,  he  once  used  the  expression  that  the  spectacle  of  a  mouse  is 
enough  to  stagger  a  sextillion  of  infidels."  Dr.  Conway  replied :  ,  And  the  sight  of  the 
cat  playing  with  the  mouse  is  enough  to  set  them  on  their  feet  again  ;  whereat  Whitman 
tolerantly  smiled. 


454    FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUKY 

done  to  so  thorough  a  rationalist  as  the  late  Dr.  Moncure  Conway  at 
the  hands  of  his  ahna  mater,  the  Dickinson  College,  West  Virginia, 
may  be  seen  the  proof  that  the  official  orthodoxy  of  his  youth  has 
disappeared  from  the  region  of  his  birth. 

13.  Of  the  vast  modern  output  of  belles  lettres  in  continental 
Europe,  finally,  a  similar  account  is  to  be  given.  The  supreme 
poet  of  modern  Italy,  Leopardi,  is  one  of  the  most  definitely 
rationalistic  as  well  as  one  of  the  greatest  philosophic  poets  in 
literature  ;  Carducci,  the  greatest  of  his  successors,  was  explicitly 
anti-Christian ;  and  despite  all  the  claims  of  the  Catholic  socialists, 
there  is  little  modern  Catholic  literature  in  Italy  of  any  European 
value.  One  of  the  most  distinguished  of  modern  Italian  scholars. 
Professor  A.  de  GUBERNATIS,  has  in  his  Letture  sopra  la  mitologia 
vedica  (1874)  explicitly  treated  the  Christian  legend  as  a  myth.  In 
Germany  we  have  seen  Goethe  and  Schiller  distinctly  counting 
for  naturalism  ;  and  of  Jean  Paul  Eichter  (1763-1825)  an  orthodox 
historian  declares  that  his  "  religion  was  a  chaotic  fermenting  of 
the  mind,  out  of  which  now  deism,  then  Christianity,  then  a  new 
reMgion,  seems  to  come  forth."  ^  The  naturalistic  line  is  found  to  be 
continued  in  Heinrich  VON  Kleist,  the  unhappy  but  masterly 
dramatist  of  Der  Zerbrochene  Krug,  one  of  the  truest  geniuses  of 
his  time ;  and  above  all  in  Heine,  whose  characteristic  profession 
of  reconciling  himself  on  his  deathbed  with  the  deity  he  imaged  as 
"the  Aristophanes  of  heaven"^  serves  so  scantily  to  console  the 
orthodox  lovers  of  his  matchless  song.  His  criticism  of  Kant  and 
Fichte  is  a  sufficient  clue  to  his  serious  convictions ;  and  that  '*  God 
is  all  that  there  is  " '  is  the  sufficient  expression  of  his  pantheism. 
The  whole  purport  of  his  brilliant  sketch  of  the  History  of  Beligion 
and  Philosophy  in  Germany  (1834 ;  2nd  ed.  1852)  is  a  propaganda 
of  the  very  spirit  of  freethinking,  which  constitutes  for  Germany 
at  once  a  literary  classic  and  a  manifesto  of  rationalism.  As  he 
himself  said  of  the  return  of  the  aged  Schelling  to  Catholicism,  we 
may  say  of  Heine,  that  a  deathbed  reversion  to  early  beliefs  is  a 
pathological  phenomenon. 

The  use  latterly  made  of  Heine's  deathbed  re-conversion  by 
orthodoxy  in  England  is  characteristic.  The  late  letters  and 
conversations  in  which  he  said  edifying  things  of  God  and  the 
Bible  are  cited  for  readers  who  know  nothing  of  the  context, 
and  almost  as  little  of  the  speaker.  He  had  similarly  praised 
the  Bible  in  1830  (Letter  of  July,  in  B.  iii  of  his  volume  on 

\  Kahnis,  Internal  Hist,  of  Ger.  Protestantism,  Eng.  tr.  1856,  p.  78. 

2  Oestdndnisse,  end  (TFerfce.  ed.  1876.  iv.  59). 

8  Zur  Gesch.  der  Belig.  und  Fhilos.  in  Werke,  ed.  cited,  iii,  80. 


POETEY  AND  GENEEAL  LITEEATUEE 


455 


I 


I 


Borne— Werke,  vii,  160).  To  the  reader  of  the  whole  it  is  clear 
that,  while  Heine's  verbal  renunciation  of  his  former  pantheism, 
and  his  characterization  of  the  pantheistic  position  as  a  '*  timid 
atheism,"  might  have  been  made  independently  of  his  physical 
prostration,  his  profession  of  the  theism  at  which  he  had 
formerly  scoffed  is  only  momentarily  serious,  even  at  a  time 
when  such  a  reversion  would  have  been  in  no  way  surprising. 
His  return  to  and  praise  of  the  Bible,  the  book  of  his  childhood, 
during  years  of  extreme  suffering  and  utter  helplessness,  was 
in  the  ordinary  way  of  physiological  reaction.  But  inasmuch 
as  his  thinking  faculty  was  never  extinguished  by  his  tortures, 
he  chronically  indicated  that  his  religious  talk  was  a  half- 
conscious  indulgence  of  the  overstrained  emotional  nature,  and 
substantially  an  exercise  of  his  poetic  feeling — always  as  large 
a  part  of  his  psychosis  as  his  reasoning  faculty.  Even  in 
deathbed  profession  he  was  neither  a  Jew  nor  a  Christian,  his 
language  being  that  of  a  deism  "scarcely  distinguishable  in 
any  essential  element  from  that  of  Voltaire  or  Diderot'' 
(Strodtmann,  Heine's  Leben  und  Werke,  2te  Aufl.  ii,  386). 
"  My  rehgious  convictions  and  views,"  he  writes  in  the  preface 

to  the  late  Romancero,  "  remain  free  of  all  churchism I  have 

abjured  nothing,  not  even  my  old  heathen  Gods,  from  whona  I 
have  parted  in  love  and  friendship."  In  his  will  he  peremptorily 
forbade  any  clerical  procedure  at  his  funeral ;  and  his  feeling 
on  that  side  is  revealed  in  his  sad  jests  to  his  friend  Meissner 
in  1850.  "  If  I  could  only  go  out  on  crutches  1"  he  exclaimed  ; 
adding:  "Do  you  know  where  I  should  go?  Straight  to 
church."  On  his  friends  expressing  disbehef,  he  went  on: 
"  Certainly,  to  church  !  Where  should  a  man  go  on  crutches  ? 
Naturally,  if  I  could  walk  without  crutches,  I  should  go  to  the 
laughing  boulevards  or  the  Jardin  Mabille."  ^  The  story  is  told 
in  England  without  the  conclusion,  as  a  piece  of  "Christian 

Evidence." 

But  even  as  to  his  theism  Heine  was  never  more  than 
wilfully  and  poetically  a  believer.  In  1849  we  find  him  jesting 
about  "  God  "  and  "  the  Gods,"  declaring  he  will  not  offend  the 
lieber  Gott,  whose  vultures  he  knows  and  respects.  Opium 
is  also  a  religion,"  he  writes  in  1850.     "  Christianity  is  useless 

for  the  healthy for  the  sick  it  is  a  very  good  religion."        If 

the  German  people  in  their  need  accept  the  King  of  Prussia, 
why  should  not  I  accept  the  personal  God  ?  "  And  in  speaking 
of  the  postscript  to  the  Bomancero  he  writes  in  1851 :  Alas,  I 
had  neither  time  nor  mood  to  say  there  what  I  wanted— namely, 
that  I  die  as  a  Poet,  who  needs  neither  religion  nor  philosophy, 
and  has  nothing  to  do  with  either.  The  Poet  understands  very 
well  the  symbolic  idiom  of  Eeligion,  and  the  abstract  jargon  of 
Philosophy ;  but  neither  the  religious  gentry  nor  those  of  philo- 
sophy will  ever  understand  the  Poet."     A  few  weeks  before  his 


i 


456     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUKY 

death  he  signs  a  New  Year  letter,  "Nebuchadnezzar  II, 
formerly  Prussian  Atheist,  now  Lotosfiower-adorer."  At  this 
time  he  was  taking  immense  doses  of  morphia  to  make  his 
tortures  bearable.  A  few  hours  before  his  death  a  querying 
pietist  got  from  him  the  answer:  "God  will  pardon  me;  it  is 
his  business."  The  Gestdnd?iisse,  written  in  1854,  ends  in 
absolute  irony;  and  his  alleged  grounds  for  giving  up  atheism, 
sometimes  quoted  seriously,  are  purely  humorous  (Werke,  iv,  33). 
If  it  be  in  any  sense  true,  as  he  tells  in  the  preface  to  the 
Eoiiiancero,  that  "  the  high  clerisy  of  atheism  pronounced  its 
anathema"  over  him— that  is  to  say,  that  former  friends 
denounced  him  as  a  weak  turncoat — it  needed  only  the  publi- 
cation of  his  Life  and  Letters  to  enable  freethinkers  to  take  an 
entirely  sympathetic  view  of  his  case,  which  may  serve  as  a 
supreme  example  of  "  the  martyrdom  of  man."  On  the  whole 
question  see  Strodtmann,  as  cited,  ii,  372  sq.,  and  the  Gestdnd- 
nisse,  which  should  be  compared  with  the  earlier  written 
fragments  of  Briefe  ilber  Deutschland  {JVerke,  iii,  110),  where 
there  are  some  significant  variations  in  statements  of  fact. 

Since  Heine,  German  belles  kttres  has  not  been  a  first-rate 
influence  in  Europe ;  but  some  of  the  leading  novelists,  as  AuER- 
BACH  and  Heyse,  are  well  known  to  have  shared  in  the  rational 
philosophy  of  their  age;  and  the  Christianity  of  Wagner,  whose 
precarious  support  to  the  cause  of  faith  has  been  welcomed  chiefly 
by  its  heteroclite  adherents,  counts  for  nothing  in  the  critical  scale/ 

14.  But  perhaps  the  most  considerable  evidence,  in  belles  lettres, 
of  the  predominance  of  rationalism  in  modern  Europe  is  to  be  found 
in  the  literary  history  of  the  Scandinavian  States  and  Eussia.  The 
Eussian  development  indeed  had  gone  far  ere  the  modern  Scan- 
dinavian literatures  had  well  begun.  Already  in  the  first  quarter 
of  the  century  the  poet  Poushkine  was  an  avowed  heretic  ;  and 
Gogol  even  let  his  art  suffer  from  his  preoccupations  with  the 
new  humanitarian  ideas ;  while  the  critic  BlELlNSKY,  classed  by 
Tourgu^nief  as  the  Lessing  of  Eussia,'^  was  pronouncedly  ration- 
alistic,^ as  was  his  contemporary  the  critic  Granovsky,^  reputed 
the  finest  Eussian  stylist  of  his  day.  At  this  period  belles  lettres 
stood  for  every  form  of  intellectual  influence  in  Eussia,*  and  all 
educated  thought  was  moulded  by  it.  The  most  perfect  artistic 
result  is  the  fiction  of  the  freethinker  TOURGUENIEF,^  the  Sophocles 

1  See  Ernest  Newman's  Study  of  Wagner,  1899,  p.  390,  note,  as  to  the  vagueness  of 
Wagnerians  on  the  subject. 

a  Tikhomirov.  La  Buftsie,  2e  6dit.  p.  343. 

8  See  Conate  de  Vogue's  Le  roman  russe,  p.  218.  as  to  his  propaganda  of  atheism. 

^  Arnaudo,  Le  Nihiliftme  et  les  Nihilistes,  French  tr.  50.  ^  Tikhomirov.  p.  341. 

6  "II  [Tourgu6nief]  etait  libre-penseur.  et  detestat  I'apparat  religieux  d*une  mani^re 
toute  particulidre."    I.  Pavlovsky,  Souvenirs  »ur  Tourguenief,  1887,  p.  242. 


THE  NATUEAL  SCIENCES 


457 


of  the  modern  novel.  His  two  great  contemporaries,  Dostoyevsky 
and  Tolstoy,  count  indeed  for  supernaturalism  ;  but  the  truly 
wonderful  genius  of  the  former  was  something  apart  from  his  philo- 
sophy, which  was  merely  childHke  ;  and  the  latter,  the  least  masterly 
if  the  most  strenuous  artist  of  the  three,  made  his  religious  converts 
in  Eussia  chiefly  among  the  uneducated,  and  was  in  any  case  sharply 
antagonistic  to  orthodox  Christianity.  It  does  not  appear  that  the 
younger  writer,  Potapenko,  a  fine  artist,  is  orthodox,  despite  his 
extremely  sympathetic  presentment  of  a  superior  priest ;  and  the 
still  younger  Gorky  is  an  absolute  Naturalist. 

15.  In  the  Scandinavian  States,  again,  there  are  hardly  any 
exceptions  to  the  freethinking  tendency  among  the  leading  living 
men  of  letters.  In  the  person  of  the  abnormal  religionist  Soren 
Kierkegaard  (1813-1855)  a  new  force  of  criticism  began  to  stir 
in  Denmark.  Setting  out  as  a  theologian,  Kierkegaard  gradually 
developed,  always  on  quasi-religious  lines,  into  a  vehement  assailant 
of  conventional  Christianity,  somewhat  in  the  spirit  of  Pascal, 
somewhat  in  that  of  Feuerbach,  again  in  that  of  Euskin ;  and  in 
a  temper  recalling  now  a  Berserker  and  now  a  Hebrew  prophet. 
The  general  effect  of  his  teaching  may  be  gathered  from  the  mass 
of  the  work  of  Henrik  Ibsen,  who  was  his  disciple,  and  in  parti- 
cular from  Ibsen's  Brand,  of  which  the  hero  is  partly  modelled  on 
Kierkegaard.^  Ibsen,  though  his  Brand  was  counted  to  him  for 
righteousness  by  the  Churches,  showed  himself  a  thorough-going 
naturalist  in  all  his  later  work  ;  B  JORNSON  was  an  active  freethinker  ; 
the  eminent  Danish  critic,  Georg  Brandes,  early  avowed  himself 
to  the  same  effect  ;  and  his  brother,  the  dramatist,  EDWARD 
Brandes,  was  elected  to  the  Danish  Parliament  in  1871  despite 
his  declaration  that  he  believed  in  neither  the  Christian  nor  the 
Jewish  God.  Most  of  the  younger  littdrateurs  of  Norway  and 
Sweden  seem  to  be  of  the  same  cast  of  thought. 

Section  4. — The  Natural  Sciences 

L  The  power  of  intellectual  habit  and  tradition  had  preserved 
among  the  majority  of  educated  men,  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  a  notion  of  deity  either  slightly  removed  from  that  of  the 
ancient  Hebrews  or  ethically  purified  without  being  philosophically 
transformed,  though  the  astronomy  of  Copernicus,  Gahleo,  and 
Newton  had  immensely  modified  the  Hebraic   conception   of  the 

1  See  the  article  "Un  Pr^curseur  d' Henrik  Ibsen,  Soeren  Kierkegaard."  in  the  Bevue  de 
Paris,  July  1. 1901. 


i> 


458    FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 

physical  universe.  We  have  seen  that  Newton  did  not  really  hold 
by  the  Christian  scheme— he  wrote,  at  times,  in  fact,  as  a  pantheist 
— but  some  later  astronomers  seem  to  have  done  so.  When,  how- 
ever, the  great  LAPLACE  developed  the  nebular  hypothesis,  previously 
guessed  at  by  Bruno  and  outlined  by  Kant,  orthodox  psychological 
habit  was  rudely  shaken  as  regards  the  Biblical  account  of  creation ; 
and  like  every  other  previous  advance  in  physical  science  this  was 
denounced  as  atheistic* — which,  as  we  know,  it  was,  Laplace  having 
declared  in  reply  to  Napoleon  that  he  had  no  need  of  the  God 
hypothesis.  Confirmed  in  essentials  by  all  subsequent  science, 
Laplace's  system  widens  immensely  the  gulf  between  modern  cosmo- 
logy and  the  historic  theism  of  the  Christian  era  ;  and  the  subse- 
quent concrete  developments  of  astronomy,  giving  as  they  do  such 
an  insistent  and  overwhelming  impression  of  physical  infinity,  have 
made  the  "Christian  hypothesis"'  fantastic  save  for  minds  capable 
of  enduring  any  strain  on  the  sense  of  consistency.  Paine  had 
brought  the  difficulty  vividly  home  to  the  common  intelligence ;  and 
though  the  history  of  orthodoxy  is  a  history  of  the  success  of  insti- 
tutions and  majorities  in  imposing  incongruous  conformities,  the 
perception  of  the  incongruity  on  this  side  must  have  been  a  force  of 
disintegration.  The  freethinking  of  the  French  astronomers  of  the 
Revolution  period  marks  a  decisive  change  ;  and  as  early  as  182G 
we  find  in  a  work  on  Jewish  antiquities  by  a  Scotch  clergyman  a 
very  plain  indication^  of  disbelief  in  the  Hebrew  story  of  the  stopping 
of  the  sun  and  moon,  or  (alternatively)  of  the  rotation  of  the  earth. 
It  is  typical  of  the  tenacity  of  religious  delusion  that  a  quarter  of 
a  century  later  this  among  other  irrational  credences  was  contended 
for  by  the  Swiss  theologian  Gaussen,^  and  by  the  orthodox  majority 
elsewhere,  when  for  all  scientifically  trained  men  they  had  become 
untenable.  And  that  the  general  growth  of  scientific  thought  was 
disintegrating  among  scientific  men  the  old  belief  in  miracles  may 
be  gathered  from  an  article,  remarkable  in  its  day,  which  appeared 
in  the  Edinburgh  Bevieiv  of  January,  1814  (No.  46),  and  was 
"  universally  attributed  to  Prof.  LesHe,"'^  the  distinguished  physicist. 

1  Prof.  A.  D.  White,  Hist,  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology.  1896.  i,  17,  22. 

2  The  phrase  is  used  by  a  French  Protestant  pastor.    La  virit^.  chrHienne  et  la  doute 

mOfi«r«e  (Conferences),  1879,  pp.  24-25.  ..^^    ,.^.   »,       -u  -.ooc  -  ioi  oo     n^r.^,. 

3  Antiquities  of  the  Jews,  by  William  Brown,  D.D.,  Edinburgh,  1826, 1. 121-22.  Brown 
quotes  "from  a  friend"  a  demonstration  of  the  monstrous  consequences  of  a  stoppage  ot 
the  earth's  rotation.  ^     ,   .  „        ^  -.^-i. 

*  Theopneustia :  The  Plenary  Inspiration  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  Eng.  trans.  Edm- 
burgh  1850,  pp.  246-49.  Gaussen  elaborately  argues  that  if  eighteen  minutes  were  allowed 
for  the  stoppage  of  the  earth's  rotation,  no  shock  would  occur.  Fmally,  however,  he 
argues  that  there  may  have  been  a  mere  refraction  of  the  sun's  rays— an  old  theory. 

already  set  forth  by  Brown.  ,,    „.         -  ^,.     «  w     .  ttt    *        m^^^^a 

5  Dr.  C.  R.  Edmonds.  Introd.  to  rep.  of  Leland's  View  of  the  Detstical  Writers,  Tegg  s 

ed.  1837.  p.  xxiii. 


THE  NATUEAL  SCIENCES 


459 


1 


Eeviewing  the  argument  of  Laplace's  essay,  Sur  les  probabilites,  it 
substantially  endorsed  the  thesis  of  Hume  that  miracles  cannot  be 
proved  by  any  testimony. 

Leslie's  own  case  is  one  of  the  milestones  marking  the  slow 
recovery  of  progress  in  Britain  after  the  Eevolution.  His  appoint- 
ment to  the  chair  of  Mathematics,  after  Playfair,  at  Edinburgh 
University  in  1805  was  bitterly  resisted  by  the  orthodox  on  the 
score  that  he  was  a  disbeliever  in  miracles  and  an  "infidel "  of  the 
school  of  Hume,  who  had  been  his  personal  friend.  Nevertheless 
he  again  succeeded  Playfair  in  the  chair  of  Physics  in  1819,  and 
was  knighted  in  1832.  The  invention  of  the  hygrometer  and  the 
discovery  of  the  relations  of  light  and  heat  had  begun  to  count  for 
more  in  science  than  the  profession  of  orthodoxy. 

2.  From  France  came  likewise  the  impulse  to  a  naturalistic 
handling  of  biology,  long  before  the  day  of  Darwin.  The  prota- 
gonist in  this  case  was  the  physician  P.-J,-G.  Cabanis  (1737- 
1808),  the  colleague  of  Laplace  in  the  School  of  Sciences.  Growing 
up  in  the  generation  of  the  Eevolution,  Cabanis  had  met,  in  the 
salon  of  Madame  Helv^tius,  d'Holbach,  Diderot,  D'Alembert, 
Condorcet,  Laplace,  Condillac,  Volney,  Franklin,  and  Jefferson,  and 
became  the  physician  of  Mirabeau.  His  treatise  on  the  Bapports 
(III  physique  et  dii  morale  de  rhomme  (1796-1802)^  might  be 
described  as  the  systematic  application  to  psychology  of  that 
"  positive  "  method  to  which  all  the  keenest  thought  of  the  eighteenth 
century  had  been  tending,  yet  with  much  of  the  literary  or  rhetorical 
tone  by  which  the  French  writers  of  that  age  had  nearly  all  been 
characterized.  For  Cabanis,  the  psychology  of  Helv^tius  and 
Condillac  had  been  hampered  by  their  ignorance  of  physiology;^ 
and  he  easily  put  aside  the  primary  errors,  such  as  the  "  equality  of 
minds  "  and  the  entity  of  "  the  soul,"  which  they  took  over  from 
previous  thinkers.  His  ovm  work  is  on  the  whole  the  most  search- 
ing and  original  handhng  of  the  main  problems  of  psycho-physiology 
that  had  yet  been  achieved ;  and  to  this  day  its  suggestiveness  has 
not  been  exhausted. 

But  Cabanis,  in  his  turn,  made  the  mistake  of  Helv^tius  and 
Condillac.  Not  content  with  presenting  the  results  of  his  study  in 
the  province  in  which  he  was  relatively  master,  he  undertook  to 
reach  ultimate  truth  in  those  of  ethics  and  philosophy,  in  which  he 
was   not   so.     In   the   preface   to   the  Bapports  he  lays  down  an 

^  The  work  consists  of  twelve  "  M^moires"  or  treatises,  six  of  which  were  read  in  1796- 
1797  at  the  Institute.    They  appeared  in  book  form  in  1802. 

^  Bapports,  ler  Memoire,  §  ii.  near  end.    (Ed.  1843.  p.  73.)    Cp.  Pr6f .  (pp.  46-47). 


460    FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

emphatically  agnostic  conviction  as  to  final  causes:  "ignorance  the 
most  invincible."  he  declares,  is  all  that  is  possible  to  man  on  that 
issue/  But  not  only  does  he  in  his  main  work  freely  and  loosely 
generalize  on  the  phenomena  of  history  and  overleap  the  etliical 
problem :  he  penned  shortly  before  his  death  a  Lcttre  sur  les  causes 
premUres,  addressed  to  Fauriel,'^  in  which  the  aging  intelligence  is 
seen  reverting  to  a  priori  processes,  and  concluding  in  favour  of  a 
"sort  of  stoic  pantheism"^  with  a  balance  towards  normal  theism 
and  a  belief  in  immortality.  The  final  doctrine  did  not  in  the  least 
affect  the  argument  of  the  earlier,  which  was  simply  one  of  positive 
science  ;  but  the  clerical  world,  which  had  in  the  usual  fashion 
denounced  the  scientific  doctrine,  not  on  the  score  of  any  attack  by 
Cabanis  upon  religion,  but  because  of  its  incompatibihty  with  the 
notion  of  the  soul,  naturally  made  much  of  the  mystical,^  and 
accorded  its  framer  authority  from  that  moment. 

As  for  the  conception  of  "  vitalism  "  put  forward  in  the  Letter 
to  Fauriel  by  way  of  explanation  of  the  phenomena  of  life,  it  is  but 
a  reversion  to  the  earlier  doctrine  of  Stahl,  of  which  Cabanis  had 
been  a  partisan  in  his  youth.**  The  fact  remains  that  he  gave  an 
enduring  impulse  to  positive  science,^  his  own  final  vacillation  failing 
to  arrest  the  employment  of  the  method  he  had  inherited  and  im- 
proved. Most  people  know  him  solely  through  one  misquotation, 
the  famous  phrase  that  "the  brain  secretes  thought  as  the  liver 
secretes  bile."  This  is  not  only  an  imperfect  statement  of  his 
doctrine  :  it  suppresses  precisely  the  idea  by  which  Cabanis  ditFeren- 
tiates  from  pure  "  sensationaHsm."  What  he  taught  was  that 
*' impressions,  reaching  the  brain,  get  it  in  activity,  as  aliments 
reaching  the  stomach  excite  it  to  a  more  abundant  secretion   of 

gastric   juice The   function   proper   to   the   first  is  to  perceive 

particular  impressions,  to  attach  to  them  signs,  to  combine  different 
impressions,  to  separate  them,  to  draw  from  them  judgments  and 
determinations,  as  the  function  of  the  second  is  to  act  on  nutritive 
substances,"  etc.^  It  is  after  this  statement  of  the  known  processus, 
and  after  pointing  out  that  there  is  as  much  of  pure  inference  in  the 
one  case  as  in  the  other,  that  he  concludes  :  "  The  brain  in  a  manner 
digests  impressions,  and  makes  organically  the  secretion  of  thought " 


THE  NATURAL  SCIENCES 


461 


2  Not  published  till  1824. 

*  Cp.  Luchaire,  as  cited,  p.  36. 


1  Ed.  cited,  p.  54.    Cp.  p.  207,  note. 

8  Ueberweg.  ii.  339.  .  ,.  ..  ,^^ 

&  IjAnge,  Gesch.des  Matertahsynus,  u,  124.  .         .     ^^  *.     .  uoo 

6  "Since  Cabanis.  the  referring  back  of  mental  functions  to  the  nervous  system  has 
rfiiTiftined  dominant  in  physiology,  whatever  individual  physiologists  may  have  tnoucnc 
Tb^ut  final  Suses"(Lange,  ii.  70).  Compare  Ihe  tribute  ol  Cftbams'fl  orthodox  editor 
Cerise  (ed.  1843.  Introd.  pp.  xlii-iii). 

^  Bapports,  lie  M6moire,  near  end.    (Ed.  cited,  p.  122.) 


i 


and  this  conclusion,  he  points  out,  disposes  of  the  difficulty  of  those 
who  "  cannot  conceive  how  judging,  reasoning,  imagining,  can  ever 
be  anything  else  than  feeling.  The  difficulty  ceases  when  one 
recognizes,  in  these  different  operations,  the  action  of  the  brain 
upon  the  impressions  which  are  passed  on  to  it."  The  doctrine  is, 
in  short,  an  elementary  truth  of  psychological  science,  as  distin- 
guished from  the  pseudo- science  of  the  Ego  considered  as  an  entity. 
To  that  pseudo-science  Cabanis  gave  a  vital  wound  ;  and  his  derided 
formula  is  for  true  science  to-day  almost  a  truism.  The  attacks 
made  upon  his  doctrine  in  the  next  generation  only  served  to 
emphasize  anew  the  eternal  dilemma  of  theism.  On  the  one  hand 
his  final  "vitahsm"  was  repugnant  to  those  who,  on  traditional 
lines,  insisted  upon  a  distinction  between  "  soul "  and  "  vital  force  "; 
on  the  other  hand,  those  who  sought  to  make  a  philosophic  case 
for  theism  against  him  made  the  usual  plunge  into  pantheism,  and 
were  reproached  accordingly  by  the  orthodox.^  All  that  remained 
was  the  indisputable  "  positive  "  gain. 

3.  In  England  the  influence  of  the  French  stimulus  in  physiology 
was  seen  even  more  clearly  than  that  of  the  great  generalization  of 
Laplace.  Professor  William  Lawrence  (1783-1867),  the  physiologist, 
published  in  1816  an  Introduction  to  Comparative  Ayiatomy  and 
Physiology,  containing  some  remarks  on  the  nature  of  hfe,  which 
elicited  from  the  then  famous  Dr.  Abernethy  a  foul  attack  in  his 
Physiological  Lectures  delivered  before  the  College  of  Surgeons. 
Lawrence  was  charged  with  belonging  to  the  party  of  French  physio- 
logical skeptics  whose  aim  was  to  "  loosen  those  restraints  on  which 
the  welfare  of  mankind  depends."^  In  the  introductory  lecture  of 
his  course  of  1817  before  the  College  of  Physicians,  Lawrence 
severely  retaliated,  repudiating  the  general  charge,  but  reasserting 
that  the  dependence  of  Hfe  on  organization  is  as  clear  as  the  deriva- 
tion of  dayUght  from  the  sun.  The  war  was  adroitly  carried  at 
once  into  the  enemy's  territory  in  the  declaration  that  "  The  pro- 
found, the  virtuous,  and  fervently  pious  Pascal  acknowledged,  what 
all  sound  theologians  maintain,  that  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 

1  See  the  already  cited  introduction  of  Cerise,  who  solved  the  problem  religiously  by 
positing  "a  force  which  executes  the  plans  of  God  without  our  .knowledge  orintervention 
(p.  xix).    He  goes  on  to  lament  the  pantheism  of  Dr.  Dubois  (whose  Examendes  doctp,ne8 
de  Cabanis,  Gall,  et  ^roussa is  (1842)  was  put  forward  as  a  vindication  of  the    spiritual 
principle),  and  of  the  German  school  of  physiology  represented  by  Oken  and  Burdacn. 

a  Lawrence's  Lectures  on  Physiology,  Zoology,  and  the  Natziral  History  of  Man,  otn  ea. 
1840.  pp.  1-3.  The  aspersion  of  Abernethy  is  typical  of  the  orthodox  malignity  of  the 
time.  Cabanis  in  his  preface  had  expressly  contended  for  the  all-importance  of  morals. 
The  orthodox  Dr.  Cerise,  who  edited  his  book  in  1843.  while  acknowledging  the  high 
character  of  Cabanis,  thought  fit  to  speak  of  "  the  materialists  "  as  interested  in^abasing 
man  "  (introd.  p.  xxi).  On  the  score  of  fear  of  demoralization,  the  champions  of  spirit 
themselves  exhibited  the  maximum  of  baseness. 


462     FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


THE  NATURAL  SCIENCES 


463 


the  great  truths  of  rehgion,  and  the  fundamental  principles  of  morals 
cannot  be  demonstrably  proved  by  mere  reason  ;  and  that  revelation 
alone  is  capable  of  dissipating  the  uncertainties  which  perplex  those 
who  inquire  too  curiously  into  the  sources  of  these  important 
principles.  All  will  acknowledge  that,  as  no  other  remedy  can  be 
so  perfect  and  satisfactory  as  this,  no  other  can  be  necessary,  if  we 
resort  to  this  with  firm  faith."  *  The  value  of  this  pronouncement 
is  indicated  later  in  the  same  volume  by  subacid  allusions  to  "  those 
who  regard  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  as  writings  composed  with  the 
assistance  of  divine  inspiration,"  and  who  receive  Genesis  "  as  a 
narrative  of  actual  events."  Indicating  various  **  grounds  of  doubt 
respecting  inspiration,"  the  lecturer  adds  that  the  stories  of  the 
naming  of  the  animals  and  their  collection  in  the  ark,  "  if  we  are  to 
understand  them  as  applied  to  the  living  inhabitants  of  the  whole 
world,  are  zoologically  impossible."*  On  the  principle  then  govern- 
ing such  matters  Lawrence  was  in  1822,  on  the  score  of  his  heresies, 
refused  copyright  in  his  lectures,  which  were  accordingly  reprinted 
many  times  in  a  cheap  stereotyped  edition,  and  thus  widely  dififused.'* 

This  hardy  attack  w^as  reinforced  in  1819  by  the  publication  of 
Sir  T.  C.  Morgan's  Sketches  of  the  Philosophy  of  Life,  wherein  the 
physiological  materialism  of  Cabanis  is  quietly  but  firmly  developed, 
and  a  typical  sentence  of  his  figures  as  a  motto  on  the  title-page. 
The  method  is  strictly  naturalistic,  alike  on  the  medical  and  on  the 
philosophic  side;  and  "vitalism  "  is  argued  down  as  exphcitly  as  is 
anthropomorphism.*  As  a  whole  the  book  tells  notably  of  the 
stimulus  of  recent  French  thought  upon  English. 

4.  A  more  general  efi'ect,  however,  was  probably  wrought  by  the 
science  of  geology,  which  in  a  stable  and  tested  form  belongs  to  the 
nineteenth  century.  Of  its  theoretic  founders  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  Werner  and  Dr.  JAMES  HUTTON  (1726-1797),  the  latter 
and  more  important^  is  known  from  his  Investigation  of  the  Prin- 
ciples of  Knowledge  (1794)  to  have  been  consciously  a  freethinker  on 
more  grounds  than  that  of  his  naturalistic  science ;  and  his  Theory 
of  the  World  (1795)  was  duly  denounced  as  atheistic*  Whereas  the 
physical  infinity  of  the  universe  almost  forced  the  orthodox  to 
concede  a  vast  cosmic  process  of  some  kind  as  preceding  the  shaping 

1  Lawrence's  Lectures,  p.  9.  note.  2  j^.  pp.  168-69. 

8  Yet  Lawrence  was  created  a  baronet  two  months  before  his  death.  So  much  progress 
had  been  made  in  half  a  century. 

*  Work  cited,  pp.  355  sq.,  375  sq.    The  tone  is  at  times  expressive  of  a  similar  attitude 

towards  historical  religion— e.g. :  '  Human  testimony  is  of  so  little  value that  it  cannot 

be  received  with  sufficient  caution.    To  doubt  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom."    Id.  p.  269. 

^  Cp.  W^hewell.  Hist,  of  the  Inductive  Sciences,  3rd  ed.  iii,  505. 

6  White,  as  cited,  i.  222-23,  gives  a  selection  of  the  language  in  general  use  among 
theologians  on  the  subject. 


i 


of  the  earth  and  solar  system,  the  formation  of  these  within  six 
days  was  one  of  the  plainest  assertions  in  the  sacred  books ;  and 
every  system  of  geology  excluded  such  a  conception.  As  the  evidence 
accumulated,  in  the  hands  of  men  mostly  content  to  deprecate 
reHgious  opposition,^  there  was  duly  evolved  the  quaint  compromise 
of  the  doctrine  that  the  Biblical  six  "days"  meant  six  ages — a 
fantasy  still  cherished  in  the  pulpit.  On  the  ground  of  that  absurdity, 
nevertheless,  there  gradually  grew  up  a  new  conception  of  the 
antiquity  of  the  earth.  Thus  a  popular  work  on  geology  such  as 
The  Ancient  World,  by  Prof.  Ansted  (1847),  could  begin  with  the 
proposition  that  "long  before  the  human  race  had  been  introduced 
on  the  earth  this  world  of  ours  existed  as  the  habitation  of  living 
things  different  from  those  now  inhabiting  its  surface."  Even  the 
thesis  of  "six  ages,"  and  others  of  the  same  order,  drew  upon  their 
supporters  angry  charges  of  "infidelity."  Hugh  Miller,  whose 
natural  gifts  for  geological  research  were  chronically  turned  to  con- 
fusion by  his  orthodox  bias,  was  repeatedly  so  assailed,  when  in 
point  of  fact  he  was  perpetually  tampering  with  the  facts  to  salve 
the  Scriptures.^  Of  all  the  inductive  sciences  geology  had  been  most 
retarded  by  the  Christian  canonization  of  error.^  Even  the  plain 
fact  that  what  is  dry  land  had  once  been  sea  was  obstinately  dis- 
torted through  centuries,  though  Ovid^  had  put  the  observations  of 
Pythagoras  in  the  way  of  all  scholars  ;  and  though  Leonardo  da 
Vinci  had  insisted  on  the  visible  evidence  ;  nay,  deistic  habit  could 
keep  even  Voltaire,  as  we  saw,  preposterously  incredulous  on  the 
subject.  When  the  scientific  truth  began  to  force  its  way  in  the 
teeth  of  such  authorities  as  Cuvier,  who  stood  for  the  "Mosaic" 
doctrine,  the  effect  was  proportionately  marked;  and  whether  or 
not  the  suicide  of  Miller  (1856)  was  in  any  way  due  to  despair  on 
perception  of  the  collapse  of  his  reconciliation  of  geology  with 
Genesis,**  the  scientific  demonstration  made  an  end  of  revelationism 
for  many.  What  helped  most  to  save  orthodoxy  from  humiHation 
on  the  scientific  side  was  the  attitude  of  men  like  Professor  Baden 

»  The  early  policy  of  the  Geological  Society  of  London  (1807).  which  professed  to  seek 
for  facts  and  to  disclaim  theories  as  premature  (cp.  Whewell,  iii,  428;  Buckle,  in,  392),  was 
at  least  as  much  socially  as  scientifically  prudential.  „   .^.     ^  ^x   j 

~  See  the  excellent  monograph  of  W.M.Mackenzie,  Hugh  Miller:  A  Critical  Study, 
1905.  cb.  vi ;  and  cp.  Spencer's  essay  on  Illogical  Geology— Essays,  vol.  i ;  and  Baden 
Powells  Christianity  ivithout  Judaism,  1857,  p.  254  sq.  Miller's  friend  Dick,  the  Thurso 
naturalist,  being  a  freethinker,  escaped  such  error.    (Mackenzie,  pp.  161-64.) 

3  Cp.  the  details  given  by  Whewell.  iii,  406-408,  411-13.  506-507.  as  to  early  theories  of  a 
sound  order,  all  of  which  came  to  nothing.  Steno,  a  Dane  resident  in  Italy  in  the  seven- 
teenth  century,  had  reached  non-Scriptural  and  just  views  on  several  points.  Cp.  White, 
Hist,  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology,  i,  215.  Leonardo  da  Vinci  and  Frascatorio 
had  reached  them  still  earlier.    Above,  vol.  i,  p.  371. 

*  Metamorphoses,  lib.  xv.  _     ,         ■      „     r. 

«  He  had  just  completed  a  work  on  the  subject  at  his  death.  Cp.  Mackenzie,  Hugh 
Miller,  as  cited,  pp.  134-35, 146-47. 


464     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUKY 


THE  NATUKAL  SCIENCES 


465 


Powell,  whose  scientific  knowledge  and  habit  of  mind  moved  him 
to  attack  the  Judaism  of  the  Bibliolaters  in  the  name  of  Christianity, 
and  in  the  name  of  truth  to  declare  that  *'  nothing  in  geology  bears 
the  smallest  semblance  to  any  part  of  the  Mosaic  cosmogony, 
torture  the  interpretation  to  what  extent  we  may."^  In  1857  this 
was  very  bold  language. 

5.  Still  more  rousing,  finally,  was  the  effect  of  the  science  of 
zoology,  as  placed  upon  a  broad  scientific  foundation  by  CHARLES 
Darwin.  Here  again  steps  had  been  taken  in  previous  generations 
on  the  right  path,  without  any  general  movement  on  the  part  of 
scientific  and  educated  men.  Darwin's  own  grandfather,  ERASMUS 
Darwin,  had  in  his  Zoommia  (1794)  anticipated  many  of  the 
positions  of  the  French  LAMARCK,  who  in  1801  began  developing 
the  views  he  fully  elaborated  in  1815,  as  to  the  descendance  of  all 
existing  species  from  earlier  forms.^  As  early  as  1795  Geoffroy 
Saint-Hilaire  had  begun  to  suspect  that  all  species  are  variants 
on  a  primordial  form  of  life ;  and  at  the  same  time  (1794-95) 
Goethe  in  Germany  had  reached  similar  convictions.^'  That  views 
thus  reached  almost  simultaneously  in  Germany,  England,  and 
France,  at  the  time  of  the  French  Revolution,  should  have  to  wait 
for  two  generations  before  even  meeting  the  full  stress  of  battle, 
must  be  put  down  as  one  of  the  results  of  the  general  reaction. 
Saint-Hilaire,  publishing  his  views  in  1828,  was  officially  overborne 
by  the  Cuvier  school  in  France.  In  England,  indeed,  so  late  as 
1855,  we  find  Sir  David  Brewster  denouncing  the  Nebular  Hypo- 
thesis :  "that  dull  and  dangerous  heresy  of  the  age An  omni- 
potent arm  was  required  to  give  the  planets  their  position  and 
motion  in  space,  and  a  presiding  intelligence  to  assign  to  them  the 
different  functions  they  had  to  perform."*  And  Murchison  the 
geologist  was  no  less  emphatic  against  Darwinism,  which  he  rejected 
till  his  dying  day  (1871). 

6.  Other  anticipations  of  Darwin's  doctrine  in  England  and  else- 
where came  practically  to  nothing,''  as  regarded  the  general  opinion, 
until  Robert  Chambers  in  1844  published  anonymously  his 
Vestiges  of  the  Natural  History  of  Creation,  a  work  which  found 
a  wide  audience,  incurring  bitter  hostility  not  only  from  the  clergy 
but  from  some  specialists  who,  like  Huxley,  were  later  to  take  the 

*  Christianity  and  Judaism,  pp.  256-57. 

2  See  Charles  Darwin's  Historical  Sketch  prefixed  to  the  Origin  of  Species. 

8  Meding,  as  cited  by  Darwin.  6th  ed.  i,  p.  xv.  Goethe  seems  to  have  had  his  general 
impulse  from  Kielmeyer,  who  also  taught  Cuvier.  Virchow,  Qothe  als  Naturforscher, 
1861,  Beilage  x. 

*  Memoirs  of  Newton,  i,  131.    Cp.  More  Worlds  than  One,  1854,  pp.  vi,  226. 
5  See  Darwin's  Sketch,  as  cited. 


i 


t 

u 
II: 


evolutionist  view  on  Darwin's  persuasion.  Chambers  it  was  that 
brought  the  issue  within  general  knowledge  ;  and  he  improved  his 
position  in  successive  editions.  A  hostile  clerical  reader,  Whewell, 
admitted  of  him,  in  a  letter  to  a  less  hostile  member  of  his  profes- 
sion, that,  "  as  to  the  degree  of  resemblance  between  the  author  and 
the  French  physiological  atheists,  he  uses  reverent  phrases  :  theirs 
would  not  be  tolerated  in  England";  adding:  "  You  would  be  sur- 
prised to  hear  the  contempt  and  abhorrence  with  which  Owen  and 
Sedgwick  speak  of  the  Vestiges.''  ^  Hugh  Miller,  himself  accused  of 
"  infidelity  "  for  his  measure  of  inductive  candour,  held  a  similar 
tone  towards  men  of  greater  intellectual  rectitude,  calling  the 
liberaHzing  rehgionists  of  his  day  "vermin"  and  "reptiles,"^  and 
classifying  as  '*  degraded  and  lost  "  ^  all  who  should  accept  the  new 
doctrine  of  evolution,  which,  as  put  by  Chambers,  was  then  coming 
forward  to  evict  his  own  delusions  from  the  field  of  science.  The 
young  Max  Miiller,  with  the  certitude  born  of  an  entire  ignorance 
of  physical  science,  declared  in  1856  that  the  doctrine  of  a  human 
evolution  from  lower  types  "  can  never  be  maintained  again,"  and 
pronounced  it  an  "unhallowed  imputation." 

7.  "  Contempt  and  abhorrence  "  had  in  fact  at  all  times  consti- 
tuted the  common  Christian  temper  towards  every  form  of  critical 
dissent  from  the  body  of  received  opinion ;  and  only  since  the 
contempt,  doubled  with  criticism,  began  to  be  in  a  large  degree 
retorted  on  the  bigots  by  instructed  men  has  a  better  spirit  prevailed. 
Such  a  reaction  was  greatly  promoted  by  the  establishment  of  the 
Darwinian  theory.  It  was  after  the  above-noted  preparation, 
popular  and  academic,  and  after  the  theory  of  transmutation  of 
species  had  been  definitely  pronounced  erroneous  by  the  omniscient 
Whew^ell,^  that  Darwin  produced  (1859)  his  irresistible  arsenal  of 
arguments  and  facts,  the  Origin  of  Species,  expounding  systematically 
the  principle  of  Natural  Selection,  suggested  to  him  by  the  economic 
philosophy  of  Malthus,  and  independently  and  contemporaneously 
arrived  at  by  Dr.  Alfred  Kussel  Wallace.  The  outcry  was  enormous  ; 
and  the  Church,  as  always,  arrayed  itself  violently  against  the  new 
truth.  Bishop  Wilberforce  pointed  out  in  the  Quarterhj  Beview 
that ."  the  principle  of  natural  selection  is  absolutely  incompatible 
with  the  word  of  God,"®  which  was  perfectly  true  ;  and  at  a  famous 

1  Letter  of  March  16.  1845.  in  Life  of  WTiewell,  by  Mrs.  Stair  Douglas.c2nd  ed.  1882. 
pp.  318-19.  If  this  statement  be  true  as  to  Owen,  he  shuffled  badly  in  his  correspondence 
with  the  author  of  the  Vestiges.    See  the  Life  of  Sir  Richard  Owen,  1894,  i,  251. 

2  Mackenzie.  Hugh  Miller,  p.  185.  ^  Foot-Prints  of  the  Creator,  end. 
*  Oxford  Essays,  1856.  p.  5 

5  Hist,  of  the  Inductive  Sciences,  3rd  ed.  iii.  479-83 ;  Life,  as  above  cited.  Whewell  is 
said  to  have  refused  to  allow  a  copy  of  the  Origin  of  Species  to  be  placed  in  the  Trinity 
College  Library.    W^hite,  i.  84.  ^  White,  i,  70  sq. 

VOL.   II  2H 


% 


466     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 

meeting  of  the  British  Association  in  1860  he  so  travestied  the 
doctrine  as  to  goad  Huxley  into  a  fierce  declaration  that  he  would 
rather  be  a  descendant  of  an  ape  than  of  a  man  who  (like  the 
Bishop)  plunged  into  questions  with  which  he  had  no  real  acquaint- 
ance, only  to  obscure  them  and  distract  his  hearers  by  appeals  to 
religious  prejudice/  The  mass  of  the  clergy  kept  up  the  warfare 
of  ignorance  ;  but  the  battle  was  practically  won  within  twenty 
years.  In  France,  Germany,  and  the  United  States  leading  theolo- 
gians had  made  the  same  suicidal  declarations,  entitling  all  men  to 
say  that,  if  evolution  proved  to  be  true,  Christianity  was  false. 
Professor  Luthardt,  of  Leipzig,  took  up  the  same  position  as  Bishop 
Wilberforce,  declaring  that  **  the  whole  superstructure  of  personal 
religion  is  built  upon  the  doctrine  of  creation";*  leading  American 
theologians  pronounced  the  new  doctrine  atheistic  ;  and  everywhere 
gross  vituperation  eked  out  the  theological  argument.^ 

8.  Thus  the  idea  of  a  specific  creation  of  all  forms  of  life  by  an 
originating  deity— the  conception  which  virtually  united  the  deists 
and  Christians  of  the  eighteenth  century  against  the  atheists — was 
at  length  scientifically  exploded.  The  principle  of  personal  divine 
rule  or  providential  intervention  had  now  been  philosophically 
excluded  successively  (1)  from  astronomy  by  the  system  of  Newton ; 
(2)  from  the  science  of  earth-formation  by  the  system  of  Laplace 
and  the  new  geology ;  (3)  from  the  science  of  living  organisms  by 
the  new  zoology.  It  only  needed  that  the  deistic  conception  should 
be  further  excluded  from  the  human  sciences— from  anthropology, 
from  the  philosophy  of  history,  and  from  ethics— to  complete,  at 
least  in  outline,  the  rationalization  of  modern  thought.  Not  that 
the  process  was  complete  in  detail  even  as  regarded  zoology. 
Despite  the  plain  implications  of  the  Origin  of  Species,  the  doctrine 
of  the  Descent  of  Man  (1871)  came  on  many  as  a  shocking  surprise 
and  evoked  a  new  fury  of  protest.  The  lacunae  in  Darwin,  further, 
had  to  be  supplemented;  and  much  speculative  power  has  been 
spent  on  the  task  by  Haeckel,  without  thus  far  establishing 
complete  agreement.  But  the  desperate  stand  so  long  made  on  the 
score  of  the  "missing  link"  seems  to  have  been  finally  discredited 
in  1894 ;  and  the  Judseo-Christian  doctrine  of  special  creation  and 

1  Edward  Clodd.  Thomas  Henry  Huxley.  1902,  pp.  19-20. 

2  Luthardt.  Fundamental  Truths  of  Christiarnty,  Eng.  tr.  1665,  p.  74. 

8  See  the  many  examples  cited  by  White.  As  late  as  1885  the  Scottish  clergyman 
Dr.  Lee  is  quoted  as  calling  the  Darwinians  "  gospellers  of  the  gutter,  and  charging  on 
their  doctrine  "  utter  blasphemy  against  the  divine  and  human  character  of  our  incarnate 
Lord"  (White.  i,a3).  Carlyle  is  quoted  as  calling  Darwin  an  apostle  of  dirt-worsliip. 
His  admirers  appear  to  regard  him  as  having  made  amends  by  admitting  that  Darwin 
was  personally  charming. 


THE  NATUEAL  SCIENCES 


467 


4 


1^ 


providential  design  appears,  even  in  the  imperfectly  educated  society 
of  our  day,  to  be  already  a  lost  cause. 

As  we  have  seen,  however,  it  was  not  merely  the  clerical  class 
that  resisted  the  new  truth  :  the  men  of  science  themselves  were 
often  disgracefully  hostile  ;  and  that  "  class  "  continued  to  give  a 
sufiBciency  of  support  to  clericalism.  If  the  study  of  the  physical 
sciences  be  no  guarantee  for  recognition  of  new  truth  in  those 
sciences,  still  less  is  it  a  sure  preparation  for  right  judgment  in 
matters  of  sociology,  or,  indeed,  for  a  courageous  attitude  towards 
conventions.  Spencer  in  his  earlier  works  used  the  language  of 
deism  ^  at  a  time  when  Comte  had  discarded  it.  It  takes  a  rare 
combination  of  intellectual  power,  moral  courage,  and  official 
freedom  to  permit  of  such  a  directly  rationalistic  propaganda  as  was 
carried  on  by  Professor  CLIFFORD,  or  even  such  as  has  been  accom- 
plished by  President  ANDREW  WHITE  in  America  under  the  com- 
paratively popular  profession  of  deism.  It  was  only  in  his  leisured 
latter  years  that  Huxley  carried  on  a  general  conflict  with  orthodoxy. 
In  middle  age  he  frequently  covered  himself  by  attacks  on  professed 
freethinkers ;  and  he  did  more  than  any  other  man  of  his  time  in 
England  to  conserve  the  Bible  as  a  school  manual  by  his  politic 
panegyric  of  it  in  that  aspect  at  a  time  when  bolder  rationalists 
were  striving  to  get  it  excluded  from  the  State  schools.^  Other  men 
of  science  have  furnished  an  abundance  of  support  to  orthodoxy  by 
more  or  less  vaguely  religious  pronouncements  on  the  problem  of 
the  universe ;  so  that  Catholic  and  other  obscurantist  agencies  are 
able  to  cite  from  them  many  quasi-scientific  phrases^ — taking  care 
not  to  ask  what  bearing  their  language  has  on  the  dogmas  of  the 
Churches.  Physicists  who  attempt  to  be  more  precise  are  rarely 
found  to  be  orthodox  ;  and  the  moral  and  social  science  of  such 
writers  is  too  often  a  species  of  charlatanism.  But  the  whole 
tendency  of  natural  science,  which  as  such  is  necessarily  alien  to 
supernaturalism,  makes  for  a  rejection  of  the  religious  tradition ; 
and  the  real  leaders  of  science  are  found  more  and  more  openly 
alienated  from  the  creed  of  faith.  We  know  that  Darwin,  though 
the  son  and  grandson  of  freethinkers,  was  brought  up  in  ordinary 
orthodoxy  by  his  mother,  and  "  gave  up  common  religious  belief 
almost   independently  from   his   own  reflections."^     All   over  the 

^  E.g.  the  Education,  small  ed.  pp.  41, 155. 

2  I  am  informed  on  good  authority  that  in  later  life  Huxley  changed  his  views  on  the 
subject.  He  had  abundant  cause.  As  early  as  1879  he  is  found  complaining  (pref .  to  Eng. 
tr.  of  Haeckel's  Freedom  in  Science  and  Teaching,  p.  xvii)  of  the  mass  of  "falsities  at 
present  foisted  upon  the  young  in  the  name  of  the  Church." 

"  See  a  choice  collection  in  the  pamphlet  What  Men  of  Science  say  about  God  and 
Beligion.  by  A.  E.  Proctor;  Catholic  Truth  Society. 

*  Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin,  ed.  1888,  iii,  179. 


468     FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 


THE  SOCIOLOGICAL  SCIENCES 


469 


world  that  has  since  been  an  increasingly  common  experience  among 
scientific  men. 

Section  5. — The  Sociological  Sciences 

1.  A  rationalistic  treatment  of  human  history  had  been  explicit 
or  implicit  in  the  whole  literature  of  Deism  ;  and  had  been  attempted 
with  various  degrees  of  success  by  Bodin,  Vico,  Montesquieu,  Mande- 
ville,  Hume,  Smith,  Voltaire,  Volney,  and  Condorcet,  as  well  as  by 
lesser  men/  So  clear  had  been  the  classic  lead  to  naturalistic  views 
of  social  growth  in  the  Politics  of  Aristotle,  and  so  strong  the 
influence  of  the  new  naturalistic  spirit,  that  it  is  seen  even  in  the 
work  of  Goguet  (1769),  who  sets  out  as  biblically  as  Bossuet;  while 
in  Germany  Herder  and  Kant  framed  really  luminous  generalizations  ; 
and  a  whole  group  of  sociological  writers  rose  up  in  the  Scotland  of 
the  middle  and  latter  parts  of  the  century.'*  Here  again  there  was 
reaction ;  but  in  France  the  orthodox  Guizot  did  much  to  promote 
broader  views  than  his  own  ;  EusEBE  Salverte  in  his  essay  De  la 
Civilisation  (1813)  made  a  highly  intelligent  effort  towards  a  general 
view  ;  and  CHARLES  COMTE  in  his  Traite  de  Mgislation  (1826)  made 
a  marked  scientific  advance  on  the  suggestive  work  of  Herder.  As 
we  have  seen,  the  eclectic  Jouffroy  put  human  affairs  in  the  sphere 
of  natural  law  equally  with  cosmic  phenomena.  At  length,  in  the 
great  work  of  AUGUSTE  CoMTE,  scientific  method  was  applied  so 
effectively  and  concretely  to  the  general  problem  that,  despite  his 
serious  fallacies,  social  science  again  took  rank  as  a  solid  study. 

2.  In  England  the  anti-revolution  reaction  was  visible  in  this  as 
in  other  fields  of  thought.  Hume  and  Gibbon  had  set  the  example 
of  a  strictly  naturalistic  treatment  of  history ;  and  the  clerical 
Kobertson  was  faithful  to  their  method ;  but  Hallam  makes  a  stand 
for  supernaturalism  even  in  applying  a  generally  scientific  critical 
standard.  The  majority  of  historical  events  he  is  content  to  let 
pass  as  natural,  even  as  the  average  man  sees  the  hand  of  the  doctor 
in  his  escape  from  rheumatism,  but  the  hand  of  God  in  his  escape 
from  a  railway  accident.     Discussing  the  defeat  of  Barbarossa  at 

Legnano,  Hallam  pronounces  that  it  is  not  "material  to  allege 

that  the  accidental  destruction  of  Frederic's  army  by  disease  enabled 

the  cities  of  Lombardy  to  succeed  in  their  resistance Providence 

reserves  to  itself  various  means  by  which  the  bonds  of  the  oppressor 
may  be  broken;  and  it  is  not  for  human  sagacity  to   anticipate 

1  It  is  doubtful  whether  C.  A.  Walckenaer  should  be  so  described.     His  Essai  sur 
I'histoire  de  I'espdce  humaine  (1798)  has  real  scientific  value. 
*2  See  the  author's  Buckle  and  his  Critics,  1895. 


■| 


11 


whether  the  army  of  a  conqueror  shall  moulder  in  the  unwholesome 
marshes  of  Eome  or  stiffen  with  frost  in  a  Kussian  winter."^ 

But  Hallam  was  nearly  the  last  historian  of  distinction  to  vend 
such  nugatory  oracles  as  either  a  philosophy  or  a  religion  of  history. 
Even  the  oracular  Carlyle  did  not  clearly  stipulate  for  *'  special 
providences  "  in  his  histories,  though  he  leant  to  that  conception ; 
and  though  Kanke  also  uses  mystifying  language,  he  writes  as  a 
Naturalist ;  while  Michelet  is  openly  anti-clerical.  Grote  was  wholly 
a  rationalist ;  the  historic  method  of  his  friend  and  competitor, 
Bishop  Thirlwall,  was  as  non-theological  as  his ;  Macaulay,  what- 
ever might  be  his  conformities  or  his  bias,  wrote  in  his  most  secular 
spirit  when  exhibiting  theological  evolution ;  and  George  Long 
indicated  his  rationalism  again  and  again.^  It  is  only  in  the  writings 
of  the  most  primitively  prejudiced  of  those  German  historians  who 
eliminate  ethics  from  historiography  that  the  "God"  factor  is 
latterly  emphasized  in  ostensibly  expert  historiography. 

3.  All  study  of  economics  and  of  political  history  fostered  such 
views,  and  at  length,  in  England  and  America,  by  the  works  of 
Draper  and  Buckle,  in  the  sixth  and  later  decades  of  the  century, 
the  conception  of  law  in  human  history  was  widely  if  slowly 
popularized,  to  the  due  indignation  of  the  supernaturalists,  who  saw 
the  last  great  field  of  natural  phenomena  passing  like  others  into 
the  realm  of  science.  Draper's  avowed  theism  partly  protected  him 
from  attack ;  but  Buckle's  straightforward  attacks  on  creeds  and  on 
Churches  brought  upon  him  a  peculiarly  fierce  hostility,  which  was 
unmollified  by  his  incidental  avowal  of  belief  in  a  future  life  and  his 
erratic  attacks  upon  unbelievers.  For  long  this  hostility  told  against 
his  sociological  teaching.  Spencer's  Principles  of  Sociology  never- 
theless clinched  the  scientific  claim  by  taking  sociological  law  for 
granted ;  and  the  new  science  has  continually  progressed  in  accept- 
ance. In  the  hands  of  all  its  leading  modern  exponents  in  all 
countries — Lester  Ward,  Giddings,  Guyau,  Letourneau,  Tarde, 
Ferri,  Durkheim,  De  Greef,  Gumplowicz,  Lilienfeld,  Schaffle — it 
has  been  entirely  naturalistic,  though  some  Catholic  professors 
continue  to  inject  into  it  theological  assumptions.  It  cannot  be 
said,  however,  that  a  general  doctrine  of  social  evolution  is  even 
yet  fully  established.  The  problem  is  complicated  by  the  profoundly 
contentious  issues  of  practical  politics ;  and  in  the  resulting  diffidence 
of  official  teachers  there  arises  a  notable  opening  for  obscurantism, 

I  Europe  during  tJie  Middle  Agen.  11th  ed.  i.  377. 

*  Cp.  his  Decline  of  the  Roman  Republic,  1864.  i.  345-47 :  and  note  on  p.  447  of  his  trans- 
lation of  Plutarch's  Brutus,  Bohn  ed.  of  Lives,  vol.  iv. 


470    FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 


which  has  been  duly  forthcoming.  In  the  first  half  of  the  century 
such  an  eminent  Churchman  as  Dean  Milman  incurred  at  the  hands 
of  J.  H.  Newman  and  others  the  charge  of  writing  the  history  of 
the  Jews  and  of  early  Christianity  in  a  rationalistic  spirit,  presenting 
rehgion  as  a  "  human  "  phenomenon/  Later  Churchmen,  with  all 
their  preparation,  have  rarely  gone  further. 

4.  Two  lines  of  scientific  study,  it  would  appear,  must  be 
thoroughly  followed  up  before  the  ground  can  be  pronounced  clear 
for  authoritative  conclusions — those  of  anthropological  archaeology 
(including  comparative  mythology  and  comparative  hierology)  and 
economic  analysis.  On  both  lines,  however,  great  progress  has  been 
made ;  and  on  the  former  in  particular  the  result  is  profoundly  dis- 
integrating to  traditional  behef.  The  lessons  of  anthropology  had 
been  long  available  to  the  modern  world  before  they  began  to  be 
scientifically  appHed  to  the  "  science  of  religion."  The  issues  raised 
by  Fontenelle  and  De  Brosses  in  the  eighteenth  century  were  in 
practice  put  aside  in  favour  of  direct  debate  over  Christian  history, 
dogma,  and  ethic  ;  though  many  of  the  deists  dwelt  on  the  analogies 
of  "  heathen  "  and  "  revealed  "  rehgion.  As  early  as  1824  Benjamin 
Constant  made  a  vigorous  attempt  to  bring  the  whole  phenomena 
under  a  general  evolutionary  conception  in  his  work  De  la  Beligion^ 
But  it  was  not  till  the  treasure  of  modem  anthropology  had  been 
scientifically  massed  by  such  students  as  Theodor  Waitz  [Anthro- 
pologie  der  Naturvolker,  6  Bde.  1859-71)  and  Adolf  Bastian  {Der 
Mensch  in  der  Geschichte,  3  Bde.  1860),  and  above  all  by  Sir  EDWARD 
Tyloe,  who  first  lucidly  elaborated  the  science  of  it  all,  that  the 
arbitrary  religious  conception  of  the  psychic  evolution  of  humanity 
began  to  be  decisively  superseded. 

In  1871  Tylor  could  still  say  that  "to  many  educated  minds 
there  seems  something  presumptuous  and  repulsive  in  the  view  that 
the  history  of  mankind  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  history  of  nature ; 
that  our  thoughts,  wills,  and  actions  accord  with  laws  as  definite  as 
those  which  govern  the  motion  of  waves,  the  combination  of  acids 
and  bases,  and  the  growth  of  plants  and  animals."^  But  the 
old  repulsion  had  already  been  profoundly  impaired  by  biological 
and  social  science ;  and  Tylor's  book  met  with  hardly  any  of  the 
odium  that  had  been  lavished  on  Darwin  and  Buckle.     "  It  will 


1  See  The  Dynamics  of  Eeligion,  pp.  227-33. 

2  It  is  difficult  to  understand  the  claim  made  for  Hegel  by  his  translator,  the  Rev.  E.  B. 
Speirs,  that  any  student  of  his  lectures  on  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  "  will  be  constrained 
to  admit  that  in  them  we  have  the  true  *  sources  '  of  the  evolution  principle  as  applied  to 
the  study  of  religion"  (edit.  pref.  to  trans,  of  work  cited,  i.  p.  viii).  To  say  nothing  of 
Fontenelle  and  De  Brosses,  Constant  had  laid  out  the  whole  subject  before  Uegel. 

5*  Primitive  Culture,  i,  2. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS 


471 


make  me  for  the  future  look  on  religion — a  belief  in  the  soul,  etc. — 
from  a  different  point  of  view,"  wrote  Darwin  ^  to  Tylor  on  its  appear- 
ance. So  thoroughly  did  the  book  press  home  the  fact  of  the  evolu- 
tion of  religious  thought  from  savagery  that  thenceforward  the 
science  of  mythology,  which  had  never  yet  risen  in  professional 
hands  to  the  height  of  vision  of  Fontenelle,  began  to  be  decisively 
adapted  to  the  anthropological  standpoint. 

In  the  hands  of  Spencer^  all  the  phenomena  of  primitive  mental 
life — beliefs,  practices,  institutions — are  considered  as  purely  natural 
data,  no  other  point  of  view  being  recognized ;  and  the  anthro- 
pological treatises  of  Lord  Avebury  (Sir  John  Lubbock)  are  at  the 
same  standpoint.  When  at  length  the  mass  of  savage  usages  which 
lie  around  the  beginnings  of  historic  religion  began  to  be  closely 
scanned  and  classified,  notably  in  the  great  latter-day  compilations 
of  Sir  J.  G.  Frazer,  what  had  appeared  to  be  sacred  peculiarities 
of  the  Christian  cult  were  seen  to  be  but  variants  of  universal 
primitive  practice.  Thenceforth  the  problem  for  serious  inquirers 
was  not  whether  Christianity  was  a  supernatural  revelation — the 
supernatural  is  no  longer  a  ground  of  serious  discussion — but 
whether  the  central  narrative  is  historical  in  any  degree  whatever. 
The  defence  is  latterly  conducted  from  a  standpoint  indistinguishable 
from  the  Unitarian.  But  an  enormous  amount  of  anthropological 
research  is  being  carried  on  without  any  reference  to  such  issues, 
the  total  effect  being  to  exclude  the  supernaturalist  premiss  from 
the  study  of  religion  as  completely  as  from  that  of  astronomy. 

Section  6. — Philosophy  and  Ethics 

1.  The  philosophy  of  Kant,  while  giving  the  theological  class 
a  new  apparatus  of  defence  as  against  common-sense  freethinking, 
forced  none  the  less  on  theistic  philosophy  a  great  advance  from  the 
orthodox  positions.  Thus  his  immediate  successors,  Fichte  and 
Schelling,  produced  systems  of  which  one  was  loudly  denounced  as 
atheistic,  and  the  other  as  pantheistic,^  despite  its  dualism.  Neither 
seems  to  have  had  much  influence  on  concrete  religious  opinion 
outside  the  universities;^  and  when  Schelling  in  old  age  turned 
Catholic  obscurantist,  the  gain  to  clericalism  was  not  great.  Hegel 
in  turn  loosely  wrought  out  a  system  of  which  the  great  merit  is  to 
substitute  the  conception  of  existence  as  relation  for  the  nihilistic 
idealism  of  Fichte  and  the  unsolved  dualism  of  Schelling.     This 


*  Life  and  Letters,  i,  151.  ^  Principles  of  Sociology,  3  vols.  1876-96. 

8  Cp.  Saintes,  Hist.  crit.  du  rationalism>e  en  AUemagne,  p.  323.  *  Id.  pp.  322-24. 


472     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 

system  he  latterly  adapted  to  practical  exigencies*  by  formulating, 

as  Kant  had  recently  done,  a  philosophic  Trinity  and  hardily  defining 

Christianity  as  **  Absolute  Eeligion  "  in  comparison  with  the  various 

forms  of  "  Natural  Eeligion."     Nevertheless,  he  counted  in  a  great 

degree  as  a  disintegrating  influence,  and  was  in  a  very  practical  way 

anti-Christian.     More  explicitly  than   Kant,  he  admitted  that  the 

Aufkldrung,  the  freethinking  movement  of  the  past  generation,  had 

made  good  its  case  so  far  as  it  went ;  and  though,  by  the  admission 

of  admirers,  he  took  for  granted  without  justification  that  it  had 

carried  its  point  with  the  world  at  large,^  he  was  chronically  at 

strife  with  the  theologians  as  such,  charging  them  on  the  one  hand 

with  deserting  the  dogmas  which  he  re-stated,^  and  on  the  other 

declaring  that  the  common  run  of  them  "  know  as  little  of  God  as 

a  blind  man  sees  of  a  painting,  even  though  he  handles  the  frame."* 

Of  the  belief  in  miracles  he  was  simply  contemptuous.     "  Whether 

at  the  marriage  of  Cana  the  guests  got  a  little  more  wine  or  a  little 

less  is  a  matter  of  absolutely  no  importance ;  nor  is  it  any  more 

essential  to  demand  whether  the  man  with  the  withered  hand  was 

healed  ;  for  millions  of  men  go  about  with  withered  and  crippled 

limbs,  whose  limbs  no  man   heals."     On   the  story  of  the  marks 

made  for  the  information  of  the  angel  on  the  Hebrew  houses  at  the 

Passover  he  asks  :  "  Would  the  angel  not  have  known  them  without 

these  marks?",  adding:  "  This  faith  has  no  real  interest  for  Spirit."' 

Such  writing,  from  the  orthodox  point  of  view,  was  not  compensated 

for  by  a  philosophy  of  Christianity  which  denaturalized  its  dogmas, 

and  a  presentment  of  the  God-idea  and  of  moral  law  which  made 

religion  alternately  a  phase  of  philosophy  and  a  form  of  political 

utilitarianism. 

As  to  the  impression  made  by  Hegel  on  most  Christians, 
compare  Hagenbach,  German  Bationalism  (Eng.  tr.  of  Kircheii- 
geschichte),  pp.  364-69;  Eenan,  Etudes  d'histoire  religieuse, 
5e  ^dit.  p.  406  ;  J.  D.  Morell,  Histor.  and  Crit.  View  of  the 
Spec.  Philos.  of  Europe  in  the  Nineteenth  Ce7itimj,  2nd  ed. 
1847,  ii.  189-91  ;  Eobins,  A  Defence  of  the  Faith,  1862,  pt.  i, 
pp.  135-41,  176;  Eschenmenger,  Die  HegeVsche  Beligions- 
philosophie,  1834  ;  quoted  in  Beard's  Voices  of  the  Church,  p.  8 ; 
Leo,  Die  Hegeliyigen,  1838  ;  and  Eeinhard,  Lehrbuch  der 
Geschichte  der  Philosophic,  2nd  ed.  1839,  pp.  753-54 — also  cited 
by  Beard,  pp.  9-12. 

»  As  to  Hegel's  mental  development  cp.  Dr.  Beard  on  "Strauss.  Hegel,  and  their 
Opinions,"  in  Voices  of  the  Church  in  Reply  to  Strauss,  1845,  pp.  3-4. 
2  E.  Caird,  Hegel.  1883,  p.  94. 
8  E.g.  Philos.  of  Religion,  introd.  Eng.  tr.  1,  38-40. 
*  Id.  p.  41.    Cp.  pp.  216-17.  5  Id.  p.  219. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS 


473 


« 


I*  if 


ii. 


(  i 
11  i 


I 


The  gist  of  Hegel's  rehabilitation  of  Christianity  is  well  set 
forth  by  Prof.  A.  Seth  Pringle-Pattison  in  his  essay  on  The 
Philosophy  of  Eeligion  in  Kant  and  Hegel  (rep.  in  The  Philos. 
Badicals  a7id  other  Essays,  1907),  ch.  iii.  Considered  in  con- 
nection with  his  demonstration  that  in  politics  the  Prussian 
State  was  the  ideal  government,  it  is  seen  to  be  even  more  of 
an  arbitrary  and  unvoridical  accommodation  to  the  social 
environment  than  Kant's  Eeligion  innerhalh  der  Grenzen  der 
hlossen  Vernunft.  It  approximates  intellectually  to  the  process 
by  which  the  neo-Platonists  and  other  eclectics  of  the  classic 
decadence  found  a  semblance  of  allegorical  or  symbolical  justifi- 
cation for  every  item  in  the  old  theology.  Nothing  could  be 
more  false  to  the  spirit  of  Hegel's  general  philosophy  than  the 
representing  of  Christianity  as  a  culmination  or  "  ultimate  "  of 
all  religion  ;  and  nothing,  in  fact,  was  more  readily  seen  by  his 
contemporaries. 

We  who  look  back,  however,  may  take  a  more  lenient  view 
of  Hegel's  process  of  adaptation  than  was  taken  in  the  next 
generation  by  Haym,  who,  in  his  Hegel  imd  seijie  Zeit  (1857), 
presented  him  as  always  following  the  prevailing  fashion  in 
thought,  and  lending  himself  as  the  tool  of  reactionary  govern- 
ment. Hegel's  officialism  was  in  the  main  probably  whole- 
hearted. Even  as  Kant  felt  driven  to  do  something  for  social 
conservation  at  the  outbreak  of  the  French  Eevolution,  and 
Fichte  to  shape  for  his  country  the  sinister  ideal  of  The  Closed 
Industrial  State,  so  Hegel,  after  seeing  Prussia  shaken  to  its 
foundations  at  the  battle  of  Jena  and  being  turned  out  of  his 
own  house  by  the  looting  French  soldiers,  was  very  naturally 
impelled  to  support  the  existing  State  by  quasi-philosophico- 
religious  considerations.  It  was  an  abandonment  of  the  true 
function  of  philosophy ;  but  it  may  have  been  done  in  all  good 
faith.  An  intense  political  conservatism  was  equally  marked 
in  Strauss,  who  dreaded  "demagogy,"  and  in  Schopenhauer, 
who  left  his  fortune  to  the  fund  for  the  widows  and  families  of 
soldiers  killed  or^  injured  in  the  revolutionary  strifes  of  1848. 
It  came  in  their  case  from  the  same  source — an  alarmed 
memory  of  social  convulsion.  The  fact  remains  that  Hegel 
had  no  real  part  in  the  State  rehgion  which  he  crowned  with 
formulas. 

Not  only  does  Hegel's  conception  of  the  Absolute  make  deity 
simply  the  eternal  process  of  the  universe,  and  the  divine  conscious- 
ness indistinguishable  from  the  total  consciousness  of  mankind,^  but 
his  abstractions  lend  themselves  equally  to  all  creeds;^  and  some  of 
the  most  revolutionary  of   the  succeeding  movements  of   German 

.^,L^?'l^^^f\^^  ,^}^^\^^^  pp.  195-96:  and  Feuerbach,  as  summarized  by  Baur,  Kir- 
chengeschtchte  des  19ten  Jahrh.  p.  390.  2  cp.  Michelet  as  cited  by  Morell.  ii.  192-93. 


474     FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 

thoughfc — as  those  of  Vatke,  Strauss,^  Feuerbach,  and  Marx — pro- 
fessedly founded  on  him.  It  is  certainly  a  striking  testimony  to  the 
influence  of  Hegel  that  five  such  powerful  innovators  as  Vatke'^  in 
Old-Testament,  Bruno  Bauer  and  Strauss  in  New-Testament 
criticism,  Feuerbach  in  the  philosophy  of  religion,  and  Marx  in 
social  philosophy,  should  at  first  fly  the  Hegelian  flag.  It  can  hardly 
have  been  that  Hegel's  formulas  sufficed  to  generate  the  criticism 
they  all  brought  to  bear  upon  their  subject  matter  ;  rather  we  must 
suppose  that  their  naturally  powerful  minds  were  attracted  by  the 
critical  and  reconstructive  aspects  of  his  doctrine ;  but  the  philo- 
sophy which  stimulated  them  must  have  had  great  affinities  for 
revolution,  as  well  as  for  all  forms  of  the  idea  of  evolution. 

2.  In  respect  of  his  formal  championship  of  Christianity  Hegel's 
method,  arbitrary  even  for  him,  appealed  neither  to  the  orthodox 
nor,  with  a  few  exceptions,^  to  his  own  disciples,  some  of  whom,  as 
Euge,  at  length  definitely  renounced  Christianity.'*  In  1854  Heine 
told  his  French  readers  that  there  were  in  Germany  "  fanatical 
monks  of  atheism  "  who  would  willingly  burn  Voltaire  as  a  besotted 
deist  ;^  and  Heine  himself,  in  his  last  years  of  suffering  and  of 
revived  poetic  religiosity,  could  see  in  Hegel's  system  only  atheism. 
Bruno  Bauer  at  first  opposed  Strauss,  and  afterwards  went  even 
further  than  he,  professing  Hegelianism  all  the  while.*^  SCHOPEN- 
HAUER and  Hartmann  in  turn  being  even  less  sustaining  to  ortho- 
doxy, and  later  orthodox  systems  faiUng  to  impress,  there  came  in 
due  course  the  cry  of  "  Back  to  Kant,"  where  at  least  orthodoxy  had 
some  formal  semblance  of  sanction. 

Hartmann's  w^ork  on  The  Self -Decomposition  of  Christianik/  is 
a  stringent  exposure  of  the  unreality  of  what  passed  for  'liberal 
Christianity"  in  Germany  a  generation  ago,  and  an  appeal  for  a 
"new  concrete  religion"  of  monism  or  pantheism  as  a  bulwark 
against  Ultramontanism.  On  this  monism,  however,  Hartmann 
insisted  on  grounding  his  pessimism ;  and  with  this  pessimistic 
pantheism  he  hoped  to  outbid  Catholicism  against  the  "irreHgious" 
Strauss  and  the  liberal  Christians — in  his  view  no  less  irrehgious. 


1  As  to  Strauss  cp.  Beard,  as  above  cited,  pp.  21-22,  30 ;  and  Zeller,  David  Friedrtch 
Strauss,  Eng.  tr.  pp.  35.  47-48,  71-72,  etc. 

2  As  to  Vatke  see  Pfleiderer,  as  cited,  p.  252  8a.;  Cheyne,  Founders  of  O.  T.  Criticism, 
1893.  p.  135. 

3  E.g.  Dr.  Hutchison  Stirling.  See  his  trans,  of  Schwegler's  Handbook  of  the  History 
of  Fhilosophy,  6th  ed.  p.  438  sq. 

4  Baur.  last  cit.  p.  389.  ^  Gestdndnisse.    Werke,  iv,  33.    Cp.  iii.  110. 

6  Cp.  Hagenbach,  pp.  369-72 ;  Farrar.  Crit.  Hist.  ofFreethought,  pp.  387-88.  On  Bauer  s 
critical  development  and  academic  career  see  Baur,  Kirchengesch.  des  19ten  Jalirh- 
pp.  386-89. 

7  Die  Selbstzersetzung  des  Christenthums  nnd  die  Beligion  der  Zukunft,  2te  Aufl.  1874 
trans,  in  Eng.  as  The  Meligion  of  the  Future,  1886. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS 


475 


It  does  not  seem  to  have  had  much  acceptance.  On  the  whole,  the 
effect  of  all  German  philosophy  has  probably  been  to  make  for 
the  general  discredit  of  theistic  thinking,  the  surviving  forms  of 
Hegelianism  being  little  propitious  to  current  religion.  And  though 
Schopenhauer  and  NIETZSCHE  can  hardly  be  said  to  carry  on  the 
task  of  philosophy  either  in  spirit  or  in  effect,  yet  the  rapid  intensi- 
fication of  hostility  to  current  religion  which  their  writings  in 
particular  manifest^  must  be  admitted  to  stand  for  a  deep  revolt 
against  the  Kantian  compromise.  And  this  revolt  was  bound  to 
come  about.  The  truth-shunning  tactic  of  Kant,  Fichte,  and  Hegel 
— aiming  at  the  final  discrediting  of  the  Aufklarung  as  a  force  that 
had  done  its  work,  and  could  find  no  more  to  do,  however  it  be 
explained  and  excused — was  a  mere  expression  of  their  own  final 
lack  of  scientific  instinct.  It  is  hard  to  believe  that  thinkers  who 
had  perceived  and  asserted  the  fact  of  progression  in  religion  could 
suppose  that  true  philosophy  consisted  in  putting  a  stop  on  a  priori 
grounds  to  the  historical  analysis,  and  setting  up  an  "  ultimate  "  of 
philosophic  theory.  The  straightforward  investigators,  seeking 
simply  for  truth,  have  passed  on  to  posterity  a  spirit  which,  correct- 
ing their  inevitable  errors,  reaches  a  far  deeper  and  wider  compre- 
hension of  religious  evolution  and  psychosis  than  could  be  reached 
by  the  verbalizing  methods  of  the  self-satisfied  and  self-sufiicing 
metaphysicians.  These,  so  far  as  they  prevailed,  did  but  delay  the 
advance  of  real  knowledge.  Their  work,  in  fact,  w^as  fatally  shaped 
by  the  general  reaction  against  the  Kevolution,  which  in  their  case 
took  a  quasi-philosophic  form,  while  in  France  and  England  it 
worked  out  as  a  crude  return  to  clerical  and  political  authoritarianism.^ 
3.  From  the  collisions  of  philosophic  systems  in  Germany  there 
emerged  two  great  practical  freethinking  forces,  the  teachings  of 
LuDwiG  Feuerbach  (1804-76),  who  w^as  obliged  to  give  up  his 
lecturing  at  Erlangen  in  1830  after  the  issue  of  his  Thoughts  upon 
Death  and  Immortality,  and  LuDWiG  BtJCHNER,  who  was  deprived 
of  his  chair  of  clinic  at  Tiibingen  in  1855  for  his  Force  and  Matter. 
The  former,  originally  a  Hegelian,  expressly  broke  away  from  his 
master,  declaring  that,  whereas  Hegel  belonged  to  the  **  Old  Testa- 
ment "  of  modern  philosophy,  he  himself  would  set  forth  the  New, 
wherein  Hegel's  fundamentally  incoherent  treatment  of  deity  (as 
the   total   process   of  things   on  the   one   hand,  and   an   objective 

1  See  Schopenhauer's  dialogues  on  Beligion  and  Inimortality,  and  his  essay  on  The 
Christian  System  (Eng.tr.  by  T.  B.  Saunders),  and  Nietzsche's  Antichrist.  The  latter 
work  IS  discussed  by  the  writer  in  Essays  in  Sociology,  vol.  ii. 

Prof- Seth  Pringle-Pattison,  who  passes  many  just  criticisms  on  their  work  (.Philos. 
of  Belig.  in  Kant  aiid  Hegel,  rep.  with  The  Philosophical  Radicals),  does  not  seem  to 
suspect  this  determination. 


476     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS 


477 


personality  on  the  other)  should  be  cured.^  Feuerbach  accordingly, 
in  his  Essence  of  Christianity  (1841)  and  Essence  of  Religion  (1851), 
supplied  one  of  the  first  adequate  modern  statements  of  the  positively 
rationalistic  position  as  against  Christianity  and  theism,  in  terms  of 
philosophic  as  well  as  historical  insight — a  statement  to  which  there 
is  no  characteristically  modern  answer  save  in  terms  of  the  refined 
sentimentalism  of  the  youthful  Renan,'^  fundamentally  averse  alike 
to  scientific  precision  and  to  intellectual  consistency. 

Feuerbach's  special  service  consists  in  the  rebuttal  of  the  meta- 
physic  in  which  religion  had  chronically  taken  refuge  from  the 
straightforward  criticism  of  freethinkers,  in  itself  admittedly  un- 
answerable. They  had  shown  many  times  over  its  historic  falsity, 
its  moral  perversity,  and  its  philosophic  self-contradiction  ;  and  the 
more  astute  ofi&cial  defenders,  leaving  to  the  less  competent  the  task 
of  re-vindicating  miracles  and  prophecy  and  defending  the  indefen- 
sible, proceeded  to  shroud  the  particular  defeat  in  a  pseudo-philo- 
sophic process  which  claimed  for  all  religion  alike  an  indestructible 
inner  truth,  in  the  light  of  which  the  instinctive  believer  could  again 
make  shift  to  affirm  his  discredited  credences.  It  was  this  process 
which  Feuerbach  exploded,  for  all  who  cared  to  read  him.  He  had 
gone  through  it.  Intensely  religious  in  his  youth,  he  had  found  in 
the  teaching  of  Hegel  an  attractive  philosophic  garb  for  his  intuitional 
thought.  But  a  wider  concern  than  Hegel's  for  actual  knowledge, 
and  for  the  knowledge  of  the  actual,  moved  him  to  say  to  his 
teacher,  on  leaving:  "Two  years  have  I  attached  myself  to  you; 
two  years  have  I  completely  devoted  to  your  philosophy.  Now  I 
feel  the  necessity  of  starting  in  the  directly  opposite  way :  I  am 
going  to  study  anatomy."^  It  may  have  been  that  what  saved  him 
from  the  Hegelian  fate  of  turning  to  the  end  the  squirrel-cage  of 
conformist  philosophy  was  the  personal  experience  which  put  him 
in  fixed  antagonism  to  the  governmental  forces  that  Hegel  was 
moved  to  serve.  The  hostility  evoked  by  his  Thoughts  on  Death 
and  Immortality  completed  his  alienation  from  the  official  side  of 
things,  and  left  him  to  the  life  of  a  devoted  truth-seeker — a  career 
as  rare  in  Germany  as  elsewhere.  The  upshot  was  that  Feuerbach, 
in  the  words  of  Strauss,  "  broke  the  double  yoke  in  which,  under 
Hegel,  philosophy  and  theology  still  went."* 

For  the  task  he    undertook   he   had   consummately    equipped 

*  Baur  gives  a  good  summary.  Kirchengeschichte,  pp.  390-94. 

2  "  M.  Feuerbach  et  la  nouvelle  ecole  h^g^lienne."  in  Etudes  dliistoire  religieuse. 
8  A.  Kohut.  Ludwig  Feuerbach,  sein  Leben  und  seine  Werke,  1909,  p.  48. 

*  Die  Halben  und  die  Qanzen,  p.  50.  "  Feuerbach  a  ruin6  le  syst^me  de  Hegel  et  fond^ 
la  positivisme."  A.  L6vy.  La  philosophie  de  Feuerbach  et  son  influence  sur  la  litt. 
allemande,  1904,  introd.  p.  xxii. 


n 


himself.  In  a  series  of  four  volumes  {History  of  Modern  Philosophy 
from  Bacon  to  Spinoza,  1833  ;  Exposition  and  Criticism  of  the 
Leihnitzian  Philosophy,  1837 ;  Pierre  Bayle,  1838  ;  On  Philosophy 
and  Christianity,  1839)  he  explored  the  field  of  philosophy,  and 
re-studied  theology  in  the  light  of  moral  and  historical  criticism, 
before  he  produced  his  masterpiece.  Das  Wesen  des  Christenthums. 
Here  the  tactic  of  Hegel  is  turned  irresistibly  on  the  Hegelian 
defence ;  and  religion,  defiantly  declared  by  Hegel  to  be  an  affair  of 
self-consciousness,^  is  shown  to  be  in  very  truth  nothing  else. 
"  Such  as  are  a  man's  thoughts  and  dispositions,  such  is  his  God  ; 
so  much  worth  as  a  man  has,  so  much  and  no  more  has  his  God. 
Consciousness  of  God  is  self-consciousness  ;  knowledge  of  God  is 
self-knowledge."  ^  This  of  course  is  openly  what  Hegelian  theism 
is  in  effect — philosophic  atheism ;  and  though  Feuerbach  at  times 
disclaimed  the  term,  he  declares  in  his  preface  that  "  atheism,  at 
least  in  the  sense  of  this  w^ork,  is  the  secret  of  rehgion  itself ;  that 

religion  itself in  its  heart,  in  its  essence,  believes  in  nothing  else 

than  the  truth  and  divinity  of  human  nature."  In  the  preliminary 
section  on  The  Essence  of  Beligion  he  makes  his  position  clear  once 
for  all :  "A  God  who  has  abstract  predicates  has  also  an  abstract 

existence Not  the  attribute  of  the  divinity,  but  the  divineness  or 

deity  of  the  attribute,  is  the  first  true  Divine  Being.  Thus  what 
theology  and  philosophy  have  held  to  be  God,  the  Absolute,  the 
Infinite,  is  not  God  ;  but  that  which  they  have  held  not  to  be  God, 
is  God — namely  the  attribute,  the  quality,  whatever  has  reality. 
Hence,  he  alone  is  the  true  atheist  to  whom  the  predicates  of  the 
Divine  Being — for  example,  love,  wisdom,  justice — are  nothing  ;  not 

he  to  whom  merely  the  subject  of  these  predicates  is  nothing These 

have  an  intrinsic,  independent  reality ;  they  force  their  recognition 
upon  man  by  their  very  nature  ;  they  are  self-evident  truths  to  him  ; 

they  approve,  they  attest  themselves The  idea  of  God  is  dependent 

on  the  idea  of  justice,  of  benevolence " 

This  is  obviously  the  answer  to  Baur,  who,  after  paying  tribute 
to  the  personality  of  Feuerbach,  and  presenting  a  tolerably  fair 
summary  of  his  critical  philosophy,  can  find  no  answer  to  it  save 
the  inept  protest  that  it  is  one-sided  in  respect  of  its  reduction  of 
religion  to  the  subjective  (the  very  course  insisted  on  by  a  hundred 
defenders!),  that  it  favours  the  communistic  and  other  extreme 
tendencies  of  the  time,  and  that  it  brings  everything  "  under  the 

*  E.g.  "All  knowledge,  all  conviction,  all  piety is  based  on  the  principle  that  in  the 

spirit,  as  such,  the  consciousness  of  God  exists  immediately  with  the  consciousness  of 
itself."    Philos.  of  Belig.  Eng.  tr.  introd.  i.  42-43. 

2  Essence  of  Christianity,  Eng.  tr.  1854,  p.  12. 


478     FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUKY 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS 


479 


rude  rule  of  egoism."^  Here  a  philosophic  and  an  aspersive  mean- 
ing are  furtively  combined  in  one  word.  The  scientific  subjectivism 
of  Feuerbach's  analysis  of  religion  is  no  more  a  vindication  or 
acceptance  of  *'  rude  egoism "  than  is  the  Christian  formula  of 
*'  God's  will  "  a  condonation  of  murder.  The  restraint  of  egoism  by 
altruism  lies  in  human  character  and  polity  alike  for  the  rationalist 
and  for  the  irrationalist,  as  Baur  must  have  known  well  enough  after 
his  long  survey  of  Church  history.  His  really  contemptible  escape 
from  Feuerbach's  criticism,  under  cover  of  alternate  cries  of  **  Com- 
munism "  and  "egoism" — a  self-stultification  which  needs  no 
comment — is  simply  one  more  illustration  of  the  fashion  in  which, 
since  the  time  of  Kant,  philosophy  in  Germany  as  elsewhere  has 
been  chronically  demoralized  by  resort  to  non-philosophical  tests. 
*  Max  Stirner  "  (pen-name  of  Johann  Caspar  Schmidt,  1806-1856) 
carried  the  philosophic  "  egoism "  of  Feuerbach  about  as  far  in 
words  as  might  be  ;  but  his  work  on  the  Ego  {Der  Einzige  unci  sem 
Eigenthum,  1845)  remains  an  ethical  curiosity  rather  than  a  force."^ 

4.  Arnold  Kuge  (1802-1880),  who  was  of  the  same  philoso- 
phical school,^  gave  his  life  to  a  disinterested  propaganda  of  democracy 
and  light ;  and  if  in  1870  he  capitulated  to  the  new  Empire,  and 
thereby  won  a  small  pension  for  the  two  last  years  of  his  life,  he 
was  but  going  the  way  of  many  another  veteran,  dazzled  in  his  old 
age  by  very  old  fires.  His  Addresses  on  Religion,  its  Rise  and  Fall : 
to  tlie  educated  among  its  Reverers^  (1869)  is  a  lucid  and  powerful 
performance,  proceeding  from  a  mythological  analysis  of  religion  to 
a  cordial  plea  for  rationalism  in  all  things.  The  charge  of 
"materialism"  was  for  him  no  bugbear.  "Truly,"  he  writes,  "we 
are  not  without  the  earth  and  the  solar  system,  not  without  the 
plants  and  the  animals,  not  without  head.  But  whoever  has  head 
enough  to  understand  science  and  its  conquests  in  the  field  of  nature 
and  of  mind  (Geist)  knows  also  that  the  material  world  rests  in  the 
immaterial,  moves  in  it,  and  is  by  it  animated,  freed,  and  ensouled; 
that  soul  and  idea  are  incarnate  in  Nature,  but  that  also  logic,  idea, 
spirit,  and  science  free  themselves  out  of  Nature,  become  abstracted 
and  as  immaterial  Power  erect  their  own  realm,  the  realm  of  spirit 
in  State,  science,  and  art."  ^ 

5.  On  Feuerbach's  Essence  of  Religion  followed  the  resounding 
explosion   of   Buchner's  Force  and  Matter  (1855),  which  in  large 

1  Kirch  en  geschichte  den  19ten  JahrhunderiSt  PP.  393-94. 

2  Cp.  A.  Levy,  as  cited,  cti.  iv.  8  j^  qJj   jj 

*  Beden  ilber  Religion,  ihr  Entfitehen  und  Vergehen.  an  di'i    Gehildeten  unter  ihren 
Verehrern—a.  parody  of  the  title  of  the  famous  work  of  Schleierniacher. 
«  Work  cited,  p.  119. 


measure,  but  with  much  greater  mastery  of  scientific  detail,  does  for 
the  plain  man  of  his  century  what  d'Holbach  in  his  chief  work 
sought  to  do  for  his  day.  Constantly  vilified,  even  in  the  name  of 
philosophy,  in  the  exact  tone  and  spirit  of  animal  irritation  which 
marks  the  religious  vituperation  of  all  forms  of  rationalism  in 
previous  ages ;  and  constantly  misrepresented  as  professing  to 
explain  an  infinite  universe  when  it  does  but  show  the  hollowness 
of  all  supernaturalist  explanations,^  the  book  steadily  holds  its 
ground  as  a  manual  of  anti-mysticism.^  Between  them,  Feuerbach 
and  Biichner  may  be  said  to  have  framed  for  their  age  an  atheistic 
"  System  of  Nature,"  concrete  and  abstract,  without  falling  into  the 
old  error  of  substituting  one  apriorism  for  another.  Whosoever 
endorses  Baur's  protest  against  the  "  one-sidedness  "  of  Feuerbach, 
who  treats  of  religion  on  its  chosen  ground  of  self-consciousness,  has 
but  to  turn  to  Biichner's  study  of  the  objective  world  and  see  whether 
his  cause  fares  any  better. 

6.  In  France  the  course  of  thought  had  been  hardly  less  revolu- 
tionary. Philosophy,  like  everything  else,  had  been  affected  by  the 
legitimist  restoration ;  and  between  Victor  Cousin  and  the  other 
"  classic  philosophers  "  of  the  first  third  of  the  century  orthodoxy 
was  nominally  reinstated.  Yet  even  among  these  there  was  no  firm 
coherence.  Maine  de  Biran,  one  of  the  shrinking  spirits  who  passed 
gradually  into  an  intolerant  authoritarianism  from  fear  of  the  per- 
petual pressures  of  reason,  latterly  declared  (1821)  that  a  philosophy 
which  ascribed  to  deity  only  infinite  thought  or  supreme  intelligence, 
eliminating  volition  and  love,  was  pure  atheism  ;  and  this  pronounce- 
ment struck  at  the  philosophy  of  Cousin.  Nor  was  this  species  of 
orthodoxy  any  more  successful  than  the  furious  irrationalism  of 
Joseph  De  Maistre  in  setting  up  a  philosophic  form  of  faith,  as 
distinct  from  the  cult  of  rhetoric  and  sentiment  founded  by  Chateau- 
briand. Cousin  was  deeply  distrusted  by  those  who  knew  him,  and 
at  the  height  of  his  popularity  he  was  contemned  by  the  more  com- 
petent minds  around  him,  such  as  Sainte-Beuve,  Comte,  and  Edgar 
Quinet.^  The  latter  thinker  himself  counted  for  a  measure  of 
rationalism,  though  he  argued  for  theism,  and  undertook  to  make 
good  the  historicity  of  Jesus  against  those  who  challenged  it.     For 

*  Biichner  expressly  rejected  the  term  "  materialism  "  because  of  its  misleading  impli- 
cations or  connotations.  Cp.  in  Mrs.  Bradlaugh  Bonner's  Charles  Bradlaugh  the  discus- 
sion in  Pt.  ii.  ch.  i,  §  3  (by  J.  M.  R.). 

J^'bile  the  cognate  works  of  Carl  Vogt  and  Moleschott  have  gone  out  of  print, 
Buchner's,  recast  again  and  again,  continues  to  be  republished, 

„,  Cp.  Paul  Deschanel.  Figures  Litteraires,  1889,  pp.  130-32,  171-73;  Levy-Bruhl,  The 
rhilosophy  of  Auguste  Comte,  Eng.  tr.  1903.  p.  190;  and  Ch.  Adam,  La  Fhilosophie  en 
Jt  ranee,  1894,  p.  228. 


480    FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS 


481 


the  rest,  even  among  the  ostensibly  conservative  and  official  philo- 
sophers, Theodore  Jouffroy,  an  eclectic,  who  held  the  chair  of  moral 
philosophy  in  the  Faculty  des  Lettres  at  Paris,  was  at  heart  an 
unbeliever  from  his  youth  up/  and  even  in  his  guarded  writings  was 
far  from  satisfying  the  orthodox.  "God,"  he  wrote,^  "interposes  as 
little  in  the  regular  development  of  humanity  as  in  the  course  of  the 
solar  system."  He  added  a  fatalistic  theorem  of  divine  predeter- 
mination, which  he  verbally  salved  in  the  usual  way  by  saying  that 
predetermination  presupposed  individual  liberty.  Eclecticism  thus 
fell,  as  usual,  between  two  stools  ;  but  it  was  not  orthodoxy  that 
would  gain.  On  another  line  Jouffroy  openly  bantered  the  authori- 
tarians on  their  appeal  to  a  popular  judgment  which  they  declared 
to  be  incapable  of  pronouncing  on  religious  questions.** 

7.  On  retrospect,  the  whole  official  French  philosophy  of  the 
period,  however  conservative  in  profession,  is  found  to  have  been  at 
bottom  rationalistic,  and  only  superficially  friendly  to  faith.  The 
Abb6  Felice  de  Lamennais  declaimed  warmly  against  Uindiffercnce 
en  matidre  de  religion  (4  vols.  1818-24),  resorting  to  the  old  Catholic 
device,  first  employed  by  Montaigne,  of  turning  Pyrrhonism  against 
unbelief.  Having  ostensibly  discredited  the  authority  of  the  senses 
and  the  reason  (by  which  he  was  to  be  read  and  understood),  ho 
proceeded  in  the  customary  way  to  set  up  the  ancient  standard  of 
the  consensus  universalis,  the  authority  of  the  majority,  the  least 
reflective  and  the  most  fallacious.  This  he  sought  to  elevate  into 
a  kind  of  corporate  wisdom,  superior  to  all  individual  judgment ;  and 
he  marched  straight  into  the  countersense  of  claiming  the  pagan 
consensus  as  a  confirmation  of  religion  in  general,  while  arguing  for 
a  religion  which  claimed  to  put  aside  paganism  as  error.  The  final 
logical  content  of  the  thesis  was  the  inanity  that  the  majority  for 
the  time  being  must  be  right. 

Damiron,  writing  his  Essai  sur  Vhistoire  de  la  pJiilosophie  en 
France  au  XIXe  Sidcle  in  1828,  replies  in  a  fashion  more  amiable 
than  reassuring,  commenting  on  the  "  strange  skepticism  "  of  Lamen- 
nais as  to  the  human  reason.^  For  himself,  he  takes  up  the  parable 
of  Lessing,  and  declares  that  where  Lessing  spoke  doubtfully,  men 
had  now  reached  conviction.  It  was  no  longer  a  question  of 
whether,  but  of  when,  religion  was  to  be  recast  in  terms  of  fuller 
intelligence.     '*  In  this  religious  regeneration  we  shall   be   to  the 

*  Adam,  as  cited,  pp.  227-30. 

2  In  his  Melanges  philosophiques  (1833),  Eng.  trans,  (incomplete)  by  George  Ripley. 
Philos.  Essays  of  Th.  Jouffroy,  Edinburgh.  1839.  ii.  32.  Ripley,  who  was  one  of  the 
American  transcendentalist  group  and  a  member  of  the  Brook  Farm  Colony,  indicates 
his  own  semi-rationalism  in  his  Introductory  Note,  p.  xxv. 

^  Milanges  philosophiques,  toraas.  as  cited,  ii,  95.  *  Essai,  cited,  i,  232,  237. 


Christians  what  the  Christians  were  to  the  Jews,  and  the  Jews  to 
the  patriarchs  :  we  shall  be  Christians  and  something  more."  The 
theologian  of  the  future  will  be  half-physicist,  half-philosopher. 
"  We  shall  study  God  through  nature  and  through  men ;  and  a  new 
Messiah  will  not  be  necessary  to  teach  us  miraculously  what  we 
can  learn  of  ourselves  and  by  our  natural  lights."  Christianity  has 
been  a  useful  discipline;  but  "our  education  is  so  advanced  that 
henceforth  we  can  be  our  own  teachers  ;  and,  having  no  need  of  an 
extraneous  inspiration,  we  draw  faith  from  science."^  "Prayer  is 
good,  doubtless,"  but  it  "  has  only  a  mysterious,  uncertain,  remote 
action  on  our  environment."  ^  All  this  under  Louis  Philippe,  from 
a  professor  at  the  Ecole  Normale.  Not  to  this  day  has  official 
academic  philosophy  in  Britain  ventured  to  go  so  far.  In  France 
the  brains  were  never  out,  even  under  the  Eestoration.  Lamennais 
himself  gave  the  proof.  His  employment  of  skepticism  as  an  aid 
to  faith  had  been,  like  Montaigne's,  the  expression  of  a  temperament 
slow  to  reach  rational  positions,  but  surely  driven  thither.  As  a 
boy  of  twelve,  when  a  priest  sought  to  prepare  him  for  communion, 
he  had  shown  such  abnormal  incredulity  that  the  priest  gave  him 
up;  and  later  he  read  omnivorously  among  the  deists  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  Kousseau  attracting  him  in  particular.  Later 
he  passed  through  a  religious  crisis,  slowly  covering  ground  which 
others  traverse  early.  He  did  not  become  a  communicant  till  he 
was  twenty-two;  he  entered  the  seminary  only  at  twenty-seven; 
and  he  was  ordained  only  when  he  was  nearly  thirty-two. 

Yet  he  had  experienced  much.  Already  in  1808  his  Beflexions 
sur  Vitat  de  I'eglise  had  been  suppressed  by  Napoleon's  police;  in 
1814  he  had  written,  along  with  his  brother,  in  whose  seminary  he 
taught  mathematics,  a  treatise  maintaining  the  papal  claims ;  and 
in  the  Hundred  Days  of  1815  he  took  flight  to  London.  His  mind 
was  always  at  work.  His  Essay  on  Indifference  expressed  his  need 
of  a  conviction  ;  with  unbelief  he  could  reckon  and  sympathize  ; 
with  indifference  he  could  not ;  but  when  the  indifference  was  by 
his  own  account  the  result  of  reflective  unbelief  he  treated  it  in  the 
same  fashion  as  the  spontaneous  form.  At  bottom,  his  quarrel  was 
with  reason.  Yet  the  very  element  in  his  mind  which  prompted 
his  anti-rational  polemic  was  ratiocinative  ;  and  as  he  slowly  reached 
clearness  of  thought  he  came  more  and  more  into  conflict  with 
Catholicism.  It  was  all  very  well  to  flout  the  individual  reason  in 
the  name  of  the  universal ;  but  to  give  mankind  a  total  infallibility 


1  Id.  pp.  241-43. 
VOL.  II 


2  Id.  p-  221. 


2i 


I 


482     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS 


483 


was  not  the  way  to  satisfy  a  pope  or  a  Church  which  claimed  a 
monopoly  of  the  gift.  In  1824  he  was  well  received  by  the  pope ; 
but  when  in  1830  he  began  to  write  Liberal  articles  in  the  journal 
L'Avenir,  in  which  he  collaborated  with  Lacordaire,  the  Comte  de 
Montalembert,  and  other  neo-CathoHcs,  offence  was  quickly  taken, 
and  the  journal  was  soon  suspended.  Lamennais  and  his  disciples 
Lacordaire  and  Montalembert  went  to  Kome  to  plead  their  cause, 
but  were  coldly  received ;  and  on  their  way  home  in  1832  received 
at  Munich  a  missive  of  severe  reprimand. 

Eendering  formal  obedience,  Lamennais  retired,  disillusioned, 
with  his  friends  to  his  and  his  brother's  estate  in  Brittany,  and 
began  his  process  of  intellectual  severance.  In  January,  1833,  he 
performed  mass,  and  at  this  stage  he  held  by  his  artificial  distinction 
between  the  spheres  of  faith  and  reason.  In  May  of  that  year  he 
declared  his  determination  to  place  himself  "  as  a  writer  outside  of 
the  Church  and  CathoHcism,"  declaring  that  "  outside  of  CathoHcism, 
outside  faith,  there  is  reason ;  outside  of  the  Church  there  is 
humanity;  I  place  myself  {je  me  renferme)  in  this  sphere."^ 
Still  he  claimed  to  be  simple  fiddle  en  religio7i,  and  to  combine 
"fidelity  in  obedience  with  liberty  in  science."^  In  January  of 
1834,  however,  he  had  ceased  to  perform  any  clerical  function ;  and 
his  Paroles  d'un  Croyant,  published  in  that  year,  stand  for  a  faith 
which  the  Church  reckoned  as  infidelity. 

Lacordaire,  separating  from  his  insubordinate  colleague,  pub- 
lished an  Examen  de  la  philosophie  de  M.  de  Larmnnais,  in  which 
the  true  papal  standpoint  was  duly  taken.  Thenceforth  Lamennais 
was  an  IshmaeHte.  Feeling  as  strongly  in  politics  as  in  everything 
else,  he  was  infuriated  by  the  brutal  suppression  of  the  PoHsh  rising 
in  1831-32 ;  and  the  government  of  Louis  Philippe  pleased  him  as 
little  as  that  of  Charles  X  had  done.  In  1841  he  was  sentenced  to 
a  year's  imprisonment  for  his  brochure  Le  pays  et  le  gouvernemeyit 
(1840).  Shortly  before  his  death  in  1854  he  claimed  that  he  had 
never  changed :  "  I  have  gone  on,  that  is  all."  But  he  had  in  effect 
changed  from  a  Catholic  to  a  pantheist;^  and  in  1848,  as  a  member 
of  the  National  Assembly,  he  more  than  once  startled  his  colleagues 
by  "an  affectation  of  impiety.'"*  On  his  deathbed  he  refused  to 
receive  the  cur6  of  the  parish,  and  by  his  own  wish  he  was  buried 
without  any  religious  ceremony,  in  the  fosse  commune  of  the  poor 
and  with  no  cross  on  his  grave. 


*  Correfipondance,  1858-86.  letter  of  May  26. 1833. 

2  Letters  of  August  1  and  November  25. 

8  Cp.  Ch.  Adam.  La  Philosophie  en  France,  18Qi,  p.  105. 


*  Id.  p.  84. 


Such  a  type  does  not  very  clearly  belong  to  rationahsm ;  and 
Lamennais  never  enrolled  himself  save  negatively  under  that  flag. 
Always  emotional  and  impulsive,  he  had  in  his  period  of  aggressive 
fervour  as  a  Churchman  played  a  rather  sinister  part  in  the  matter 
of  the  temporary  insanity  of  Auguste  Comte,  lending  himself  to  the 
unscrupulous  tactics  of  the  philosopher's  mother,  who  did  not  stick 
at  hbelling  her  son's  wife  in  order  to  get  him  put  under  clerical 
control.*  It  was  perhaps  well  for  him  that  he  was  forced  out  of  the 
Church  ;  for  his  love  of  liberty  was  too  subjective  to  have  quahfied 
him  for  a  wise  use  of  power.  But  the  spectacle  of  such  a  tempera- 
ment forced  into  antagonism  with  the  Church  on  moral  and  social 
grounds  could  not  but  stimulate  anti-clericaHsm  in  France,  what- 
ever his  philosophy  may  have  done  to  promote  rational  thinking. 

8.  The  most  energetic  and  characteristic  philosophy  produced 
in  the  new  France  was  that  of  AuGUSTE  COMTE,  which  as  set  forth 
in  the  Cours  de  Philosophie  Positive  (1830-42)  practically  reaffirmed 
while  it  recast  and  supplemented  the  essentials  of  the  anti-theo- 
logical rationalism  of  the  previous  age,  and  in  that  sense  rebuilt 
French  positivism,  giving  that  new  name  to  the  naturalistic  principle. 
Though  Comte's  direct  following  was  never  large,  it  is  significant 
that  soon  after  the  completion  of  his  Cotcrs  we  find  Saisset  lamenting 
that  the  war  between  the  clergy  and  the  philosophers,  "  suspended 
by  the  great  pohtical  commotion  of  1830,"  had  been  "revived  with 
a  new  energy."^  The  later  effort  of  Comte  to  frame  a  poKtico- 
ecclesiastical  system  never  succeeded  beyond  the  formation  of  a 
politically  powerless  sect ;  and  the  attempt  to  prove  its  consistency 
with  his  philosophic  system  by  claiming  that  from  the  first  he  had 
harboured  a  plan  of  social  regulation^  is  beside  the  case.  A  man's 
way  of  thinking  may  involve  intellectual  contradictions  all  through 
his  life ;  and  Comte's  did.  Positivism  in  the  scientific  sense  cannot 
be  committed  to  any  one  man's  scheme  for  regulating  society  and 
conserving  "cultus";  and  Comte's  was  merely  one  of  the  many 
evoked  in  France  by  the  memory  of  an  age  of  revolutions.  It 
belongs,  indeed,  to  the  unscientific  and  unphilosophic  side  of  his 
mind,  the  craving  for  authority  and  the  temper  of  ascendency,  which 
connect  with  his  admiration  of  the  medieval.  Church.  Himself 
philosophically  an  atheist,  he  condemned  atheists  because  they 
mostly  contemned  his  passion  for  regimentation.  By  reason  of  this 
idiosyncrasy  and  of  the  habitually  dictatorial  tone  of  his  doctrine, 

^  Littr6.  Auguste  Comte  et  la  philosophie  positive,  pp.  123,  125-26. 
Article  in  1844,  rep.  in  Essais  sur  la  philosophie  et  la  religion,  1845,  p.  1. 
See  M.  L6vy-Bruhl'8  Philosophy  of  Auguste  Comte,  Eng.  tr.  pp.  10-15.    M.  L6vy-Bruhl 
really  does  not  attempt  to  meet  jLittr6's  argument,  which  he  puts  aside. 


484    FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 

he  has  made  his  converts  latterly  more  from  the  religious  than  from 
the  freethinking  ranks.  But  both  in  France  and  in  England  his 
philosophy  tinged  all  the  new  thought  of  his  time,  his  leading 
English  adherents  in  particular  being  among  the  most  esteemed 
publicists  of  the  day.  Above  all,  he  introduced  the  conception  of 
a  "science  of  society"  where  hitherto  there  had  ruled  the  haziest 
forms  of  "providentialism."  In  France  the  general  effect  of  the 
rationalistic  movement  had  been  such  that  when  Taine,  under  the 
Third  Empire,  assailed  the  whole  "  classic "  school  in  his  Philo- 
sophes  classiques  (1857),  his  success  was  at  once  generally  recog- 
nized, and  a  non-Comtist  positivism  was  thenceforth  the  ruHng 
philosophy.  The  same  thing  has  happened  in  Italy,  where  quite 
a  number  of  university  professors  are  explicitly  positivist  in  their 
philosophic  teaching.' 

9.  In  Britain,  where  abstract  philosophy  after  Berkeley  had 
been  mainly  left  to  Hume  and  the  Scotch  thinkers  who  opposed 
him,  metaphysics  was  for  a  generation  practically  overriden  by  the 
moral  and  social  sciences  ;  Hartley's  Christian  Materialism  making 
small  headway  as  formulated  by  him,  though  it  was  followed  up  by 
the  Unitarian  Priestley.  The  reaction  against  the  Eevolution, 
indeed,  seems  to  have  evicted  everything  in  the  nature  of  active 
philosophic  thought  from  the  universities  in  the  first  decade  of  the 
nineteenth  century  ;  at  Oxford  it  was  taught  in  a  merely  traditionary 
fashion,  in  lamentable  contrast  to  what  was  going  on  in  Germany  ;^ 
and  in  Scotland  in  the  'thirties  things  had  fallen  to  a  similar  level.^ 
It  was  over  practical  issues  that  new  thought  germinated  in  England. 
The  proof  of  the  change  wrought  in  the  direction  of  native  thought 
is  seen  in  the  personalities  of  the  men  who,  in  the  teeth  of  the 
reaction,  applied  rationalistic  method  to  ethics  and  psychology. 
Bentham  and  James  Mill  were  in  their  kindred  fields  among  the 
most  convinced  and  active  freethinkers  of  their  day,  the  former 
attacking  both  clericalism  and  orthodoxy ;  *  while  the  latter,  no  less 
pronounced  in  his  private  opinions,  more  cautiously  built  up  a 
rigorously  naturalistic  psychology  in  his  Analysis  of  the  Human 
Mind  (1829).  Bentham's  utilitarianism  was  so  essentially  anti- 
Christian  that  he  could  hardly  have  been  more  disliked  by  discerning 
theists  if  he  had  avowed  his  share  in  the  authorship  of  the  atheistic 
Analysis  of  the  Influence  of  Natural  Beligion,  which,  elaborated 

1  Cp.  Prof.  Botta's  chapter  in  Ueberweg's  Hist,  of  Philos.  ii,  513-16. 

2  Yeitch' 8  Memoir  of  Sir  William  HamtltOiit  1S69,  p.  54.    Cp.  Hamilton's  own  Discus- 
sions, 1852,  p.  187  (rep.  of  article  of  1839).  »  Veitch.  p.  214. 

*  In  his  Church  of  Engkmdism  and  its  Catechism  Examined  (1818),  and  Not  Paul  but 
Jesus  (1823),  by  "  Gamaliel  Smith." 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS 


485 


s^ 


( 

''I 


I 
'I  I 


from  his  manuscript  by  no  less  a  thinker  than  Geokge  Grote, 
was  published  in  1822.^  Pseudonymous  as  that  essay  is,  it  seeks 
to  guard  against  the  risk  of  prosecution  by  the  elaborate  stipulation 
that  what  it  discusses  is  always  the  influence  of  natural  religion  on 
life,  revealed  religion  being  another  matter.  But  this  is  of  course 
the  merest  stratagem,  the  whole  drift  of  the  book  being  a  criticism 
of  the  effects  of  the  current  religion  on  contemporary  society.  It 
greatly  influenced  J.  S.  Mill,  whose  essay  on  The  Utility  of  Beligion 
echoes  its  beginning ;  and  if  it  had  been  a  little  less  drab  in  style  it 
might  have  influenced  many  more. 

But  Bentham's  ostensible  restriction  of  his  logic  to  practical 
problems  of  law  and  morals  secured  him  a  wider  influence  than  was 
wielded  by  any  of  the  higher  publicists  of  his  day.  The  whole 
tendency  of  his  school  was  intensely  rationalistic ;  and  it  indirectly 
affected  all  thought  by  its  treatment  of  economics,  which  from 
Hume  and  Smith  onwards  had  been  practically  divorced  from 
theology.  Even  clerical  economists,  such  as  Malthus  and  Chalmers, 
alike  orthodox  in  religion,  furthered  naturalism  in  philosophy  in 
spite  of  themselves  by  their  insistence  on  the  law  of  population, 
which  is  the  negation  of  divine  benevolence  as  popularly  conceived. 
A  not  unnatural  result  was  a  religious  fear  of  all  reasoning  what- 
ever, and  a  disparagement  of  the  very  faculty  of  reason.  This, 
however,  was  sharply  resisted  by  the  more  cultured  champions  of 
orthodoxy,^  to  the  great  advantage  of  critical  discussion. 

10.  When  English  metaphysical  philosophy  revived  with  Sir 
WiUiam  Hamilton,^  it  was  on  the  lines  of  a  dialectical  resistance  to 
the  pantheism  of  Germany,  in  the  interests  of  faith ;  though  Hamil- 
ton's dogmatic  views  were  always  doubtful.^  Admirably  learned, 
and  adroit  in  metaphysical  fence,  he  always  grounded  his  theism  on 
the  alleged  "  needs  of  our  moral  nature  " — a  declaration  of  philo- 
sophical bankruptcy.  The  vital  issue  was  brought  to  the  front 
after  his  death  in  the  Bampton  Lectures  (1858)  of  his  supporter 
Dean  Mansel ;  and  between  them  they  gave  the  decisive  proof  that 
the  orthodox  cause  had  been  philosophically  lost  while  being  socially 
won,  since  their  theism  emphasized  in  the  strongest  way  the 
negative  criticism  of  Kant,  leaving  deity  void  of  all  philosophically 
cognizable   quaUties.     Hamilton   and   Mansel   ahke   have   received 

1  Under  the  pseudonym  of  Philip  Beauchamp.  See  The  Minor  Works  of  George  Grote, 
edited  by  Professor  Bain,  1873.  p.  18;  Athenceum,  May  31, 1873;  J.  S.  Mill's  Autobiography, 
p.  69 ;  and  Three  Essays  on  Religion,  p.  76. 

2  Cp.  Morell,  Spec.  Philos.  of  Europe  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  ii,  620  ;  and  Life  and 
Corr.  of  Whately.  by  E.  Jane  Whately.  abridged  ed.  p.  159. 

8  Articles  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  (182&-30) :  and  professorial  lectures  at  Edinburgh 
1839-56).  4  Cp.  Veitch's  Memoir,  pp.  195-97. 


486     FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 

severe  fcreatmenfe  at  the  hands  of  Mill  and  others  for  the  calculated 
irrationalism  and  the  consequent  immoralism  of  their  doctrine, 
which  insisted  on  attributing  moral  bias  to  an  admittedly  Unknow- 
able Absolute,  and  on  standing  for  Christian  mysteries  on  the 
skeptical  ground  that  reason  is  an  imperfect  instrument,  and  that 
our  moral  faculties  and  feelings  "  demand  "  the  traditional  beliefs. 
But  they  did  exactly  what  was  needed  to  force  rationalism  upon 
open  and  able  minds.  It  is  indeed  astonishing  to  find  so  constantly 
repeated  by  trained  reasoners  the  old  religious  blunder  of  reasoning 
from  the  inadequacy  of  reason  to  the  need  for  faith.  The  disputant 
says  in  efifect :  "  Our  reason  is  not  to  be  trusted  ;  let  us  then  on  that 
score  rationally  decide  to  believe  what  is  handed  down  to  us":  for 
if  the  argument  is  not  a  process  of  reasoning  it  is  nothing ;  and  if 
it  is  to  stand,  it  is  an  assertion  of  the  validity  it  denies.  Evidently 
the  number  of  minds  capable  of  such  self-stultification  is  great ;  but 
among  minds  at  once  honest  and  competent  the  number  capable  of 
detecting  the  absurdity  must  be  considerable  ;  and  the  invariable 
result  of  its  use  down  to  our  own  time  is  to  multiply  unbelievers  in 
the  creed  so  absurdly  defended. 

It  is  difficult  to  free  Mansel  from  the  charge  of  seeking  to  confuse 
and  bewilder ;  but  mere  contact  with  the  processes  of  reasoning  in 
his  Bampton  Lectures  is  almost  refreshing  after  much  acquaintance 
with  the  see-saw  of  vituperation  and  platitude  which  up  to  that 
time  mostly  passed  muster  for  defence  of  religion  in  nineteenth- 
century  England.  He  made  for  a  revival  of  intellectual  life.  And 
he  suffered  enough  at  the  hands  of  his  co-religionists,  including 
F.  D.  Maurice,  to  set  up  something  like  compassion  in  the  mind  of 
the  retrospective  rationahst.  Accused  of  having  adopted  "the 
absolute  and  infinite,  as  defined  after  the  leaders  of  German  meta- 
physics," as  a  "  synonym  for  the  true  and  living  God,"  he  protested 
that  he  had  done  "exactly  the  reverse.  I  assert  that  the  absolute 
and  infinite,  as  defined  in  the  German  metaphysics,  and  in  all  other 
metaphysics  ivith  tvhich  I  am  acquainted,  is  a  notion  which  destroys 
itself  by  its  own  contradictions.  I  believe  also  that  God  is,  in  some 
manner  incomprehensible  by  me,  both  absolute  and  infinite ;  and 
that  those  attributes  exist  in  Him  ivithout  any  repugnance  or  contra- 
diction  at  all.  Hence  I  maintain  throughout  that  the  infinite  of 
philosophy  is  not  the  true  infinite,''  ^     Charged  further  with  borrowing 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS 


487 


1  Bampton  Lectures  on  The  Limitn  o/  Eeligioitit  Thought,  4th  ed.  pref.  p.  xxxvi,  note. 
After  thus  declaring  aU  metaphysics  to  be  profoundly  delusive,  Mansel  shows  at  his  worst 
(Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned,  1866,  p.  188)  by  disparaging  Mill  as  an  incompetent  meta- 
physician. 


without  acknowledgment  from  Newman,  the  Dean  was  reduced  to 
crediting  Newman  with  "  transcendent  gifts  "  while  claiming  to  have 
read  almost  nothing  by  him,'  and  winding  up  with  a  quotation  from 
Newman  inviting  men  to  seek  solace  from  the  sense  of  nescience  in 

blind  belief. 

It  was  said  of  Hamilton  that,  "  having  scratched  his  eyes  out  in 
the  bush  of  reason,  he  scratched  them  in  again  in  the  bush  of  faith  "; 
and  when  that  could  obviously  be  said  also  of  his  reverend  pupil, 
the  philosophic  tide  was  clearly  on  the  turn.     Within  two  years  of 
the  delivery  of  Mansel's  lectures  his   and  Hamilton's  philosophic 
positions  were  being  confidently  employed  as  an  open  and  avowed 
basis  for  the  naturalistic  First  Principles  (1860-62)  of  Herbert 
Spencer,  wherein,  with  an  unfortunate  laxity  of  metaphysic  on 
the  author's  own  part,  and  a  no  less  unfortunate  lack  of  consistency 
as  regards  the  criticism  of  religious  and  anti-rehgious  positions,^  the 
new   cosmic   conceptions   are   unified  in  a  masterly  conception  of 
evolution  as  a  universal  law.     This  service,  the  rendering  of  which 
was  quite  beyond  the  capacity  of  the  multitude  of  Spencer's  meta- 
physical critics,  marks  him  as  one  of  the  great  influences  of  his  age. 
Strictly,  the  book  is  a  "  System  of  Nature  "  rather  than  a  philosophy 
in  the  sense  of  a  study  of  the  grounds  and  limitations  of  knowledge ; 
that  is  to  say,  it  is  on  the  former  ground  alone  that  it  is  coherent 
and  original.     But  its  very  imperfections  on  the  other  side  have 
probably  promoted  its  reception   among   minds   already  shaken  in 
theology  by  the  progress  of  concrete  science  ;  while  at  the  same 
time  such  imperfections  give  a  hostile  foothold  to  the  revived  forms 
of  theism.     In  any  case,  the  "  agnostic  "  foundation  supplied  by  the 
despairing  dialectic  of  Hamilton  and  Mansel  has  always  constituted 
the  most  effective  part  of  the  Spencerian  case. 

11,  The  effect  of  the  ethical  pressure  of  the  deistic  attack  on  the 
intelligence  of  educated  Christians  was  fully  seen  even  within  the 
Anglican  Church  before  the  middle  of  the  century.  The  unstable 
Coleridge,  who  had  gone  round  the  whole  compass  of  opinion*  when 
he  began  to  wield  an  influence  over  the  more  sensitive  of  the  younger 
Churchmen,  was  strenuous  in  a  formal  affirmation  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity,  but  no  less  anxious  to  modify  the  doctrine  of  Atone- 

1  Id.  p.  xxxviii.  ,  .  ,  .     ,  ,         .^.     - 

2  Spencer  has  avowed  in  his  Autohiogravhy  (ii,  75)  what  might  be  surmized  by  critical 
readers,  that  he  wrote  the  First  Part  of  First  Principles  in  order  to  guard  against  the 
charge  of  "  materialism."  This  motive  led  him  to  misrepresent  " atheism,"  and  there  was 
a  touch  of  retribution  in  the  general  disregard  of  his  disavowal  of  materialism,  at  which 
he  expresses  surprise.  The  broad  fact  remains  that  for  prudential  reasons  he  set  forth  at 
the  very  outset  of  his  system  a  set  of  conclusions  which  could  properly  be  reached  only 
at  the  end.  if  at  all.  ,  __        _ 

3  As  to  his  fluctuations,  which  lasted  till  his  death,  cp.  the  author  s  New  Essays 
towards  a  Critical  Method,  1897.  pp.  144-47. 14&-54, 168-69. 


I 


488     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 


MODEEN  JEWEY 


489 


ment  on  which  the  conception  of  the  Trinity  was  historically 
founded.  In  the  hands  of  Maurice  the  doctrine  of  sacrifice  became 
one  of  example  to  the  end  of  subjective  regeneration  of  the  sinner. 
This  view,  which  was  developed  by  John  the  Scot— perhaps  from 
hints  in  Origen^— and  again  by  Bernardino  Ochino,^  is  specially 
associated  with  the  teaching  of  Coleridge  ;  but  it  was  quite  inde- 
pendently held  in  England  before  him  by  the  Anglican  Dr.  Parr 
(1747-1825),  who  appears  to  have  been  heterodox  upon  most  points 
in  the  orthodox  creed,^  and  who,  like  Servetus  and  Coleridge  and 
Hegel,  held  by  a  modal  as  against  a  "personal"  Trinity.  The 
advance  in  ethical  sensitiveness  which  had  latterly  marked  English 
thought,  and  which  may  perhaps  be  traced  in  equal  degrees  to  the 
influence  of  Shelley  and  to  that  of  Bentham,  counted  for  much  in 
this  shifting  of  Christian  ground.  The  doctrine  of  salvation  by 
faith  was  by  many  felt  to  be  morally  indefensible.  Such  Unitarian 
accommodations  presumably  reconciled  to  Christianity  and  the 
Church  many  who  would  otherwise  have  abandoned  them  ;  and  the 
only  orthodox  rebuttal  seems  to  have  been  the  old  and  dangerous 
resort  to  the  Butlerian  argument,  to  the  effect  that  the  God  of 
Nature  shows  no  such  benign  fatherliness  as  the  anti-sacrificial 
school  ascribe  to  him.'*  This  could  only  serve  to  emphasize  the 
moral  bankruptcy  of  Butler's  philosophy,  to  which  Mansel,  in  an 
astonishing  passage  of  his  Bampton  Lectures,'^  had  shown  himself 
incredibly  blind. 

The  same  pressure  of  moral  argument  was  doubtless  potent  in 
the  development  of  "Socinian"  or  other  rationalistic  views  in  the 
Protestant  Churches  of  Germany,  Holland,  Hungary,  Switzerland, 
and  France  in  the  first  half  of  the  century.  Such  development  had 
gone  so  far  that  by  the  middle  of  the  century  the  Churches  in 
question  were,  to  the  eye  of  an  English  evangelical  champion,  pre- 
dominantly rationalistic,  and  in  that  sense  "infidel."^  Eeactions 
have  been  claimed  before  and  since;  but  in  our  own  age  there  is 
little  to  show  for  them.  In  the  United  States,  again,  the  ethical 
element  probably  predominated  in  the  recoil  of  Emeeson  from 
Christian  orthodoxy  even  of  the  Unitarian  stamp,  as  well  as  in  the 
heresy  of  THEODORE  Parker,  whose  aversion  to  the  theistic  ethic 

*  Baur.  Die  christliche  Lehre  der  Versdhnung,  1838,  pp.  54-63, 124-31. 
2  Benrath.  Benmrdino  Ochino,  Eng.  tr.  pp.  248-87. 

8  Field's  Memoirs  of  Parr,  1828.  ii.  363,  374-79. 

*  See  Pearson's  Infidelity,  its  Aspects,  Causes, and  Ageyicies,  18.53.  p.  215  sq.  The  position 
of  Maurice  and  Parr  (associated  with  other  and  later  nanaes)  is  there  treated  as  one  of  the 
prevailing  forms  of  "infidelity,"  and  called  spiritualism.  In  Germany  the  orthodox 
made  the  same  dangerous  answer  to  the  theistic  criticism.  See  the  Memoirs  of  F. 
Perthes,  Eng.  tr.  2nd.  ed.  ii.  242-43.  «  Ed.  cited,  pp.  158-59. 

6  Pearson,  as  cited,  pp.  560-62.  568-79,  584-84. 


of  Jonathan  Edwards  was  so  strong  as  to  make  him  blind  to  the 
reasoning  power  of  that  stringent  Calvinist. 

12.  A  powerful  and  wholesome  stimulus  was  given  to  English 
thought  throughout  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  by  the 
many-sided  influence  of  JOHN  STUART  MiLL,  who,  beginning  by 
a  brilliant  Syste7n  of  Logic  (1843),  which  he  followed  up  with  a  less 
durable  exposition  of  the  Prijiciples  of  Political  Economy  (1848), 
became  through  his  shorter  works  On  Liberty  and  on  various 
political  problems  one  of  the  most  popular  of  the  serious  writers  of 
his  age.  It  was  not  till  the  posthumous  issue  of  his  Autobiography 
and  his  Three  Essays  on  Religion  (1874)  that  many  of  his  readers 
realized  how  complete  was  his  alienation  from  the  current  religion, 
from  his  childhood  up.  In  his  Examination  of  Sir  William 
Hamilton's  Philosophy  (1865),  indeed,  he  had  indignantly  repudiated 
the  worship  of  an  unintelligibly  good  God  ;  but  he  had  there  seemed 
to  take  for  granted  the  God-idea  ;  and  save  in  inconclusive  passages 
in  the  Liberty  (1859)  he  had  indicated  no  rejection  of  Christianity. 
But  though  the  Liberty  was  praised  by  Kingsley  and  contemned  by 
Carlyle,  it  made  for  freethinking  no  less  than  for  tolerance  ;  and 
his  whole  life's  work  made  for  reason.  "  The  saint  of  rationahsm  " 
was  Gladstone's^  account  of  him  as  a  parliamentarian.  His  post- 
humous presentment  to  the  world  of  the  strange  conception  of  a 
limited-liabiHty  God,  the  victim  of  circumstances — a  theorem  which 
meets  neither  the  demand  for  a  theistic  explanation  of  the  universe 
nor  the  worshipper's  craving  for  support — sets  up  some  wonder  as 
to  his  philosophy  ;  but  was  probably  as  disintegrative  of  orthodoxy 
as  a  more  philosophical  performance  would  have  been. 

Section  7. — Modern  Jewry 

In  the  culture-life  of  the  dispersed  Jews,  in  the  modern  period, 
there  is  probably  as  much  variety  of  credence  in  regard  to  religion 
as  occurs  in  the  life  of  Christendom  so  called.  Such  names  as  those 
of  Spinoza,  Jacobi,  Moses  Mendelssohn,  Heine,  and  Karl  Marx  tell 
sufficiently  of  Jewish  service  to  freethought ;  and  each  one  of  these 
must  have  had  many  disciples  of  his  own  race.  Deism  among  the 
educated  Jews  of  Germany  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  probably 
common.'  The  famous  Kabbi  Elijah  of  Wilna  (d.  1797),  entitled 
the  Gaon,  "the  great  one,"  set  up  a  movement  of  relatively  ration- 
alistic pietism  that  led  to  the  establishment  in  1803  of  a  Eabbinical 

1  Letter  in  W.  L.  Courtney's  J.  S.  Mill,  1889,  p.  142. 

2  Cp.  Schechter,  Studies  in  Judaism,  1896,  pp.  59. 71.     Schechter  writes  with  a  marked 
Judaic  prejudice. 


490    FKEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUBY 


THE  ORIENTAL  CIVILIZATIONS 


491 


college  afc  Walosin,  which  has  flourished  ever  since,  and  had  in  1888 
no  fewer  than  400  students,  among  whose  successors  there  goes  on 
a  certain  amount  of  independent  study/  In  the  freer  world  outside 
critical  thought  has  asserted  itself  within  the  pale  of  orthodox 
Judaism  ;  witness  such  a  writer  as  Nachman  Krochmal  (1785-1840), 
whose  posthumous  Guide  to  the  Perplexed  of  the  Time'^  (1851), 
though  not  a  scientific  \vork,  is  ethically  and  philosophically  in 
advance  of  the  orthodox  Judaism  of  its  age.  Of  Krochmal  it  has 
been  said  that  he  "  was  inspired  in  his  work  by  the  study  of  Hegel,  just 
as  Maimonides  had  been  by  the  study  of  Aristotle."  ^  The  result  is 
only  a  liberalizing  of  Jewish  orthodoxy  in  the  light  of  historic  study,* 
such  as  went  on  among  Christians  in  the  same  period ;  but  it  is 
thus  a  stepping-stone  to  further  science. 

To-day  educated  Jewry  is  divided  in  somewhat  the  same  propor- 
tions as  Christendom  into  absolute  rationalists  and  liberal  and 
fanatical  beUevers  ;  and  representatives  of  all  three  types,  of  difiPerent 
social  grades,  may  be  found  among  the  Zionists,  whose  movement 
for  the  acquisition  of  a  new  racial  home  has  attracted  so  mucli 
attention  and  sympathy  in  recent  years.  Whether  or  not  that 
movement  attains  to  any  decisive  political  success,  Judaism  clearly 
cannot  escape  the  solvent  influences  which  afi'ect  all  European 
opinion.  As  in  the  case  of  the  Christian  Church,  the  synagogue  in 
the  centres  of  culture  keeps  the  formal  adherence  of  some  who  no 
longer  think  on  its  plane  ;  but  while  attempts  are  made  from  time 
to  time  to  set  up  more  rationalistic  institutions  for  Jew^s  with  the 
modern  bias,  the  general  tendency  is  to  a  division  between  devotees 
of  the  old  forms  and  those  who  have  decided  to  live  by  reason. 

Section  8.— The  Oriental  Civilizations 
We  have  already  seen,  in  discussing  the  culture  histories  of 
India,  China,  and  Moslem  Persia,  how  ancient  elements  of  rationalism 
continue  to  germinate  more  or  less  obscurely  in  the  unpropitious 
soils  of  x\siatic  life.  Ignorance  is  in  most  oriental  countries  too 
immensely  preponderant  to  permit  of  any  other  species  of  survival. 
But  sociology,  while  recognizing  the  vast  obstacles  to  the  higher 
life  presented  by  conditions  which  with  a  fatal  facility  multiply  the 
lower,  can  set  no  limit  to  the  possibilities  of  upward  evolution. 
The  case  of  Japan  is  a  sufiicient  rebuke  to  the  thoughtless  iterators 
of  the  formula  of  the  "  unprogressiveness  of  the  East."     While  a 

1  Id.  pp.  117-18. 

3  This  title  imitates  that  of  the  famous  More  Nebuchim  of  Maimonides. 

^  Zunz.  cited  by  Schechter,  p.  79. 

*  Whence  Krochmal  is  termed  liiie  Father  of  Jewish  Science.    Id.  p.  81. 


cheerfully  superstitious  religion  is  there  still  normal  among  the 
mass,  the  transformation  of  the  political  ideals  and  practice  of  the 
nation  under  the  influence  of  European  example  is  so  great  as  to 
be  unparalleled  in  human  history ;  and  it  has  inevitably  involved 
the  substitution  of  rationalism  for  supernaturalism  among  the  great 
majority  of  the  educated  younger  generation.  The  late  YUKICHI 
FUKUZAWA,  who  did  more  than  any  other  man  to  prepare  the 
Japanese  mind  for  the  great  transformation  effected  in  his  time,  was 
spontaneously  a  freethinker  from  his  childhood;^  and  through  a 
long  life  of  devoted  teaching  he  trained  thousands  to  a  naturalist 
way  of  thought.  That  they  should  revert  to  Christian  or  native 
orthodoxy  seems  as  impossible  as  such  an  evolution  is  seen  to  be 
in  educated  Hindostan,  where  the  higher  orders  of  intelligence  are 
probably  not  relatively  more  common  than  among  the  Japanese. 
The  final  question,  there  as  everywhere,  is  one  of  social  reconstruc- 
tion and  organization  ;  and  in  the  enormous  population  of  China 
the  problem,  though  very  different  in  degree  of  imminence,  is  the 
same  in  kind.  Perhaps  the  most  hopeful  consideration  of  all  is  that 
of  the  ever-increasing  inter-communication  which  makes  European 
and  American  progress  tend  in  every  succeeding  generation  to  tell 
more  and  more  on  Asiatic  life. 

As  to  Japan,  Professor  B.  H.  Chamberlain  pronounced 
twenty  years  ago  that  the  Japanese  "  now  bow  down  before 
the  shrine  of  Herbert  Spencer  "  {Things  Japanese,  3rd  ed.  1898, 
p.  321.  Cp.  Beligious  Systems  of  the  World,  3rd  ed.  p.  103), 
proceeding  in  another  connection  (p.  352)  to  describe  them  as 
essentially  an  undevotional  people.  Such  a  judgment  would  be 
hard  to  sustain.  The  Japanese  people  in  the  past  have  exhibited 
the  amount  of  superstition  normal  in  their  culture  stage  (cp.  the 
Voyages  de  C.  P.  Thunberg  au  Japon,  French  tr.  1796,  iii,  206)  ; 
and  in  our  own  day  they  differ  from  Western  peoples  on  this 
side  merely  in  respect  of  their  greater  general  serenity  of 
temperament.  There  were  in  Japan  in  1894  no  fewer  than 
71,831  Buddhist  temples,  and  190,803  Shinto  temples  and 
shrines ;  and  the  largest  temple  of  all,  costing  "  several  miUion 
dollars,"  was  built  in  the  last  dozen  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  To  the  larger  shrines  there  are  habitual  pilgrimages, 
the  numbers  annually  visiting  one  leading  Buddhist  shrine 
reaching  from  200,000  to  250,000,  while  at  the  Shinto  shrine 
of  Kompira  the  pilgrims  are  said  to  number  about  900,000 
each  year.  (See  The  Evolutio7i  of  the  Japanese,  1903,  by 
L.  Gulick,  an  American  missionary  organizer.) 

1  A  Life  of  Mr.  YuJcichi  Fukuzawa,  by  Asataro   Miyamori,  revised  by  Prof.  E.  H. 
Vickers,  Tokyo.  1902.  pp.  9-10. 


492     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 


THE  OEIENTAL  CIVILIZATIONS 


493 


Professor  Chamberlain  appears  to  have  construed  "  devo- 
tional"  in  the  light  of  a  special  conception  of  true  devotion. 
Yet  a  Christian  observer  testifies,  of  the  revivalist  sect  of 
Nichirenites,  "the  Eanters  of  Buddhism,"  that  "the  wildest 
excesses  that  seek  the  mantle  of  religion  in  other  lands  are  by 
them  equalled  if  not  excelled  "  (Grifltis,  The  Mikado's  Empire, 
1876,  p.  163) ;  and  Professor  Chamberlain  admits  that  *'  the 
religion  of  the  family  binds  them  [the  Japanese  in  general, 
including  the  '  most  materialistic  ']  down  in  truly  sacred  bonds  " 
while  another  writer,  who  thinks  Christianity  desirable  for 
Japan,  though  he  apparently  ranks  Japanese  morals  above 
Christian,  declares  that  in  his  travels  he  was  much  reassured 
by  the  superstition  of  the  innkeepers,  feeling  thankful  that  his 
hosts  were  "not  Agnostics  or  Secularists,"  but  devout  beHevers 
in  future  punishments  (Tracy,  Bamhles  through  Japan  without 
a  Guide,  1892.  pp.  131,  276,  etc.). 

A  third  authority  with  Japanese  experience.  Professor  W.  G. 
Dixon,  while   noting   a   generation    ago   that  "  among  certain 
classes  in  Japan  not  only  religious  earnestness  but  fanaticism 
and  superstition  still  prevail,"  decides  that  "  at  the  same  time 
it  remains  true  that  the  Japanese  are  not  in  the  main  a  very 
religious  people,  and  that  at  the  present  day  religion  is  in  lower 
repute  than  probably  it  has  ever  been  in  the  country's  history. 
Eeligious  indifference  is  one  of  the  prominent  features  of  new 
Japan"  (The  Land  of  the  Morning,  1882,  p.  517).     The  recon- 
ciliation of  these  estimates  lies  in  the  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  the  Japanese  populace  is  religious  in  very  much  the  same 
way  as  those  of  Italy  and  England,  while  the  more  educated 
classes   are   rationalistic,  not  because  of  any  "essential"  in- 
capacity for  "  devotion,"  but  because  of  enlightenment  and  lack 
of  countervailing  social  pressure.     To  the  eye  of  the  devotional 
Protestant  the  Catholics  of  Italy,  with  their  regard  to  externals, 
seem  "  essentially  "  irreligious  ;  and  vice  versa.     Such  formulas 
miss   science.       Two    hundred   years   ago   Charron,    following 
previous  schematists,  made  a  classification  in  which  northerners 
figured  as  strong,  active,  stupid,  warlike,   and   little   given  to 
religion  ;  the  southerners  as  slight,  abstinent,  obstinate,  unwar- 
like,  and  superstitious ;  and  the  "  middle  "  peoples  as  between 
the   two.     La  Sagesse,  liv.  i,   ch.    42.     The  cognate  formulas 
of  to-day  are  hardly  more  trustworthy.     Buddhism   triumphed 
over  Shint6ism  in  Japan  both  in  ancient  and  modern  times 
precisely  because  its  lore  and  ritual  make  so  much  more  appeal 
to    the    devotional    sense.      (Op.   Chamberlain,    pp.    358-62; 
Dixon,  ch.  X  ;  Eeligious  Systems  of  the   World,  pp.  103,  111; 
Griffis,  p.  166.)      But  the  aesthetically  charming  cult  of  the 
family,  with  its  poetic  recognition  of  ancestral  spirits  (as  to 
which  see  Lafcadio  Hearn,  Japan  :  An  Attempt  at  Literpreta- 
tion,  1904),  seems  to  hold  its  ground  as  well  as  any. 


So  universal  is  sociological  like  other  law  that  we  find  in 
Japan,  among  some  freethinkers,  the  same  disposition  as 
among  some  in  Europe  to  decide  that  religion  is  necessary  for 
the  people.  Professor  Chamberlain  (p.  352)  cites  Fukuzawa, 
"Japan's  most  representative  thinker  and  educationist,"  as 
openly  declaring  that  "  It  goes  without  saying  that  the  main- 
tenance of  peace  and  security  in  society  requires  a  religion. 
For  this  purpose  any  religion  will  do.  I  lack  a  religious 
nature,  and  have  never  believed  in  any  religion.  I  am  thus 
open  to  the  charge  that  I  am  advising  others  to  be  religious 
while  I  am  not  so.     Yet  my  conscience  does  not  permit  me  to 

clothe  myself  with  religion  when  I  have  it  not  at  heart Of 

religions  there  are  several  kinds — Buddhism,  Christianity,  and 
what  not.     From  my  standpoint  there  is  no  more  difference 

between  those  than  between  green  tea  and  black See  that 

the  stock  is  well  selected  and  the  prices  cheap "  (Japari 

Herald,  September  9,  1897).  To  this  view,  however,  Fukuzawa 
did  not  finally  adhere.  The  Eev.  Isaac  Dooman,  a  missionary 
in  Japan  w^ho  knew  him  well,  testifies  to  a  change  that  was 
taking  place  in  his  views  in  later  life  regarding  the  value  of 
religion.  In  an  unpublished  letter  to  Mr.  Eobert  Young,  of 
Kobe,  Mr.  Dooman  says  that  on  one  occasion,  when  conversing 
on  the  subject  of  Christianity,  Fukuzawa  remarked :  "  There 
was  a  time  when  I  advocated  its  adoption  as  a  means  to  elevate 
our  lower  classes ;  but,  after  finding  out  that  all  Christian 
countries  have  their  own  lower  classes  just  as  bad,  if  not  worse 
than  ours,  I  changed  my  mind."  Further  reflection,  marked 
by  equal  candour,  may  lead  the  pupils  of  Fukuzawa  to  see  that 
nations  cannot  be  led  to  adore  any  form  of  "  tea  "  by  the  mere 
assurance  of  its  indispensableness  from  leaders  who  confess 
they  never  take  any.  His  view  is  doubtless  shared  by  those 
priests  concerning  whom  "it  may  be  questioned  whether  in 
their  fundamental  beliefs  the  more  scholarly  of  the  Shinshiti 
priests  differ  very  widely  from  the  materialistic  agnostics  of 
Europe"  (Dixon,  p.  516).  In  this  state  of  things  the  Christian 
thinks  he  sees  his  special  opportunity.  Professor  Dixon  writes 
(p.  518),  in  the  manner  of  the  missionary,  that  "decaying 
shrines  and  broken  gods  are  to  be  seen  everywhere.  Not  only 
is  there  indifference,  but  there  is  a  rapidly-growing  skepticism. 

The  masses  too  are  becoming  affected  by  it Shintoism 

and Buddhism  are  doomed.     What  is  to  take  their  place? 

......It  must  be  either  Christianity  or  Atheism.     We  have  the 

brightest   hopes   that  the   former  will    triumph   in   the  near 

future " 

The  American  missionary  before  cited,  Mr.  Gulick,  argues 
alternately  that  the  educated  Japanese  are  religious  and  that 
they  are  not,  meaning  that  they  have  "religious  instincts," 
while  rejecting  current  creeds.     The  so-called  religious  instinct 


494     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

is  in  fact  simply  the  spirit  of  moral  and  intellectual  seriousness 
Mr.  Guhck's  summing-up,  as  distinct  from  his  theory  and 
forecast,  is  as  follows:  "For  about  three  hundred  years  the 
intelligence  of  the  nation  has  been  dominated  by  Confucian 
thought,  which    rejects    active   belief  in  supra-human  beings. 

The  tendency  of  all  persons  trained  in  Confucian  classics 

was  towards  thoroughgoing  skepticism  as  to  divine  beings  and 
their  relation  to  this  worid.  For  this  reason,  beyond  doubt, 
has  Western  agnosticism  found  so  easy  an  entrance  into  Japan! 

Complete  indifference  to   religion   is   characteristic   of  the 

educated  classes  of  to-day,  Japanese  and  foreigners,  Christians 
and  non-Christians  alike,  unite  in  this  opinion.  The  impression 
usually  conveyed  by  this  statement,  however,  is  that  agnos- 
ticism   IS    a   new   thing   in   Japan.     In  point  of  fact,  the  old 

agnosticism  is  merely  reinforced  by the  agnosticism  of  the 

West  "  [The  Evolution  of  the  Japanese,  pp.  286-87).  This  may 
be  taken  as  broadly  accurate.  Cp.  the  author's  paper  on 
Freethought  in  Japan"  in  the  Agnostic  Annual  for  1906. 
Professor  E.  H.  Parker  notes  {China  aiid  Beligio7i,  1905,  p.  263) 
that  the  Japanese  in  translating  Western  books  are  beginning, 
to  the  dismay  of  our  missionaries,  to  leave  out  all  the  Chris- 
tianity that  is  in  them." 

But  a  very  grave  danger  to  the  intellectual  and  moral  life  of 
Japan  has  been  of  late  set  up  by  a  new  application  of  Shintoism, 
on  the  lines  of  the  emperor-worship  of  ancient  Eome.     A  recent 
pamphlet  by  Professor    Chamberiain,  entitled  The  Invention  of  a 
New  Religion  (R.P.  A.;  1912),  incidentally  shows  that  the  Japanese 
temperament     is     so     far    from    being     "essentially"    devoid    of 
devotion  as  to  be  capable  of  building  up  a  fresh  cultus  to  order. 
It    appears    that    since    the  so-called   Restoration  of    1868,  when 
the  Imperial  House,  after  more  than  two  centuries  of  seclusion  in 
Kyoto,  was  brought  from  its  retirement  and  the  Emperor  pubHcly 
instaUed  as  ruler  by  right  of  his  divine  origin,  the  sentiment  of 
religious  devotion  to  the  Imperial  House  has  been  steadily  incul- 
cated, reaching  its  height  during  the  Russo-Japanese  War,  when  the 
messages  of  victorious  generals  and  admirals  piously  ascribed  their 
successes  over  the  enemy  to  the  *'  virtues  of  the  Imperial  Ancestors." 
In  every  school  throughout  the  Empire  there  hangs  a  portrait  of 
the  emperor,  which  is  regarded  and  treated  as  is  a  sacred  image  in 
Russia  and  in  Catholic  countries.     The  curators  of  schools  have 
been  known  on  occasion  of  fire  and  earthquake  to  save  the  imperial 
portrait  before  wife  or  child ;  and  their  action  has  elicited  popular 
acclamation.     On  the  imperial  birthday  teachers  and  pupils  assemble, 
and  passing  singly  before  the  portrait,  bow  in  solemn  adoration. 


THE  ORIENTAL  CIVILIZATIONS 


495 


^ 

\ 


i 


i 


The  divine  origin  of  the  Imperial  House  and  the  grossly  mythical 
history  of  the  early  emperors  are  taught  as  articles  of  faith  in 
Japanese  schools  precisely  as  the  cosmogony  of  Genesis  has  been 
taught  for  ages  in  the  schools  of  Christendom,  Some  years  ago 
a  professor  who  exposed  the  absurdity  of  the  chronology  upon  which 
the  religion  is  based  was  removed  from  his  post,  and  a  teacher  who 
declined  to  bow  before  a  casket  containing  an  imperial  rescript  was 
dismissed.  His  life  was,  in  fact,  for  some  time  in  danger  from  the 
fury  of  the  populace.  So  dominant  has  Mikado-worship  become 
that  some  Japanese  Christian  pastors  have  endeavoured  to  reconcile 
it  with  Christianity,  and  to  be  Mikado-worshippers  and  Christ- 
worshippers  at  the  same  time.*  All  creeds  are  nominally  tolerated 
in  Japan,  but  avowed  heresy  as  to  the  divine  origin  of  the  Imperial 
House  is  a  bar  to  public  employment,  and  exposes  the  heretic  to 
suspicion  of  treason.  The  new  religion,  which  is  merely  old 
Shintoism  revised,  has  been  invented  as  a  political  expedient,  and 
may  possibly  not  long  survive  the  decease  of  Mutsu  Hito,  the  late 
emperor,  who  continued  throughout  his  reign  to  live  in  comparative 
seclusion,  and  has  been  succeeded  by  a  young  prince  educated  on 
European  lines.  But  the  cult  has  obtained  a  strong  hold  upon  the 
people ;  and  by  reason  of  social  pressure  receives  the  conventional 
support  of  educated  men  exactly  as  Christianity  does  in  England, 
America,  Germany,  and  Russia. 

Thus  there  is  not  "plain  sailing"  for  freethought  in  Japan.  In 
such  a  political  atmosphere  neither  moral  nor  scientific  thought  has 
a  good  prognosis ;  and  if  it  be  not  changed  for  the  better  much  of 
the  Japanese  advance  may  be  lost.  Rationalism  on  any  large  scale 
is  always  a  product  of  culture ;  and  culture  for  the  mass  of  the 
people  of  Japan  has  only  recently  begun.  Down  till  the  middle  of 
the  nineteenth  century  nothing  more  than  sporadic  freethought 
existed.^  Some  famous  captains  were  irreverent  as  to  the  omens ; 
and  in  a  seventeenth-century  manual  of  the  principles  of  govern- 
ment, ascribed  to  the  great  founder  of  modern  feudalism,  lyeyasu, 
the  sacrifices  of  vassals  at  the  graves  of  their  lords  are  denounced, 

^  Pamphlet  cited,  p.  16. 
^  A  curious  example  of  sporadic  freethought  occurs  in  a  pamphlet  published  towards 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  1771  a  writer  named  MotoOri  began  a  propaganda 
m  favour  of  Shintoism  with  the  publication  of  a  tract  entitled  Spirit  of  Straightening. 
This  tract  emphatically  asserted  the  divinity  of  the  Mikado,  and  elicited  a  reply  from 
another  writer  named  Ichikawa,  who  wrote:  "The  Japanese  word  kami  (God)  was  simply 
a  title  of  honour:  but  in  consequence  of  its  having  been  used  to  translate  the  Chinese 
character  shin  (shen)  a  meaning  has  come  to  be  attached  to  it  which  it  did  not  originally 
possess.  The  ancestors  of  the  Mikados  were  not  Gods,  but  men,  and  were  no  doubt  worthy 
T?  u^  reverenced  for  their  virtues  ;  but  their  acts  were  not  miraculous  nor  supernatural. 
If  the  ancestors  of  living  men  were  not  human  beings,  they  are  more  likely  to  have  been 
birds  or  beasts  than  Gods."  Art.:  "The  Revival  of  Pure  Shinto,"  by  Sir  E.  N.  Satow,  in 
Trans.  Asiatic  Society  of  Japan. 


496     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 

and  Confucius  is  even  cited  as  ridiculing  the  burial  of  effigies  in 
substitution/  But,  as  elsewhere  under  similar  conditions,  such 
displays  of  originality  were  confined  to  the  ruling  caste.  I  have 
seen,  indeed,  a  delightful  popular  satire,  apparently  a  product  of 
mother-wit,  on  the  methods  of  popular  Buddhist  shrine-making; 
but,  supposing  it  to  be  genuine  and  vernacular,  it  can  stand  only  for 
that  measure  of  freethought  which  is  never  absent  from  any  society 
not  pithed  by  a  long  process  of  religious  tyranny.  Old  Japan,  with 
its  intense  feudal  discipHne  and  its  indurated  etiquette,  exhibited 
the  social  order,  the  grace,  the  moral  charm,  and  the  intellectual 
vacuity  of  a  hive  of  bees.  The  higher  mental  life  was  hardly  in 
evidence;  and  the  ethical  literature  of  native  inspiration  is  of  no 
importance.**  To  this  day  the  educated  Chinese,  though  lacking  in 
Japanese  "efficiency"  and  devotion  to  drill  of  all  kinds,  are  the 
more  freely  intellectual  in  their  habits  of  mind.  The  Japanese 
feudal  system,  indeed,  was  so  immitigably  ironbound,  so  incompar- 
ably destructive  of  individuality  in  word,  thought,  and  deed,  that 
only  in  the  uncodified  life  of  art  and  handicraft  was  any  free  play  of 
faculty  possible.  What  has  happened  of  late  is  the  rapid  and  docile 
assimilation  of  western  science.  Another  and  a  necessarily  longer 
step  is  the  independent  development  of  the  speculative  and  critical 
intelligence ;  and  in  the  East,  as  in  the  West,  this  is  subject  to 
economic  conditions. 

A  similar  generalization  holds  good  as  to  the  other  Oriental 
civilizations.  Analogous  developments  to  those  seen  in  the  latter- 
day  Mohammedan  world,  and  equally  marked  by  fluctuation,  have 
been  noted  in  the  mental  life  alike  of  the  non-Mohammedan  and  the 
Mohammedan  peoples  of  India  ;  and  at  the  present  day  the  thought 
of  the  relatively  small  educated  class  is  undoubtedly  much  affected 
by  the  changes  going  on  in  that  of  Europe,  and  especially  of  England. 
The  vast  Indian  masses,  however,  are  far  from  anything  in  the 
nature  of  critical  culture ;  and  though  some  system  of  education  for 
them  is  probably  on  the  way  to  establishment,^  their  life  must  long 
remain  quasi-primitive,  mentally  as  well  as  physically.  Buddhism 
is  theoretically  more  capable  of  adaptation  to  a  rationalist  view  of 
life  than  is  Christianity;  but  its  intellectual  activities  at  present 
seem  to  tend  more  towards  an  "esoteric"  credulity  than  towards 
a  rational  or  scientific  adjustment  to  life. 

1  Lafcadio  Hearn,  Japan :  An  Attempt  at  Interpretation,  1904,  p.  313 ;  cp.  p.  46. 

2  Thus  the  third  emperor  of  the  Ming  dynasty  in  China  (1425-1435).  referring  to  ine 
belief  in  a  future  life,  makes  the  avowal :  '  I  am  fain  to  sigh  with  despair  when  I  see  tDaj 
in  our  own  day  men  are  just  as  superstitious  as  ever"  (Prof.  E.  H.  Parker,  ctnna  anu. 
Melioion,  1905,  p.  99).  »  See  Hearn.  as  cited,  passtm. 

*  Cp.  Sir  F.  S.  P.  Leiy,  Suggestions  for  the  Better  Governing  of  India,  1906.  p  59. 


THE  OKIENTAL  CIVILIZATIONS 


497 


J 


\ 


1 


Of  the  nature  of  the  influence  of  Buddhism  in  Burmah, 
where  it  has  prospered,  a  vivid  and  thoughtful  account  is  given 
in  the  work  of  H.  Fielding,  The  Soul  of  a  People,  1898.  At  its 
best  the  cult  there  deifies  the  Buddha ;  elsewhere,  it  is  inter- 
woven with  aboriginal  polytheism  and  superstition  (Davids, 
Buddhism,  pp.  207-211 ;  Max  Miiller,  A^ithro.  Bel,  p.  132). 

Within  Brahmanism,  again,  there  have  been  at  different 
times  attempts  to  set  up  partly  naturalistic  reforms  in  rehgious 
thought — e.g.  that  of  Chaitanya  in  the  sixteenth  century  ;  but 
these  have  never  been  pronouncedly  freethinking,  and  Chaitanya 
preached  a  "surrender  of  all  to  Krishna,"  very  much  in  the 
manner  of  evangehcal  Christianity.  Finally  he  has  been  deified 
by  his  followers.     (Miiller,  Nat.  Bel.  p.  100  ;  Phys.  Bel.  p.  356.) 

More  definitely  freethinking  was  the  monotheistic  cult  set 
up  among  the  Sikhs  in  the  fifteenth  century,  as  the  history 
runs,  by  Nanak,  who  had  been  influenced  both  by  Parsees  and 
by  Mohammedans,  and  whose  ethical  system  repudiated  caste. 
But  though  Nanak  objected  to  any  adoration  of  himself,  he 
and  all  his  descendants  have  been  virtually  deified  by  his 
devotees,  despite  their  profession  of  a  theoretically  pantheistic 
creed.  (Cp.  De  la  Saussaye,  Manual  of  the  Science  of  Beligion, 
Eng.  tr.  pp.  659-62;  Miiller,  Phys.  Bel.  p.  355.)  Trumpp 
{Die  Beligion  der  Sikhs,  1881,  p.  123)  tells  of  other  Sikh  sects, 
including  one  of  a  markedly  atheistic  character  belonging  to 
the  nineteenth  century ;  but  all  alike  seem  to  gravitate  towards 
Hinduism. 

Similarly  among  the  Jainas,  who  compare  with  the  Buddhists 
in  their  nominal  atheism  as  in  their  tenderness  to  animals  and 
in  some  other  respects,  there  has  been  decline  and  compromise ; 
and  their  numbers  appear  steadily  to  dwindle,  though  in  India 
they  survived  while  Buddhism  disappeared.  Cp.  De  la  Saussaye, 
Manual,  pp.  557-63  ;  Kev.  J.  Eobson,  Hinduism,  1874,  pp.  80- 
86  ;  Tiele,  Outlines,  p.  141.  Finally,  the  Brahmo-Somaj  move- 
ment of  the  nineteenth  century  appears  to  have  come  to  little  in 
the  way  of  rationaUsm  (Mitchell,  Hinduism,  pp.  224-46 ;  De  la 
Saussaye,  pp.  669-71 ;  Tiele,  p.  160). 

The  principle  of  the  interdependence  of  the  external  and  the 
internal  hfe,  finally,  apphes  even  in  the  case  of  Turkey.  The  notion 
that  Turkish  civilization  in  Europe  is  unimprovable,  though  partly 
countenanced  by  despondent  thinkers  even  among  the  enhghtened 
Turks,  had  no  justification  in  social  science,  though  bad  politics 
may  ruin  the  Turkish,  like  other  Moslem  States;  and  although 
Turkish  freethinking  has  not  in  general  passed  the  theistic  stage,^ 

"  A^T?®®i^^^^SJ®  0°  "The  Future  of  Turkey"  in  the  Contemporary  Review,  April,  1899.  by 
A^iurKisn  OflBcial." 

Tnri?^''  ^''^.^^rlyas  the  date  of  the  Crimean  War,  it  was  noted  by  an  observer  that  "young 

xumey  makes  profession  of  atheism."    Ubicini,  La  Turquie  actuelle,  1855.  p.  361.    Cp.  Sir 

VOL.  II  2K 


iiriiiiifiMiiiiiiriiiiifi 


Mi 


498     FEEETHOUGHT  IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTUEY 

and  its  spread  is  grievously  hindered  by  the  national  rehgiosity/ 
which  the  age-long  hostihty  of  the  Christian  States  so  much  tends 
to  intensify,  a  gradual  improvement  in  the  educational  and  poHtical 
conditions  would  suffice  to  evolve  it,  according  to  the  observed  laws 
of  all  civiHzation.  It  may  be  that  a  result  of  the  rationahstic 
evolution  in  the  other  European  States  will  be  to  make  them  intel- 
ligently friendly  to  such  a  process,  where  at  present  they  are  either 
piously  malevolent  towards  the  rival  creed  or  merely  self-seeking  as 
against  each  other's  influence  on  Turkish  destinies. 

In  any  case,  it  cannot  seriously  be  pretended  that  the  mental 
life  of  Christian  Greece  in  modern  times  has  yielded,  apart  from 
services  to  simple  scholarship,  a  much  better  result  to  the  world  at 
large  than  has  that  of  Turkey.  The  usual  reactions  in  individual 
cases  of  course  take  place.  An  American  traveller  writing  in  1856 
notes  how  illiterate  Greek  priests  glory  in  their  ignorance,  "  asserting 
that  a  more  liberal  education  has  the  effect  of  making  atheists  of 
the  youth."  He  adds  that  he  has  "known  several  deacons  and 
others  in  the  University  [of  Athens]  that  were  skeptics  even  as  to 
the  truth  of  religion,"  and  would  gladly  have  become  laymen  if  they 
could  have  secured  a  UveHhood.^  But  there  was  then  and  later  in 
the  century  no  measurable  movement  of  a  rationalistic  kind. 
At  the  time  of  the  emancipation  the  Greek  priesthood  was  "in  general 
at  once  the  most  ignorant  and  the  most  vicious  portion  of  the  com- 
munity ";^  and  it  remained  socially  predominant  and  reactionary. 
"  Whatever  progress  has  been  made  in  Greece  has  received  but 
little  assistance  from  them."''  Liberal-minded  professors  in  the 
theological  school  were  mutinied  against  by  bigoted  students,^  a  type 
still  much  in  evidence  at  Athens  ;  and  the  liberal  thinker  Theophilus 
Kaires,  charged  with  teaching  "  atheistic  doctrines,"  and  found  guilty 
with  three  of  his  followers,  died  of  jail  fever  while  his  appeal  to  the 
Areopagus  was  pending.® 

Thus  far  Christian  bigotry  seems  to  have  held  its  own  in  what 
once  was  Hellas.  On  the  surface,  Greece  shows  little  trace  of 
instructed  freethought ;  while  in  Bulgaria,  by  Greek  testimony, 
school  teachers  openly  proclaim  their  rationalism,  and  call  for  the 
exclusion   of   rehgious   teaching   from   the    schools^      Despite  the 

G.  Campbell.^  Very  Recent  View  of  Turkey,  2nd  ed.  1878.  p.  &5.  Vamlj^ry  makes  fpme- 
what  light  of  such  tendencies  (Der  Islam  tm  19ten  Jahrhundert,  1875.  pp.  185, 187).  uus 
admits  cases  of  atbeism  even  among  mollahs,  as  a  result  of  European  culture  tP- i^i'. 

1  Ubicini  (p.  344),  with  Vamb^ry  and  most  other  observers,  pronounces  the  lurKS  iu« 
most  religious  people  in  Europe.  .„„  „. 

2  H.  M.  Baird.  Modern  Qreece,  New  York.  1856.  pp.  123-24. 

8  Id.,  p.  3-20.  <  Id.  p.  339.  «  Id.  p.  86.  «  Id.  P.  340. 

7  Prof.  Neocles  Karasis,  Oreelcs  and  Bulgarians  in  the  Nineteenth  and   Twenties 
Centuries,  London,  1907,  pp.  15-17,  citing  a  Bulgarian  journal. 


CONCLUSION 


499 


political  freedom  of  the  Christian  State,  there  has  thus  far  occurred 
there  no  such  general  fertilization  by  the  culture  of  the  rest  of 
Europe  as  is  needed  to  produce  a  new  intellectual  evolution  of  any 
importance.  The  mere  geographical  isolation  of  modern  Greece 
from  the  main  currents  of  European  thought  and  commerce  is 
probably  the  most  retard ative  of  her  conditions  ;  and  it  is  hard  to 
see  how  it  can  be  countervailed.  Italy,  in  comparison,  is  pulsating 
with  original  life,  industrial  and  intellectual.  But,  given  either  a 
renascence  of  Mohammedan  civilization  or  a  great  political  recon- 
struction such  as  is  latterly  on  foot,  the  whole  hfe  of  the  nearer  East 
may  take  a  new  departure ;  and  in  such  an  evolution  Greece  would 
be  likely  to  share. 


CONCLUSION 

Any   fuller   survey  of   the   intellectual   history   of   the  nineteenth 
century  will  but  reveal  more  fully  the  signal  and  ever-widening 
growth  of  rational  thought  among  all  classes  of  the  more  advanced 
nations,  and  among  the  more  instructed  of  the  less  advanced.     The 
retrospect  of  the  whole  past  tells  of  a  continuous  evolution,  which 
in  the  twentieth  century  proceeds  more  extensively  than  ever  before. 
There   has   emerged   the   curious  fact  that  in  our  own  country  a 
measure  of  rational  doubt  has  been  almost  constantly  at  work  in 
the  sphere  in  which  it  could  perhaps  least  confidently  be  expected— 
to  wit,  that  of  poetry.     From  Chaucer  onwards  it  is   hard  to  find 
a  great  orthodox  poet.     Even   Spenser  was  as  much  Platonist  as 
Christian  ;  and  Marlowe,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Dryden,  Pope,  Burns, 
Wordsworth,   Shelley,  Byron,  Coleridge,   Keats,  Tennyson,  Arnold, 
and  Browning  (to  name  no  others)  in  their  various  ways  baffle  the 
demand  of  faith.     Latterly,  the  sex  which  has  always  been  reckoned 
the  more  given  to  religion  has  shown  many  signs  of  adaptation  to 
the  higher  law.     In  Britain,  as  in  France,  women  began  to  appear 
in  the  ranks  of  reason  in  the  eighteenth  century.^     In  the  nineteenth 
the  number  has  increased  at  a  significant   rate.     Already   in   the 
fierce  battles  fought  in  the  time  of  reaction  after  the  French  Revolu- 
tion women  took  their  place  on  the  side  of  freedom ;  and  Frances 
Wright    (Madame   d'Arusmont)    played   a   notable   part  as  a  free- 
thinking  pubHcist  and  philanthropist.'     Since  her  day  the  names  of 

thinkPr?l^«?*l!°^"'"^^  ^^^^or  of  1779  (No.  30)  Henry  Mackenzie  speaks  of  women  free- 
2"  ci  phenomenon. 

purchaaffrifln^^iii^-^^"f,^x,i°  Tennessee,  and  peopled  them  with  slave  families  she 
purcnasea  and  redeemed  "  (Wheeler,  Biog.  Diet.). 


500 


CONCLUSION 


CONCLUSION 


501 


Harriet  Martineau  and  George  Eliot  tell  of  the  continual  gain  of 
knowledge ;  and  women  rationalists  are  now  to  be  counted  by 
thousands  in  all  the  more  civilized  countries. 

The  same  law  holds  of  public  life  in  general.  Gladstone  eagerly 
maintained  in  his  latter  years  that  politicians,  in  virtue  of  their 
practical  hold  of  Hfe,  were  little  given  to  skepticism ;  but  the  facts 
were  and  are  increasingly  against  him.  The  balance  of  the  evidence 
is  against  the  ascription  of  orthodoxy  to  either  of  the  Pitts,  or  to 
Fox ;  and  we  have  seen  that  the  statesmen  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion, as  of  the  French,  were  in  general  deists.  Garibaldi'  in  Italy, 
and  Gambetta  in  France,  were  freethinkers;  Lincoln  and  his 
opponent,  Douglas,  were  deists ;  towards  the  close  of  the  century, 
in  New  Zealand,  Sir  Eobert  Stout  and  the  late  Mr.  John  Ballance, 
avowed  rationalists,  were  among  the  foremost  politicians  of  their 
generation;  and  in  the  Enghsh  Cabinet  rationalism  began  to  be 
represented  in  the  person  of  Lord  Morley. 

While  such  developments  have  been  possible  in  the  fierce  hght 
of  political  strife,  the  process  of  disintegration  and  decomposition 
has  proceeded  in  society  at  large  till  unbehef  can  hardly  be  reckoned 
a  singularity.  Within  the  pale  of  aU  the  Christian  Churches 
dogmatic  belief  has  greatly  dwindled,  and  goes  on  dwindling  :  and 
"Christianity"  is  made  to  figure  more  and  more  as  an  ethical 
doctrine  which  has  abandoned  its  historical  foundations,  while 
preserving  formulas  and  rituals  which  have  no  part  in  rational 
ethics.  The  mythical  cosmogony  out  of  which  the  whole  originally 
grew  is  no  longer  believed  in  by  any  educated  person,  though  it  is 
habitually  presented  to  the  young  as  divine  truth.  Thousands  of 
clergymen,  economically  gripped  to  a  false  position,  would  gladly 
rectify  their  professed  creeds,  but  cannot ;  because  the  pohtical  and 
economic  bases  involve  the  consent  of  the  majority,  and  changes 
cannot  be  made  without  angry  resistance  and  uproar  among  the 
less  instructed  multitude  of  all  classes.  The  Protestant  Churches 
collectively  dread  to  figure  as  repudiating  the  historic  creed ;  while 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  conscious  of  the  situation,  maintains 
a  semblance  of  rigid  discipline  and  a  minimum  standard  of  instruc- 
tion for  its  adherents,  counting  on  holding  its  ground  while  the 
faculty  of  uncritical  faith  subsists.  Only  by  the  silent  alienation  of 
the  more  thoughtful  and  sincere  minds  from  the  priesthood  can  the 
show  of  orthodoxy  be  maintained  even  within  the  Cathohc  pale. 

In  all  orders  alike,  nevertheless,  the  "practice"  of  rehgion  decays 

1  See  Lord  Morley's  Life  of  Gladstone.  1903.  ii,  110-11.  as  to  the  embarrasBment  felt  in 
English  official  circles  at  the  time  of  Garibaldi's  visit. 


with  the  theory.  The  Churches  are  constantly  challenged  to  justify 
their  existence  by  social  reforms  and  philanthropic  works :  no  other 
plea  passes  as  generally  valid ;  and  it  is  only  by  reason  of  a  general 
transference  of  interest  from  religious  to  social  problems  that  the 
decay  of  belief  is  disguised.  "Piety,"  in  the  old  sense,  counts  rela- 
tively for  little  ;  and  while  orthodoxy  is  still  a  means  of  advantage 
in  pohtical  life,  religion  counts  for  nothing  in  international  relations. 
In  the  war  of  1899-1902,  "  Bible-loving"  England  forced  a  quarrel 
on  the  most  Bible-loving  race  in  the  world  ;  and  at  the  time  of  the 
penning  of  these  lines  six  nations  are  waging  the  greatest  war  of  all 
time  irrespectively  of  racial  and  religious  ties  alike,  though  all  alike 
oflacially  claim  the  support  of  Omnipotence.  In  Berhn  a  popular 
preacher  edifies  great  audiences  by  proclaiming  that  "  God  is  not 
neutral  ";  and  his  Emperor  habitually  parades  the  same  faith,  with 
the  support  of  all  the  theologians  of  Germany — the  State  supremely 
guilty  of  the  whole  embroilment,  and  the  deliberate  perpetrator  of 
the  grossest  aggression  in  modern  history.  On  the  side  of  the  AUies 
"  Christianity  "  is  less  systematically  but  still  frequently  invoked. 
On  both  sides  the  forms  of  prayer  are  ofiicially  practised  by  the 
non-combatants,  very  much  as  the  Romans  in  their  wars  main- 
tained the  practice  of  augury  from  the  entrails  of  sacrificed  victims  ; 
and  "  family  prayer"  is  said  to  be  reviving. 

Everywhere,  nevertheless,  the  more  rational,  remembering  how 
in  the  ages  of  faith  "  deadly  w^ars  were  waged  for  whole  generations 
in  the  very  name  of  religion,  recognize  that  Christianity  furnishes 
neither  control  for  the  present  nor  solution  for  the  future;  and 
that  the  hope  of  civilization  lies  in  the  resort  of  the  nations  to  \ 
human  standards  of  sanity  and  reciprocity.  The  ties  which  hold  ) 
are  those  of  fellow-citizenship. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  among  rationalists  that  if  modem  civiliza- 
tion escapes  the  ruin  which  militarism  brought  upon  those  of  all  pre- 
vious eras,  the  principle  of  reason  will  continually  widen  its  control, 
latterly  seen  to  be  everywhere  strengthening  apart  from  the  dan- 
gerous persistence  of  mihtarist  ideals  and  impulses.  When  it 
controls  international  relations,  it  will  be  dominant  in  the  life  of 
thought.  In  the  words  of  a  great  fighter  for  freethought,  "  No  man 
ever  saw  a  rehgion  die  "  ;  and  there  are  abundant  survivals  of  pre- 
Christian  paganism  in  Europe  after  two  thousand  years  of  Chris- 
tianity ;  but  it  seems  Hkely  that  when  the  history  of  the  twentieth 
century  is  written  it  will  be  recognized  that  what  has  historically 
figured  as  religion  belongs  in  all  its  forms  to  the  past. 

The  question  is  sometimes  raised  whether  the  age  of  decline  will 


502 


CONCLUSION 


be  marked  by  movements  of  active  and  persecuting  fanaticism. 
Here,  again,  the  answer  must  be  that  everything  depends  upon  the 
general  fortunes  of  civilization.  It  is  significant  that  a  number  of 
clerical  voices  proclaim  a  revival  of  religion  as  a  product  of  war, 
while  others  complain  that  the  state  of  struggle  has  a  steriHzing 
effect  upon  religious  life.  While  organized  religions  subsist,  there 
will  always  be  adherents  with  the  will  to  persecute ;  and  from  time 
to  time  acts  of  public  persecution  occur,  in  addition  to  many  of  a 
private  character.  But  in  Britain  public  persecution  is  latterly 
restricted  to  cases  in  which  the  technical  offence  of  "  blasphemy  " 
is  associated  with  acts  which  come  under  ordinary  police  jurisdic- 
tion. After  the  unquestionable  blasphemies  of  Arnold  and  Swin- 
burne had  to  be  officially  ignored,  it  became  impossible,  in  the  present 
stage  of  civilization,  that  any  serious  and  decent  literary  indictment 
of  the  prevailing  creeds  should  be  made  a  subject  of  persecution ; 
and  before  long,  probably,  such  indictments  will  be  abandoned  in  the 
cases  of  offenders  against  police  regulations. 

The  main  danger  appears  to  lie  in  Catholic  countries,  and  from 
the  action  of  the  Catholic  hierarchy.  The  common  people  every- 
where, save  in  the  most  backward  countries,  are  increasingly  disin- 
clined to  persecution.  In  Ireland  there  is  much  less  of  that  spirit 
among  the  Catholic  population  than  among  that  of  Protestant  Ulster. 
But  the  infamous  execution  of  Francisco  Ferrer  in  Spain,  in  1909, 
which  aroused  passionate  reprobation  in  every  civilized  country,  was 
defended  in  England  and  elsewhere  with  extravagant  baseness  by 
Catholic  litUrateurs,  who,  with  their  reactionary  priests,  are  the 
last  to  learn  the  lesson  of  tolerance.  The  indignation  everywhere 
excited  by  the  judicial  murder'  of  Ferrer,  however,  gives  promise  that 
even  the  most  zealous  fanatics  of  the  CathoUc  Church  will  hesitate 
again  to  rouse  the  wrath  of  the  nations  by  such  a  reversion  to  the 
methods  of  the  eras  of  religious  rule. 


I  On  the  whole  case  see  The  Life,  Trial,  and  Beath  of  Francisco  Ferrer,  by  W'illiam 
Archer:  Chapman  &  Hall.  1911;  a.ad  The  Martyrdom  of  Ferrer,  by  Joseph  McCabe  : 
R.  F.  A..  1910. 


INDEX 


AbaiLARD,  i,  307,  308  n.,  311  sq, 

Abassides,  the,  i,  252,  255 

Abauzit,  ii,  243 

Abbadie,  ii,  141,  250,  252 

Abbas  Effendi,  i,  274 

Abbot,  Archbishop,  ii,  11,  22 

Abdera,  i,  157 

Aben-Ezra,  i,  335 

Abernethy,  ii,  461 

Aboul-ala  el  Marri,  i,  261 

Abraham  and  Isaac,  i,  102 

Abraxas,  i,  228 

Abstractions,  deification  of,  i,  198 

Abubacer,  i,  270 

Abyssinia,  magic  and  religion  in,  i,  46 

Academic  thought  in  England,  i,  164, 

165,  321 
Academic,  the  French,  ii,  227  sq. 
Academy,  the  New,  i,  187  ;  of  Florence, 

i,  371 
Achamoth,  i,  228 
Aconzio,  i,  392,  468,  469,  470 
Acton,  Lord,  i,  461 
Adamites,  the,  i,  418 
Adams,  John,  ii,  382 

George,  ii,  394 

Adamson,  Professor,  ii,  43  7i.;  cited,  ii, 

65  ?z.,  105,  338  71. 
Addison,  ii,  151 
Adler,  Felix,  ii,  414 
Adonai,  i,  105 
Adonis,  i,  75,  101 
Afdal-i-k4shl,  i,  265 
^neas   Sylvius,   i,    367,    370   «.,    415, 

418  n. 
iEnesidemus,  i,  181  n.,  190 
Aerius,  i,  239 
iEschylus,  i,  130  sg-.,  148 
Africa,  Islam  in,  i,  276 

unbelief  in,  i,  34,  35,  38,  39 

African  tribes,  religion  of,  i,  23,  31 
Agatbon,  i,  162  n. 
Agni,  cult  of,  i,  48 
Agnosticism,  Chinese,  i,  83  sg. 

of  Chaucer,  i,  346-47 

Greek,  i,  143,  146,  152,  161 

Mohammedan,  i,  255,  263 

Agobard,  i,  282 
Agur,  i,  116 


Ahriman  (Angra  Mainyu),  i,  68,  111 

Ahura  Mazda,  i,  65  sg. 

Aikenhead,  ii,  181 

Akbar,  i,  275 

Akerberg,  ii,  418 

Akhunaton,  i,  72  sq. 

Akkadian  religion,  i,  61  sq. 

Ala-ud-Dawla,  i,  267 

Alba,  Duked',  ii,  372 

Alberti,  cited,  ii,  157  n.,  190,  368 

Albertus  Magnus,  i,  319,  362,  377  n. 

of  Saxony,  i,  360 

Albigenses,  i,  282,  299  sq. 
Alciati,  i,  453 
Alexander  IV,  i,  322 

VI,  i,  373 

of  Aphrodisias,  i,  376 

Alexandria,  religion  at,  i,  189,  226 

library  of,  i,  253  n. 

culture  at,  i,  188 

Alfarabi,  i,  267 

Alfieri   ii    369 

Alfonso  X,  the  Wise,  i,  321,  325,  338-39 

II,  i,  336 

of  Naples,  i,  366 

de  Spina,  i,  370  n.,  376 

Algarotti,  ii,  369 

Algazel,  i,  259,  263,  266,  267,  270 

Algebra,  ii,  13 

Algeria,  freethought  in,  i,  276 

Alhazen,  i,  268 

Alison,  cited,  ii,  250 

Ali  Syed,  i,  272  n. 

Alkaios,  i,  200 

Alkibiades,  i,  159,  160 

Al  Kindi,  i,  267 

Al  Kindy,  i,  258 

All  butt,  Professor  T.  C,  cited,  i,  40  ; 

ii,  103  n. 
Allegory,  frecthinking,  i,  145,  161,  191 
Allen,  Ethan,  ii,  382  n. 
Allingham,  cited,  ii,  447 
Allix,  ii,  98,  252 
Allsopp,  cited,  ii,  444,  446 
Almodobar,  Duke  of,  ii,  373 
Almoravides  and  Almohades,  i,  269 
Alphabetic  writing,  age  of,  i,  105,  194 
Alsted,  ii,  294  sq. 
Alyattes,  i,  136 


503 


i 


504 


INDEX 


INDEX 


505 


Amadeo  de'  Landi,  i,  368 

Amalrich  (Amaury)  of  Bena,  i,  317,  333 

Amazons,  myth  of,  i,  173,  185 

Amberley,  ii,  403 

Ambrose,  i,  233,  393 

American  colonies,  revolt  of,  ii,  281 

Amen-Ra,  i,  69,  72 

Ames,  ii,  74 

Ammianus  Marcellinus,  i,  234 

Ammonios  Saccas,  i,  226 

Amos,  i,  104  sq. 

Amsterdam,  ii,  133,  138 

Amun,  i,  62 

Anabaptists,  the,  i,  436,  454  ;  ii,  1,  2 

Anaita,  i,  67 

Anatomy,  i,  259  n. 

Anax,  i,  125  n. 

Anaxagoras,  i,  136,  152  sq. 

Anaximandros,  i,  136,  138  ;  ii,  47 

Anaximenes,  i,  136,  138,  152 

Ancestor- worship,  i,  83 

Andamanese,  religion  and  ethics  of,  i, 
93  ;  food  supply  of,  i,  94 

Andr^,  ii,  122 

Angels,  belief  in,  i,  110,  111 

Angerio,  i,  411 

Anglo-Saxons,  i,  113 

Ani,  papyrus  of,  i,  109 

Annet,  ii,  169-70,  200,  392 

Anomeans,  the,  i,  242 

Anselm,  St.,  i,  307,  308  n.,  309  sq. 

of  Laon,  i,  315  n. 

Ansted,  ii,  463 

Anstruther,  ii,  104,  116,  182 

Anthoine,  Nicholas,  i,  453 

Anthropomorphism,  i,  182,  195 ;  ii,  29 

Antichthon,  i,  150 

Anti-clericalism  in  India,  i,  55  ;  Pauli- 
cian,  i,  280,  293,  295 ;  of  Troubadours, 
i,  300  sq,;  Italian,  i,  323,  327,  366; 
medieval,  i,  331  sq.;  English,  346, 
348;  French,  i,  351,  353;  German, 
i,  361 ;  in  the  Renaissance,  i,  366  sq. 

Antinomianism  and  religion,  i,  2,  18, 
333,  446 

Antisthenes,  i,  183 

Antonines,  the,  i,  217 

Anytas,  i,,171 

Aphrodite,  i,  124 

Apistos,  early  use  of  word,  i,  1,  127  n., 
235 

Apocalypse,  i,  225  n. 

Apollo,  i,  124,  145 

ApoUonius  of  Tyana,  i,  238  n. 

Apologetics,  Christian,  i,  235,  310,  350, 
370,  407,  482  sq.;  ii,  79  sq.,  97  sq., 
124  sq.,  137,  145,  156,  162  sq.,  179, 
210,  214 

Apostolici,  i,  336,  406 

Apotheosis,  imperial,  i,  185,  208,  209 


Apthorp,  ii,  205 

Apuleius,  i,  212  ;  cited,  i,  77 

Aquinas,  Thomas,  i,  318  sq.,  359,  360, 

376 
Arabs,  influence  of,  on  Europe,  i,  268, 

301  sq.,  315  sq.,  362,  366;  influence 

of  on  negro  life,  i,  276  ;  civilization 

of,  i,  249,  251,   268  sq.;  science  of, 

i,  256,  258,  268  sq. ;  decadence  of,  i, 

258  sq.,  269  52.;  persecution  of,ii,  66; 

Himyarite,  i,  112,  116 
Aranda,  Count,  ii,  372,  373,  377 
Arcadia,  religion  in,  i,  46 
Archelaos,  i,  136,  160,  163 
Archilochos,  i,  124  n.,  145 
Argotti,  ii,  54 
Aristarchos,  i,  188 
Aristippos,  i,  183 
Aristo,  i,  184 
Aristodemos,  i,  170 
Aristophanes,  i,  152,  167,  171 
Aristotle,  i,  131,  149,  152,  168,  177  sq., 

257,  307,  471 ;  in  Campaspe,  ii,  3 
Aristo telianism,  i,  307,  317,  318,469-70; 

ii,  63 
Arius  and  Arianism,  i,  77,  229  sq.;  ii, 

151,  153-54 
Ark,  the  Hebrew,  i,  101 
Arkesilaos,  i,  187 
Arminianism,  i,  462  sq.;  ii,  22, 133, 137, 

378 
Arminius,  i,  455,  462 
Armstrong,  E.,  cited,  i,  408 
Arnaldo  of  Villanueva,  i,  339 
Arnauld,  ii,  125,  129,  142 
Arnobius,  i,  215,  225 
Arnold  of  Brescia,  i,  295 

the  legate,  i,  303 

Gottfried,  ii,  294,  307 

Matthew,   i,   457;     ii,    256,   403, 

408,  441  n.,  450,  452 
Arnoldson,  K.  P.,  ii,  418 
Artaxerxes  Mnemon,  i,  67 
Artemis,  i,  124 
Artemon,  i,  230 
Arts,   effect  of,  on  religion,  i,  95-96 ; 

affected  by  religion,  i,  365 
Aryabhata,  i,  57 
Aryans,  i,  48  sq. 

Asceticism,  i,  54,  216,  227,  243  sq. 
Ascham,  i,  467  ;  ii,  2 
Aselli,  ii,  66 
Asgill,  ii,  152,  166m. 
Ashari,  Al,  i,  259 
Ashtoreths,  i,  79,  81 
Asmodeus,  i,  111 
Asoka,  i,  59,  60 
Aspasia,  i,  155 
Assassins,  the,  i,  266 
Asser,  i,  284 


Associations,  religious,  in  Greece,  i,  189 

"Assurance,"  doctrine  of,  i,  455 

Assyria,  religion  of,  i,  47,  63  sq. 

Astrology,  i,  401;  Chaldean,  i,  63; 
Greek,  i,  188  ;  Roman,  i,  212  ;  me- 
dieval, i,  327  ;  Italian,  i,  373  ;  Rabe- 
lais on,  i,  382,  384  ;  Renaissance,  i, 
401  ;  and  Protestantism,  i,  449  ;  as- 
sailed by  Gassendi,  ii,  67-68 

Astronomy,  Arab,  i,  270,  275  ;  Hindu, 
i,  56-57 ;  Greek,  i,  137,  188  ;  Baby- 
Ionian,  i,  62-63,  95,  137  ;  Modern,  ii, 
41  sq. 

Astruc,  ii,  236  n.,  239,  256,  431 

Asvamedha,  rite  of,  i,  53 

Aszo  y  del  Rio,  ii,  372 

Aten,  cult  of,  i,  73,  74  sq. 

Athanasius,  i,  77 

Athanasianism,  i,  235 

Atheism  and  atheist,  use  of  words,  i,  1, 
4,  225 

Atheism,  Arab,  i,  249  sq.,  256;  Brah- 
manic,  i,  51  sq.;  Buddhistic,  i,  56,  68; 
among  Sikhs,  ii,  428  ;  in  Phoenicia, 
i,  79;  in  Greece,  i,  17,  142,  156,  169, 
160,  173,  183,  184,  189 ;  at  Rome,  i, 
211;  under  Islam,  i,  249  266;  in 
modern  Germany,  i,  437  ;  ii,  296  ;  in 
medieval  Italy,  i,  325  ;  in  Renais- 
sance Italy,  i,  374 ;  in  France,  i, 
389,  473  ;  ii,  219,  221,  231,  207,  273, 
275,  278  ;  in  the  Netherlands,  ii,  135  : 
in  Poland,  ii,  308  ;  in  England,  ii, 
2,  3,  6  sq.,  72,  79,  97,  150,  151,  165  ; 
in  Scotland,  ii,  181,  182  ;  in  the 
French  Revolution,  ii,  274  sq.,  287; 
rise  of  modern,  i,  466 ;  in  Turkey,  i, 
272  ;  in  Japan,  ii,  426 

Athenaeus,  cited,  i,  176 

Athenagoras,  i,  225  n.,  230 

Athene,  i,  124 

Athens,  culture  of,  i,  133,  148,  152  sq. 

Atlieos,  early  use  of  word,  i,  127 

Atomic  theory,  i,  80,  157,  312 

Atto,  i,  291  n. 

Aticassin  et  Nicolette,  i,  300-301 

Audra,  ii,  291 

Auerbach,  ii,  456 

Aufkldrung,  the,  ii,  331,  333,  409,  472, 

474 

Augsburg,  Peace  of,  ii,  49 

Augustine,  St.,  i,  1,  215,  225,  231,  232, 

233,  235,  287,  290  ;  ii,  119 

Augustus,  i,  204,  207  sq.,  213 

Aulard,  cited,  i,  287  n. 

Aulus  Gellius,  cited,  i,  200  n. 

Auspices,  Roman,  i,  199 

Austore  d'Orlac,  i,  366  n. 

Australian  aborigines,  religion  of,  i,  32, 
35,  95  &  »    »       , 


Australian,  freethought,  ii,  412 

Austria,  freethought  in,  ii,  306  sq. 

Austrittsbewegioig ,  ii,  436  n. 

Autocracy  and  freethought,  i,  212  sq. 

Auxerre,  Bishop  of,  ii.  264,  269 

Avebury,  Lord,  i,  30-31,  93 ;  ii,  471 

Avempace,  i,  270,  316 

Avenar,  ii,  6 

Aver  roes  and  Averroism,  i,  270  sq.,  302, 
316,  318  sq.,  324,  330,  338,  346,  360, 
361,  369,  376,  379,  404  ;  ii,  34 

Avicebron,  i,  316 

Avicenna,  i,  265,  267 

Avignon,  the  papacy  at,  i,  354  sq.,  398, 
443 

Azara,  ii,  374 

Aztec  religion,  i,  88  sq. 

BAALS,  i,  78-79,  124 
Bab  sect,  i,  273  sq. 

Babylon,  religion  of,  i,  47,  111 ;  free- 
thought  in,  i,  62-65 ;  science  in,  i, 
62-63,  95,  122 

Bacchic  mysteries,  i,  200 

Bachaumont,  cited,  ii,  221  n.,  235  n., 
239  n.,  240  n.,  242  n.,  244 

Bacon,  Francis,  ii,  25  sq.,  64;  on  ra- 
tioji-ales,  i,  6  ;  on  education,  i,  378 ; 
on  Demokritos,  i,  158,  177  n.;  method 
of,  i,  178  n.;  on  second  causes,  i, 
472  ;  on  atheists,  ii,  4,  282  ;  on  reli- 
gious wars,  ii,  13  ;  and  persecution, 
ii,  23 ;  and  Aristotle,  ii,  63 ;  and 
Herbert,  ii,  70  ;  and  Spinoza,  ii,  134  ; 
cited,  ii,  271 

John,  ii,  54 

Roger,  i,  319,  343  sq.,  354 

Baden  Powell,  Rev.,  cited,  ii,  13,  178, 
463  sq. 

Baerlein,  H.,  i,  262 

Bagehot,  W.,  criticized,  ii,  198 

Bahrdt,  ii,  319,  320  sg.,  424 

Bails,  ii,  376 

Bain,  Professor,  ii,  404 ;  quoted,  i, 
174  n.,  178,  109,  449 

Bainham,  i,  468 

Bains,  i,  456 

Baird,  H.  M.,  cited,  ii,  498 

Baker,  Sir  S.,  i,  35 

Balfour,  A.  J.,  ii,  401,  404 

Balguy,  ii,  173,  174,  193 

Ball,  John,  i,  360 

Ballance,  ii,  500 

Baltus,  ii,  226 

Balzac,  ii,  442 

Bandino,  i,  469  n. 

Banier,  Abb6,  i,  185 

Bantu,  the,  i,  22 

Ban  van,  i,  429 

Baptism,  i,  280 


INDEX 


507 


Barante,  ii,  284  sq. 
Bardesanes,  i,  227 
Barmekides,  the,  i,  257 
Barneveldt,  i,  463 
Barrington,  ii,  173 
Barrow,  ii,  104 
Barth,  cited,  i,  50 
Barthez,  ii,  243 
Barthogge,  ii,  87 
Bartholmess,  ii,  43  n. 
Bartoli,  cited,  i,  328  n.,  353 
Basedow,  ii,  315  sq.,  323  n. 
Basel,  University  of,  i,  447 
Basil,  Emperor,  i,  279 
Basileiis,  i,  125  ?t. 
Basilides,  i,  228 
Bastian,  A.,  ii,  470 
Bataks,  the,  i,  23 
Bathenians,  the,  i,  255 
Baudeau,  ii,  244 
Baudelaire,  ii,  442 
Baudrier,  President,  i,  387  n. 
Bauer,  A.,  quoted,  i,  156  n. 

Bruno,  ii,  427  sq.,  474 

Edgar,  ii,  432 

G.  L.,  ii,  423,424 

Baume-Desdossat,  ii,  239 

Baumgarten,  ii,  318  n. 

Baur,  P.  C,  ii,  325,  354  ;  cited,  i,  410, 

436  ;  ii,   311,  317,  336  n.,  344,  425, 

428,  434,  477  sq.,  479 

Kev.  W.,  cited,  ii,  336  n.,  409  ?i. 

Baxter,  i,  350  n.\  ii,  71,  82,  84 

Bayle,  i,  2,  466  ;  ii,  139  sq.,   150,  154, 

282,  352 
Beard,  C,  cited,  i,  464 
Beaufort,  ii,  257,  368 
Beaumont,  J.,  ii,  138 
Beating  of  idols,  i,  23  sq. 
Beausobre,  ii,  239,  347 
Bebel,  August,  ii,  411,  412 

Heinrich,  i,  435 

Beccaria,  ii,  266,  368 

Beda,  i,  429 

Bede,  i,  313 

Beethoven,  ii,  351 

Beghards  and  Beguins,  i,  333,  335,  839, 

406 
B^ha,  i,  274 
Bekker,  ii,  138 

Belgium,  free  thought  in,  ii,  406  sq. 
"Believers  in  Reason,"  ii,  350 
Bilisaire,  ii,  259  sq. 
Bellarmin,  Cardinal,  i,  462  ;    ii,  22,  57, 

119  n. 
Bellay,  Guillaume  de,  i,  383 

Jean  du,  i,  382 

Joachim  du,  i,  390 

Bellman,  ii,  360 

Bel  Merodach,  i,  62,  64 


Benedict  XIV,  Pope,  ii,  368,  369,  370 
Benn,  A.,  ii,   389  n.,  444  n.;  cited,  i, 

137  n.,  138  n.,  146  n.,  158,   170  n., 

178  n.,  179-80, 187  ;  criticized,  ii,  211 
Bennet,  Benjamin,  ii,  88  n. 

A.,  ii,  451 

Bentham,  ii,  267,  484  sq. 

Bentley,  ii,  97,  155 ;  cited,  i,  8  n. 

B^ranger,  ii,  442 

Berault,  ii,  98 

Berengar,  i,  289  sq.,  440 

Bergier,  ii,  245,  250,  253,  256,  275,  287 

Berington,  Rev.  J.,  cited,  i,  300 

Berkeley,  i,  8  n.;  ii,  91,  105,   124,  150, 

151-52,  162  sq.,  168  ;  and  Hume,  ii, 

180,  251,  252 
Berlin,  churchgoing  in,  ii,  438  n. 
Bernard,  St.,  i,  295,  312,  313 

J.-P.,  ii,  238 

Sylvester,  i,  312 

Berquin,  i,  429 

Berruyer,  ii,  215 

Berthelot,  ii,  122 

Berti,  cited,  ii,  61  n.;  quoted,  ii,  62 

Besant,  Mrs.,  ii,  402,  408,  452 

SirW.,ii,  452 

Bettinelli,  ii,  368 

Bevan,  E.  R.,  cited,  i,  186 

Beverland,  ii,  36 

Beyle,  ii,  442 

Beza,  i,  450  ;  ii,  34,  64 

Bezold,  i,  404,  435  n.,  441 

Bhagavat  Gita,  the,  i,  59 

Biandrata,  i,  420-21,  425,453,468;  ii,37 

Bibliolatry,  i,  403,  439,  454,  457  ;  ii,  25, 

26,  32,  35,  61,  209 
Bickell,  i,  115 
Biddle,  ii,  78,  83 
Bielfeld,  cited,  ii,  303  n. 
Bielinsky,  ii,  456 
Biology,  ii,  207,  459  sq.,  464  sq. 
Bion.  i,  184 
Biran,  ii,  479 
Birch,  W.  J.,  ii,  18  n. 
Bjornson,  ii,  457 
Black  Death,  i,  34,  328-29 
Blackmore,  ii,  173 
Blackstone,  Sir  W.,  ii,  195-96 
Blanchard,  ii,  257 
Blasphemy,  i,  167  ;  ii,  5,  8,  73  «.,  76, 

99,  147,  149,  159,  170 
Blatchford,  ii,  408 
Bleeckly,H.,  i,  171  w.,  172 
Blind,  ideas  of  the,  i,  39 
Blount,   Charles,   ii,   96  sq.,   99,   115, 

149-50,  243,  449 

Sir  T.  P.,  ii,  96  n. 

Blunt,  cited,  i,  458 

Bluntschli,  ii,  35 

Boas,  Professor,  cited,  ii,  12 


Boccaccio,  i,  327  sq.;  ii,  328 

Bocher,  Joan,  ii,  1 

Bodin,  i,  1,  390 ;  ii,  4,  468 

Boeheim,  i,  406  n. 

Boethius,  i,  246-47,  348  ;  ii,  34 

Bogomilians,  the,  i,  281 

Bohemia,  Reformation  in,  i,  415  sq. 

Bohemian  Brethren,  the,  i,  419 

Bohn,  H.,  ii,  398 

Bohun,  ii,  99  n. 

Boileau,  ii,  183 

Boindin,  ii,  222,  248  n.,  267,  258 

Boissier,  cited,  i,  195,  198  n.,  205  n. 

Bolde,  ii,  110 

Boleslav,  i,  422 

Bolingbroke,    ii,    143,    154,    164,    178, 

196  S3.,  223,  232-33,  253 
Bolsec,  i,  442,  446 
Bonamy,  ii,  257 

Bonaventure  Desperiers,  i,  379  sq.,  391 
Boncerf,  ii,  290 
Boniface,  St.,  i,  282 
Bonner,  Mrs.,  ii,  338 
Book  of  the  Dead,  the,  i,  70 
Booth,  B.,  ii,  452  n. 
Booms,  ii,  352 
Borowski,  cited,  ii,  341,  345 
Borthwick,  F.,  ii,  182  n. 
Bos  Homes,  i,  297 

Bossuet,  ii,  65?i.,   126,  131,   142,   146, 
213,  250,  251 

cited,  ii,  123 

Bouchier,  Jean,  i,  459 
Bougre,  origin  of  word,  i,  281 
Bouillier,  cited,  i,  377  n.;  ii,  121  n. 
Boulainvilliers,  ii,  213,  237-38,  241 
Boulanger,  ii,  240,  246-48 
Bourdelot,  ii,  357 
Bourdin,  ii,  65 
Bourget,  ii,  385 
Bourgeville,  i,  473 
Bourne,  cited,  ii,  108  n.,  114  n. 
Bouterwek,  cited,  ii,  40,  41  n. 
Boyle,  i,  5  ;  ii,  91,  155 

lectures,  ii,  97,  166 

Boyse,  ii,  188 
Bradke,  Von,  cited,  i,  49 
Bradford,  Bishop,  ii,  98 
Bradlaugh,  ii,  399  sq. 
Bradley,  J.,  ii,  98 

F.  H.,  i,  140 

A.  C,  ii,  15-16 

Brahe,  Tycho,  ii,  355 

Brahmanism,   i,  51  sq.\  schisms  in,  i, 

64  ;  ii,  497  ;  Dravidian  influence  on, 

i,  56  71. 

Brahmo-Somaj  movement,  ii,  428 
Brandes,  G.,  ii,  457 

E.,  ii,  457 

Braun,  ii,  418 


Breasted,  J.  H.,  cited,  i,  74 

Breitburg,  ii,  136  n. 

Breitinger,  ii,  234  n. 

Brethren  of  the  Free  Spirit,  i,  2,  317, 

333,  335,  362,  446 

Sincere  (of  Purity),  i,  256 

Bohemian,  i,  419 

of  the  Common  Lot,  i,  438 

Bretschneider,  ii,  423,  426 

Brett,  Prof.,  ii,  66  n. 

Brewster,  cited,  ii,  110,  112,  113,  151, 

178,  464 
Bri(,'onnet,  i,  428 
Bridges,  Dr.,  i,  344  n. 
Brihaspati,  i,  53,  54 
Brissot  de  Warville,  ii,  244 
"Broad  Church,"  ii,  375 
Brooke,  ii,  20 

Brougham,  ii,  448  n.,  449  n. 
Brown,  ii,  194 

W.,  ii,  458  n. 

Browne,  Sir  T.,  i,  3,  11 ;  ii,  100  sq. 

Bishop,  ii,  150 

E.  G.,  cited,  i,  261 

Browning,  ii,  413,  452 

quoted,  ii,  231 

Brunetiere,  ii,  443 

Brunetto  Latini,  i,  348,  398  n. 

Bruno,  Giordano,   i,   21,   411  n.,  451, 

469;  ii,  43s2.,134,  458 
Bryce,  cited,  i,  18,  294 
Bucer,  i,  447 
Buchanan,  ii,  283 
Biichner,  ii,  418,  436  n.,  478  sq. 
Buckingham,  ii,  97 
Buckle,  i,  13,  480  ;  ii,  402,  469  ;  cited, 

i,  272,  306,  341,  356,  391  n.,  481  n.; 

ii,  66,   105,   173,    224-25,   227,   228, 

256,  269  n. 
Buckley,  i,  130  n. 

Buddeus,  i,  11  ' 

Buddha,  traditions  of,  i,  55  sq. 
Buddhism,    i,    52   7i.,   55  sq.,   149  ;  ii, 

491  sq.,  497 
Bude,  i,  388 

Budge,  Dr.  Wallis,  i,  70,  75 
Budny,  ii,  37 

Buffier,  ii,  130,  215,  249  n. 
BufEon,  ii,  207,  262,  264 
Bulgarians,  i,  281 ;  ii,  498 
Bull,  Dr.,  ii,  114 
Bullen,  cited,  ii,  100  n. 
Burckhardt,  cited,  i,  131,  328 n.,  367 n., 

369,  409 
Burgers,  ii,  416 
Burghley,  cited,  i,  468 
Buridan,  i,  360 
Burigny,  ii,   225,   226,  238,  241,  245, 

248,  258 
Burke,  ii,  205,  209 


508 


INDEX 


INDEX 


509 


Burke,  V.  R.,  cited,  i,  340-41 

Burlamaqiii,  ii,  379 

Burleigh,  Walter,  i,  346  n. 

Burnet,    Bishop,    cited,    i,    6,    432   w., 

460  n.;  ii,  78,  111,  153,  166  ;  ii,  365 
Dr.  J.,  cited,  i,  122,  142,  149,  151, 

192 


Dr.  T.,  ii,  109,  115,  176,  182 

Burns,  i,  352  ;  ii,  208-209 
Bury,  A.,  ii,  111 

J.  B.,  i,  10,  126  n..  247  n. 

Richard  de,  i,  334 

Busher,  Leonard,  ii,  24 
Busone  da  Gubbio,  i,  328  n. 
Bussy,  ii,  142 

Butler,  ii,  143,  168,  179,  251,  252 
Byron,  ii,  444 

Byzantium,  civilization  of,  i,  246  ;  free- 
thought  in,  i,  277  sq, 

CABALLERO,  ii,  387 

Cabanis,  ii,  387,  459  sq.,  462 

Cadell,  Mrs.  A.  M.,  i,  264  w. 

Caelestius,  i,  229,  232 

Caesar,  i,  206  sq.,  212 

Cagnuelo,  ii,  375 

Caird,  E.,  i.  441 

Cairns,  ii,  265,  274  n. 

Calas,  ii,  220 

Calderon,  ii,  39 

Calendar,  reform  of,  i,  262,  457 

Callidius,  ii,  33 

Cailimachus,  i,  184 

Calovius,  i,  457 

Calvert,  A.  F.,  cited,  i,  95 

Calvin,  i,  2,  379,  383,  392,  408  n.,  414, 

431,  439,  442  s^.,  455 
Calvinism,  i,  442  sq.,  462  ;  ii,  22,  378  sq. 
Cambridge  university  in  18th  century, 

ii,  167 
Cambyses,  i,  66,  76 
Camden,  cited,  ii,  5  n. 
Campanella,  ii,  309 
Campanus,  i,  435 
Cannibalism,  i,  43 
Cantatapiedra,  Martinez  de,  ii,  39 
Canti^,  i,  13  ;  cited,  i,  411  n. 
Caraffa,  Cardinal,  i,  408,  412 
Cardan,  i,  xv,  349  n. 
Carducci,  ii,  454 
Carlile,  ii,  394,  408 
Carlyle,  ii,  232,  270  n.,  313   sq.,  447, 

448,  449,  450,  466  n.,  469,  489 
Carmelites,  the,  i,  330 
Carneades,  i,  187,  200 
Carnesecchi,  i,  412 
Caroline,  Queen,  ii,  165  n. 
Carpi,  Marquis  of,  ii,  365 
Carpocrates,  i,  228 
Carra,  ii,  243 


Carranza,  ii,  44 

Carriere,  cited,  i,  390  n.;  ii,  49  n. 

Carrol,  ii,  109 

Cartaud,  ii,  291 

Cartesianism,  ii,  103  sq.,  121,  128,  133 

Casaubon,  Isaac,  i,  464 

Meric,  ii,  86 

Casimir  the  Great,  i,  423 

Cassels,  W.  R.,  ii,  439  n. 

Cassini,  ii,  178 

Castalio,  i,  392,  442,  446 

Castelli,  ii,  53 

Castelnau,  ii,  45 

Castillon,  ii,  239,  241 

Casuistry,  ii,  74 

Cataneo,  ii,  218,  280 

CatJmri,  i,  292,  296 

Catherine  the  Great,  ii,  260,  364 

Catholic    Church    and    civilization,  i, 

192-93 
Cato,  i,  199,  200-201 
Cavalcanti,  the  two,  i,  325  and  n. 
Cavoli,  i,  411 
Caxton,  i,  353 
Cecco  d'Ascoli,  i,  327 
Cellario,  i,  412 
Celso,  i,  392 
Celsus,  i,  236  sq. 
Censorship,  Roman,  i,  212 
Centeno,  ii,  375 
Cerinthus,  i,  225  n. 
Cerise,  ii,  461  n. 
Cerutti,  ii,  280 
Cervantes,  ii,  39,  40 
Cesalpini,  ii,  63  n. 
Chaeremon,  i,  211 
Chaitanya,  ii,  497 
Chaldea,  science  in,  i,  180 
Chalmers,  ii,  485  ;  cited,  i,  85 
Chaloner,  ii,  78 

Chamberlain,  B.  H.,  cited,  ii,  491  sq. 
Chambers,  R.,  ii,  464  sq. 
Chamfort,  ii,  259,  279,  288 
Champion,  i,  476  n.,  479  ;  ii,  233 
Chandragupta,  i,  59 
Channing,  ii,  344 
Chapman,  G.,  ii,  13,  17 

Dr.  John,  ii,  408  n. 

Charlemagne,  i,  24,  293 
Charles  II,  ii,  73,  84 

Ill  of  Spain,  ii,  377 

IV  of  Spain,  ii,  377 

IV,  Emperor,  i,  415 

V,  i,  341,  401,  408,  412,  414  ;  ii, 

32 
Charleton,  W.,  ii,  81,  82 
Charron,  i,  480  sq.;  cited,  ii,  492 
Chastellain,  i,  429 
Chateaubriand,  ii,  421,  438,  441 
Ch&telet,  Marquise  du,  ii,  230 


Chatham.     See  Pitt 

Chatterton,  ii,  199 

Chaucer,  i,  346  sq. 

Chaumette,  ii,  278 

Chazars,  the,  i,  292  n. 

Cheffontaines,  i,  474 

Chelsum,  ii,  205 

Chenier,  A.,  ii,  254 

Chesterfield,  cited,  ii,  165  n. 

Cheyne,  Dr.,  ii,  431  n.,  434 

cited,  i,  105  n.,  106,  107,  112,  115  ; 

ii.  167  n.,  175-76 

Chillingworth,  ii,  106 

China,  thought  in,  i,  82  sq. 

evolution  of,  i,  136 

Chivalry  and  religion,  i,  356  sq. 

Choiseul,  ii,  236 

Cholmeley,  ii,  12 

Chosroes,  i,  240  n. 

Christian  II  of  Denmark,  ii,  138 

Ill,  ii,  354 

Christianity,  theory  of ,  i,  18  ;  rise  of,  i, 
210,  216  ;  hostility  of  to  freethought, 
i,  224;  in  Egypt,  i,  77;  strifes  of,  i, 
215-16  ;  and  conduct,  i,  18,  19,  223  ; 
and  cruelty,  i,  172  ;  and  war,  ii,  500 

Christie,  R.,  i,  383  n.,  386  ;  ii,  51,  53  n. 

Christina,  Queen,  ii,  121,  357  sq. 

Chronology,  Biblical,  criticism  of,  ii,  9 

Chrysostom,  i,  239  7i.,  241,  242 

Chubb,  ii,  161 

Chuen-Aten,  i,  72  sq. 

Church,  popular  hostility  to,  ii,  75 

Church,  Dean,  cited,  ii,  28 

Churchill,  Lord  Randolph,  ii,  401 

Chwang-Tsze,  i,  86 

Cicero,  i,  168,  175,  199,  202  sq. 

Clairaut,  ii,  177 

Clarke,  i,  8  n.;  ii,  98, 104,  105, 150,  166, 
168,  196 

John,  ii,  394 

W.  R.,  i,  232 

Clarkson,  ii,  76 

Claudius  of  Turin,  i,  282,  298  n. 

of  Savoy,  i,  468 

Clavel,  ii,  129  n. 

Clayton,  Bishop,  ii,  189 

Cleauthes,  i,  184  ;  in  Campaspe,  ii,  3 

Clemens  Alexandrinus,  i,  175,  225,  226 

Romanus,  i,  227 

Clement  IV,  i,  343 

VII,  i,  382,  408 

XIV,  ii,  369  sq.,  371 

Clergy,  extortion  by,  i,  292,  311 

vice  among,  i,  292,  331 

hostility  to,  i,  282,  292,  295  ;  ii, 

79,  171 
Gierke,  ii,  114 
Clifiord,  M.,  ii,  90 
Professor,  ii,  403,  450,  467 


Clitomachos,  i,  187 

Clootz,  ii,  244,  278 

Clough.  ii,  452 

Cobbett,  i,  404 

Coger.  ii,  282 

Coifi,  i,  39 

Colbert,  ii,  67,  142 

Cole,  P.,  ii,  5 

Colenso,  i,  38,  108  ;  ii,  418,  431,  433 

Coleridge,  i,  231 ;  ii,  9,  349  n.,  443-44, 
446,  447,  450,  487  sq. 

Colet,  i,  404  n. 

"Collegiants,"  the,  ii,  136  ?t. 

Colletet,  ii,  122 

Collins,  Anthony,  i,  7,  21 ;  ii,  113,  138, 
150  n..  154  sg.,  166,  174,  225 

W.  E.,  cited,  i,  306 

Prof.  J.  C,  ii,  232-33 

Columbus,  i,  345 

Combe,  G.  and  A.,  ii,  398 

Comenius,  i,  5  ;  ii,  30 

Comines,  i,  356 

Communism,  primitive,  and  ethics,  i,  93 

in  the  Reformation,  i,  418,  425 

Comparison  of  creeds,  efiect  of,  i,  44, 

135,  198 
Comte,  Auguste,  ii,  405,  467,  468,  479, 
483  sq. 

Charles,  ii,  468  ;  cited,  ii,  281  n. 

Comtism,  ii,  405,  483  sq. 
Conches.     See  William 
Concordat,  Napoleon's,  ii,  293 
Condillac,  ii,  235,  261,  265,  459 
Condorcet,  ii,  227,  243,  274,  285,  468 
Confucianism,  ii.  111,  494 
Confucius,  i,  82  sq.;  ii.  111 
Connor,  ii,  115 
Conrad,  Joseph,  ii,  451 

the  Inquisitor,  i,  305  n. 

of  Waldhausen,  i,  415 

Conservatism,  savage,  i,  22  ;  chiefs  and, 
i,   41  ;    and  interaction   of  commu- 
nities, i,  44  ;  and  economics,  i,  64 ; 
of  Confucius  and  Lao  Tsze,  i,  84  ;  of 
Romans,  i,  203 
Constance,  Council  of,  i,  366,  417 
Constans,  i,  240  w. 
Constant,  B.,  i,  31 ;  ii,  442,  470  w. 
Constantine,  i,  233 

Copronymus,  i,  281 

Constantius,  i,  234,  240  n. 
Conway,  M.  D.,  ii,  402,  413  sq.,  453  n., 
454 

cited,  i,  220  n.;  ii,  384  n. 

Conybeare,  ii,  173 

F.  C,  i,  280  n.;   ii,  425  n. 

Cooke,  Miss  A.  M.,  i,  395 
Cooper,  J.  G.,  ii,  201 

T.,  ii,  201 

Coornhert,  ii,  33  sq. 


510 


INDEX 


INDEX 


511 


Copernicus,  i,  441,  456,  457,  477  7i.;  ii, 

32,  41  sg.,  47 
Coping,  John,  ii,  5 
Coquereau,  ii,  291 
Coquerel,  ii,  404 
Coras,  i,  393 
Corelli,  Miss,  ii,  451 
Corneille,  i,  2  ;  ii,  122 
Cornelius  Agrippa,  i,  402 
Cornford,  F.  M.,  i,  13,  139 
Comill,  i,  112 
Cornutus,  i,  191 
Corodi,  ii,  432 

Corporate  culture,  i,  122-23,  139 
Cosimo  del  Medici,  i,  372 
Cosmas  Indicopleustes,  i,  241 
Cosmology,  ancient,  i,  80,  118,  125 
Cotta,  i,  203 
Cotterill,  J.  M.,  i,  238  n. 
Counter-Reformation,  the,  ii,  56 
Cousin,  i,  313,  321  n.;  ii,  62  n.,  124  n., 

479 
Coward,  ii,  152,  166 
Cowell,  Professor,  cited,  i,  264 
Cowper,  ii,  207 
Craig,  ii,  116,  150  n. 
Craik,  cited,  ii,  149  7i. 
Cramer,  ii,  418 
Cranmer,  i,  459 
Crates,  in  Campaspe,  ii,  3 
Creation,  doctrine  of,  i,  118 
Creator-Gods,  i,  62,  90,  182 
Credulity,  evolution  of,  i,  91  sq. 
Cremonioi,  ii,  57,  63  n. 
Crequi,  Madame  de,  ii,  223  n. 
Croce,  on  Vico,  ii,  366  sq. 
Cromwell,  i,  206  n.;  ii,  73,  78 
Crotus,  i,  434,  435 
Crousaz,  cited,  ii,  165 
Cruelty,   Christian  and  pagan,  i,  172, 

246  ;  Moslem,  i,  264 
Crusades,  effects  of,  i,  47  n.,  295 
Crusius,  ii,  346 
Cudworth,  i,  4  ;  ii,  87,  95,  101  w.,  104, 

149-50 
Cuffelaer,  ii,  258 
Culverwel,  ii,  80 

Cumberland,  i,  30  ;  ii,  80,  103,  104 
Cuper,  Franz,  ii,  136 
Curnier,  cited,  ii,  210  n. 
Curtius,  E.,  cited,  i,  127 
Cuvier,  ii,  449  w.,  463,  464 
Cybele,  cult  of,  i,  64 
Cynics,  the,  i,  183 
Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  ii,  123 
Cyrenaics,  the,  i,  183 
Cyril,  i,  235,  239 
Cyrus,  i,  64,  65,  66 
Czechowicz,  ii,  37 


D'AGUESSEAU,  ii,  258 

Daill^,  ii,  120 

Daillon,  ii,  138 

D'Alba,  ii,  372 

D'Alembert,  ii,  177,  235,  236  n.,  258, 

271  s^.,  286,  372 
Dalton,  cited,  i,  41  n. 
Damilaville,  ii,  267,  291 
Damiron,  ii,  480 
Damon,  i,  154 
Dandolo,  ii,  367 
Dante,  i,  324,  325  sq.,  330  n. 
Danton,  ii,  279 
Daoud,  i,  101 

Darboy,  Archbishop,  ii,  406 
Dareios,  i,  65,  66 
D'Argens,  ii,  225,  238,  242,  262 
D'Argenson,  ii,  223,  235  sq.,  258,  281, 

282  n.,  286,  288  n. 
Darigrand,  ii,  291 
"Dark  Ages,"  the,  i,  277  n. 
Darmesteter,  cited,  i,  68 
D'Arusmont,  Madame,  ii,  499 
Darwin,  C,  ii,  207,  450,  464,  465,  406. 

467 

E.,  ii,  207,  464 

Darwinism,  early,  ii,  365,  366 
Daudet,  ii,  442 
Daumer,  ii,  433 
David,  King,  i,  101 

of  Dinant,  i,  317,  333 

Davides,  i,  421  ;  ii,  37 
Davids,  Rhys,  cited,  i,  55,  58 
Davidson,  J.,  ii,  453 
Davies,  J.  C,  ii,  201 

Archbishop,  ii,  98 

Sir  John,  ii,  21 

Davis,  ii,  205 

Deaf-mutes,  beliefs  of,  i,  42 

De  Brosses,  ii,  246,  250,  470 

Decamermi,  The,  i,  350  sq. 

Decharme,  i,  13,  127,  132 

De  Crousaz,  ii,  237  n. 

Deffand,  Madame  du,  ii,  223  n. 

Degeneration  in  religion,  i,87,91s3.,243 

D'Eichthal,  ii,  440 

Deification,  i,  185,  208,  209 

"Deism"  and  "deist,"  use  of  words,  i, 

4,  466  ;  ii,  91 

early  Italian  and  French,  i.  328 

English,    ii,    25,    28,    31,    69  sq., 

147  sq. 

French,  ii,  223  sq. 

German,  ii,  302  sq.,  329  sq. 

American,  ii,  317  sg. 

Scottish,  ii,  182 


"Deiste,"  introduction  of  word,  i,  1 

Dekker,  ii,  17 

De  la  Chambre,  ii,  226 

De  la  Chapelle,  ii,  226 


Delamare,  cited,  ii,  141 

Delambre,  ii,  254 

De  la  Serre,  ii,  225,  226,  238 

Deleyre,  ii,  239 

Delisle  de  Sales,  ii,  242,  290 

Delmedigo,  E.  and  J.  S.,  i,  379 

De  Lolme,  ii,  290 

De  Longue,  L.  P.,  ii,  238 

Delphi,  oracle  of,  i,  135,  186 

De  Maillet,  ii,  239,  262  sq. 

Demeter,  i,  153 

Demetrius  Phalereus,  i,  183 

Poliorketes,  i,  186 

Democracy    and    freethought,   i,    151, 

155,  160, 167  ;  ii,  209,  277  sq.,  282  sq. 
Demokritos,  i,  136,  157  sq.,  181 
Demonax,  i,  190 
Denk,  i,  436 
Denman,  Lord,  ii,  395 
Denmark,  culture  history  of,  ii,  354  sq., 

457 
Denyse,  ii,  215 

D'Epinay,  Madame,  ii,  223  n. 
De  Prades,  ii,  224,  239,  269  sq. 
De  Roches,  ii,  234  ?i. 
Dersdon,  ii,  88 
Descartes,  i,  470  ;  ii,  36,  64  sq.,  72,  73, 

121,  133,  134,  150 
Descente  de  Saint  Paul  anx  Enfers,  i,  326 
Desdouits,  Professor,  ii,  49  sq. 
Desforges,  ii,  291 
Des  Fourneilles,  ii,  104 
Desgabets,  ii,  128 
Deshoulieres,  Madame,  ii,  142 
Deslandes,  i,  7, 236, 237, 238  ;  ii,  214, 225 
Desmoulins,  ii,  254 
Destutt  de  Tracy,  ii,  254 
De  Thou,  i,  482  n. 
Deukalion,  i,  173 
Deurhoff,  ii,  138 
Deus  ex  Machina,  i,  163 
Devienne,  i,  477 
De  Villars,  ii,  125 
D'Holbach,  ii,  77,  221,  242-43,  245,  249, 

253,  211  sq.,  285,  393 
Diagoras,  i,  130  ?i.,  159 
Dick,  ii,  463  n. 
Dickens,  ii,  451 
Dickinson,  T.  L.,  cited,  i,  100 
Diderot,  ii,  218,    226,    229,   247,    248, 

249,    254,    259,    261,    264,    266   n., 

267  sq.,  285  sq.,  364,  371;  cited,  i, 

209  n.;  ii,  199,  221,  223  n.,  278 
Dikaiarchos,  i,  184 
Dill,  Sirs.,  i,  246  w. 
Dillon,  Dr.,  cited,  i,  112,  113,  115 
Diodoros,  cited,  i,  71,  72 
Diogenes  of  Apollonia,  i,  138  n.,  154 

Laertius,  i,  138  n.,  144,  145,  183 

• the  Babylonian,  i,  184  n. 


Diogenes  the  Peripatetic,  i,  188 
Dionysios,  the  younger,  i,  175,  176 

the  Areopagite,  i,  229  n. 

Dionysos,  i,  125,  134,  145,  164 

Diopeithes,  i,  154 

Dippel,  J.  Conrad,  ii,  304 

Dissent,  English,  and  Liberalism, ii,  326 

Dissenters'  Chapels  Act,  ii,  334 

Divination,  Hebrew,  i,  99 

Dixon,  Prof.,  cited,  ii,  492  sq. 

Doddridge,  ii,  173 

Dodwell,  H.,  senr.,  ii,  153 

H.,  junr.,  ii,  170 

W.,  cited,' ii,  191 

Dolcino,  i,  337 

Dolet,  i,  21,  380,  383,  385  sq. 

D'Olivet,  ii,  145 

DoUinger,  i,  331  n. 

Dominic,  St.,  i,  333,  340 

Dominicans,  i,  333,  334,  335  ;  ii,  43 

Domitian,  i,  214 

Domitius,  i,  206  n. 

Donatists,  the,  i,  232 

Dooman,  ii,  493 

Dostoyevsky,  ii,  457 

Douglas,  S.  A.,  ii,  419 

Douglass,  Frederick,  ii,  419 

Dove,  Dr.  John,  ii,  21,  79 

J.,  ii,201 

Drama,  freethought  in,  i,  133,  148, 161, 

302  ;  Elizabethan,   ii,   16  ;   Spanish, 

ii,  39 
Draper,  i,  13  ;  ii,  469 
Drews,  A.,  i,  13,  168 
Driver,  Canon,  ii,  433,  434  7i.;  cited,  i, 

105,  106,  112 
Droz,  cited,  ii,  275 
Drummond,  H.,  ii,  403 
Drunkenness,  Protestant,  i,  455 
Dry  den,  ii,  90  7i.,  93  sq.,  190 
Dualism,  i,  68,  154,  174,  227,  255,  280 
Du  Barry,  Madame  de,  ii,  236 
Dubois,  Dr.,  ii,  461  n. 
Duchatel,  Bishop,  i,  383,  384,  387 
Du  Chatelet,  Marquise,  ii,  230 
Ducket,  ii,  167 
Duclos,  ii,  215,  258,  291 
Dudgeon,  ii,  184,  201 
Duels,  veto  on,  i,  283  n. 
Dujardin,  i,  108 
Dulaurens,  ii,  237  n. 
Dumarsais,  li,  238,  243,  248,  272 
Dunbar,  W.,  quoted,  ii,  183 
Duni,  ii,  367 
Dunlop,  R.,  cited,  ii,  172 

Mrs.,  ii,  275  n. 

Duns  Scotus,  i,  336,  359 
Du  Pin,  ii,  144 
Dupuis,  ii,  274,  404 
Durand,  i,  360 


512  INDEX 


INDEX 


513 


Durkheim,  ii,  469 
Duruy,  ii,  227  n.,  406 
Duvernet,  ii,  222  n.,  244,  290 

EARTHQUAKES,  i,  278 

Eberhard,  ii,  260  n.,  315,  317 

Ebionites,  i,  225 

Ecclesiastes,  i,  114  sq.,  207 

Eckhart,  i,  362 

Economic  causation,  i,  36,  41,  60,  71  sq., 
77,  87,  233  sq.,  287  sq.,  292  sq.,  305- 
306,  339,  341,  357,  377,  404  sq.,  414, 
423  sq.,  427  sq.,  431  sq.;  ii,  160,  171, 
216 

Ecphantos,  i,  150 

Edelmann,  ii,  307  sq. 

Edersheim,  cited,  i,  118 

Edgeworth,  Miss,  ii,  451 

Education  and  Protestantism,  i,  436 

in  England  in  eighteenth  century, 

ii,  200 

Edwards,  T.,  cited,  ii,  77-78 

Jonathan,  ii,  438 

John,  ii,  98,  109,  110 

Egypt,  ancient,  religion  of,  i,  69  sq.; 
freethought  in,  i,  70 ;  influence  of 
on  Greece,  i,  121,  129  ;  influence  of 
on  Gnosticism,  i,  227  ;  modern,  i, 
22,  274-75 

Eichhorn,  ii,  423,  424,  431 

Elcesaites,  i,  227 

Eleatic  School,  i,  136,  Ml  sq.,  146  sq. 

Elements,  the  four,  i,  140 

Eleusinian  mysteries,  i,  159 

Elias,  i,  334 

Eliezer,  Rabbi,  i,  334 

Elijah  and  Elisha,  i,  102 

Rabbi,  ii,  489 

Eliot,  George,  ii,  438,  439,  444,  451,  600 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  ii,  4,  11 

St.,  i,  305  n. 

Ellis,  C,  ii,  98 

Sir  A.  B.,  cited,  i,  23,  25 

W.,  cited,  i,  23,34 

Elohim,  i,  98  ;  ii,  256 

Elwall,  ii,  162,  354 

Emerson,  ii,  100,  450,  453,  488 

Ernes,  ii,  98 

Emin,  Khalif,  i,  257 

Emlyn,  ii,  188 

Empedokles,  i,  158 

Encyclopidie,  ii,  234  sq.,  258,  270 

Engels,  ii,  412 

England,  medieval,  freethought  in,  i, 
297-98,  342  sq.;  torture  in,  322  n.; 
Tudor,  freethought  in,  i,  458  s^.;  ii, 
1  sq.;  Reformation  in,  i,  431  sq.;  ii, 
1  sq.;  15th  century,  freethought  in, 
i,  393  sq.;  17th  century,  freethought 
in,   ii,   69  sq.;  18th    century,    free- 


thought  in,  ii,  147  sq.;  19th  century, 
freethought  in,  ii,  386  sq.,  431,  433 

English  influence  on  France,  ii,  223, 
250  ;  on  Germany,  ii,  309,  311  sq. 

Ennius,  i,  151,  199  sq. 

Enoch,  Booh  of  the  Secrets  of,  i,  221 

Enrique  IV,  i,  340 

Ephesos,  i,  124 

Ephoros,  i,  180 

Epic,  rise  of,  i,  126 

Epicharmos,  i,  152,  199 

Epictetus,  i,  189,  215,  392,  476 

Epicureanism,  i,  118,  181  sq.,  200, 
201  sq.,  322,  325,  366  ;  ii,  67,  143 

Epicurus,  i,  157,  181  sq.,  186,  212 

Erasmus,  i,  370,  403,  406,  429,  440, 
450, 461 

Erastianism,  ii,  71  ?i. 

Eratosthenes,  i,  188 

Erdmann,  cited,  i,  314,  345 

Erhard,  ii,  346 

Erigena.     See  John  Scotus 

Esoteric  religion,  i,  71,  87,  191 

Esprit  fort,  use  of  term,  i,  6 

Essays  and  Reviews,  ii,  325 

Essenes,  i,  148 

Essex,  Earl  of,  ii,  2 

Est^ve,  P.,  ii,  239 

Estienne,  i,  391,  473  n. 

Ethical  Societies,  ii,  414 

Ethics,  progress  in,  i,  132,  184  ;  ii,  34, 
116,  343  ;  of  Chinese,  i,  85;  of  Greeks, 
i,  127, 133 ;  of  Hebrews,  i,  104,  221 ;  of 
primitive  peoples,  i,  28,  93  ;  of  Phoe- 
nicians, i,  81 ;  of  Romans,  i,  215 ; 
of  Mexicans,  i,  91  ;  of  early  Chris- 
tians, i,  220,  223,  244  ;  of  Moham- 
med, i,  263 

Etruscan  religion,  i,  197,  199,  200 

Eucharist,  doctrine  of  the,  i,  286, 
289  sg..  417-18,  420,  440 

Euchite  heresy,  i,  280  n.,  293 

Euclides,  i,  149  w.,  184 

Eudemus,  i,  138 

Eudo,  i,  295 

Eugenius  IV,  i,  357 

Euler,  ii,  177,  310 

Eunomians,  i,  247 

Euripides,  i,  127  n.,  148,  161  sq.,  171, 
199 

Eusebius,  i,  241,  434 

Evans,  Marian,  ii,  438,  439 

Eyanson,  ii,  201-203,  cited,  205 

Evelyn,  cited,  ii,  168 

Evemerism   among   Semites,  i,  79-80, 
102  ;    among    Greeks,   i,    169,    185 ; 
among    Christians,    i,    225 ;    among 
Romans,  i,  199 
Ev^meros,  i,  79,  184 
Everlasting  Gospel,  the,  i,  335  sq. 


Evolution  theory,  i,  138,  158  ;  ii,  207 

Ewald,  ii,  431 

Ewerbeck,  ii,  433 

Exeter,  i,  468 

Eye,  S.,  ii,  98 

Ez^l,  i,  274 

FABRICIUS,  i,  11 

Faguet,  cited,  ii,  442  n. 

Fairbanks,  i,  137  n.,  144  w. 

Falkland,  ii,  106 

"  Family  of  Love,"  ii,  4 

Farel,  i,  428 

Farinata  degli  Uberti,  i,  325 

Farrar,  A.  S.,  i,  14-15 

cited,  i,  808  n.,  321  n.;  ii,  175 

Fathers,  the  Christian,  i,  215,  216 

Fatimids,  the,  i,  256  n. 

Fauriel,  ii,  460 

Faxardo,  ii,  375 

Faye,  La,  ii,  44 

Feargal,  i,  282,  368 

Fear  in  religion,  i,  44 

Federation,  i,  137 

Fenelon,  i,  363  ;  ii,  126,  130,  142,  146, 

213,  250,  252 
Ferdinand,  King,  i,  340 
Ferdinando  II,  Duke,  ii,  365 

Ill,  ii,  371 

Ferguson,  ii,  186 

Ferini  and  Ayitiferini,  ii,  367 

Ferrand,  Mdlle.,  ii,  265 

Ferrer,  Francisco,  ii,  502 

Ferri,  ii,  469 

Fetishism,  i,  25,  36 

Feuerbach,  ii,  474,  475  sq. 

Fichte,  ii,  345,  347  sq.,  425,  471  sq., 

473,  475 
Fiji,  unbelief  in,  i,  36  n.,  43  ;  religion 

in,  i,  37,  43 
Filangieri,  ii,  369 
Finetti,  ii,  367 
Finlay,  quoted,  i,  278  w. 
Finow,  i,  38 
Fiorentino,  cited,  i,  376 
Firdausi,  i,  262 
Firmicus  Maternus,  i,  233 
Firmin,  ii,  114 
Fischer,  Kuno,  quoted,  ii,  Q>& 
Fisher,  Bishop,  ii,  1 

Dr.  L.,  quoted,  i,  49 

Fitzgerald,  i,  264 

Flade,  ii,  33 

Flagellants,  i,  336 

Flanders,    civilization   of,   i,   2;    early 

freethought  in,  i,  295,  297 
Flaubert,  i,  140  ;  ii,  442 
Fletcher,  ii,  19 
Fleury,  ii,  215 

Flint,Professor,cited,ii,35,366w.,3997i. 

VOL.  II 


Florence,  culture  of,  i,  325  sq.^  407  ;  ii, 
365,  387 

Florimond  de  Boemond,  i,  479  sq, 

Fliigel,  i,  256  w. 

Fogg's  Weekly  Journal,  quoted,  ii,  157 

Fontane,  cited,  i,  50 

Fontanier,  ii,  122 

Fontenelle,  ii,  54, 130  n.,  142-43,  227  n., 
235,  246,  250,  470 

Pood  supply  and  religion,  i,  94-5 

Foote,  G.  W.,  ii,  400,  408 

Forbes,  Lord  President,  ii,  104,  185, 
252 

Forbonnais,  ii,  245 

Forchhammer,  i,  171  n 

Forgiveness,  ethic  of,  i,  221 

Forgery,  priestly,  i,  72,  101,  230  7i., 
243 

Fotherby,  Bishop,  ii,  24 

Poucher,  ii,  258 

Founders,  religious,  i,  68 

Fourier,  ii,  404  n. 

Fourth  Gospel,  ii,  425 

Fowler,  Dr.,  ii,  28,  30  n.,  105,  111 

Dr.  Warde,  i,  195-96,  200  n.,  202, 

204,  209 

Fox,  C.  J.,  ii,  206 

W.  J.,  ii,  413 

Foxe,  i,  3,  395,  459 

Fracastorio,  i,  371  n.;  ii,  463  n. 

France,  early  freethought  in,  i,  291  sq.^ 
296  n-,  299  .svy.,  317  sq.,  351  sq.; 
Reformation  in,  i,  427  sq.;  influence 
of,  on  Germany,  ii,  309,311 ;  influence 
of,  on  Italy,  i,  351  n.;  ii,  371 ;  free- 
thought  in,  i,  379  sq.,  473  sq.;  ii, 
117  sq.,  141  sq.,  213  sg.,  388  ;  culture- 
history  of,  i,  317  sq.,  351  sq.,  379  sq.^ 
427  sq.,  473  sq.;  ii,  420,  440  sq. 

Francis,  King,  i,  383,  389,  427 

of  Assisi,  i,  333 

Franciscans,  i,  333  sq.,  339,  409 

Pranck,  Sebastian,  i,  442 

Francklin,  T.,  ii,  180,  203 

Fran<?ois  de  Rues,  i,  351 

Franklin,  B.,  ii,  381  sq.,  384  n. 

Fraticelli,  the,  i,  317,  337 

Fraud  in  religion,  i,  26  sq.,  108,  109, 
175,  230  n.,  243,  250 

Frazer,  Sir  J.  G.,  i,  401  w.,  471 

Frederick  II,  Emperor,  i,  323,  324 

of  Aragon,  i,  339 

the  Great,  ii,  248  n.,  261  n.,  269, 


287,  305,  311,  312  sq. 
—  William,  ii,  331,  342 
TV,  ii,  426 


V,  of  Denmark,  ii,  361 

Free  Church  of  Scotland,  ii,  410  sq. 
Freeman,  cited,  i,  261 
Freemasonry,  i,  358 ;  ii,  306,  330 

2L 


514 


INDEX 


lit 

i 


INDEX 


515 


"  Free  religious  "  societies,  ii,  410,  413 
Freeseekers,  sect  of,  6 
Free  Spirit,     See  Brethren 
"Freethinker,"  origin  of  word,  i,  1,  4, 

6  sq.;   meaning   of    word,    i,    4    •«'?., 

7  sq. 

Freethinker,  early  journal,  i,  7 

Freethought,  meaning  of,  i,  1  sq.,B  sq. 
and  conduct,  i,  17  sq.;  continuity  of 
i,S6sq.,i00sq.;  histories  of,  i,  10>»r/. 
psychology  of,  i,  8  sq.,  15,  39  ;  resist 
ance  to,  i,  22  «<?.;  in  religion,  i,  36  n. 
primitive,  i,  26,  38  sq.;    early  Arab 
i,   112,   116;    Babylonian,   i,  62-65 
Chinese,  i,  82  sq.;  Christian,  i,  218  sq. 
Egyptian,  i,  69  sq.;  Greek,  i,  128  sq. 
Hebrew,   i,   104,   111   sq.;    Hindu,  i 
49  sq.;  in  4th  and  5th  centuries,  i 
235  ;    in    medieval    schools,    i,   282 
307    sq.;    in    medieval    England,    i 
342  sq.;  in  the  Renaissance,  i,  365  sq. 
in  England  in  the  15th  century,  i 
398  sq.;  in  Tudor  England,  i,  458  sq. 
ii,    i,    sq.;    in    Austria,    ii,    351  ;     in 
France  in  the  16th  and  17th  centuries, 
i,   478   sq.;    ii,    117   sq.,    141    sq.;    in 
France  in  the   18th  century,  ii,  213 
sq.;  in  France  in  the  19th  century,  ii, 
404  sq.;  in  England  in  the  16th  cen- 
tury, ii,  1  sq.;  in  England  in  the  17th 
century,  ii,  69  sq.;  in  England  in  the 
18th  century,  ii,  147  sq.;  in  England 
in  the  19th  century,  ii,  392  sq.;  in  Ger- 
many, i,  361  sq.,'4:M  sq.;  ii,  294  sq.. 
388,  409  sq.,  420  sq,,  448,  454  sq.;  in 
Holland,  i,  398  sq.;  ii.  132  sq.,S52  sq. 
in  Italy,  i,  322  sq.;  n,  365  sq.,  387 
454 ;  in  Spain  and  Portugal,  i,  338  sq. 
470  sq.;  ii,  372  sq.;  in  Switzerland 
ii,  378  sq.;  in  Scandinavia,  ii,  354  sq. 
412  sq.;    in  the  Slavonic  States,  ii 
362  sg.,  412  sq.;  in  South  Africa,  ii 
416  sq.;  in  South  America,  ii,  407 
in  the  United  States,  ii,  381  sq.;  in 
Catholic  countries  to-day,  ii,  406  sq 
in   the   Catholic   Church,    ii,   5;    in 
Oriental  countries  to-day,  ii,  490  sq. 
Phoenician,   i,   79,   80;    Peruvian,   i 
90;  psychology  of,  i,  8   sq.,  16   sq. 
Roman,  i,   199  sq.;  under   Islam,  i, 
248  sq.,  272;  in  Persia,  i,  273 

Free-will,  doctrine  of,  i,  8,   232.   254, 
270  ;  ii,  150  n. 

Frei-geist,  use  of  word,  i,  6  ;  ii,  301 

Freke,  ii,  114  n. 

French  Revolution,  effect  on  English 
freethought  of,  ii,  209,  386  sq. 

Fr^ret,  ii,  241  n.,  243,  245,  248,  289 

Freron,  ii,  258 

Fresnoy,  L.  du,  ii,  206 


Frcudenthal,  i,  142 

"Friends  of  God,"  i,  362 

"  Friends  of  Light,"  ii,  339 

Frith,  Mrs.  I.,  ii,  43  n. 

Froissart,  i,  356 

Fromman,  ii,  298 

Fronto,  i,  236 

Froude,  i,  3  n.;  ii,  448 

Fry,  ii,  106 

Fuegians,  i,  98 

Fukuzawa,  ii,  491,  493 

Fuller,  cited,  ii,  22  n.,  23  n.,  24 

Andrew,  ii,  210,  398 

Furnival,  F.  J.,  cited,  ii,  19 

GABLER,  ii,  423,  424 

Gabriele  de  Salo,  i,  369 

Gaetano  of  Siena,  i,  369 

Gaidi,  ii,  221 

Gainsford,  ii,  11 

Galen,  i,  471 

Galeotto  Marcio,  i,  369 

Galiani,  ii,  369,  371 

Galileo,   i,   377-78,   401,   456;  ii,  42, 

57  sq.,  65 
Galitzin,  Prince  von,  ii,  286 
Galton,  cited,  i,  31 
Galvani,  ii,  371 
Gambetta,  ii,  500 
Ganganelli,  ii,  369  sq.,  371 
Garasse,  i,  480  7i.,  482  sq.;  ii,  55,  56 
Garat,  ii,  280 
Garbe,  Prof.,  cited,  i,  51 
Garcilasso,  cited,  i,  90 
Gardiner,  cited,  i,  396,  405  ;   ii,  22,  23, 

79 
Garibaldi,  ii,  500 
Garlon,  ii,  291 

Gassendi,  ii,  64,  65,  66 sq.,  104, 138, 150 
Gastrell,  ii,  98 
Gauchat,  ii,  165,  226,  250  n. 
Gaul,  Christian,  freethought  in,  i,  236  ; 

vice  in,  i,  245 
Gaultier,  ii,  217 
Gaunilo,  i,  310 
Gaussen,  ii,  458 
Gautama.     See  Buddha 
Gautier,  ii,  250  n. 
Gazier,  ii,  275  n.,  292  «. 
Gazzali,  i,  259,  263,  266,  267,  270 
Gebhardi,  ii,  312 
Gebhart,  discussed,  i,  409 
Gebler,  criticized,  ii,  59 
Geddes,  Dr.,  ii,  431 
Gegenbauer,  Theophilus,  ii,  295 
Geijer,  ii,  417 
Gemistos  Plethon,  i,  371 
G^nard,  ii,  291 
Genesis,  criticism   of,   i,  450  ;  ii,   115, 

463.     See  Pentateuch 


I 


Genest,  ii,  214 

Geneva,  thought  in,  i,  2,  446  ;  ii,  379 

Gennadios,  i,  372 

Genovesi,  ii,  369 

Gentilis,  Valentinus,  i,  451,  453 

Gentillet,  i,  468 

Geoffrin,  Madame,  ii,  223  ?z.,  272  n. 

Geoffrey  d'Estissac,  i,  381 

Geographical  causation,  i,  134,  197 

Geology,  i,  371  ;  ii,  206 

George  III,  ii,  200 

Georgios  Trapezuntios,  i,  372 

Gerbert,  i,  301  n. 

Gerhard,  Bishop,  i,  291,  336  n. 

Germany,  Reformation  in,  i,   403  sq.; 

freethought  in,  i,  361  sq.,  434  sq.;  ii, 

294  sq.,  388,  409  sq.,  420  sq.,  454  sq. 
Gerson,  i,  363,  417 
Gervinus,  ii,  15 
Geryon,  i,  185 
Geulincx,  ii,  138 
Gewissener,  ii,  296 
Ghailan  of  Damascus,  i,  254 
Ghibellines,  i,  325 
Ghillany,  ii,  427,  432 
Giannone,  ii,  368,  369 
Gibbon,  i,139,  178,204-205,  209,  246  ?i., 

262;  ii,  229,  398,  399,  447,  468 
Gibson,  Bishop,  ii,  159 
Giddings,  ii,  469 
Gilbert,  i,  456 

Claude,  ii,  214,  237 

Gildon,  ii,  98,  168 

Gilman,  Arthur,  quoted,  i,  260 

Giorgio  di  Novara,  i,  369 

Giraldus  Cambrensis,  i,  310-311 

Girard,  i,  127,  131,  167 

Gladiatorial  games,  i,  245 

Gladstone,  i,  202  n.;  ii,  205-206,  255, 

489 
Glanvill,  i,  3  ;  ii,  102-106,  138 
Glave,  E.  J.,  cited,  i,  36 
Glisson,  ii,  103 
Gnosticism,  i,  191,  225  sq. 
Go,  the  chief,  i,  39 
Gobel,  ii,  278 

"  Goddess  of  Reason,"  ii,  274,  278 
God-idea,  evolution  of,  i,  197 
God-names,  Semitic,  i,  102 
Godwin,  ii,  445 
Goethe,  ii,  48,  317,  333  sq.,  447,   464; 

cited,  ii,  309,  310,  323  n.,  389 
Goeze,  ii,  317 
Gogol,  ii,  398 
Goguet,  ii,  379 
Golden  Rule,  i,  85,  137 
Goldsmith,  ii,  195 
Goliards,  i,  299,  326 
Gomates,  i,  67 
Gomperz,  i,  123 


Goncourt,  de,  ii,  442 

Goniondzki,  i,  425 

Good,  Dr.  T.,  ii,  87 

Goodman,  ii,  98 

Gordon,  T.,  ii,  201 

Gorgias,  i,  168 

Gorky,  ii,  457 

Gorlaeus,  ii,  35 

Gospels,  freethought  in,  i,  218  sq.;  order 
of,  ii,  425,  427-28 

Gostwick,  cited,  ii,  165 

Gottschalk,  i,  283,  284  sq. 

Gouge,  R.,  ii,  89  n. 

Gouvest,  ii,  239 

Graf,  i,  108 

Gramond,  ii,  53 

Granovsky,  ii,  456 

Grant,  Sir  A.,  i,  178  n. 

General,  ii,  408 

R.,  cited,  ii,  178 

Grapius,  ii,  259 

Grassi,  ii,  59 

Gratz,  i,  115 

Gray,  cited,  ii,  195 

Greece,  freethought  in,  i,  120  sq. 

modern,  freethought  in,  ii,  498 

Greef,  de,  ii,  469 

Greek  civilization,  i,  120  sq.,  192  ;  reli- 
gion, i,  100,  123  sq.,  191  ;  influence 
in  India,  i,  56  ;  influence  on  Jews, 
i,  116  ;  influence  on  Rome,  i,  194, 
200  sq.;  influence  on  Saracens,  i,  255 

Green,  J.  R.,  cited,  i,  404  7i.,  439,  460 ; 
ii,  17,  200;  criticized,  ii,  42-43 

Greene,  ii,  6-7,  16 

Greg,  W.  R.,  ii,  402,  439 

Gr^goire,  Abb6,  ii,  276,  292  n. 

Bishop,  ii,  292 

Gregorovius,  cited,  i,  374  n. 

Gregory  VII,  i,  289,  294 

IX,  i,  305,  323,  376 

XIII,  i,  457 

Greissing,  ii,  298 

Greville,  ii,  45 

Gribaldo,  i,  451,  453 

Griffis,  cited,  ii,  492 

Grimm,  Jakob,  cited,  i,  39 

M.,  cited,  ii,  231  n.,  240,  256  n., 

266,  267,  273,  275  n.,  368,  371,  374  n. 

Gringoire,  i,  381,  427 

Gronvelle,  ii,  280 

Grosart,  Dr.,  ii,  27 

Grosley,  ii,  291 

Grosse,  ii,  298 

Grosstete,  Robert,  i,  320,  345 

Grote,  ii,  469,  485 ;  quoted,  i,  129-30, 
133,  145,  169,  171  n.,  177,  182 

Grotius,  i,  463  ;  ii,  35,  70,  366 

Gruet,  Jacques,  i,  442  sq. 

Gruppe,  i,  42 


516 


INDEX 


Guardati,  i,  368 
Gubernatis,  ii,  454 
Gueroult  de  Pival,  ii,  241 
Gueudeville,  ii,  237 
Guibert,  ii,  291 

7 de  Nogent,  i,  323 

Guicciardini,  i,  375 
Guillaume  de  Lorris,  ii,  351 
Guiot,  i,  300 
Guirlando,  i,  468 
Guizot,  ii,  442  ;  cited,  i,  431 
Gulick,  cited,  ii,  493-94 
Gumplowicz,  ii,  469 
Gustavus  Vasa,  ii,  354 

Til,  ii,  360 

Gutschmid,  cited,  i,  68 
Guyau,  ii,  469 
Guyon,  Madame,  ii,  146 
Abbe,  ii,  228 

HADI,  Khalif,  i,  257 

Haeckel,  ii,  466 

Hafiz,  i,  266 

Hagenbach,  i,  13  ;  ii,  311 

Hahn,  i,  13 

Haigh,  cited,  i,  131,  133,  161  n.,  163, 

166 
Hale,  SirM.,  ii,  101,  176 
Hall,  Bishop,  ii,  74,  105 

Joseph,  ii,  162 

Robert,  ii,  451 

Hallam,  ii,  468  sq.;  cited,  i,  357,  369-70, 

392  n.,  464  ;  ii,  52  n.,  63  n.,  80 
Haller,  Von,  ii,  261,  310 
Halley,  ii,  151,  173,  178 
Halyburton,  ii,  181-82  ;  cited,  ii,  166  «., 

168 
Hamann,  ii,  346 
Hamilton,  ii,  485  sq. 
Hammurabi,  i,  61 
Hamond,  ii,  5 
Hampden,  Dr.,  quoted,  i,  229  ii.,  307  n., 

308,  309,  312  n. 

Richard,  ii,  93 

Hancock,  ii,  98 

Hanyfism,  i,  249  sq. 

Hanyfites,  the,  i,  249  ;i.,  255 

Hardy,  ii,  451 

Harnack,  cited,  i,  231  n,;  criticized,  i, 

233  n.;  ii,  436 
Haroun  Alraschid,  i,  257 
Harrington,  ii,  78 
Harriott,  i,  456  ;  ii,  9,  12-13 
Harris,  ii,  98 
Harrison,  F.,  i,  313  n. 
Hartley,  ii,  485 
Hartmann,  ii,  474 
Hartung,  i,  166 
Harvey,  ii,  30,  66 
Gabriel,  ii,  7 


Haruspices,  i,  199 

Hasan-al-Basri,  i,  254 

Haslam,  ii,  395 

Hassall,  cited,  ii,  197 

Hassan,  i,  266 

Hatch,  quoted,  i,  174  n.,  226  n, 

Hattem,  P.  van,  ii,  138 

Haureau,  i,  345  n. 

Hausrath,  cited,  ii,  426 

Havet,  i,  107-8;  ii,  440 

Hawaii,  freethought  in,  i,  38 

Hawkins,  B.,  quoted,  ii,  448-49 

Hawthorne,  ii,  453 

Hayitians,  the,  i,  256  n. 

Haym,  ii,  473 

Haynes,  E.  S.  P.,  i,  14,  288 

Hazlitt,  ii,  445,  446 

Healy,  John,  cited,  i,  3 

Hebert,  ii,  278 

Hebrews,  religion  and  ethics  of,  i,  97  sq.; 

mythology  of ,  i,  102  sqr,  freethought 

among,  i,  111  sq. 
Hegel,  i,  12,  231  ;  ii,  350,  470  7i.,  471  sq., 

475,  476,  477,  490 
Heiberg,  ii,  362 
Heine,  ii,  442,  454  sq.,  474,  489;  quoted, 

ii,  328,  338,  345,  474 
Heiric,  i,  318  n. 
Hekataios,  i,  144,  147 
Helchitsky,  i,  418-19 
Helena,  i,  128 
Hell,  theories  of,  i,  266,  285,  459  ;  ii, 

4,  8,  77,  203 
Helvetius,   ii,   207,   240,   243,   265  sq., 

368,  459 
Hemming,  ii,  6 
Henley,  ii,  453 
Hennell,  C.  C,  ii,  402,  438 
Hennequin,  ii,  443 
Henotheism,  i,  50 
Henry,  the  monk,  i,  295 

of  Clairvaux,  i,  297 

IV,  of  Prance,  i,  481  ;  ii,  314 

V,  of  England,  i,  394 

VIII, i,  396,  427,  432,  458 

P.  E.,  cited,  i,  444,  445  n.,  446, 


449  n. 
Hensel,  i,  457 
Herakleides,  i,  145,  191 
Herakleitos,  i,  130,  136,  144  sq. 
(author   of   De   Incredibilibus) ,  i, 

185 
Herbert  of  Cherbury,  Lord,  ii,  25,  69  «(?., 

98 
Herder,  ii,  311,  333,  345,  350,  468 
Here,  i,  124 
Hermeias,  i,  177 
Hermippos,  i,  155 

i,  154  n. 

Hermits,  Hindu,  i,  54 


INDEX 


517 


Hennogenes,  i,  214 
Hermotimos,  i,  136 
Herodotos,  i,  35  w.,  45,  67,  121,  125  n., 

147,  156 
Hesiod,  i,  80,  125  sq.,  144 
Hetherington,  ii,  395 
Hettner,  ii,  261,  326  n. 
Hetzer,  i,  435 
Hewley,  Lady,  ii,  160 
Hexameter,  origin  of,  i,  126 
Heyse,  ii,  456 
Hey  wood,  Thomas,  ii,  16 
Hibbert,  Julian,  ii,  272  n. 
Hickes,  Dr.,  ii,  113 
Hicksites,  the,  ii,  385 
Hiero,  i,  152 
Hierocles,  i,  226,  238 
Hierology,  ii,  71,  102,  181 
Hieronymos,  i,  154  n. 
Higginson,  Colonel  T.  W.,  ii,  453 
Higher  Criticism,  the,  ii,  256,  330 
High  Priests,  i.  Ill 
Hiketas.     See  Iketas 
Hildebrand,  i,  294 
Hillel,  i,  117,  218 
Hilton,  ii,  6 
Hincmar,  i,  284 
Hinduism,  i,  48  sq, 
Hinsdale,  Mrs.,  ii,  384  n. 
Hipparchia,  i,  183  n. 
Hipparchos,  i,  188 
Hippias,  i,  168 
Hippo,  i,  156 

Hippokrates,  i,  169,  180.  471 
Hitopadesa,  the,  i,  54 
Hittites,  i,  136 
Hobbes,  ii,  28,  63,  64,  71   sq.,  90,  103, 

134,  150  n.,  253,  255,  282,  380 
HofEding,  Prof,,  criticized,  ii,  175 
Holbach.     See  d'Holbach 
Holberg,  ii,  355  sq. 
Holcroft,  ii,  445 
Holdsworth,  Dr.,  ii,  158 
Holkot,  Robert,  i,  334 
Holland.     See  Netherlands 

G.  J.,  ii,  253 

Holmes,  O.  W.,  ii,  453 
"  Holy,"  early  meaning  of,  i,  103 
Holyoake,  G.  J.,  ii,  394  sg.,  408 
Home,  H.     See  Kames 

John,  ii,  186 

Homer,  i,  99-100,  123,  145,  197 
Homeric  poems,  i,   100,   120,   124,  126 

sq.,  135,  152,  161 
Honduras,  Freethought  in,  ii,  407 
Hone,  ii,  394 

Honorius  of  Autun,  i,  313 
Hooker,  i,  394 ;  ii,  25 ;  cited,  i,  3 ;  ii,13, 14 
Hooper,  cited,  i,  3,  459 
Horace,  i,  209,  215  ;  ii,  35 


Horrebow,  ii,  355 

Hosea,  i,  104  sq. 

Hosius,  i,  426 

Hotman,  ii,  283 

Houston,  ii,  385,  393 

Houteville,  ii,  215 

Howe,  ii,  82,  91 

Howells,  ii,  453 

Howitt,  Dr.,  31-2 

Huard,  ii,  216,  249  n. 

Huarte,  i,  471  sq.;  ii,  56 

Huber,  Marie,  ii,  233,  238,  249 

Huet,  ii,  126  sq.,  131,  217,  250,  252 

Hugo,  Victor,  ii,  442 

Hull,  John,  ii,  21 

Humanists,  Greek,  i,  147 ;  German, 
i,  403  ;  Italian,  i,  327  sq. 

Hume,  i,  204  ;  ii,  10-11,  67,  102,  174, 
178,  180-1,  205  n.,  468,  484;  cited, 
ii,  195 

Humiliati,  i,  334 

Humphrey  of  Gloucester,  i,  396 

Hungary,  thought  in,  i,  421 ;  reforma- 
tion in,  i,  419  sq. 

Hunt,  Leigh,  ii,  446,  447 

Hunter,  J,,  cited,  ii,  161 

Hurst,  Bishop,  i,  5,  14  ;  cited,  ii,  294. 
322,  333  n.,  335 

Huss,  i,  308,  360,  366,  415  sq.,  423 

Hutcheson,  F.,  ii,  183  sq,,  189 

Hutchinson,  Mrs.,  cited,  ii,  75,  79 

J.,  ii,  150,  185 

Roger,  i,  458-59 

Huttman,  ii,  393  n. 

Hutton,  ii,  206,  462 

Huxley,  ii,  174,  450,  464  sq.,  466,  467  ; 
cited,  ii,  263 

Huysmans,  ii,  443,  451 

Hyde,  ii,  257 

Hygiainon,  i,  162  n. 

Hyksos,  the,  i,  73 

Hypatia,  i,  233 

IBN  EZRA,  i,  316 

Ibn  Gebriol,  i,  316 

Ibn  Khaldun,  i,  268,  271-72 

Ibsen,  ii,  457 

Ichikawa,  ii,  495  ?i. 

Iconoclasm,  savage,  i,  24  ;  Byzantine,  i, 
277-89  ;  in  the  West,  i,  282 

Ideas,  doctrine  of,  i,  147,  307  sq. 

Idolatry,  i,  63,  65;  67  ;  early  opposition 
to,  i,  63  ;  Christian  opposition  to,  i, 
225  ;  Christian,  i,  225,  242,  277  sq. 

Ignell,  ii,  418 

Iketas,  i,  150 

Ilgen,  ii,  431 

Hive,  J.,  ii,  200 

Imbert,  ii,  289 

Imitatio  Christi,  i,  363 


518 


INDEX 


ft 


INDEX 


519 


Immaculate  Conception,  i,  336 
Immortality,  belief  in,  i,  99,  100,  116- 

17,   330  n.;    savage  ideas  of,    i,  33; 

theories   of,    ii,   153 ;    denial    of,    in 

India,  i,  53,  58  ;  Hebrew,  i,  109,  113, 

117,207;  Greek,   i,   187;  Roman,  i, 

206,   207,    210;    Christian,    i,    224; 

Arab,    i,    253,    262;  Italian,    i,   322, 

325,369,370,  376;  Spanish,   i,  339, 

340;  French,   i,   361;  ii,   119,    230; 

Polish,   i,    424 ;  English,   i,   458-59, 

460;  ii,  8,  76,   196;  of  animals,    ii, 

309,  316 
Imperialism   and  freethought,  ii,  171, 

195 
Impostors,  tJie  Three,  i,  27,  323  sq.,  339, 

445 
Incas,  rationalistic,  i,  90 
Index  Expurgatorius,  i,  376,  412,  414, 

479;  ii,  58,  61,  63,  121,  218 
India,  freethought  in,  i,  49,  53,  55,  275  ; 

magic  in,  i,   45  ;  religious  evolution 

in,  i,  48  ^q.,  92  ;  ii,  496  sq. 
Indra,  cult  of,  i,  49 
Indulgences,  i,  406,  417 
Industrialism,  ii,  195  ;  and  freethought, 

ii,  171,  195 
Infanticide,  Arab,  i,  253 
"Infidel,"  use  of  word,  i,  1,  3,  8 
"Infidelity,"  use  of  word,  i,  1,  3,  4,  8  ; 

ii,  96 
Ingelo,  ii,  86-87 
IngersoU,  ii,  418,  419 
Inglis,  Sir  R.,  ii,  61 
Innocent  II,  i,  296 

Ill,  i,  299,  302 

IV,  i,  322 

VIII,  i,  372 

Inquisition,  the,  i,  297,  299,  302,  305, 

306,   322,  335  n.,  337  sq.,  356,  368, 

376,  387.  399,  409,  414,  423,  469,  475; 

ii,  39,  40,  46,  48,  59,  146,  372  sq. 
Institutions,  power   of,   in    religion,    i, 

36,  41,  59,  61;  lack  of  rationalist,  i, 

36,  41 
Intolerance,   Greek,   i,    152,   154,  159, 

170  s^.,  174, 184  ;  Roman,  i,206,  213  ; 

Christian,  i,  172,  232  sq.,  240.     {See 

Persecution.) 
Intuitionism,  ii,  341 
Ionia,  culture  of,  i,  123  sq.,  135  sq.,  180 
Ireland,  ancient,  culture  in,  i,  283-84  ; 

toleration  in,  ii,  172  ;  Protestantism 

in,  i,  433;  freethought  in,  ii,  188  sq. 
Irenaeus,  i,  232 
Iriarte,  ii,  375 
Isabella,  i,  340-41 
Isaiah,  i,  63,  105,  107 
Isenbiehl,  ii,  329 
Isis,  cult  of,  i,  77 


Islam,  i,  248  sq. 

Ismailites,  the,  i,  261,  266 

Israel,  relative  freethought  in,  i,  104  sq. 

Ista,  ii,  376 

Italy,  freethought  in,  i,  3,  322  sq., 
365  sq.;  ii,  365  sq.,  387,  454;  influ- 
ence of,  on  Europe,  i,  466  sq.',  refor- 
mation in,  i,  407  sq, 

ly^yasu,  ii,  495 

JAAFER,  i,  257 

Jabarites,  the,  i,  255 

Jacob,  i,  102 

Jacobeos,  the,  ii,  377 

Jacobi,ii,  333  w.,  489 

Jacques  de  Bourgogne,  i,  447 

Jahedians,  the,  i,  266  n. 

Jahn,  ii,  351 

Jainism,  i,  57  ;  ii,  497 

Jamblichos,  i,  235 

James,  Epistle  of,  i,  224 

James  I.  of  England,  ii,  4  n.,  19,  21  sq. 

James,  Prof.  W.,  i,  16  n. 

Henry,  ii,  453 

Jami,  i,  266 

Jamin,  ii,  252 

Jann^s,  P.  de  la,  ii,  291 

Jansenists,  ii,  121,  125,  129,  213,  216, 
227,  269,  277 

Japan,  freethought  in,  ii,  490  sq.;  re- 
form in,  i,  22 

Jean  d' Olive,  i,  344 

lo  Clopinel,  i,  351 

de  Caturce,  i,  386 

de  Boysonne,  i,  386 

Jeanne  d'Arc,  i,  395 

Jeannin,  i,  481 

Jefferies,  R.,  ii,  452 

Jefferson,  ii,  382,  385 

Jeffrey,  ii,  386 

Jehovah.     SeeYahweh 

Jenghiz  Khan,  i,  260 

Jeremiah,  1,  104 

Jerome,  St.,  i,  240 

Jerome  of  Prague,  i,  417,  423 

Jerusalem,  J.  P.  W.,  ii,  308 

the  Younger,  309  n. 

Jesuits,  i,  421,  422,  469  ;  ii,  2,  32,  58n., 
60,  65ri21,  125,  143,  145,  227,  236, 
245,  251,  277 

Jesus,  i,  21  ;  the  Pauline,  i,  219 ;  bio- 
graphy and  teachings  of,  i,  220-21 ; 
horoscope  of,  i,  327  n. 

Jevons,  F.B.,  criticized,  i,  45 

Jewel,  Bp.,  cited,  i,  3 

Jews  in  Middle  Ages,  i,  302,  315  sq., 
379;  persecutions  of,  i,  342;  modern, 
ii,  489  sq. 

Joachim,  Abbot,  i,  335 

Job,  i.  111  sq.,  242 


Joel,  i,  106  .. 

John  the  Scot,  i,  283  sq.,  308,  309  ;  n, 

488 
of  Baconthorpe,  i,  346  n. 

of  Gaunt,  i,  349 

of  Jandun,  i,  359 

of  Parma,  i,  336 

of  Salisbury,  i,  310,  314,  315,  376 

Pannonicus,  i,  419 

• Pirnensis,  i,  423 

Sobieski,  ii,  363 

of  Wesel,  i,  406 

Wessel,  i,  406 

Zapoyla,  i,  420 

Zimisces,  Emperor,  i,  281 

Pope,  XII,  i,  294 

Pope,  XXI,  i,  377  «. 

Pope,  XXIII,  i,  417 

Johnston,  Sir  H.  H.,  cited,  i,  276 

Johnstone,  John,  ii,  183 

Joinville,  i,  317,  356 

Jonas  al  Aswari,  i,  254 

Jonson,  Ben,   ii,  16,  20;  cited,  i,  3,  6; 

ii,  21 
Joseph,  myth  of,  i,  102 
Joseph  II,  ii,  315,  351,  360 
Joshua,  i,  102 

Jouffroy,  ii,  468,  479 

Journalism,  freethinking,   li,  400,  407, 
408,  411,  419 

Jousse,  ii,  291 

Jovinian,  i,  239 

Jowett,  cited,  ii,  229-30 

Juan  de  Paratallada,  i,  339 

"Juan  di  Pesos,"  ii,  214,  352 

Judas,  i,  172  n. 

Julian,  i,  189,  217,  238 

"Julianites,"  i,  459 

Julius  III,  i,  411 

Junod,  H.  A.,  i,  25,  31,  34 

Jurieu,  ii,  140,  282 

Justinian,  i,  240  ?i.,  255 

Justin  Martvr,  i,  236,  244 

Juvenal,  i,  118,  210,  223 


KA'ABA,  the,  i,  248 

Kadarites,  i,  254,  270 

Kadesh,  i,  103 

Kafhrs,  freethought  among,  39 

Kafirs  of  Hindu  Kush,  i,  40 

Kahnis,  cited,  ii,  300  w.,  306,  308,  311, 

421  n. 
Kaires,  ii,  498 
Kaiser,  ii,  424 
Kalam,  the,  i,  259 
Kalisch,  ii,  433 
Karnes,  Lord,  ii,  186,  207 
Kant,  ii,  311,  331,  333,  337  sq.,  458, 

468,  471  sq.,  475  ;  cited,  ii,  330  n. 
Kantemir,  ii,  364 


Kantsa,  i,  52 

Kapila,  i,  52 

Karaites,  i,  315 

Karians,  i,  124 

Karma,  doctrine  of,  i,  56 

Karmathians,  the,  i,  260 

Karneades,  i,  187,  200 

Kasimirski,  i,  249  n. 

Kautsky,  i,  416  n. 

Keane,  cited,  i,  95 

Keats,  ii,  445 

Keener,  Bishop,  ii,  419 

Kenrick,  ii,  415 

Kepler,  i,  263,  456  ;  ii,  43 

Kerberos,  i,  185 

Kett,  ii,  5,  7  n. 

Ketzer,  origin  of  word,  i,  292 

Kharejites,  the,  i,  254 

Kharvakas,  the,  i,  51,  53 

Kidd,  B.,ii,  404 

Kidder,  ii,  98 

Kiellgren,  ii,  360 

Kielmeyer,  ii,  464  n. 

Kierkegaard,  ii,  457 

Kindi,  Al,  i,  267 

Kindy,  Al,  i,  258 

King  and  Hall,  cited,  i,  74-76 

King,  Archbishop,  ii,  150,  154 

Kings,  deification  of,  i,  185,  208,  209 

Kingsley,  Miss,  on  fetishism,  i,  25 

Charles,  ii,  489 

Kipling,  ii,  453 

Kirke,  Edward,  cited,  ii,  2 

Kirk  up,  cited,  ii,  395  n. 

Kleist,  ii,  454 

Klitomachos,  i,  187 

Knaggs,  ii,  98 

Knight,  ii,  185 

Knutzen,  Matthias,  ii,  296  sq.,  297  n. 

Martin,  ii,  307 

Koerbagh,  ii,  36 

KoJieleth,  i,  109,  114  sq. 

Koran,  the,  i,  248  n.,  249  sg. 

Korn,  ii,  432 

Kortholt,  i,  324  ;  ii,  297 

Krake,  Rolf,  i,  40 

Kratinos,  i,  157 

Kraus,  ii,  347 

Krause,  E.,  cited,  ii,  207 

Kriezanitch,  ii,  364 

Krishna  myth,  i,  56 

Kritias,  i,  160,  171 

Krochmal,  ii,  490 

Kronos,  i,  125 

Kropf,  cited,  i,  39  n. 

Krug,  ii,  424 

Ktesilochos,  i,  167  n. 

Kuenen,  i,  106,  250,  254  w.,  431,  433 

Kumarila,  i,  53 

Kurtz,  cited,  ii,  296,  330  n. 


520  INDEX 


f 


Kurz,  cited,  ii,  329  n. 
Kuyper,  ii,  136 
Kyd.  ii,  12,  16 

La  Barre,  ii,  230 

Labitte,  cited,  i,  483  n. 

La  Bletterie,  ii,  257,  289 

Laboudorie,  i,  478 

Labour  churches,  ii,  414 

La  Bruy^re,  ii,  142,  143  sq.;  cited,  i, 
47  71. 

Lachares,  i,  186 

Lacordaire,  ii,  482 

Lactantius,  i,  215,  225,  235,  241 

Lafayette,  ii,  227,  283 

Lafitau,  cited,  i,  30 

La  Fontaine,  ii,  142 

Lafuente,  ii,  39 

Lagrange,  ii,  177,  254 

La  Harpe,  ii,  217,  290 

Laing,  cited,  ii,  410 

Lalande,  i,  11  ;  ii,  254 

Lamarck,  ii,  207,  263,  464 

Lamartine,  ii,  442 

Lamb,  C,  ii,  445  sq. 

Lambert,  Francois,  i,  437 

Lamennais,  ii,  480  sq. 

La  Mettrie,  ii,  194,  239,  260  sq.,  313 

Lami,  ii,  122,  141  n.,  214 

La   Mothe   le   Vayer,  i,  483  ;    ii,  117. 
118  sq. 

Laodau,  cited,  i,  350  7i. 

Lane,  cited,  i,  22,  275 
M.  A.,  i,  277  n. 

Laney,  Bishop,  ii,  90 

Lang,  A.,  criticized,  i,  44  n,  90,  93,  94, 

98,  99;  cited,  i,  37 
Lange,  i,  10,  178,  180;  ii,  64,  148  n., 
175,  261  sq.,  268,  297  n.,  311,  460  n. 
Langland,  i,  348 

Languedoc,  civilization  in,  i,  299  sq. 
Lanjuinais,  ii,  290 
Lanson,   cited,    i,   354  ;    ii,    124,    144, 

217  n.,  230  7z. 
Lao-Tsze,  i,  82,  84  sg. 
La  Peyrere,  ii,  196  sq. 
Laplace,  i,  184  ;  ii,  177,  254,  274,  458 
La  Flacette,  ii,  120 
La  Primaudaye,  ii,  6 
Lardner,  ii,  201-202 
La  Rochette,  ii,  229 
Larroque,  ii,  440 
Lassen,  ii,  298 
Lasson,  Dr.,  cited,  i,  363 
Latimer,  ii,  1 
Latini,  Brunetto,  i,  326 
Latitudinarians,  i,  469;  ii,  115 
Lau,  ii,  305 
Laukhard,  ii,  311 
Lavater,  ii,  334 


Lavergne,  L<5once  de,  cited,  ii,  276 
Law,  William,  ii,  110,  168,  173  n.,  179 
Lawrence,  W.,  ii,  445  n.,  461  sq. 
Lea,  H.  C,  cited,  i,  298,  305  n.,  306. 

357 
Le  Breton,  ii,  270  n. 
Lechler,  i,  13  ;  ii,  28 
Lecky,   i,   13-14;    ii,   402;    quoted,    i 
318  n.,  392  n,;  ii,  18,  19,  172,  209  n.' 
254 
Le  Clerc,  i,  464  ;  ii,  75,  97,  116  n.,  137, 

150 
Leconte  de  Lisle,  ii,  443,  453 
Lecount,  ii,  395 
Le  Dautec,  cited,  ii,  125  n. 
Leo,  Dr.,  ii,  466 

Sir  Sidney,  ii,  71  n. 

Leechman,  ii,  185 

Leenhof,  ii,  352 

Lef^vre,  i,  380,  428,  429 

Legate,  ii,  21,  23 

Legge,  Dr.,  cited,  i,  82,  83,  86 

Leibnitz,  i,  390  n.;  ii,  29, 150,  174,  175, 

264,  298  sg.,  309,  337 
Leicester,  LoUardry  in,  i,  349 
Leland,  ii,  168,  170,  197 
Lemaitre,  ii,  443 
Le  Monnicr,  ii,  178 
Lenglet  du  Fresnoy,  ii,  262,  290 
Lenient,  C,  cited,  i,  299,  332  n.,  353 
Lennstrand,  ii,  418 
Lonormant,  cited,  i,  68  7i. 
Leo  the  Armenian,  i,  280 

the  Isaurian,  i,  255,  277-78 

X,  Pope,  i,  377 

Leonardo  da  Vinci,  i,  370  ;  ii,  463 
Leopardi,  ii,  387,  454 
Leopold  II  of  Tuscany,  ii,  371 
Leslie,  C,  ii,  97,  154  n.,  269 

Prof.,  ii,  458  sq. 

Leasing,  i,  328,  471 ;  ii,  229,  309  n.,  315, 

323  sq.,  338,  344,351,  425 
Le  Tellier,  ii,  142 
Letourneau,  ii,  469 
Le  Trosne,  ii,  291 
Leufstedt,  ii,  418 
Leukippos,  i,  136,  157 
Leukothea,  i,  143 
Levallois,  cited,  ii,  443  n. 
Levellers,  the,  ii,  77 
Levesque.     See  Burigny  and  Pouilly 
Levi  ben  Gershom,  i,  317 

David,  ii,  49  n. 

Levites,  origin  of,  i,  45,  111 
L^vy,  A.,  cited,  ii,  476 
L^vy-Bruhl,  ii,  483  n. 
Lewes,  G.  H.,  ii,  336,  408,  450 

John,  ii,  5 

L'H6pital,  i,  391 

Libanius,  i,  245  ;  quoted,  i,  234 


INDEX 


521 


Libertin,  use  of  word,  i,  2 

Libertini,  or  "  libertines,"  use  of  word, 

i,  2,  445,  458,  459,  482  ;  tenets  of,  i, 

445  sq. 
Libraries,  public,  i,  208  n. 
Lichtenstein,  cited,  i,  35 
Lidgould,  ii,  98 
Liebknecht,  ii,  411 
Lieh-Tsze,  i,  86 

Lightfoot,  Bishop,  cited,  i,  148,  223 
Lilienfeld,  ii,  469 
Lilja,  ii,  418 
Lillie,  cited,  i,  55  n. 
Lilly,  i,  472;  ii,  2  sg.,  11,  16 
Lincoln,  President,  ii,  419 
Linguet,  ii,  252,  290 
Lipsius,  i,  393 
Liszinski,  ii,  362-63 
Littri^,  cited,  i,  355,  356 
Livy,  i,  196,  198,  200,  209 
Llorente,  i,  342  n. 
Lobeck,  i,  165 

Localization  of  Gods,  i,  46  sg. 
Locke,  ii,  98,  106, 107  sq.,  129,  130,  138, 

147,   150    n.,    174,    300  ;     cited,   ii, 

154-55,  182 
Lodge,  ii,  16 
Loescher,  ii,  298 

Logos,  the,  i,  84,  130,  174  ;  ii,  137 
Lokayata,  i,  53 
Lollards,  i,  348,  394  sq.,  406 
Long,  G.,  ii,  469 ;  cited,  i,  206  n. 
Longrais,  ii,  244 
Lope  de  Vega,  ii,  39 
Lord's  Prayer,  the,  i,  222-23 
Lorenzo  dei  Medici,  i,  373 
Louis,  Saint,  i,  317,  427  ;  ii,  314 

Philippe,  ii,  404  7i. 

XI,  i,  427,  428 

XII,  i,  427,  428 

XIV,  ii,  123,  146,  216 

XV,  ii,  287 

Lounsbury,  Prof.,  cited,  i,  346-47 
Lowndes,  Miss,  cited,  i,  476 
Lubbock.     See  Avebury 
Lucian,  i,  183,  188  ?i.,  189,  190,  211, 

212,  238 
Lucilius,  i,  203  n. 

Lucretius,  i,  182-83,  201  sg.,  205;   in- 
fluence of,  i,  323 
Ludovicus  Vives,  i,  470 ;  ii,  64 
LuUy,  ii,  47 
Luthardt,  Prof.,  ii,  466 
Luther,  i,  366,  405-406,  417,  424,  427, 

429,  435,  436,  439  sq.,  449,  450,  454, 

455  ;  ii,  64 
Lutheranism,  morals  of,  ii,  294 
Liitzelberger,  ii,  433 
Luzac,  ii,  194,  261  n. 
Lyall,  Edna,  ii,  452 


Lydgate,  cited,  i,  397 
Lydia,  civilization  in,  i,  136 
Lyell,  ii,  449 
Lyons,  ii,  156  ?i. 
Lysimachos,  i,  183  n. 
Lyttleton,  ii,  173 

Ma'AVI,  i,  261 

Mabad  al  Jhoni,  i,  254 

Mably,  ii,  254,  284,  290 

Macaulay,  ii,  395,  449,  469  ;   cited,  i, 

47  n.;  ii,  152,  172,  204  n.  ;  criticized, 

ii,  96  n.,  181  ?i.,  449 
McClellan,  i,  233 
McCosh,  cited,  ii,  184  7i. 
McCrie,  i,  408  n.,  412  n.,  413 
Macdonald,  D.  B.,   i,  248  n.,  25G  n., 

257 

Rev.  J.,  cited,  i,  36  n. 

Machiavelli,  i,  332,  373  sg.;  ii,  6-7 

Mclntyre,  Prof.,  ii,  43  n. 

Mackay,   R.  W.,   i,    12;  ii,  402,  439; 

quoted,  i,  137  n.,  147  n.,  227  n. 
Mackenzie,  George,  ii,  85,  181 
Maclaurin,  ii,  178 
Macolano,  ii,  61  n. 
Macro  bins,  i,  240 
Madhavachara,  i,  54 
Madison,  ii,  385 
Magi,  i,  66,  67,  148 
Magian  religion,  i,  66  sg. 
Magic,  Savage,  i,  35 ;  Christian,  i,  242, 

287;  and  religion,  i,  45,  46,  401;  in 

Middle  Ages,  i,  326 
Magna  Graecia,  culture  of,  i,  151 
Magyars,  the,  i,  280  n. 
Mahabharata,  the,  i,  59 
Mahaffy,  quoted,  i,  126,  129,  132,  164, 

172 
Mahdi,  Khalif,  i,  257 
Mahmoud,  Sultan,  i,  261,  262 
Maillet,  ii,  206 

Maimonides,  i,  302,  315-16,  490 
Maine  de  Biran,  ii,  479 
Maistre,  J.  de,  ii,  479 
Maitland,  i,  349  7i. 
Major,  John,  ii,  283 
Makrisi,  i,  268 
Malachi,  i,  115 
Malebranche,  ii,  128  sg. 
Maiesherbes,  ii,  235-36,  259,  289 
Malherbe,  ii,  122   . 
Malik,  i,  262 

Mallet  du  Pan,  ii,  279  sq.,  284  sq. 
Malte  Brun,  ii,  362 
Malthus,  i,  179;  ii,  465,  485 
Mamoun,  i,  257-58 
Mandard,  ii,  7 
Mandeville,  ii,  157,  194,  200,  265,  380, 

468 


1' 


522 


INDEX 


INDEX 


523 


Manfred,  i,  325 

Manichseism,  i,  228,  229,  280,  293 

Mansel,  ii,  485  sq. 

Mansour,  Khalif,  i,  256 

Marcion  and  Marcionites,  i,  227 

Marcus  Aurelius,  i,  211,  215,  217 

Mardouk-nadinakhe,  i,  47 

Mar^chal,  Sylvain,  i,  11 ;  ii,  244,  289 

Margat,  ii,  290 

Margherita  de  Trank,  i,  337 

Marguerite  of  Navarre,   i,   2,  380,  386, 
389,  428,  429 

,  the  Second,  i,  480 

Maria  Theresa,  ii,  260,  351 

Mariner,  cited,  i,  38 

Marini,  ii,  61 

Mariolatry,  i,  336 

Marius,  i,  206 

Marlowe,  ii,  4,  1  sq.,  16 

Marmontel,   ii,  259  sq.;  cited,  222  n., 
280  w. 

Marot,  i,  380,  388 

Marri,  El,  i,  261 

Marriage,  ancient,  i,  243-44 

Mars,  i,  197 

Marsiglio  of  Padua,  i,  359  ;  ii,  283 

Marsilio  Ficino,  i,  308,  370  n.,  371,  372 

Marsy,  ii,  239,  290 

Marten,  ii,  78 

Martha,  Prof,  i,  187 

Martin  Marprelate,  ii,  7 

Martin,  Mrs.  Emma,  ii,  394 

Henri,  ii,  286  n. 

St.,  i,  233  n. 

Martineau,  J.,  ii,  415;  cited,  ii,  135  n. 

Harriet,  ii,  448,  500 

Martyrs,  i,  243  n. 

Marx,  ii,  411,  412,  474,  489 

Mary  of  Hungary,  i,  420 

Queen  of  England,  ii,  1  n. 

Mary  and  Jesus,  myth  of,  i,  102 

Mascagni,  ii,  387 

Masillon,  ii,  142 

Maspero,  cited,  i,  74 

Mass,  the,  i,  287 

Massey,  cited,  ii,  200 

Massinger,  ii,  17 

Masson,  Prof.,  ii,  105 

Mastricht,  ii,  133 

Masuccio,  i,  287  n.,  368 

Materialism,  in  India,  i,  53,  54  ;  in 
Persia,  i,  273;  in  Egypt,  i,  69 ;  in 
Greece,  i,  125,  153,  157  ;  in  Italy,  i, 
368,  371  ;  in  England,  ii,  72,  104, 
148,  150,  166;  in  Prance,  ii,  261  sq. 

Mathematics,  rise  of,  i,  149  ;  English 
in  18th  century,  ii,  177-78 

Mathew,  John,  cited,  i,  33 
Matter,  doctrines  concerning,  i,146n., 
150,  316 


Matthew  Paris,  i,  305  w.,  315  n. 
Matthias  of  Janow,  i,  415 

Corvinus,  i,  419 

Maultrot,  ii,  221 

Maupassant,  ii,  442 

Maupeou,  ii,  140 

Maupertuis,  ii,  262,  264 

Maurice,  i,  314  ;  ii,  486,  488  ;  cited,  i, 

247  n. 
Maury,  L-F.  A.,  cited,  ii,  241  n. 
Mauvillon,  ii,  315,  332 
Maximillian  II,  ii,  32 
Maximus  Tyrius,  i,  215 
Maxwell,  ii,  104 
Mayer,  ii,  178 

Mazarin,  ii,  117  n,,  122,  123 
Mazdeism,  i,  65  sq. 
Medes,  the,  i,  66 

Medicine,  Renaissance,  i,  378,  382 
Meister,  ii,  242,  244,  246,  248,  266  n., 

269  n.,  286  n. 
Melanchthon,   i,  401,  408  n.,  436,  437, 

441,  447,  449,  450,  454  ;  ii,  32 
Melissos,  i,  146 
Menander,  i,  186 
Mencius,  i,  86 
Mendelssohn,  Moses,  ii,  315, 323,  328  n., 

489 
Mendicant  Friars,  i,  333 
Menippus,  i,  189 
Menzel,  cited,  i,  362  n.,  438,  455 
Menzies,  Dr.,  cited,  1,  82,  84,  98 
Mercier  de  la  Riviere,  ii,  244 
Meredith,  George,  ii,  451 

E.P.,  ii,  439 

Merim«^>e,  ii,  442 

Merivale,  criticized,  i,  207 

Merodach,  i,  64 

Merry,  Dr.W.W.,  i,  167  n. 

Mersenne,  i,  4,  73  n.,  324,  484 

Meslier,  ii,  219  sq.,  225,  273,  285 

Mesopotamia,  cults  of,  i,  47 ;  religious 

evolution  in,  i,  61  sq. 

Messianism,  i,  117 

Metempsychosis,  i,  158 

Metrodoros,  i,  161 

(the  second),  i,  182 

Meung,  Jean  de,  i,  351 

Mexico,  religions  of,  i,  88  sq. 

Mey,  ii,  290 
Meyer,E.,cited,i,64-5,66-7,68,125n., 

126,  131,  155  n.;  criticized,  i,  81 

Louis,  ii,  133 

^lezentius,  i,  40 

INIezi^res,  i,  329 

Mezzanotte,  i,  370  n. 

Michael,  Emperor,  i,  278-79 

Scotus,  i,  324 

Michaelis,  ii,  320 

Michelet,  ii,  277,  442,  469;    cited,   i, 


4 


1 

I 


304,  327  M.,  338,  355  n.,  405,  451  sq., 

460  n.;  ii,  256 
"Middle  Ages,"  the,  i,  277  n. 
Middleton,  i,  288,  472;    ii,   157,   158, 

190  sq. 
Mikado- worship,  ii,  494  sg. 
Miletos,  i,  124,  136,  137,  147 
Militarism  and  thought,  i,  203  ;  n,  146 
Militz,  i,  415 
Mill,  James,  ii,  484  ;  cited,  i,  360 

J.  S.,  ii,  266,  395,  403,  408  n.,  447, 

450,  485,  486,  489 
Millar,  J.,  ii,  186 
Miller,  Hugh,  ii,  463,  465 
Millot,  ii,  241,  254 
Milman,  ii,  438,  470  ;  cited,  i,  233,  245, 

299  71.,  318,  362 
Milner,  Rev.  J.,  ii,  109,  110 
Milton,  ii,  105,  106 
Minnesingers,  i,  361 
Minoan  civilization,  i,  120,  121 
Mino  Celso,  i,  392 
Minucius  Felix,  i,  245 
Mirabaud,  ii,  206,  242,  243,  246,  263 
Mirabeau,  the  elder,  ii,  244 

the  younger,  ii,  254,  273  n. 

Miracles,  i,  204,  241  n.;  ii,  95,  180, 191, 

338,  444,  472 
Miriam,  i,  102 
MirzaAli,  i,  273-74 
Mithra,i,  67,  68,228 

Mithraism,  i,  67,  68,  229,  240 

Mitra,  cult  of,  i,  48 

Moabite  Stone,  i,  105  n. 

Mocenigo,  ii,  45,  46 

Moffat,  cited,  i,  34,  35 

Mohammed,  i,  27,  248  sq. 

Mohammedanism,   freethought   under, 
248  sq. 

Moktader,  i,  260 

Molech,  i,  103 

Moleschott,  ii,  479  n. 

Molesworth,  ii,  189 

Moliere,  i,  2,  475  ;  ii,  122-23 

Molina,  i,  456;  ii,  125 

Molinists,  ii,  146,  213 

Molinos,  ii,  146 

Mollio,  i,  411 

Molyneux,  i,  6  ;  ii,  104,  188 

Mommsen,  i,  194  n.,  195,  197,  198 

Monaldeschi,  ii,  358  n. 

Monarchism  and  religion,  i,  47,  125 

Monasteries,  dissolution  of,  in  England, 
i,  458 

Monboddo,  Lord,  ii,  207 

Mongault,  ii,  258 

Monk,  ii,  167 

Monolatry,  i,  57,  98,  249 

Monotheism,  in  Mesopotamia,  i,  61  sq.', 
Arab,  i,  254  sq.;  Persian,  i,  67  ;  Egyp- 


tian, i,  69;  in  China,  i,  82-83  ;  Mexi^ 
can,  i,  89,90;  Peruvian,  i,90;  alleged 
primitive,  i,  94 ;  Hebrew,  i,  97, 
100,  118  ;  Greek,  i,  178,  181,  184 ; 
Roman,  i,  209  ;  later  Pagan,  i,  240; 
of  Mohammed,  i,  248  sq. 
Monroe,  ii,  385 

Montagu,  Lady  Mary  Wortley,  ii,  164 
Montaigne,   i,  2,  393,  465,  474,  475  sq.; 
ii,  18,  67,  95, 100, 139  n. ,  268, 480,  481 ; 
cited,  i,  2 
Montalembert,  ii,  482  ;  cited,  i,  303  n., 

305  n. 
Montesquieu,  ii,  217  sq.,  245,  257,  351, 

366,  368,  468 
Monti,  Pompeo  de,  i,  412 

Abbate,  ii,  371-72 

Moore,  G.,  ii,  451 

^Moors.     See  Arabs 

Morabethin,  ii,  269  n. 

More,  Sir  T.,  i,  177,  396,  460-61  ;   ii,  1 

Henry,  ii,  65,  81,  88,  102,  104 

Hannah,  ii,  451 

Morehead,  ii,  450  n. 

Morellet,  ii,  254 

Morelly,  ii,  239 

Morgan,  Professor  de,  cited,  ii,  13 

Morgan,  T.,  ii,  169 

SirT.  0.,  ii,  462 

Morin,  i,  324 

Morley,  Lord,  i,  452  ;  ii,  256,  401,  408; 
cited,  ii,  149  ii.,   228,  261,  267,  272, 
285  n.,  286  n.,  287  71.,  311 
Mornay,  de,  i,  2,  473  ;  ii,  18 
Moroccan  Letters,  ii,  331 
Morris,  Rev.  J.,  ii,  109 

Gouverneur,  ii,  382  n. 

Morton,  Bishop,  ii,  6,  13 

Morus,  ii,  320 

Moschus,  i,  80 

Moses,  i,  102 

Mosheim,  cited,  i,  211,  226,  229  n.,  451; 

ii,  74,  303 
Motadhed,  i,  259 
Motamid,  i,  259 
Motasim,  i,  258 
Motawakkel,  i,  258 
Motazilites,  the,   i,   254  sq.,  272,  316, 

328  n. 
Motecallemin,  the,  i,  267,  270,  328  n. 
Moxon,  ii,  395 
Mozdar,  i,  257     • 
Muggleton,  ii,  78 
Muir,  Dr.,  cited,  i,  50 
Miiller,  J.,  ii,  298 

K.  O.,  i,  121 71.,  123,  131,  133 

Max,  cited,  i,  51,  58,   145  ;  criti- 
cized, i,  48  71.,  54,  95,  162  n.,   165; 
ii,  465 
Munter,  ii,  361 


524 


INDEX 


INDEX 


525 


Muratori,  ii,  368 

Murchison,  ii,  467 

Murimuth,  i,  335 

Murray.  Prof.  G.,  cited,  i,  122,  135  w., 
164-65,  166,  171  n. 

Musaeus,  ii,  297 

Musgrave,  i,  165 

Musset,  de,  ii,  442 

Mutianus,  i,434  sq. 

Mycenean  civilization,  i,  120 

Mylius,  ii,  324,  325 

Mysteries,  Eleusinian,  i,  183  n.;  Pytha- 
gorean, i,  129 ;  Bacchic,  i,  200,  210 

Mystery-plays,  ChristiaA,  i,  302 

Mysticism,  i,  229  n.;  Greek,  i,  146, 
L89;  Christian,  i,  218,  335,  362; 
Arab, 4,  265,  267,  270 

Mythology,'  ii,  246,  319,  424  sq.,  470  sq. 

NABONIDOS,  i,  64 

Nadaillac,  cited,  i,  88  n. 

Naigeon,  ii,  224,  242,  267,  272  sq. 

Nanak,  ii,  497 

Nantes,  reyocationof  Edict  of,  ii,  141-42 

Napier,  ii,  182 

Naples,  freethought  in,  i,  366-67  ;   ii, 

365  ;  reaction  in,  ii,  387 
Napoleon,  ii,  292  sq.,  387  sq.,  458 

Ill,  ii,  406 

Narrien,  i,  150 

Nashe,  ii,  7,  16 

Natalius,  i,  230 

Natura  naturans,  i,  318,  472  ;  ii,  3,  207 

"Naturalist,"  use  of  word,  i,  1-2 

Naude,  Gabriel,  i,  391  n.\  ii,  117  sq. 

Nay  lor,  James,  ii,  83 

Neander,  cited,  i,  287,  288,  446;  ii,  431 

Nebo,  i,  47 

Necker,  ii,  275,  280 

"Negative  criticism,"  i,  16-17  ;  ii,  197 

Neo-Platonism,  i,  76,  189,  191,  226 

Nero,  i,  213 

Nestorians,  the,  i,  241 

Netherlands,  i,  398  sq.,  414,  461  sq.\ 

ii,  33  sq.,  132  sq.,  352  sq.,  407 
NetzahualpiUi,  i,  90 
Netzahuatlcoyotl,  i,  41,  89 
Nevill,  ii,  78 

"New  Christians,"  the,  i,  342 
Newman,  J.  H.,  ii,  127   n.,  170,  437, 

470.  487 

F.  W.,  ii,  402,  408,  439 

C.  R.,  ii,  439  w. 

New  Testament,  criticism  of,  ii,    148, 

211,  219,  230,  245,  308,  318,  321,  327 

sq.,  423  sq. 
Newton,  ii,  61,  106,   110-11,   112  sq., 

150,  174,  178,  202-203,  457  sq. 
New  Zealand,  freethought  in,  ii,  500  ; 

superstition  in,  i,  46 


Nichirenites,  ii,  492 
Nicholas  I,  Pope,  i,  285 

IV,  Pope,  i,  344 

V,  Pope,  i,  367 

the  painter,  i,  297  n. 

of  Amiens,  i,  311 

Nichols,  Dr.,  ii,  98 

James,  ii,  22  n. 

Nicholson,  or  Lambert,  ii,  1 

E.  B.,  i,  220  n. 

R.  A.,  cited,  i,  250,  251  n.,  252 

W.,  ii,  201 

Nicolai,  ii,  315  sg. 

Nicolaus  of  Autricuria,  i,  361,  368 

of  Cusa,  i,  367,  368,  398  ;  ii,  42, 

47  n. 
Nicoletto,  Vemias,  i,  369 
Niebuhr,  ii,  368 
Nietzsche,  ii,  474 
Nifo,  i,  369 
Niketas.     See  Iketas 
Nikias,  i,  174 
Nikon,  ii,  363 
Nilus,  St.,  i,  392 
Ninon  de  I'Enclos,  ii,  223  «. 
Niphus.     See  Nifo 
Nirvana,  doctrine  of,  i,  56 
Nizolio,  i,  469 

Nominalism,  i,  283,  307  sq.,  358,  360 
Nonconformity  in  England,  ii,  160  sq. 
Norris,  John,  ii,  104 
Norway,  freethought  in,  ii,  412,  457 
Nourisson,  ii,  255 
Nous,  doctrine  of,  i,  154 
Noyes,  ii,  453 
Numa,  i,  374 

Numbers,  doctrine  of,  i,  149,  228 
Nystrom,  ii,  418 

Obscenity  and  religion,  i,  357  sq. 

Occam.     See  William 

Ochino,  i,  409,  453,  468  ;  ii,  488 

Ogilvio,  cited,  ii,  207 

Oglethorpe,  ii,  267  n. 

Okeanos,  i,  125 

O'Keefe,  ii,  201 

Olavid^s,  ii,  373 

Oldcastle,  i,  349 

Oldfield,  ii,  98 

Old  Testament,  criticism  of,  i,  316  ;   ii, 

97,  131,  132,  134,  156,  167.  211,  256, 

307,  318,  321,  359,  431  sq. 
Olivetan,  i,  379 
Omar,  the  Khalif ,  i,  251 
Omar  Khayyam,  i,  262  sq. 
Omens,  belief  in,  i,  174,  198,  199,  206 
Oracles,  i,  136,  157  sq.,  174,  186 
Orano,  cited,  i,  411  n. 
Origen,  i,  226,  236  sq.\  ii,  488 
Orleans,  Duchessed',  cited,  ii,  145 


Ormazd.     See  Ahura  Mazda 
Ormsby,  cited,  ii,  40 
Orpheus,  i,  125  n. 
Orphicism,  i,  148  n.,  149 
Ortlieb,  i,  333 

Orvieto,  heresy  at,  i,  295,  299 
Orzechowski,  i,  425 
Osborn,  Major,  cited,  i,  255  n. 

Francis,  cited,  ii,  11 

Ostrorog,  i,  423 

Overton,  ii,  79 

Ovid,  i,  209  ;  ii,  463 

Owen,  Rev.  John,  i,  11 ;  cited,  i,  191  n., 

301   n.,   328  n.,   352,   368,    374   n., 

377  n.,  477  n.,  479,  480  n.,  483;  ii, 

43  n.,  52  n.,  125  n. 

Robert,  ii,  395  sq.,  399,  405 

Sir  Richard,  ii,  465 

Oxford  in  16th  century,  ii,  64  ;  in  18th 

century,  ii,  157 
Ozanam,  cited,  i,  230  n. 

PACHACAMAC,  i,  90 

Padua,  school  of,  i,  330,  379 

Paganism,  suppression  of,  i,  234  ;  late, 
and  Christianity,  i,  217 

Pagitt,  ii,  79 

Paine,  ii,  210  sq.,  382  sq.,  392,  393,  398, 
418,  458 

Painting,  Italian,  i,  365,  370 

Palaiphatos,  i,  185 

Paleario,  i,  412 

Palestrina,  i,  469 

Paley,  ii,  210,  252 ;  cited,  ii,  207,  252 

Palissot,  ii,  258 

Palmaer,  ii,  418 

Palmer,  Herbert,  ii,  27 

Prof.,  i,  248  n.,  249  n.,  250 

Elihu,  ii,  385 

Panini,  i,  53 

Pankosmism,  i,  144 

Pannonicus,  i,  419 

Pantheism,  medieval,  i,  2,  285  ;  Indian 
i,  48  sq.\  Babylonian,  i,  62 ;  Egyptian 
i,  69,  76;  Chinese,  i.  84;  Greek,  i 
130,    132,    137,   142,   144,    150,    162 
184  ;  Moorish,  i,  270  ;  Jewish,  i,  316 
German,  i,  333,  398 ;  ii,  303,  308  n. 
328;    Roman,   i,   209,   210   n.,   212 
Gnostic,  i,   226;    Sufi,  i,   265,   266 
Persian,  i,  272  sq.;  French,  i,  317 
ii,  129  ;  of  Aquinas,  i,  318 ;  Italian 
i,  373  ;  ii,  49,  52,  63  n.,  366  ;  in  the 
Netherlands,  i,  398-99 ;  ii,  135,  138 
at  Geneva,  i,  446,  449 ;  English,  ii 
148-49,  165;  Scotch,  ii,  184 

Paolo  Giovio,  i,  374  n. 

Papacy,  growth  of,  i,  294  sq.;  power  of 
i,  298,  302  sq.;  hostility  to,  i,  295 
312  n.,  322,  325,  331  sg.,419  sq.,  422 


Pare,  Gian,  ii,  1 

Parini,  ii,  371 

Paris,  university  of,  i,  329,  354,  355, 

361 
Parker,  Archdeacon,  ii,  91 

Theodore,  ii,  438,  488 

Prof.,  cited,  ii,  494,  496  n. 

Parkes,  Prof.,  cited,  ii,  426 

Parlement  of  Paris,  ii,  287 

Parmenides,  i,  136,  146 

Parr,  ii,  488 

Parsees,  the,  i,  111,  272 

Parsons,  ii,  9 

Parthians,  the,  i,  68 

Parvish,  ii,  167 

Pascal,  i,  478  ;  ii,  85,  121,  124  sq.,  251 

Paschasius  Radbert,  i,  286 

Pasiphae,  i,  185 

Passerano,  ii,  353 

Pastoret,  ii,  244 

Pastoris,  i,  424 

Patericke,  i,  384-85 

Paterini,  i,  296,  322,  406 

Patin,  Gui,  i,  389  ;  ii,  57  n.,  66,  117  sq., 

132  n. 

Professor,  i,  131 

Patot,  Tyssot  de,  ii,  214,  227 
Pattison,  Mark,  i,  442,  452,  468  n.;  ii, 

126  ?i.,  127,  179 
Paul,  i,  219,  224,  244 

of  Samosata,  i,  230 

II,  of  Russia,  ii,  365 

II,  Pope,  i,  370 

Ill,  Pope,  i,  382,  411 ;  ii,  41 

IV,  Pope,  i,  412 

V,  Pope,  ii,  57 

Herbert,  ii,  166  n. 

Pauli.  i,  397 

Gregorius,  i,  425 

Paulicians,  the,  i,  2,  279  sq.,  291  sq., 

309,  406 
Paulus,  ii,  423,  424  sq. 
Pauthier,  cited,  i,  83 
Pavlovsky,  cited,  ii,  456  n. 
Pazmany,  i,  422 
Pearson,  Bishop,  ii,  9 
Peasant  wars,  i,  406  n.,  417,  419,  436 
Pecock,  i,  394  sq.;  ii,  14 
Pedro  II,  i,  338 

de  Osma,  i,  340 

Peel,  Speaker,  ii,  402 

Peele,  ii,  16 

Peirce   ii   161 

Pelagianism,  i,  231  sq..  Til,  314 

Pelagius,  i,  229 

Pelham,  Prof.,  i,  200  n. 

Pelletier,  ii,  122  n. 

Pellicier,  i,  389 

Pelling,  E.,  ii,  98 

Penn,  ii,  114 


526 


INDEX 


Pentateuch,  criticism  of,  i,  316;  ii,  131, 
132,    137,    167,    197,    256,   423    sq., 
431  sq. 
Pereira,  i,  470 
Pericles,  i,  153  sq. 
Perier,  Madame,  ii,  134 
Perkins,  W.,  ii,  74 
Perrault,  cited,  ii,  120 
Perrens,  i,  13;    cited,  i,  2  n.,  368  ?i., 

381;  ii,  120  n.,  123  n. 
Perrin,  i,  443 

Persecution,  primitive,  i,  36  n.;  Chris- 
tian, i,  172,  232  sq.,  240,  280,  291, 
295,  296  sq.,  302  sq.,  337,  349,  385, 
386,  387,  388,  410  sq.,  419,  428  sq.; 
ii,  1  sq.,  22  sq.,  83,  122,  141-42,  181, 
188-90,  200,  214,  216,  222.  231,  233, 
235,  274.  289 sg., 502  {see  Inquisition)  ; 
Mohammedan,  i,  257,  259,  261,  271  ; 
Greek,  i,  142,  152,  154,  159,  170  sq., 
193;  Eoman,  i,  206,  207,  210,  216 
Persia,  religions  of,  i,  65  5^.;  influence 
of,  on  Hebrews,  i,  110,  149  ;  free- 
thought  in,  i,  66,  265  ;  culture-history 
of,  i,  148,  265,  272  sq. 
Peru,  ancient  freethought  in,  i,  41,  90  ; 
religion  of,  i,  88  ;  modern  freethought 
in,  ii,  407 

Perugino,  i,  370 

Pessimism,  i,  130 

Pestalozzi,  ii,  346  n. 

Peter  the  Hermit,  i,  295 

the  Great,  ii,  364 

of  Alliaco,  i,  345 

de  Brueys,  i,  295 

Martyr,  i,  409 

von  Mastricht,  ii,  133 

of  St.  Cloud,  i,  353 

of  Vaux,  i,  298 

Petit,  Claude,  ii,  122 

Petrarch,  i,  328  n.,  329  sq. 

Petrie,  W.  M.  P.,  cited,  i,  72,  75,  76  n., 
109 

Petrobrussians,  the,  i,  295 

Petronius,  i,  211 

Peucer,  i,  457 

Peyrat,  ii,  440 

Peyr^re,  ii,  132  sq. 

Pfaff,  ii,  298 

Pfander,  i,  166 

Pfeiff,  ii,  418 

Pfeiffer,  i,  457 

Pheidias,  i,  156 

Pherekydes,  i,  148 

Philanthropic  Institute,  ii,  316,  321 

Philip  II,  i,  341,  414,  472 

Philips,  A.,  i,  7 

Philiskos,  i,  200 

Phillips,  Stephen,  quoted,  ii,  53 

Philo,  i,  117,  118  n.;  cited,  183  n.,  223 


Philolaos,  i,  149,  150 

Phoenicia,    religious    evolution    in,    i, 
78  sq.,  100  :  freethought  in,  i,  79-8o' 

Photinus,  i,  231,  242 

Photius,  i,  278 

Phrenology,  ii,  398 

Physiology,  ii,  459  sg. 

Pico  della   Mirandola,  i,  371,  372-73, 
440 

Pierre  Aureol,  i,  359 

d'Ailly,  i,  327  n.,  360-61 

Piers  Ploughman,  Vision  of,  i,  348 

Pietisjn,  ii,  300  sq.,  305 

Pietro  of  Abano,  i,  326,  376 

Pighius,  i,  439 

Pilkington,  Bishop,  cited,  ii,  13 

Pindar,  i,  128-29 

Pinkerton,  cited,  i,  284 

Pirnensis,  i,  423 

Pitt,  the  elder,  ii,  169 

the  younger,  ii,  205-206 

Pius  II,  i,  367,  415 

IV,  i,  412 

V,  i,  412,  469 

Place,  Francis,  ii,  395 

Platner,  ii,  346 

Plato,  i,  146,  147,  167,  168  sq.,  174  sq., 
179,  226,  307  ;  in  Canqjaspe,  ii,  3 

Platonism,  i,  226  sq.,  371  sq. 

Playfair,  cited,  ii,  177-78 

Pliny,  i,  188,  210,  212 

Plotinus,  i,  76,  226 

Plutarch,  i,  153,   155,  172  n.,  191-92. 

227  n. 
Poe,  ii,  453 

Poetry,  Greek,  i,  126;  Roman,  i,  197,215 
Poets,  freethinking  of,  499 
Poland,  culture-history   of,   i,  422  sq.; 

ii,  37  sq.,  362  sg. 
Pole,  Cardinal,  i,  374  ?i. 
Polignac,  ii,  139,  215 
Pollard,  A.  P.,  cited,  i,  437 
Pollock,  Sir  P.,  ii,  213  n. 
Polybius,  i,  191,  374  n. 
Polynesians,  the,  i,  23,  34 
Polytheism,    i,    44   sq.,    65,   70,   225; 

Christian,  i,  242 
Pomare,  i,  38 
Pombal,  ii,  377 

Pompadour,  Madame  de,  ii,  235 
Pompeius,  i,  206  n. 
Pompignan,  Lefranc  de,  ii,  258 
Pomponazzi,  i,  376  sq.,  378 
Pomponius  Lsetus,  i,  378 
Poole,  R.  L.,  cited,  i,  309,  359,  360  n. 
Pope,  ii,  149  n.,  164-65,  190,  198,  232- 

33,  259 
Popham,  ii,  10 
Porphyry,  i,  226,  238-39 
Porteous,  Bishop,  cited,  ii,  210 


INDEX 


527 


i 


Portugal,  heresy  in,  i,  339  ;  freethought 

in,  ii,  Sn  sq.,  407 
Porzios,  i,  409  n. 
Posidonius,  i,  240 
Positivism,  ii,  483  sq. 
Postell,  i,  389,  473 
Potapenko,  ii,  457 
Pott,  Dr.,  ii,312 
Pougens,  ii,  226 
Pouilly,  Levesque  de,  ii,  257 
Poushkine,  ii,  398 

Powell,  E.  E.,  cited,  ii,  135  n.;  criti- 
cized, ii,  136-37 

Prof.  Baden,  ii,  463  sq. 

Pragmatic  Sanction,  the,  i,  427 
Prat,  Chancellier  du,  i,  428 
Praxeas,  i,  230 
Prayer,    popular    view  of,    i,  36;    the 

Lord's,  i,  122  ;  theories  of,  ii,  180 
Preaching,  early,  i,  217  n. 
Predestination,!,  231-32,  254,  277,  285, 

288,  446-47,  455-56,  462 
Premontval,  ii,  239,  249 
Presbyterians,  the,  ii,  160 
Press  Licensing  Act,  ii,  84,  99 
Prideaux,  ii,  98 
Priestcraft,  ancient,  i,  26,  62,  65,  67,  70, 

101,  196 
Priesthoods,  evolution  of,  i,  60,  62,  68, 

70,  72,  76,  89,  134 
Priestley,  i,   193  ;  ii,  179,  202,  209-10, 

385,  413,  484 
Pringle-Pattison,   Prof.  A.  S.,  ii,   473, 

475  n. 
Printing,  rise  of ,  i,  386,  439 
Proclus,  i,  241 
Prodigies,  ancient  belief  in,  i,  198,  204, 

209 
Prodikos,  i,  168 
Progress,  i,  144 ;  ii,  68 
Prophecy,  i,  106,  107 
Prophets,  Hebrew,  i,  104  sq.,  215 
Prostitution,  religious,  i,  62 
Protagoras,  i,  136,  157,  159 
Protestantism  in  Italy,  i,  408  sq.\  in 
England,  i,  354  ;  fortunes  of,   i,  389, 
413,  420  .sg.,  424  sq.,  432,  437,  440  sq., 
454  sq.,  462  sq.;  ii,  32,  141-42;  and 
occultism,  i,  401  {see  Reformation) 
Proudhon,  ii,  277 
Provence,  civilization  of ,  i,  299  sq. 
Providence,  popular  view  of,  i,  36 
Psalms,  the,  i,  106 
Psammetichus,  i,  129 
Psychology,  ii,  459  sq. 
Ptolemy,  i,  188,  225  n. 
Puffeudorf,  ii,  302,  366 
Pulci,  i,  368 

Punjaub,  ancient,  freethought  in,  i,  55, 
57 


Piinjer,  cited,  ii,  266,  322 
Purgatory,  doctrine  of ,  i,  287 
Puritanism,  ii,  20,  73,  75 
Pusey,  cited,  ii,   175,  301,  304,  318  n., 

319,  322 
Puy,  Bishop  of,  ii,  226 
Pyrrho,  i,  181 
Pyrrhonism,  i,  190 
Pythagoras,  i,  136,  Uln.,  144,  148  sq.; 

ii,  463 
Pythagoreanism,  i,  148  sq. 

Quakers,  i,  270 ;  ii,  83,  114 

Qiiatraines  du  Deiste,  i,  484 
Quesnay,  ii,  244 
Quetzalcoatl,  i,  88 
Quietism,  ii,  146 
Quinet,  i,  132  ;  ii,  371,  442,  479 

RABANUS,  i,  283,  287  n.,  288 
Rabelais,  i,  381  sq.,  388,  391,  456;  ii, 

118 
Rabia,  i,  265 
Race-character,   theories  of,  i,  65,  81, 

121-23,  179, 194  sq.,  248,  341,  362  «., 

363,  409,  413,  431 
Racine,  ii,  142 
Rae,  E.,  cited,  i,  33 
Raleigh,  ii,  7  sq. 
Ramessu  III,  i,  72 
Ramsay,  Chevalier  de,  ii,  213,  252 

of  Ochtertyre, cited, ii,183n.;  ii,187 

W.  M.,  cited,  i,  125  n. 

Ramus,  i,  383  ;  ii,  64 

Ranchon,  Abb6,  ii,  225 

Randall,  ii,  23  n. 

Ranke,  ii,  469;    cited,  i,  405,  439  n., 

457  n. 
Raoul  de  Houdan,  i,  300' 
Rapin,  i,  482  n. 
Rappolt,  ii,  297 

Rashdall,  Dr.,  cited,  i,  313,  379 
Rastus,  i,  24 

Rational  Catechism,  TJie,  ii,  106-107 
Rationalism    and    Rationalist,  use    of 

terms,  i,  5,  8;  ii,  79,  116,330 
Ratramnus,  i,  286 
Raumer,  K.  von,  ii,  409  n. 
Rawley,  ii,  12 

Rawlinson,  Canon,  cited,  i,  68 
Ray,  John,  ii,  98 
Raymond  Berenger,  i,  301 

of  Sebonde,  i,  399,  476 

Archbishop,  of  Toledo,  i,  338 

Raynal,  ii,  243,  254,  286  n.,  287,  288 

Reade,  Win  wood,  ii,  402  sq. 

Realism,  philosophic,  i,  147,   307    sq., 

358,  359,  360 
Reason,  deification  of,  i,  215  ;  ii,  274  sq., 

278  ;  religious  defence  of,  i,  283 


528 


INDEX 


INDEX 


529 


Reboulet,  ii,  291 

Recared,  i,  338 

Rechenberg,  ii,  298 

Reeve,  John,  ii,  78 

Reformation,  the,  politically  considered, 
i,403sg'.;  in  Britain,  i,  431  sq.,  4:58  sq.; 
in  France,  i,  427  sq.;  in  Germany,  i, 
403  sq. ,  434  sq. ;  in  Hungary,  i,  419  sq. ; 
in  Italy,  i,  407  sq.;  in  the  Nether- 
lands, i,  414  ;  in  Poland,  i,  422  sq.; 
in  Spain,  i,  413;  in  Scandinavian 
States,  ii,  354  sq. 

Reformers,  anti-pagan,  i,  234 

Regis,  ii,  128 

Regnard,  ii,  143 

Reid,  W.  H.,  ii,  210 

Reimams,  ii,  319,  327  n. 

Reimmann,  i,  11,  483  n. 

Reinach,  i,  120  n. 

Reinhard,  ii,  410 

Reinhold,  i,  457 

Reiser,  ii,  298 

Religion  and  conquest,  i,  44-46,  205, 
251;  psychology  of,  i,  26  s^.;  of  lower 
races,  influence  of,  i,  45,  93 ;  and 
sexual  licence,  i,  18  n.,  103,  244,  292, 
455  ;  and  self-interest,  i,  113-14 ; 
dehumanizing  power  of,  i,  172-73 

Remigius,  i,  286 

R^musat,  i,  321  n. 

Renaissance  in  Italy,  freethought  in,  i, 
365  sq.;  in  Prance,  i,  379  sq.;  in 
England,  i.  393  sq. 

Renan,  ii,  418,  429,  439,  440,  476  ;  on 
Semitic  monotheism,  i,  102  ;  on 
Roman  freethought,  i,  212  ;  on  Job, 
i,  112  ;  on  Koheleth,  i,  115  ;  on 
Mahometan  conquest,  i,  251  n.;  on 
Motazilism,  i,  254  n.;  on  Gazzali,  i, 
267  n.;  on  medieval  Jews,  i,  316  ;  on 
Italian  freethought,  i,  326  ;  on  The 
Three  Rings,  i,  328  n.;  on  Petrarch, 
i,  329  ;  on  the  Franciscans,  i,  336 

Renaud,  cited,  ii,  405 

Renee,  Princess,  i,  411 

Renouvier,  i,  121  n. 

Reuchlin,  i,  403,  406 

Reuss,  ii,  423 

Renter,  H.,  cited,  i,  13,  283  n. 

Revelatimi  of  tlie  Monk  of  Evesham^  i, 
397 

R^ville,  Dr.  A.,  i,  89  n.,  98 

Revolution,  French,  ii,  255,  274  sq.^ 
386  «f/.;  American,  ii,  317 

Rewandites,  the,  i,  256 

Reynard  the  Fox,  i,  301,  353,  361 

Rheticus,  i,  457 

Richardson,  cited,  ii,  190 

Richelieu,  i,  426,  431 ;  ii,  118,  119,  123 

Richter,  J.  P.,  ii,  346,  454 


Richter,  J.  A.  L.,  ii,  482 

Riddle,  i,  14,  15 

Riem,  ii,  315 

Rihoriho,  i,  38 

Rings,  Tlie  Three,  i,  328 

Ripley,  G.,  ii,  480  n. 

Ritchie,  cited,  ii,  187 

Ritual  and  ritualism,  i,  29 

Rivadeau,  i,  393 

Rivarol,  ii,  275,  280  sq.,  287;  cited,  ii, 

215  n. 
Roalfe,  Matilda,  ii,  394 
Robertson,  W.,  ii,  186,  468 

Prof.  Groom,  cited,  ii,  65  n. 

Robespierre,  ii,  254,  278 

Robinet,  ii,  240,  263,  265 

Robins,  S.,  cited,  i,  285,  318 

Rocquain,  ii,  227  n. 

Rod  well,  i,  249  n. 

Rohde,  cited,  i,  99-100 

Rolf  Krake,  i,  40 

Romano,  ii,  367 

Roman    religion,  i,  194    sq.,  207    <7  ; 

culture,  i,  197  ;  freethought,  i,  199  >■(}.: 

law,  i,  215 
Rome,  papal,  i,  294,  331 
Romilly,  ii,  286,  448 
Ronsard,  i,  390 
Roos,  i,  468 
Roscelin,  i,  289,  307  sq. 
Rosenkranz,  cited,  ii,  149  n.,  267-68 
Rose,  Roman  de  la,  i,  351 
Rossi,  M.  A.  de,  i,  379 
Rousseau,  J.  B.,  ii,  222  . 
J.  J.,  ii,  227,  229  n.,  245,  254  sq., 

278,  285;  287,  288,  311,  338,  396,  481 
Roustan,  ii,  256 
Royal  Society,  i,  4  ;  ii,  79,  155 
Riidiger,  ii,  312 
Rudrauf,  ii,  298 
Ruffhead,  ii,  232-33 
Ruge,  ii,  474,  478 
Rum  Bahadur,  i,  24 
Rupp,  ii,  410 
Ruskin,  ii,  450 
Russia,  culture  history  of,  ii,  363  sq., 

412  «^.,  456  .**r/. 
Rust,  ii,  97 
Ruteboeuf,  i,  300 
Ruth,  Book  of,  i,  117 
Rutherford,  ii,  182 
Rydberg,  ii,  418 
Ryssen,  ii,  36  n. 
Ryswyck,  i,  399,  404 

SaBATIER,  i,  344  n. 
Sabbath,  origin  of,  i,  110-11 
Sabellius,  i,  231 
Sach,  ii,  422 
Sack,  ii,  308  n. 


Sacraments,  Mexican,  i,  88,  89 

iTcred  books,  i.  42,  54  92,  135  193, 
216,  250 ;  ii,  176.  See  Old  Testa- 
ment and  New  Testament 

Sacrifices,  causation  of,  i,  51,  94  sq.; 
early  disbelief  in,  i,  41,  43,  52,  86, 
109  ;  human,  i,  41,  42  n.,  51,  63,  81, 
82,  86,  88,  91,  99 

Sadducees,  i,  116 

Sadi,  i,  266 

Saga,  i,  468 

Sahagun,  i,  91 

St.  Bartholomew,  massacre  of,  i,  391, 

475 

Sainte-Beuve,  ii,  406,  443,  479  ;  cited, 

i,  479;  ii,  123  w. 
St.  Gyres,  Viscount,  cited,  ii,  117-18 
St!  Evremond,  ii,  84,  143,  225 
St.  Glain,  ii,  141  w. 
St.  Hilaire,  B.,  cited,  i,  58 

Geoffroy,  ii,  464 

St.  Simon,  ii,  406 

Saintsbury,  cited,  i,  352;  ii,  281  n. 

Saisset,  i,  12;  cited,  ii,  442,  483 

Saladin,  i,  328 

Salas,  ii,  376 

Salaville,  ii,  278 

Salazar,  ii,  376 

Salchi,  ii,  250  n.,  380 

Sale,  i,  249  n. 

Sales,  Deslisle  de,  ii,  242 

Sallier,  ii,  257 

Sallustius  Philosophus,  i,  119 

Salvemini  de  Castillon,  ii,  243 

Salverte,  ii,  468 

Salvian,  i,  236,  244,  245 

Samaniego,  ii,  374 

Samaritans,  i,  110  n. 

Samoans,  religion  of,  i,  37 

Samoyedes,  the,  i,  83 

Samson,  i,  80,  102 

Sanchez,  i,  470,  474  sq. 

Sanchoniathon,  i,  79 

Sand,  George,  ii,  442 

Sanderson,  Bishop,  ii,  74 

Sandys,  J.  E.,  i,  164,  165 

Sankara,  i,  53 

Sankhya  philosophy,  i,  51 

Saracen  culture,  i,  253  sq.;  in  Spain,  i, 

268  sq.  [see  Aralas) 
Satan,  i.  111,  113 
Satire,  medieval,  i,  332,  353 
Satow,  Sir  E.,  cited,  ii,  495  n. 
Saturnalia,  the,  i,  46 
Satuminus,  i,  227 
Satyr e  Menippie,  i,  481 
Saul,  i,  102 
Saunderson,  ii,  151 
Savages,    freethought    among,    i,    26, 

33  sq.;    religion  of,   i,   27,   29    sq.; 

VOL.  II 


ethics  of,  i,  28 ;  mental  life  of,  i,  22  sq. 
Savile,  ii,  111 
Saviour-Gods,  i,  88 
Savonarola,  i,  370,  375,  407  sq. 
Sayce,  cited,  i,  62,  64,  81 
Sayous,  i,  13 
Sbinko,  i,  416 
ScsBvola,  i,  203  7i. 
Scaliger,  cited,  i,  468,  469  n. 
Scandinavia,  freethought  in  ancient,  i, 

39-40;  in  modem,  ii,  355  sg.,  412  «g., 

457 
Scaurus,  i,  209 
Sceptic.     See  Skeptic 
Sohade,  ii,  315 
Schafiae,  ii,  469 
Schechter,  cited,  i,  379 
Schelling,  ii,  349,  350,  454,  471 
Scherer,  E.,  i,  108  ;  ii,  254,  443 
Schiller,  ii,  336 

Schism,  the  Great  Papal,  i,  331 
Scioppius,  ii,  49  sq. 
Scipio  Aemilianus,  i,  201 
Schlegel,  A.,  ii,  349;  quoted,  i,  162 
Schleiermacher,  ii,  349,  350,  387,  409, 

420  sg.,  426  ,    -    .o« 

Schmidt,   W.  A.,  i,  12;  cited,  i,  192, 

208  w.,  213  n. 

J.  L.,ii,  306 

Julian,  cited,  ii,  324  n. 


Scholastics,  the,  i,  283  sq.,  307  sq- 

Schoner,  ii,  38 

Schoone,  i,  165 

Schopenhauer,  ii,  474,  475 

Schopp,  ii,  49  sq. 

Schrader,  i,  125 

Schuckburgh,  cited,  i,  199 

Schulz,  ii,  330  sq. 

Schurer,  i,  149 

Schwartz,  ii,  298  . 

Schwegler,  i,  194  n.,  197  ;  u,  426 

Schweinfurth,  i,  31 

Schweizer,  cited,  i,  40  n. 

Science  in  ancient  India,  i,  57 ;  m  Baby- 
lon, i.  62-63,96,  122;  ^  Greece  ^i, 
137,  138,  143,  149,  160,  169,  179-80; 
Christian  contempt  for,  i,  241 ;  Sara- 
cen, i,  254,  258  n.,  268  ;  Provencal,  i, 
302  ;  Spanish,  i,  339  ;  Renaissance,  i, 
371,  375,  377,  402  ;  and  the  Reforma- 
tion, i,  456  sq.;  Bacon  and,  ji'  30; 
rise  of  modern,  ii,  41  sq.,  56,  106, 
260  sg.,  309,  467  sq. 

philosophy  in,  ii,  484 

Scot,  Reginald,  i,  3  ;  ii,  4,  138 

W.,  ii,98  .      . 

Scotland,  Reformation  in,  i,  405,  433 , 
freethought  in,  ii,  85,  178,  181  sq., 
208-209 
Scott,  Temple,  ii,  156  n. 

2m 


530  INDEX 


INDEX 


531 


Scott,  Thomas,  ii,  11,  439 

Walter,  ii,  437,444 

W.  R.,  cited,  ii,  189,  198 

Scud^ry,  Mademoiselle  de,  ii,142 

Scylla,  i,  185 

Secularism,,  ii,  395,  399  sq. 

Sedgwick,  ii,  465 

Sedillot,  cited,  i,  251  n. 

Segarelli,  i,  336  sq. 

Segidi,  the  chief,  i,  39 

Seguierde  Saint-Brissoa ,  ii,  242 

Selden.ii,  20,  71  n.,  74-75 

Self-interest  and  religion,  i,  113-14 

Sellar,  cited,  i,  202,  209  n. 

Sembat,  i,  280  n. 

SemeM,  i,  125 

Semites,  religions  of  i,  44,  45,  97  sq.; 

theories  concerning,  i,  64, 81,  102,  248 
Semitic  influence  on  Greeks,  i,  120  so. 
Semler,  ii,  318  sq.,  321,  330,  424 
Seneca,  i,  209,  215,  245,  476 
Sergius,  i,  280 

Sermon  on  the  Mount,  the,  i,  221 
Serra,  ii,  368  n. 
Serre,  De  la,  ii,  225 
Servetus,  i,  231,  408,  442,  447  sq.,  467 
Seton-Merriman,  ii,  451 
Seume,  ii,  388  n. 
Sevign6,  Madame  de,  i,  2  w.;   ii,  128, 

142,  250  n. 
Sextus  Empiricus,  i,  26  «.,  159  w.,  189- 

90,  391,476;  ii,  9,  39 
Shaftesbury,  ii,  99,  143,  149,  152,  154, 

164.    184,    189,    194,  225,  268,  309  ; 

cited,  i,  6,  7 
Shakespeare,  i,  20,  475;  ii,  15  s^. 
Sharpe,  i,  112  ;  ii,  415 
Shelley,  i,  201  ;  ii,  48,  395,  400,  443  sq., 

445 
Sherlock,  W.,  i,  4 ;  ii,  91-92,  113 
Shiites,  the,  i,  254  sq. 
Shintdism,  ii,  491  sq. 
Shirazi,  J.  V.  M.,  cited,  i,  263,  273  n. 
Sibylline  books,  i,  206  n. 
Sichel,  W. ,  cited  and  discussed,  ii,  164  Ji. , 

197  n.,  198 
Sicily,  culture  of,  i,  301,  318 
Sidgwick,  H.,  cited,  ii,  74  n. 
Sidney,  A.,  ii,  78 

Sir  P.,  ii,  45 

Sifatites,  the,  i,  255 
Sigismund  III,  i,  426 
Sikhs,  ii,  497 
Simeon  Duran,  Rabbi,  i,  328 

son  of  Gamaliel,  i,  116 

Simon  de  Montfort,  i,  304,  305,  325 

of  Tournay,  i,  311,  315 

Richard,  ii,  93, 131  sg. 

Simonides,  i,  152 
Simpson,  cited,  ii,  210 


Simson,  ii,  151, 183 

Sinclar,  G.,  ii,  168 

Sismondi,  quoted,  i,  303,  304,  305  n 

312  n. 
Sixtus  VI,  i,  376 
Skarzinski,  criticized,  ii,  188  n. 
Skeat,  Prof.,  cited,  i,  347 
Skeats,  cited,  ii,  160  n. 
Skelton,  cited,  ii,  192 
Skeptic,  meaning  of  word,  i,  5, 11 
Skepticism,  academic,  i,  187  sq.;  Pyr- 
rhonic,  i,  11-12,  181,  474  sq.;  ii,  119  ; 
dialectic,  among  Christians,    i,  465 
474,  480;  ii,  120,  125,  126  sq.,  163. 
480 ;  popular,  among  Christians,  i,  3G 
465 
Skytte,  ii,  297 
Slave  Coast,  priests  of,  i,  35 
Slavery,  Christianity  and,  i,  224;  Paine 

and,  ii,  383  n. 
Slavonic  States,  culture  history  of,  n 

362  sq. 
Sloane,  Prof.,  cited,  ii,  273  ?i.,  278n. 
Smalbroke,  ii,  173 

Smith,  Adam,  ii,  178,  185,  186,  187  so., 
196,  244 

Bosworth,  i,  253  n. 

Elisha,  cited,  ii,  159 

Henry,  ii,  5 

John,  ii,  81 

Joseph,  ii,  156 

S.,  i,  6 

Sydney,  ii,  386  sq. 

W.  Robertson,  i,  51,  103;  ii,  433 

Smyrna,  ancient,  i,  124 
Social  causation,  i,  91  sq.,  113,  246,  269, 
354-55,  365  sg.;  ii,  146,  151,  170  so., 
178,  200,  S86 sq.,  391  sq. 
Socialism,  ii,  411  sg. 
Socinianism,  i,  392  ;  ii,  35,  37,  106 sg., 

138,  151,  488.     See  Unitarianism 
Sociology,  i,  375  ;  ii,  468  sq. 
Sokrates,  i,  163,  160,  168  sq.;  ii,  288 
Solano,  ii,  373 
Solomon,  i,  101,  242 

ben  Gebirol,  i,  316 

Somers,  ii,  112 

Somerset,  Duke  of,  ii,  403 

Sophia,  Princess,  ii,  363 

Sophists,  the,  i,  168 

Sophocles,  i,  127  n.,  148,  162  w. 

Sorbonne,  the,  i,  384,  429  ;  ii,  125,  2G0, 

264 
Sorcery,  belief  in,  i,  22 
Sorel,  cited,  ii,  351 
Soury,  cited,  ii,  267 
South  Africa,  freethought  in,  ii,  417 
South  America,  freethought  in,  ii,  407 
South,  Dean,  ii.  92-93,  114 
Southey,  ii,  396  n.,  444,  445 


South  Place  Institute,  ii,  413  sg. 

Southwell,  ii,  394,  408 

Sozzini,  the,  i,  392,  421,  467,  468;  ii, 

37  sg. 
Spain,  culture  history  of,  i,  268  sq., 

337  sq.,   470  sq.;    ii,  38  sq.,  372  sq., 

387  sg.;  freethought  in,  i,  338  sq., 

170  sq.;  ii,  372  sq.,  406;  Moors  in, 

i,  268  sg.,  338;  ii,  38;  Reformation 

in,  i,  413 
Spalding,  ii,  318,  422 
Speirs,  Rev.  E.,  ii,  470  n. 
Spencer  and  Gillen,  i,  32,  93 

J.,  ii,  102.  249 

H.,  ii,  403,  450,  467,  487 

Spenser,  ii,  45  n.,  499 

Speusippos,  i,  184 

Spiegel,  cited,  i,  68  n. 

Spina,  Alfonso,  i,  370  n.,  376 

Spinoza,  i,  4,  16,  316,  464  ;  ii,  29,  97, 

107,  127,  129,  133  sq.;  and  Toland, 

ii,  148,  253,  489 ;   and  Leibnitz,  ii, 

289  sq. 
Spinozism,  ii,  129,  131,  135,  138,  168, 

297,  347-48,  349  n.,  362,  400 
"  Spirit  of  Liberty,"  the  sect,  i,  337 
Spirituales,  the  sect,  i,  2,  445 
Sprat,  i,  4 

Sprenger,  cited,  i,  249  n.,  250  n. 
Squier,  cited,  ii,  407 
Btafiord,  W.,  ii,  368  w. 
Stahehn,  i,  392  n. 
Stahl,  ii,  460 
Stancari,  i,  425 
Stanhope,  Dr.,  ii,  98 

Lady  Hester,  ii,  206 

Stationers'  Company,  ii,  99 

Statius,  i,  211 

Staudlin,  i,  12  ;  ii,  345 

Stabbing,  ii,  173 

Steele,  ii,  151 

Steinbart,  ii,  317 

Steinbuhler,  ii,  330 

Steno,  ii,  463  n. 

Stephen  Battery,  King,  i,  426 

Sir  J.,  cited,  i,  356  n.;  ii,  179,  251 

■ Sir  Leslie,  i,   13  ;    ii,   403,  408 ; 

cited,  ii,  104, 163  n.,  161  n.,  168,  261; 

criticized,  ii,  148  n.,  160  n.,  155,  171, 

172  sg.,  179  n.,  203  n.,  251 
Sterling,  i,  478  n. 
Stesichoros,  i,  128 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  cited,  i,  46 
Stewart,  H.  F.,  cited,  i,  246-47 

Sir  J.,  ii,  181  n. 

Stillingfleet,  i,  4  ;  ii,  83,  87,  91, 109,  168 

Stilpo,  i,  183 

Stirling,  Dr.  H.,  ii,  474 

"  Stirner,  Max,"  ii,  478 

Stoicism,  i,  180,  203,  209,  215,  352,  392 


Stosch,  ii,  297 

Stout,  SirR.,  ii,  501 

Stow,  cited,  ii,  5  n.,  23  n. 

Strabo,  i,  173  n.,  180  n.,  191 

Strannik,  cited,  ii,  413  n. 

Strasburg  Cathedral,  i,  361  n. 

Strato,  i,  184 

Strauss,  ii,  415,  423  sg.,  425  sq.,  428  sq., 

432,  439,  447,  474,  476 
Strigolniks,  the,  ii,  363 
Strindberg,  ii,  418 
Stromer,  ii,  418 
Strowsky,  cited,  i,  393  n.,  480  n.,  481, 

483  n.;  ii,  117  n. 
Struensee,  ii,  361  sg. 
Strutt,  ii,  166,  194 
Stuart,  Dean,  ii,  81 

Stubbs,  Bishop,  cited,  i,  341,  433,  439  n. 
Stuckenberg,  cited,  ii,  339,  341,  343 
Studemund,  cited,  ii,  411,  412 
Suarez,  i,  363  ;  ii,  282 
Suckling,  Sir  J.,  ii,  31 
Sudan,  magic  and  religion  in,  i,  46 
Suetonius,  i,  212,  213 
Sufiism,  i,  265,  273 
Sulla,  i,  206  n. 
Sully,  Prof.,  cited,  i,  42 
Sun-Gods,  worship  of,  i,  69,  73,  78,  89, 

102,  124,  153 
Sunnites,  the,  i,  254 
Svedberg,  ii,  369 
Sweden,  culture  history  of,  ii,  354  sg., 

417  sg. 
Sweden borg,  ii,  358  sq. 
Swift,  i,  167  ;  ii,  151  sq.;  cited,  i,  7 
Swinburne,  ii,  452  sq.,  502 
Switzerland,  reformation  in,  i,  2,  410, 

438  sg.;  freethought  in,  ii,  378  sg., 

416  ;  bigotry  in,  ii,  415  sq. 
Sykes,  A.  A.,  ii,  173  ;  quoted,  ii,  192-93 
Sylvanus,  i,  280 
Sylvester  II,  i,  301  m. 

Bernard,  i,  312 

Symonds,  J.  A.,  cited,  i,  365  7i.,  410 
Synge,  ii,  164  n.,  189 

TABARI,  cited,  i,  257  w. 
Taborites,  the,  i,  418 
Tacitus,  i,  212,  213 
Tailh^,  ii,  221 
Taillandier,  cited,  i,  284 
Taine,  ii,  144,  443,  484 
Talbot,  A.  H.,  i,  264  n. 
Talfourd,  ii,  395 

Talmud,  thought  in,  i,  116,  221 ;  criti- 
cism of,  i,  379 
Tamerlane,  i,  260 
Tammuz,  i,  101 
Tanquelin,  i,  295 
Taouism,  i,  87 


532 


INDEX 


INDEX 


633 


Tarde,  ii,  326,  380 

Tasmanians,  religion  of,  i,  100 

Tatian,  i,  227 

Tau,  i,  84,  87 

Tauler,  i,  362 

Tayler,  ii,  415 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  il,  74,  101 

Robert,  ii,  394 

Tegn^r,  ii,  417 

Telesio,  ii,  64 

Tell-el-Amarna.  i,  73 

Teller,  ii,  318 

Templars,  the  Knights,  i.  340,  356-58 

Temple,  Sir  W.,  ii,  87,  111 

Ten  Brink,  cited,  ii,  34 

Ten,  theories  of,  i,  150 

Tenison,  ii,  98 

Tenneman,  cited,  ii,  108 

Tennyson,  ii,  101  u.,  452 

Teodori,  i,  411 

Tercier,  ii,  236 

Terrasson,  ii,  221 

Tertullian,  i,  150  n.,  229,  232,  235,  244 

Tetens,  ii,  346 

Tetzel,  i,  406 

Teuffel,  i,  194-95,  197 

Texte,  cited,  ii,  165 

Thacker,  Ellas,  ii,  5 

Thackeray,  ii,  451 

Thales,  i,  135  sq. 

Thallos,  i,  80 

Thamamians,  the.  i,  266  n. 

Theagenes,  i,  152 

Theal,  cited,  i,  22;  ii,  417 

Theil,  M.  du,  ii,  255 

Theodora,  i,  246 

Theodore  of  Mopsuestia,  i,  242 

Theodoric,  i,  246,  247 

Theodoros,  i,  183 

Theodosius  II,  i,  239 

Theodotos,  i,  229 

Theophilantkropy ,  ii,  382 

Theophrastos,  i,  186 

Thi^bault,  ii,  270  n.,  313  n. 

Thierrys,  the  two,  ii,  442 

Thirlwall,  ii,  469  ;  cited,  i,  27. 121  n.,  173 

Thirty-nine  Articles,  the,  i,  460 

Thirty  Years'  War,  ii,  75,  295,  300 

Tholuck,  i,  12  ;  ii,  423  ;  cited,  ii.  249, 

296,  301,  305  5?.,  311 
Thomas  Aquinas,  i,  318  sq,,  369,  360; 

ii,  282 
Thomas  a  Kempis,  i,  363 
Thomas,  Dr.  R.  H.,  ii,  384  n. 

A.  L.,  ii,  258,  291 

Thomasius,  Jenkin,  i.  11 ;  ii,  298  ;  cited, 

ii,  69  n.,  296 

Christian,  ii,  302  sq. 

Thompson,  F.,  ii,  453 

Thomson,  B.,  cited,  i,  36  ii.,  41  w. 


Thomson,  J.,  ii,  452 

Thonga,  the,  i,  25,  34 

Thonrakians,  i,  280  n. 

Thoreau,  ii,  453 

Thoth,  i,  110 

Thotmes  III,  i,  75 

Thrakians,  the,  i,  121  7t.,  157 

Thukydides,  i,  156  7i.,  173 

Thunder-Gods,  i,  97 

Tiberius,  i,  213 

Ticknor,  cited,  i,  341 

Tiele,  cited,  i,  66,  69-70,  71  ;  criticized, 
i,  46-47,  60,  71 

Tielenus,  ii,  70 

Tii,  Queen,  i,  74,  75 

Tilley,  A.  A.,  cited,  i,  428 

Tillotson,  ii,  88,  113 

Tindal,  ii,  152,  158,  174,  175,  306 

Tithes,  ii,  20-21 

Tocco,  i,  13 

Tocqueville,  de,  cited,  ii,  126  n.,  254 

Toland,  i,  6;  ii,  98-99,  132,  147  sg., 
174,  176 

Toleration,  beginnings  of,  in  England, 
ii,  24,  77  ;  Bayle  and,  ii,  140;  begin- 
nings of,  in  France,  ii,  221,  231,  233, 
291 ;  in  Germany,  ii,  312 

ToUner,  ii,  319 

Tolstoy,  i,  419;  ii,  457 

Toltecs,  the,  i,  88 

Tomkyns,  Martin,  ii,  201 

Tonga  Islands,  freethought  in,  i,  38 

Torild,  ii,  360 

Torquemada,  i,  342 

Torricelli,  ii,  365 

Torture,  ecclesiastical,  i,  321-22 

Totemism  and  Greek  philosophy,  i. 
139-40 

Toulmin,  G.  H.,  ii,  201 

Joshua,  ii,  202 

Tourgu6nief,  ii,  456  sq. 

Tourneur,  ii,  20 

Towers,  ii,  82 

Toy,  ii,  420 

Tractarianism,  ii,  437  sq. 

Tracy,  cited,  ii,  492 

Transubstantiation,  i,  286,  428 

Transvaal,  freethought  in,  ii,  416 

Trapezuntios,  i,  372 

Trapp,  ii,  198 

Travers,  ii,  14 

Trebonian,  i,  245 

Tregelles,  ii,  438 

Trenchard,  ii.  152 

Triads,  i,  69 

Tribbechov,  i,  II ;  ii.  298 

Trie   i   449 

Trinity,  dogma  of.  i,  77,  226.  231,  242. 
286,  307,  312,  421,  425,  447  ;  ii,  339, 
444,  487  52-     See  Unitarianism 


Trinius,  i,  11 

Trouv^resand  Troubadours,  i,  300  sq., 

326,  361 
Trumpp,  cited,  ii,  497 
Turgot,  ii,  221,  244,  254,  260,  276  7i., 

288 

Turkey,  civilization  of,  ii,  497  sq.\  free- 
thought  in,  i,  272  ;  ii,  497  sq. 

Turlupins,  i,  333 

Turner,  ii,  201 

Turpin,  ii,  291 

Turrettini,  the,  i,  458  ;  ii,  225,  378  sq. 

Twelve,  sacred  number,  i,  97,  124  n. 

Twofold  truth,  doctrine  of,  i,  271,  321, 
346,  360,  361,  377,  478;  ii,  28,  108, 
134 

Tylor,  Sir  E.,  ii,  470  sq.\  cited,  i,  22, 

31 

Tyndale,  cited,  i,  3 

Tyrannos,  i,  125  n. 

Tyrrell,  i,  166 

Tyrwhitt,  i,  165 

Tyssot  de  Patot,  ii,  214,  227 

UBALDINI,  i,  325  n. 

Ubicini,  cited,  ii,  497  n. 

Ueberweg,  quoted,  i,  176-77,  284, 
309 

Uhlich,  ii,  410 

Uitenbogaert,  i,  463 

Uladislaus  II,  i,  419 

Ullmann,  i,  249  n. 

Ulrich  von  Hutten,  i,  403,  404  n.,  406, 
438 

Undereyck.  ii,  298 

Underbill,  E.  B.,  ii,  77  n. 

Unitarianism,  early,  i,  242,  328,  404, 
447  sg.;  in  England,  i,  459;  ii,  12, 
21,  77,  83,  106  sq.,  153-54,  161,  179, 
201  sg.,  413,  414  sg.,  471 ;  in  Germany, 
i,  435  sg.;  in  Hungary,  i,  420  ;  in 
Ireland,  ii,  188  ;  in  Poland,  i,  424  sg.; 
ii,  36  sg.,  159  sq.\  in  Scotland,  ii, 
208-209  ;  in  Italy,  i,  468  ;  in  Holland, 
ii,  35;  in  Switzerland,  ii,  378  sq., 
415 ;  in  America,  ii,  385,  413 

United  States,  freethought  in,  ii ,  381  sq. , 
411,  419 ;  German  freethinkers  in, 
ii,  411 

Universalism,  ancient,  i,  60,  63,  77,  79 

Universities,  low  ebb  of  culture  in,  ii, 
195  ;  French,  i,  355  ;  German,  i,  404, 
410,  466;  Swiss,  i,  447 

Upanishads,  philosophy  of,  i,  52  .sg. 

Urban  VIII,  ii,  59 

Urstitius,  ii,  42 

Urwick,  ii,  82  7i. 

Usury  and  the  Church,  i,  295,  342  n. 

Utilitarianism,  i,  215  ;  ii,  194 

"Utilitarian  Associations,"  ii,  418 


VAIR,  Guillaume  du,  i,  393 
Valentinus,  i,  228 

Gentilis,  i,  451,  453 

Valerius  Maximus,  i,  175 

Valla,  Lorenzo,  i,  366-67,  377 

Vallee,  i,  391 

Vambery,  cited,  i,  273 ;  ii,  498  n. 

Van  den  Ende,  ii,  134 

Vandeul,  Mme.  de,  ii,  271 

Vanini,  i,  21,  475  ;  ii,  51  sg. 

Van  Mancn,  ii,  424 

Van  Mildert,  i,  14,  15 

Van  Vloten,  i,  254  n. 

Varro,  i,  195,  203  n. 

Varuna,  i,  49  sg. 

Vasari,  cited,  i,  370  n. 

Vassor,  ii,  145 

Vater,  ii,  423 

Vatke,  ii,  474 

Vaudois,  the,  i,  298,  388 

Vaughan,  cited,  ii,  79 

Vauvenargues,  ii,  246 

Vedanta,  i,  55 

Vedas,   i,   29,   48;   translations  of,    i, 

30  n.\    skepticism  in,  i,  30,  49-60  ; 

attacks  on,  i,  52-53 
Vejento,  i,  213 
Velasquez,  ii,  40 
Venus  Cloacina,  i,  82 
Verbalism,  Greek,  i,  146-47 
Vergilius,  St.,  i,  282,  368 
Verlaine,  ii,  443 
Vernes,  Maurice,  i,  108 
Vernet,  Jacob,  ii,  225 
Veron,  John,  i,  459 
Verrall,  i,  162-63;  ii,  94 
Viau,  ii,  122 

Vickers,  K.  H.,  cited,  i,  397 
Vico,  i,  26  n.,  375  ;  ii,  365  sg.,  468 
Vigilantius,  i,  239,  298  n. 
Villani,G.,  i,  322 
Villanueva,  Dr.  J.,  ii,  372 
Villari,  cited,  i,  372,  408 
Villemain,  ii,  217 
Villeneuve,  Marquis  de,  ii,  278  n. 
Vincent,  J.  M.,  cited,  i,  438 
Vinci,  Leonardo  da,  i,  370;  ii,  463 
Virchow,  ii,  436 
Viret,  i,  466 
Virgil,  i,  204,  209 
Virgin-Mother-Goddess,  i,  88,  225 

Vives,  i,  470 

Voelkel,  ii,  35 

Vogt,  ii,  479  n. 

Volkmar,  ii,  427,  430 

Volney,  ii.  244,  274,  404,  468 

Volta,  ii,  371 

Voltaire,  i,  21,  133,  277,  323,  329  ;  ii, 
113,  143  n.,  147  n.,  157,  159,  164  n., 
165,  196,  197,  198,  199,  213  «.,  220, 


534  ^ 


INDEX 


INDEX 


535 


222  55.,  227  55.,  237  sg.,  246,  252  sg., 
266,  257  sq.,  263,  273,  284,  291,  431, 
468 ;  cited,  i,  6  ;  ii,  236,  248,  273  n., 
379,  380 

Vorstius,  ii,  22 

Voult^,  i,  388 

Voyage  de  Robertson ,  ii,  241 

Voysey,  ii,  413 

Vroes,  ii,  225,  238 

WADIA,  Prof.,  ii,  288  n. 
Wagner,  Richard,  ii,  456 

Tobias,  ii,  298 

Wahabi  sect,  i,  275 

Waitz,  ii,  470 

Walckeuaer,  ii,  145,  468  n. 

Waldenses,  i,  298,  338,  411,  415 

Waldus,  i,  298 

Walid,  i,  256 

Wallace,  A.  R.,  ii,  465 

Dr.  Robert,  ii,  185 

Prof.  W.,  cited,  i,  182  n.,  183  n. 

Wallis,  Dr.,  ii,  114 

Walpole,  ii,  171 

Walsh,  Rev.  W.,  ii,  413 

Walter  von  der  Vogelweidc,  i,  362 

Walther,  cited,  ii,  295 

Walwyn,  ii,  79 

War  in  South  Africa,  efiEect  of,  ii,  417 

religious,  i,  338,  392 

and  English  deism,  ii,  170-71 

and  German,  501 

Warburton,  ii,  156,  166,  173,  339  n,, 

353  n. 
Ward,  Mrs.  Humphry,  ii,  451 

Lester,  ii,  469 

Rev.  R.,  ii,  89  n. 

Warren,  Albertus,  ii,  90 

Warton,  cited,  ii,  166 

Warville,  ii,  244 

Washington,  ii,  382  sq. 

Wasil  Ibn  Atta,  i,  254 

Waterland,  ii,  116  w.,  158,  173 

Wathek,  Khalif,  i,  258 

Watkinson,  Archdeacon,  cited,  ii,  203  n. 

Watson,  Bishop,  ii,  210,  253,  384,  392 

W.,  ii,  453 

Watts,  C,  i,  11 

H.  E.,  cited,  ii,  40 

Isaac,  ii,  90,  201-202 

Wazon,  Bishop,  i,  294 

Weber,  A., cited,  i,  45,  52  71.,  54,  55  w.,  56 

Em.,  ii,  298 

Wedderbuni,  ii,  393 

Wegscheider,  ii,  423,  424,  432 

Weigall,  A.  E.  P.,  cited,  i,  74 

Weisse,  ii,  427 

Weizsiicker,  ii,  435 

Wellhausen,   ii,   433,   436;    quoted,    i, 

104,  136 


Wen,  Emperor,  i,  86 

Wenderborn,  cited,  ii,  205  n. 

Werner,  ii,  462 

Wesley,  ii,  195  ;  cited,  ii,  381  n. 

Wesleyanism,  ii,  195 

Westphalia,  Peace  of,  ii,  295 

Wette,  de,  ii,  167,  423,  431 

Wheeler,  J.  M.,  i,  11 

Whewell,  ii,  465;  cited,  ii,  30  n.,  74, 

105 
Whinfield,  i,  264  n.,  265 
Whiston,  ii,  151,  153-54,  161,  176 
White,  A.  D.,  i,  14,  42,  457  n.\  ii,  467 

Thomas,  ii,  102 

Whitehead,  ii,  167 

Whitfield,  ii,  195 

Whitman,  ii,  453 

Whittakor,  T.,  i,  108,  187;    ii,  43  n., 

45  n.,  49  n. 
Wiclif,  i,  334,  349   sq.,   394,   416;    ii, 

280 
Wieland,  ii,  329 
Wielmacker,  ii,  2 
Wier,  i,  479 ;  ii,  33,  138 
Wightman,  ii,  21,  23 
Wilamowitz,  i,  125  n. 
Wilberforce,   ii,    393,    451  ;     cited,    ii, 

205-206 

Bishop,  ii,  465 

Wilcke,  ii,  427 

Wildman,  ii,  78 

Wilkes,  ii,  200 

Wilkins.  Bishop,  ii,  87,  88 

"  Will  to  believe,"  i,  16,  176,  360 

William  of  Auvergne,  i,  319  n. 

of  Conches,  i,  312 

of  Occam,  i,  354,  358-59  ;  ii,  283 

of  St.  Amour,  i,  334 

Williams,  David,  ii,  203 

Rowland,  cited,  i,  114  n. 

Speaker,  cited,  i,  467 

T.,  cited,  i,  24 

Willich,  cited,  ii,  311 

Wilson,  H.  H.,  cited,  i,  58 

Winchell,  ii,  420 

Winckler,  ii,  434 

Wireker,  i,  361  n. 

WisdoTn  of  Solomon,  i,  116 

Wise,  ii,  98,  165  n. 

Wislicenus,  ii,  410 

Witchcraft,  belief  in,  i,  376,  390,  402, 

449  ;  ii,  19,  33,  81,  101,  102,  372  n.; 

assailed,  i,  479,  ii,  4,  33,  07,  138 
Witt,  John  de,  ii,  134 
Witty,  John,  ii,  115 
Wolf,  P.  A.,  ii,  368 
Wolff  and  Wolfifianism,  ii,  305  sq.,  312, 

337 

Elizabeth,  ii,  352 

Wolfius,  ii,  298 


WoUstonecraft,  Mary,  ii,  101  w.,  207- 
208,  275  n. 

Wolseley,  SirC,  ii,  87,  90,  98 

Wolsey,  Cardinal,  i,  432,  458 

Women,  freethought  among,  i,  374  n., 
389;  ii,  124  n.,  207-208,  223  n.,  253, 
499-500  ;  orthodoxy  among,  ii,  171 ; 
position  of  early  Christian,  i,  245  ; 
exclusion  of,  from  sacra,  i,  196;  in 
Babism,  i,  274  ;  community  of,  i,  418 

Wood,  Anthony  a,  cited,  ii,  12,  96  n. 

Woodrow,  ii,  420 

Woodward,  ii,  115,  176-77 

Woolston,  ii,  157,  159 

Woort,  ii,  2 

Wordsworth,  ii,  444 

Bishop,  cited,  ii,  404 

Wright,  Frances,  ii,  499 

Susanna,  ii,  394  n. 

Wriothesley,  cited,  i,  389 

Writing,  antiquity  of,  i,  105  n.,  194 

XenOPHANES,  i,  136,  141-42,  144 
Xenophon,  i,  199 

Yahweh,  i,  97,  101,  103,  104  sq.,  114 
YAska,  i,  52 


Yazur  Veda,  i,  54 
Yeats,  ii,  453 
Yezid  III,  i,  256 
Young,  ii,  172 
Yuncas,  the,  i,  90 
Yvon,  Abbe,  i,  235 

ZAID,  i,  248,  249 

Zanchi,  i,  467 

Zapoyla,  i,  420 

Zarathustra,  i,  67,  68 

Zebrzydowski,  i,  424 

Zeller,  ii,  416,  426, 434  ;  cited,  i,  171  n, 

Zephaniah,  i,  114 

Zendavesta,  i,  67 

Zendekism  (Arab atheism), i, 249 sg.,  250 
Zeno  (the  elder),  i,  136,  146 

(the  Stoic),  i,  180  sq.,  186 

Zeus,  i,  124,  130  sq. 
Ziska,  i,  417  sg. 
Zola,  ii,  442,  443  n. 
Zollikofer,  ii,  318 
Zoroastrianism,  i,  68 
Zosimus,  i,  245 

Zulus,  freethought  among,!,  38 
Zwicker,  ii,  35-6,  114, 137 
Zwingli,  i,  408,  420,  440 


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